Art I've enjoyed this year Pt. 1: Books

Hello everyone,

I've informally been keeping track of my favorite reads, watchs, and plays of the year for ages now. I figured it'd be a fun glimpse behind the curtain to do an annual end of the year blog post that summarizes some of my favorite and most inspiring things I've engaged with over the year.

It goes without saying that this is, of course, incredibly subjective.  I think definitive language and framing things as being the "best of the year" is reductionist and does a disservice to a lot of art. So for me, it's a lot more fun to talk about what I enjoyed or found transportation about certain work. Over the years, I've come to recognize that we all come to art for different reasons; some to be entertained, some to have others thoughts swirled around their head, others to see their feelings or experiences reflected in some external thing - to recognize the other, experiencing the world and creating art...there are so many more reasons but you get the point. This is your final warning: expect incoherent ramblings galore.

So let's start close to home, with books and comics! In no particular order and with caveat that there are some books I've undoubtedly forgotten...

"The Swamp" and "The Man Without Talent" by Yoshiharu Tsuge

It's a wonderful feeling to discover that you have a complete blind-spot within a genre you absolutely love. I've been reading manga for my whole life but have found I've often bounced off what "alternative" manga we get translated here. Yoshihiro Tatsumi is an incredible cartoonist but I find his work often feels dour just for the sake of it and Seiichi Hayashi's work is beautiful but often a bit too abstract or meandering to leave a lasting impression (well - I wasn't personally big on Red Colour Elegy but I really enjoyed the Gold Pollen collection). Encouraged by the discovery that the Vancouver library system had a ton of out of print manga,  I read as much "early" manga as I could get my hands on.  Tsuge's work just blew me away. His cartooning is gorgeous and there's a real sense of space or resonance in his stories; moments ring out and echo throughout a whole page. I highly recommend this collection. I've yet to read the recently released "Red Flowers" collection but it's sitting on my bookshelf. 

After reading "The Swamp", I rushed out and bought "The Man Without Talent". I believe this comes a few decades after the comics in "The Swamp". It's interesting to see the style in the cartooning evolve; the drawings seem less labored over which gives them an immediate and intimate quality. What I enjoyed most about "The Swamp" remains here, despite being in a different form. I normally bounce off auto bio comics but this collection painted such a sense of time and place like a fucked up Ozu film. Poetic and funny.

"Night Bus" by Zuo Ma

God - what a beautiful book. Everything about this book sings; the art, format, and how it engages with its subject. If I had to chose a single comic from this list it'd probably be this. I read it in a sitting and it just floored me. I am going to stop myself from writing about this book as I feel I could just sit here for an hour laboring over my thoughts but it has to be experienced.

"Onward Toward Our Noble Deaths" by Shigeru Mizuki

Outside of Kitaro, I hadn't read anything else by Mizuki prior to reading this. It retells his experience in the final weeks on the Pacific front in World War II. It teeters between being funny and heartbreaking from page to page and really captures the senselessness of the death he was witnessing. It perfectly illustrates, without overt statement, the absurdity of war and the nationalist mindset. An ode to the men who died senselessly for ideas they barely believed in. An anti-war manifesto with gorgeous art. Mizuki draws like no other; the balances he achieves between his hyper textural natural landscapes and goofy cartoon forms is just a joy to look at.

"Cross Game" by Mitsuru Adachi

This really surprised me! I was in the mood for some good ol' fashioned sports shonen when I started reading it but this is a lot more slice of life then I expected. It moves at a leisurely pace which allows you to get familiar with all the characters before all the action starts. Once the "action" does start there's a twist I never expected and that caught me emotionally unprepared! The cartooning is just lovely and, aside from some out of place fan service, it's an extremely down to earth series with great characters.

"Children of the Sea" by Daisuke Igarashi

I must confess that I've been "reading" this series for two or three years now. The art is so effortless and the pages are full of atmosphere but the story takes a while to get going. Now that I am near the end, I can wholly recommend it. It's drawn with such an exacting eye and is written from, what feels like, a naturalist perspective.

"Nonnonba" by Shigeru Mizuki

This Mizuki guy is real friggin' good. 

