Hallelujah!
Here we have my final bookcase.
After this I can go back to writing about other trivial shit that
doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Like television.
Predictably, I have bought over a dozen books since
taking all the photos that comprise this and the last six diary entries. So now I don’t know what to do. Take pictures of just those books and tack
them on at the end? I guess that’s what
I’ll do. But not now. Maybe later.
Jeezus, what a pain in the ass this idea has become!
Bitch bitch bitch....
This is the “new” bookcase that I bought a few
weeks ago after getting rid of all my videotape boxes. Very exciting. If you look closely at the left-hand edge of
the photo you can see the remaining video boxes, which I still have to go
through and weed out (I do not need, for example, my commercially bought VHS
copies of Alien and Die Hard, etc., now
that I’ve switched everything over to DVD.
I wonder if I can unload those on eBay...).
Anthologies galore!
Most of these are really good—particularly Fiction 100, The
Short Story, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories
(which also happens to be a mouthful of a title, let me tell you), The
Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, blah blah blah, and The
Better of McSweeny’s, vol. 1.
The Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops annuals,
as well as the Best New American Voices annuals, are hit and
miss depending on who the guest editor is, but it’s still cool to read stories
by people who are not household names.
One of my creative writing instructors from college made it into the
1998 edition. Whee!
Er, more anthologies. The first three are from college. Every time I see those books I remember my
first college English lit class with Al David (who was the Middle English
editor for the Norton Antholgies at the time).
He was this short old guy with wild silver hair and clothes that were
shabby even when compared to the average shabby professor, but he spoke the
strange sounds of Middle English (you know, “Dream of the Rood” and all that)
with such verve and pleasure that I couldn’t help but get into it.
Words without Pictures is a
collection of prose stories by the top names in comics circa 1990. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are prominently
included. Mondo
Marilyn contains poems, short stories, and literary fragments about
Marilyn Monroe. One of my favorite poems
is Sharon Olds’s
target="_blank">“The Death of
Marilyn Monroe.” Very
haunting. The New
Yorker short story collections are, of course, excellent, and
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde is a less innovative collection of
Marilyn Monroe-related stories.
The Clouds Above is a comic book
by one of my favorite independent creators, Jordan Crane, whose anthology
non was completely awesome.
Ice Haven is not Clowes’s best work, but still
excellent. Jimmy Corrigan: The
Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware is arguably the greatest comic
book ever written. It’s also completely
heartbreaking. Jason Little wrote this
amazing comic book called “Jack’s
Luck Runs Out,” and although Shutterbug Follies
isn’t nearly as inventive, it’s still a good story.
The Peanuts collections are some
of the most beautiful books I own. If
you think Peanuts is just a dumb kids’ comic strip, you
would be wrong. Yes, Sparky started
letting a bit too much religion seep into his work near the end, and he allowed
his relatives to renege on his plans to stop syndicating reruns of
Peanuts in newspapers after he died (which in turn kept
additional page space from being available for newer cartoonists such as Frank
Cho), but even so, Peanuts is almost singlehandedly
responsible for the format of the modern newspaper comic strip. And for several decades
Peanuts was ingenious, hilarious, inventive, and not at all
sappy or lame—like many other comic strips today.
More books that I would never allow my mom to look
at. The R. Crumb Coffee Table
Art Book is mostly redundant since I have the (previously displayed)
Complete Crumb Comics series, but it’s such a beautiful book
that I couldn’t resist it. The
Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline and Guido Crepax’s oeuvre (and the
Eric Stanton collection further down the line) are the kinds of books I bought
just because I like outsider art. And because
the books are beautifully packaged. And
because I’m a bit of a perv. Just
kidding. (Eh, no I’m not.)
Luis Royo’s sketchbooks are beautiful works of art,
and I really love sketchbooks. Speaking
of which, The ACME Novelty Date Book by Chris Ware is my
favorite sketchbook of all time. Glenn
Barr’s sketchbooks aren’t far behind, nor is Coop’s The Big Fat
One. And yes, that’s a demon
girl’s ass on the spine of that book.
The Strangers in Paradise
hardcovers are a disappointment to me.
Initially I was convinced that Terry Moore would include all kinds of
stuff in them that weren’t in the regular trade paperbacks. But I was wrong. So the collection is incomplete and probably
always will be. Heck, I haven’t even read
the end of the series, yet.
Ah, my Marvel Masterworks. This shelf looks like a total mess, doesn’t
it? Well, believe it or not these book
are actually in some kind of order, even though they don’t appear to be. It’s all Marvel’s fault, as usual (the
bastards). As you can see they went
through three design incarnations of the Marvel Masterworks
line before they settled on one they liked.
Personally, I preferred the first design (with the fake marble
background and the nice, indiscreet lettering on the spine) and wish they’d
just stuck with it. The second design
(the really kooky, übercomicky spines with the terrible fonts) is the worst. The final incarnation (the black spines)
aren’t too bad, with the major exception of that horrific, ubiquitous (and,
especially in this case, totally incongruous) Marvel logo
that I hate so much.
In terms of content, I have to admit that I’ve read
fewer than half of these books. I was initially
excited about the Fantastic Four collections because I’d
never read any Fantastic Four comics in
my life (which is weird since I was such a loyal Marvel reader as a kid; it’s
like saying you’re a huge DC fan but never read any Batman). As it turns out, though, there was a
reason. I just couldn’t get into it,
with the singular exception of the Galactus and the Silver Surfer issues. All the early Spider-Man
issues were great, and of course the Daredevil issues still
knock my socks off. As with
FF, I couldn’t get into The Avengers
either, and I feel only so-so about Thor and
Captain America.
The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, and The
X-Men were all winners, though.
For Christmas Julie got me The Complete
New Yorker on DVD-ROM, and it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever
seen. All the rest of this stuff doesn’t
really require an explanation, as it’s just the last shelf I had to fill up
with books that didn’t have a home before I bought this bookcase.
So there you go.
My complete book collection.
(Minus the handful that I’ve bought over the past few weeks.) I may find the energy to update this last
page with pictures of my new acquisitions, but honestly it doesn’t seem
likely. In any case, watch this space
for future developments!
Aaaaaand scene....
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