WILL EISNER

NAME tells the story of the Arnheim family, German Jews who immigrated to America in the mid-1800s, through four generations of wealth, death, disaster, and marital strife. Eisner’s expressive characters show the reader the lives of immigrant families who suffer from “the uncertain feeling of being Jewish in a Christian world,” to quote Eisner. One thing that I found interesting was the racism of the German Jews against the Jews from Russia and Poland. It is also the story of cutthroat business deals and class. The characters are all one-dimensional, and there isn’t much nuance in the story. It is melodramatic with sudden heart attacks and a no-good, alcoholic younger son.

Not the greatest graphic novel but with Eisner being the father of the graphic novel I wanted to give it a try.

EDITORS OF HUFFINGTON POST

Wikopedia defines Huffington post:

The Huffington Post (often referred to as HuffPost) is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti, featuring various news sources and columnists.^[2] The site offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and comedy, and is a top destination for news, blogs and original content. In four years, it has become an influential media brand — “The Internet Newspaper.” The Huffington Post was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet and liberal alternative to conservative news aggregators like the Drudge Report.^[3]

In 2008, the site launched its first local version, HuffPost Chicago; HuffPost New York launched in June, 2009, and HuffPo Denver launched on Sept 15, 2009.^[4] The Huffington Post has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month.”

H-Post has garnered multiple awards for blogging and news.

The GUIDE talks most specifically about political commentary, which isn’t the type of blogging that I do. With chapters such as Finding Your Voice and How the Blogosphere is  Remaking the Media it does have wise suggestions.

It is a great book to skim if you blog. And it is funny. I laughted out loud several times. I learned that the wavy letters that you have to type to make a comment are called CAPTCHAs. That stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

I found this in A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook a blog that I’ve been following. I thought it was an interesting way to look at one’s reading over the past year to see how diverse it has been. I know I want diversity in my life.

California dreamin’ photos from our summer in the city of the fallen angels 

 Children’s Author Nikki Tate was touring schools and libraries in Saskatchewan for Canada Book Week. Nikki’s day job is working the children’s department in an independent bookstore in Victoria. Her book Trouble on Tarragon Island was banned in a school library in Kindersley Sk because it contains the work bazoongasfor a woman’s breasts. We roared with laughter. The librarian felt that the book would lead students to be disrespectful to seniors. An interesting concern but instead of reading it with students and addressing her concerns with the youth she banned the book. Of course when the publisher heard, he made press releases. Banning is always good for sales. He sent Nikki a box of books for this tour so she could give away free books at the mall in Kindersley. This story did make a four-line blurb in Mclean’s magazine the week that she was here. What most people don’t know is that Nikki had all ready started Banned on Tarragon Island. She had planned it to be about a book about a gay character. As we were discussing this at the dinner table, Liam said that the banning could be about anything, even vandalism. Then the librarian could think that the book could lead to students doing vandalism. Nikki was so impressed with the idea that she asked Liam if she could steal his idea. She wanted to concentrate on the banned issue not to confuse it with discussion of gay issues. I think Liam was thrilled.  Nikki was a terrific guest. Out going and a great storyteller she fit right in with the family. She lives north of Victoria on Squamish peninsula with a menagerie of animals and her father. Where she finds time to write she didn’t say. A real passion is doing performance art story telling of Arthurian tales. Bev found this out the next day at lunch while I was a work. She and Micah got along like a prairie fire on a windy day. She spoke his language: books. Recommending young adult books is her job. She even spent an hour doing video games with Micah. What an angel. I get nauseous just looking at the screen.  Here is the address of Nikki Tate’s blog:http://nikkitate.blogspot.com/and her webpagehttp://www.stablemates.net/ 

We created this blog to share with family and friends our love of books. If you would like to join this group please email brian.bassingt@lskysd.ca . If you choose to not join you are still able to write comments. Comments are moderated by the blog administration so inappropriate comments will not be displayed.

Brian