4月 15

EL本棚紹介(37) Watchmen, by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Watchmen is hailed as one of the best graphic novels of all time, and for good reason. It poses serious questions about morality, personal responsibility, and the value of human life. By juxtaposing personal drama between a group of ex-superheroes, the chaos of the gritty crime-infested New York streets of the 1980s, and the Doomsday Clock counting down to nuclear holocaust, it forces the reader to consider things from a series of conflicting points of view. When nuclear war and total human annihilation are on the line, every line of text, every comic panel counts.

As you can guess from this introduction, Watchmen is not necessarily an easy book to get through. Although it should be read from beginning to end, I know that is a very difficult challenge. Instead, I strongly suggest starting with “Chapter IV: Watchmaker,” which stands by itself as a standalone character portrait. You could also just read the end of each chapter, which contain pages from books written by characters in the graphic novel.

Watchmen has been made into a movie (Watchmen (2009) – IMDb) and a TV series (Watchmen (TV Mini Series 2019) – IMDb) as well.

My two cents: Give Watchmen your time, and it will give a lot back.

4月 15

EL本棚紹介(36) Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Do you like witches? Magic? Werewolves? How about young romance? A diverse ethnic mix of LGBTQ characters? A man who has a pigeon’s head? Mooncakes has all of this and more. It is a story of a family of witches attempting to protect their town from a dangerous horse demon…until they find out the surprising truth behind who summoned the demon in the first place, and why.

Mooncakes is a light read and has some colorful and sometimes creative artwork. The art style, characters’ speech, and values all feel exactly like contemporary internet culture. It is not just an interesting story. This book is also a good window into youth culture today—youth culture, from a much more feminine perspective than most of the other books in the EL library.

My two cents: This book has a non-binary character. Instead of “he” or “she,” they use “they/them” pronouns. You should become used to using these pronouns, even though they are probably not taught in your English textbooks.

4月 15

EL本棚紹介(35) Daytripper, by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Some comic books are fun, light reading. Some are heavy, difficult books that deal with history or social issues. Daytripper is something else: it is a book about life, and it tells its story in a beautiful, sometimes heart-wrenching way.

This is the story of Bras de Oliva Domingos’ life. Bras writes obituaries (お悔み) for the newspaper. His father is a famous novelist, and he dreams of becoming a writer himself. Unfortunately, he dies at the young age of 32. Or does he? Bras dies at the end of each chapter of his story, at each stage of his life. But his story continues on the next page. This may seem confusing at first, but really it means that every chapter is an individual short story. These small parts add up to a really interesting whole, but you can start by just reading one or two.

My two cents: The whole book is set in Brazil, and so in addition to appreciating the authors’ poignant story, you can also learn a little bit of Brazilian culture, names, and a couple of onomatopoeia (擬態語・擬音語).

4月 08

EL本棚紹介(34) Chasin’ the Bird: Charlie Parker in California, by Dave Chisholm and Peter Markowski

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

How do you write about music? One of the strengths of comic books is their use of color and shape to represent sound. This is one of the most important aspects of Chasin’ the Bird, which tells the story of a short period in Charlie Parker’s life. Charlie Parker was one of the most important saxophonists in jazz history. He was a pioneer of bebop. He was also a philosopher, a womanizer, and a drug addict.

This book is made up of several chapters. Each chapter is told by a different person in Charlie’s life and gives a different perspective on who he was. The art style of each chapter changes with the characters’ perspectives, so each chapter really stands alone. The pictures are full of color, and Charlie’s words will make you think.

My two cents: A good read if you are interested in jazz, US history, or just want to read a biography of an important but complicated character.

4月 08

EL本棚紹介(33) Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 1, by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Do you like Tokugawa history? Do you like crazy violence? Do you like…little babies? If so, you may be interested in Lone Wolf and Cub (子連れ狼). It is the story of Ōgami Ittō, the former executioner or the Shogun, now an assassin, and his three-year-old son. He is an unbeatable warrior who will not stop until his enemies have all fallen.

Don’t be scared by the size of the book (over 700 pages!). Each story/chapter can be read alone as a short story. In fact, the first half of the book has very little story at all—just lots of fighting and killing. The second half introduces more backstory and Buddhist ideas. This book may be a good example of “culturally-familiar learning materials,” too. There are lots of Japanese names and words in this book, which can help you remember the story and read more easily.

My two cents: This manga looks and feels like Gogol 13: the hero is a super masculine, unfeeling killer. I didn’t personally enjoy reading a lot of this, but it was an interesting time capsule of when it was written in the 1990s.

4月 08

EL本棚紹介(32) Astro Boy, by Tezuka Osamu

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

You know Tezuka Osamu, and you know Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム)…or do you? Have you ever read this classic manga? Or have you seen the TV anime? Maybe you think Astro Boy is old and boring. Maybe you think Astro Boy is for children. But I think that image is wrong.

