Reading My Entire Bookshelf

K ~ she/her ~ 28 Currently on book 7/311

[tiredthanatologist]

Book 6- Drawing Anatomy by Barrington Barber

Before I say anything else, I would like to say that the parents out there who named their newborn baby son Barrington Barber are completely crazy.

This book is going to be my first skip in the challenge. I went through my bookshelf two months ago and got rid of some books I was never going to read again and I debated giving it away then. Now, faced with sitting down and reading it, I've decided it's not something I need in my collection.

I bought this book in 2019 when I spent a lot more time drawing than I have in the past 5 years. 2019 was also before I went to mortuary school and took an in depth medical anatomy class, and before I started my embalming apprenticeship, where I get to see and work on real human bodies.

This is a reference book, and I do think it's a good one. I flipped through it a little bit before deciding to donate it, and I like how it uses anatomy studies by famous artists as examples alongside the anatomical diagrams. I also like how it focuses on just the anatomy an artist would need to know, and teaches anatomy from a complete beginner's perspective, unlike a medical anatomy textbook. However, I really don't need to own an artist's anatomy reference book anymore, and I'd like to pass it on to someone who will actually use it rather than having it gathering dust on my shelf.

One last thing: in the introduction of this book Barber states that he is leaving out the details of the penis because "the differences in size and shape are too variable." However, this book is absolutely packed with titties, the sizes and shapes of which are incredibly variable. I think Barber just didn't want to draw dicks and was too cowardly to admit it.

[tiredthanatologist]

Book 5- Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki

This is the first book on my shelf that isn't a comic of some sort, and also the first nonfiction book. I purchased it at the MFA in Boston in the gift shop for an exhibition of a very different artist, Takashi Murakami. I'm not sure why this book was being sold at that exhibition, as Murakami isn't a manga artist and his style is completely different from Araki's. I bought it almost immediately though, as I was already a huge Jojo fan at the time, and I had no idea Araki had published a book about his process before stumbling onto it in the wild.

This book is written as a guide for a reader looking to succeed as a mangaka, but as someone with absolutely no interest in ever doing that, I still enjoyed it as a fan of Araki's work. I think even if you took out every reference to Jojo and handed me this book without telling me who had written it, I could still guess it was written by Araki. He comes at manga in an incredibly analytical way. You can tell that he thinks about every choice he makes a lot, and tries to explore every possibility before deciding how to move forward. It feels very similar to the intensely specific and detailed ways that stories and battles play out in Jojo.

Parts of the book were more interesting than others. I enjoyed (although didn't necessarily agree with) the second chapter, which was about manga structure and themes. The way Araki writes characters is so deeply thought out. A lot of the advice he gave about writing sounds deceptively simple on paper, but I can imagine would take a lot of practice to master in real life. Unfortunately, the chapter on art was less interesting. I think making good art is harder to teach than writing a good story, especially in a context like shonen manga. Most shonen manga follows general story tropes that Araki can instruct on, like maintaining momentum or writing a compelling protagonist that the audience wants to root for. Art is a lot more subjective, so aside from giving common art advice like "make sure to study anatomy even if your art is stylized" and giving some descriptions of the pens he uses, there isn't much Araki can say about how to improve your art.

The biggest highlight for me was the last chapter of the book, where Araki walks the reader through an actual oneshot he wrote, and breaks it down. It was really satisfying to see everything he had gone over in the book put into practice. I also just generally think listening to a master like Araki analyze his own work and process is fascinating. If that sounds appealing to you, if you're a fan of Araki's work, or if you're generally interested in the process of how manga is made, this was a light and engaging read.

[tiredthanatologist]

Book 4- Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood Vol. 1 by Hirohiko Araki

I absolutely love Jojo, but this is the only physical copy I own of any of the comic. Shonen Jump and Viz started publishing these hardcover editions of Jojo in 2015, and right now they're the only way to buy the manga in english. They also happened to be $20 a pop when they started publishing them in 2015, and they're $25 now according to the internet. I've never seriously started collecting them because there's so much Jojo and I like all of it, but I definitely don't need that much hardcover manga in my collection. Maybe someday when I'm made of money and am sure I will never ever move again.

My brother bought me this copy, probably around the time it first came out in 2015 or 2016 if I remember correctly. I'm still not sure why. I know it wasn't for a specific reason like my birthday or Christmas, because I remember him telling me he bought it for me over text while I was on a trip home to visit friends during the summer. My brother doesn't do random acts of kindness like that for me very often, so I do sort of treasure this book. Also, if there's any one volume of Jojo that one should own, book 1 of Phantom Blood seems correct.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has come such a long way as a series since Araki started it off with Phantom Blood, and he's come such a long way as both an artist and writer in that time. Watching Araki's style evolve and improve is one of my favorite things about Jojo. There's a lot of wonk in early Jojo, and a lot of panels where the proportions of the characters are so off it's comedic. I know from past readings of part 1 that right after the point where this volume ends, part 1 segues into Jojo learning the Hamon mechanic, which would only last one more part before Araki came up with the much more enjoyable Stand mechanic. Once Jojo has mastered Hamon, he sets off on a series of really boring punch-out battles against enemies so forgettable I can't even remember their names, which take up the bulk of Phantom Blood.

However, here at the beginning, Phantom Blood is absolutely iconic. It almost feels like a piece of classic literature. Araki may not have known what to do with this story, but he absolutely knew how to start it. Dio makes for a perfectly balanced antagonist, in that the reader completely understands why his upbringing would cause him to behave the way he does, but it doesn't make him sympathetic for even a second. Jonathan is sweet and naive but well-meaning, and watching Dio systematically destroy every part of his idyllic life, starting with his friends, his first love, his beloved dog, and eventually his father, makes you root the whole time for Jonathan to finally put Dio in his place. Dio and his various followers remain antagonists throughout the rest of Jojo as a series, and I think the strength of the beginning of Phantom Blood is a big part of why it works. I definitely recommend it, even if the rest of Phantom Blood drags.