"Children of Mu-town" by Masumura Jūshichi"

There are a lot of things going on in this book and I didn't necessarily find it to be the most satisfying read but it makes it way onto this list by sheer "interesting" factor. 

"The Sky is Blue With a Single Cloud" by Kuniko Tsurita

A lot of the alternative manga I've read of this era is masculine to a fault; the stories are told through the gaze of fucked up men and, despite the quality of storytelling or cartooning, it makes me want to engage with them less. I I'd overlooked this collection when it first released but finally bit the bullet and bought it. God - Tsurita's work is gorgeous. It reads and flows like poetry and it's interesting to have a feminine perspective on stories that tackle similar content and themes as other Garo-era stories I've read. The cartoons are a bit naive but the line quality and the balance of tones on the page is gorgeous.

"The Mushroom at the End of the World"

A dry but interesting exploration that examines the supply chain and communities that spring up from one commodity: the Matsutake Mushroom. Eye opening in how it paints the delicate and unnecessarily complicated web of late capitalism. This book help me see, with sobering clarity, how each step of a products journey away from a worker, necessitates that the worker be paid less so that each following destination in the chain remains profitable. We live in a busted system that is essentially a human centipede of exploitation from worker to "sale of product". Fun stuff.

"Haway Man Klaus" by Richard Short

I have to admit that when I first read Klaus, years ago, I didn't really "get it". Reading it collected was such a treat though. Funny and sweet. Maybe a bit too naval-gazey at times but that's just a preference. I would love for there to be more Klaus!

"Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake

Reading this before bed, I kept finding myself saying, "wow" to myself and reading a section out loud to my partner. In a time that feels so dire, I have found it incredibly hopeful to read about life outside of our species in the Anthropocene. "Entangled Life" is immensely readable and engaging. I would have easily read a book triple this length in this voice on the subject. This is illuminating and has comforted me. Life on earth is vast, complex, nurturing and destructive but always changing, adapting, merging and departing. That such a world of fungi exists, that we know so little about, yet carries such weight for every aspect of life on this planet is truly awe inspiring. To look at the world and see plants, fungus, animals, and whole ecosystems existing, sharing and taking, not as other or commodity, but as systems alive beyond, above and beneath, and despite us gives me hope in times where I feel my depression rising to debilitate me. If only we could look at the world and see things as they naturally are and not as something to be sold or made "efficient". There is comfort in accepting that if we fail, something else will come - alive and thriving - unimaginable but here. To read a book that makes you see the world differently, that inspires one to pay attention to the texture or colour of bark, soil, or the smell of the air is truly a rare and vital thing. I cannot recommend this book enough.

"Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb

I did not read nearly as much fiction as I normally would this year. For whatever reason, comics and non fiction have mainly been my tonic. This book has been on my shelf for years and I'd been recommended it by many people. I haven't quite sorted if I loved this book but I did at least enjoy it enough to buy the next few books in the series. It's daunting to know there are a dozen or so books but the world and characters were all engaging. I really enjoyed how the magic of this world very slowly blooms into the story. Overall, I also appreciated how undramatic the whole affair is up until the last 100 pages. Love me some slice of life fantasy.

"Pew" by Catherine Lacey

A brief read but one that has stuck with me. It's a book that I feel the less said the better...not because there's any twist along the way but because it's a story where experieincg "what" it is is better than being told.

"Pluto" by Naoki Urasawa

Urasawa writes such page turners. Pluto is gripping and human. Full of tension. A true master in acting too.  A must read.

"Full Metal Alchemist" by Hiromu Arakawa

It's wild to reflect on how long I've considered myself to be a fan of FMA. Despite having five or so volumes of the manga as a kid I never continued reading it and opted to just watch Brotherhood and the initial series. It had been long enough that I wanted to revisit it and thought that it would be a good time to give it a read. I am happy to report that FMA is still really damn good. What really blew me away was how the story hits maximum momentum relatively early on and just maintains it until the final chapter. It consistently makes revelations that hook you in without feeling unwarranted. A lot more political than I remembered (I wish it was even more so).  The art is so good too!