Astro Boy is important in the history of Japanese manga. It contains a lot of strong political commentary. It gives an interesting perspective on nuclear technology and science from the 1950s and 60s. It also introduces themes of social justice, racism, and human rights. Like Marvel’s famous X-men comics’ “mutants,” Tezuka Osamu’s robots represent a variety of minorities. Of course, Astro Boy stories are not all serious: they can be funny or heartwarming as well.

My two cents: When I started reading this book, I did not expect such political storylines. The stories are not deep or complicated, so they keep you reading and thinking.

4月 08

EL本棚紹介(31) X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga, by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Terry Austin

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

You have probably seen a Marvel Comics movie or two. The Avengers, Spiderman, Captain America…but some of the oldest Marvel movies were about the X-men. X-men are mutants: people born with superpowers. In many X-men stories, the mutants represent minorities, and the comic is an allegory (寓話) for racism, anti-LGBTQ prejudice, etc. The Dark Phoenix Saga is not about a specific social issue, but it does ask questions about justice and the legal system.

The story is actually quite simple. Before this story starts, “X-man” Jane Grey gained godlike superpowers. Now, a psychic mutant is tricking her into using those powers for evil, and the other X-men have to save her. But what can (or should!) they do when she accidentally destroys an entire planet and billions of alien people?

My two cents: Unlike the Batman comics I have introduced before, Marvel comics assume you have read many comics already and know the characters and their histories. I think this will be a challenging book for you, but there are some really interesting points: (1) the art style is representative of the Silver Age of American comics, and is worthwhile just to look at, and (2) there are lots of accents, slang, and other kinds of speech that you might enjoy experiencing.

4月 08

EL本棚紹介(30) Gotham High, by Melissa de la Cruz

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Keywords: comic book, superhero, crime

To many people, American comic books = superhero comics. Batman and Superman have been part of US popular culture for a century, and their popularity is only increasing. But how do you keep these characters interesting for so long? How do you keep coming up with new stories? Gotham High is one example.

This comic reimagines the world of Batman as a high-school drama. Of course, you don’t need to know anything about Batman or superheroes to read Gotham High: it is a regular detective story about kidnapping, attempted murder, and lots and lots of money. There are no superheroes and no superpowers. There is just billionaire Bruce Waine (Batman) and his peers Selina Kyle (Catwoman), Jack Napier (the Joker), Harvey Dent (Two Face), etc. If you already know some of these characters, it just makes the story that much more interesting.

My two cents: This is a decent mystery story with a twist ending, but you might be interested in the high-school slang and SNS usage, too.

2月 18

EL本棚紹介(29) Locke & Key: Volumes 2 & 3, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

These two volumes continue the story begun in Volume 1, “Welcome to Lovecraft,” so you should read them in order. As a reminder, Locke & Key is about a family living in a haunted mansion and struggling with the trauma caused by the violent murder of the father, as well as many mysterious secrets and supernatural happenings.

In vol. 2, “Head Games,” the family discovers a new magical key. This key can be used to open up your head so that you can add and remove memories. While this starts out as fun and games—using it to cheat on school tests—things take a darker turn when the sister uses it to remove her paralyzing fear. This volume contains some time travel and changing identities, and while it is a very interesting read, it is intended to be confusing even for a native speaker. It will be a challenge, but a worthwhile one, I think.

In vol. 3, “Crown of Shadows,” the mother’s reaction to her trauma is brought center stage as her children confront her about her alcoholism and deteriorating parenting skills. The sister pursues clues to learn about her late father, endangering her life and the lives of her friends. The series villain attacks the house directly, searching for another mysterious key and attacking the children with shadow monsters. Compared with vol. 2, this is a much more straightforward story with no time travel. It is much easier to read but relies on knowledge from the previous issue.

My two cents: If you really liked vol. 1, these two books are well worth reading. It’s okay to be confused, too: just enjoy the atmosphere and the mystery.

2月 18

EL本棚紹介(28) Stray Bullets Volume One, by David Lapham

[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]

_______

Sometimes stories can leave us with lots of questions. We might think about why the characters did what they did. We might think about what will happen next. Stray Bullets offers a series of connected short stories that you will not only read, but keep thinking about after you are done.

These stories are all tragedies. They involve drugs, crime, and violence. Some of the characters are scary psychopaths—they will hurt others for fun. But other characters are driven to violence by strange circumstances. Or, circumstances not so strange—a family with an absent father, a girl being bullied at school, a mother frustrated with her children.

My two cents: If you don’t mind a bit of violence, I think these stories offer a quick and compelling read.