The next book on my list is the first non-comic book, but it also happens to be by Araki. I'm not sure how long it will take me to read, but I'm looking forward to writing about it.

[tiredthanatologist]

Book 3- Foxtrot by Bill Amend

I think I remember getting this anthology when I was a kid? My brother and I were both very into reading comic strip anthologies as kids. Next to Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, I liked Foxtrot because it was a little bit nerdier than other comics. Honestly, I found the jokes to be a lot lamer than I remembered when I was a kid, but there were a few that I enjoyed. I did think the comic was a pretty natural portrayal of what growing up with siblings is like, even though it was set in the 80s and I grew up in the 2000s. The forward to this anthology is by Bill Watterson and he takes a moment to commendthat the family's pet iguana, Quincy, is just a regular iguana who "does not philosophize or think those cute thoughts that quickly put most comic strip animals into the greeting card business" and I completely agree. Quincy is the best part of the comic

[tiredthanatologist]

Books 1 & 2- Heathen Vol. 1 & 2 by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Deering

The first two books in my challenge are the first two anthology volumes of a comic an old coworker of mine recommended to me- Heathen by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Deering. I think the coworker's name was Neil. Shout out to Neil. The premise is that a viking woman named Aydis has been exiled from her village for being caught kissing another woman, and decides to rescue the Valkyrie Brynhild, who Odin imprisoned for falling out of line. She does so, almost immediately (it surprised me a lot how fast paced this comic was) and decides after hearing about Brynhild's predicament that she is going to kill Odin.

Before I get into the series itself, I should mention that I tend to have a really hard time with the pacing of traditional western serialized comic books. I don't know why, as it isn't all that different from manga and I have no problem with that, but I often feel like comic books have breakneck pacing and like I don't get to know the characters as much as I want to. That could totally just be a me problem, though. I know a lot of people who love comics.

I should start by saying that the art in this comic is beautiful. The coloring isn't entirely grayscale but it uses a palette of grays and muted browns with occasional cool blues that really fit the setting and art. The style is great too, and the characters are very fun to look at. However, despite how much I wanted to love a story about a badass lesbian viking fighting injustice, the writing in this comic was so on the nose that I couldn't really get invested. It felt very black and white, with a cast of very progressive, queer heroes who do no wrong and villains who seemed bigoted for no reason other than they were the bad guys. I was hoping for something a little deeper. The art carried me through, though. I also felt like I was enjoying the writing slightly more by the end of volume 2, so maybe the writing gets better as the series finds its groove. I only own the first two volumes, though, so we are on to book 3!

[tiredthanatologist]

Day 1 of ???

Hi, I'm K, and I know I'm never gonna feel like I've written a successful, non-cringe intro post, so I'm just gonna go for it. I currently have 311 books on my bookshelf, excluding notebooks, TTRPG books, cookbooks, my mortuary school textbooks, and a few coffee table/art books. My goal is to read all of them, without buying any more in the meantime, get rid of any I can't bring myself to finish, and record my thoughts on everything on this blog. I have absolutely no idea how realistic that goal is, or what my chances of actually making a dent in it are.

There are a couple of really intimidating books. I recently purchased a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, and while I was enjoying it a lot, I'm afraid hitting a 1200 page book could kill my momentum. Farther down the shelf is Ada by Nabokov, which I bought secondhand because there was a PhilosophyTube video that mentioned it, and then Never Touched Again. Then, in a genre change that could give you whiplash, there's the fact that I own the first 5 anthology editions of Homestuck. They're the Viz versions, and they could kill a man. So part of the challenge is just gonna be Rereading Homestuck. I have one book on my shelf, Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff, that was a birthday gift from a good friend. However, I only made it to page 150-something out of over 700 before realizing I couldn't fucking stand the way the author writes and there wasn't going to be anything good for me if I kept reading it. I've been holding onto the book solely because my friend wrote me a really sweet note in it and I'm sentimental about it. I don't know if I'm still gonna feel sentimental about it if I have to reread the book, though. Finally, at the end of the challenge, the very last shelf is almost entirely taken up by the complete works of MXTX, and while I deeply love all three of those books, I feel even more intimidated by the idea of rereading all of them than I do Homestuck.

So why am I doing it? Honestly I have no idea if I'm gonna stick with it. When I was a kid I used to plow through books like I needed them to breathe, but as i got older, just like everyone else, I got burnt out. I have a really stressful job and no money and 95% of the time I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water and everything sucks. I almost never read anymore, and if i do, it's fanfiction or AITA posts. I think that's part of why I want to do this. The older I get the harder it is to cling onto my hobbies, and reading has always been my favorite hobby, so I want to rediscover it. Also, I may have no money but I do have a lot of books. Every single one of them is on my bookshelf because I read it and liked it enough to keep, or bought because at some point I really really wanted to read it. My job pays shit and I'm stressed about money at least once a day, so I'm hoping going through my bookshelf like this will help me appreciate what I have at a time where I feel what I don't have so strongly.

Anyway, I'm tired of writing about this and want to just start it, so while I still have new project momentum I'm gonna go do just that. The first four books on my bookshelf all happen to be graphic novels, so I'm looking forward to that.

If you're here and have any interest in this challenge, hi! I have to admit I don't really expect anyone to read this and I'm mostly doing it for myself, but I hope you enjoy my time here. I'd love to talk about books so please don't be shy!

K