My name’s Devin, and I like comics. And music. And movies. And books. And TV shows. I like a lot of stuff, basically. And the things that I really, really like, I want to share with as many people as possible, and get them excited, and have them tell me about the great things that they like, too. And Brandon and James have offered me a chance to stand on my tiny little soapbox and shout into the internet about all the cool things.

My goal every week is to do one long-ish piece on something (or things) that I encountered during the week, and follow that up with a handful of shorter pieces. They’re not all going to be comics, but really, I read a lot of comics so they will probably come up more often than not. Music, movies, TV, books, heck, I’ll probably toss in a video game or something here and there when the mood strikes. But for now, here’s what I’ve been up to the past seven days.

Serendipity - Short Stories and Podcasts

One of my favourite things in my exploration of popular culture are the moments of interconnection and serendipity. Whenever I notice that the things I love are colliding, it makes me take a pause and wonder how I got to that point where two or more things intersect. Was it simply that one incredibly powerful book led me to explore a path littered with similarly-themed movies, books and comics? Or did a subconscious desire to explore a certain idea lead me to consume three or four different pieces of popular culture that all revolved around that topic, not noticing what had happened until I was already deep in it? Either way: I find the coincidence interesting.

The most recent interesting coincidence happened when I realized that after two or three months where I hadn’t read any prose at all, I had read or was in the middle of five different short story collections. I’ve never been a big reader of short stories: I have some anthologies by some big name authors on my shelf, but I’ve never sought many collections out. But the beginning of last week found me having recently finished collections by Margaret Atwood and George Saunders, and in the middle of ones by Elmore Leonard and Kazuo Ishiguro, with two more to get through. And to top it all off, those two books were both brought to my attention by two different podcasts.

Full disclosure: I listen to a lot of podcasts. A quick search through my DownCast app shows that I am subscribed to thirty-six podcasts that I try to keep up with as regularly as possible, with another half-dozen or so that I am not subscribed to but will pick and choose selected episodes from. I have even more podcasts that I would like to listen to, but I only have so many hours in week. Out of those forty-odd podcasts, only two of them are dedicated to books. Two book-related podcasts, two short story collections. The podcasts are both very good; the books were more varied in their quality.

Let’s tackle the more questionable one first (questionable applies to the book, not to the podcast). A Permanent Member of the Family is by Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction. I’d never read anything by Banks before (although I did enjoy the film adaptations of both of those books), so I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than “good writing.” And unfortunately, for some of these stories, I didn’t even get that. I’m not sure that Russell Banks’ style works well in shorter form; some of these stories ended so abruptly and unsatisfyingly that they made me angry. Others were very well-crafted but so ambiguous in theme that I finished them feeling as though I had wasted my time.

There were a few gems in the collection, though. The titular story is a not-exactly-heartwarming story of an old dog’s place in a disintegrating family, which I thought benefited from a main character with a solid voice and a clear theme. And “The Green Door” and “Blue” were slightly longer stories that benefited from having the extra room to tell the story. Though I didn’t really care much for this collection, now that I’ve been exposed to how Russell Banks writes, I am actually more interested in checking out one of his novels than I was before. Which strange, as I was generally unimpressed with most of these stories, but there you have it.

However, I was not unimpressed with The Bookhouse Boys, which is an online book club/book podcast that I have been a member of for years. Granted, I am bad at keeping up with the book selections so sometimes I am an absentee member, but I enjoy being part of their very literate and polite community. I’ve even been fortunate to be a guest on two of their episodes (and hope to do another one this year to keep the streak alive). Dave, Jason, and Matt are clever gentlemen with razor wits and if you’re a literary-minded person, I would recommend checking them out.

The other book-centered podcast that I listen to is The Bookrageous Podcast, a podcast put together by a group of book-lovers to talk about what they’ve read recently and what books they’re looking forward to on the publishing schedule. I am not as up on books as the hosts are, but they know their literature and I have read a number of great books at their recommendations. On Episode 62 they ran down their favourites of 2013, and I resolved to read a couple of the ones they were particularly enthusiastic about (because I rarely read any books the year they are published, I hadn’t read any of them).

One of the books that Josh recommended on that episode was The Last Girlfriend On Earth by Simon Rich, a collection of humorous short stories about relationships (mostly between 20-something men and 20-something women, though not exclusively). I got it from the library and read it in two days. All told I think it probably took me an hour and half. It is not a long read. And I found it really, really funny. Broken up into three parts (Boy Meets Girl, Boy Gets Girl, and Boy Loses Girl), the stories range from two to ten pages and, as I said before, are brisk reads. And nearly every one made me laugh. They’re of varying quality, and a few of them seem like they’re espousing some questionable gender politics, but every time I thought that Rich was just throwing a new coat of paint on some 80s relationship tropes, a gem of a story would stand out.

Like “Unprotected,” a story told from a condom’s POV, or “I Love Girl,” about a caveman in love, or “Trade,” which uses sports trades as an allegory for the end of relationships. My favourite, though, was “The Present,” a bittersweet love story about a scientist trying to find the perfect gift for his long-suffering girlfriend. I would really recommend The Last Girlfriend On Earth a shot. Your mileage may vary, but as it’s not a long read, I think you’d probably find at least a couple of amusing stories for a short investment of time.

Other Things:

Here’s a few of the other things I started cramming in my brain over the past week.

Television: I started and finished Season Three of Game of Thrones this week. Now, either you’ve finished Season Three months ago and have been waiting for Season Four to start with bated breath, or you haven’t seen Season Three and are tensing your body at the possibility of spoilers. Or you don’t care about Game of Thrones, in which case I can’t help you. I will say a couple of things, though. First of all, as someone who hasn’t made it farther than the first book (I think you would have to pay me to read any more of them), I am not confused by the storyline, nor do I feel like I’m missing out on anything, which is a rare thing for most adaptations. Some of the big story events happen rather quickly, which I will forgive as they’re cramming six hundred page novels into ten hours of television. And secondly: while some of my favourite characters continue to delight me after thirty episodes (I still love Tyrion and Arya, as do I think 98% of GoT fans), a couple of characters have really made significant turns in the third season, and they don’t feel forced at all. I have rather enjoyed having my opinions changed about some previously despicable characters, while other characters have started out strong and ended up being absolute disappointments. My favourite thing about this sprawling story has been the shifting political allegiances between characters, and it’s a testament to the storytelling that my own allegiances to characters have shifted over the past three seasons.

Music: I have listened to “Bad Self Portraits” by the band Lake Street Dive pretty much every day for the past month or so. A jazz-blues-pop quartet that does 60s R&B revival right, and you can’t get a much better frontwoman than Rachael Price. Her voice is warm and soulful, and sends a shiver up and down my spine. My favourite song is a raucous foot-stomper called “Stop Your Crying,” but there’s not really a sour track on the album.

Comics: Hey, this is a comics blog, right? Well, I read Scarlet Spider Volume One: Life After Death this week, and I have to say, for someone with no understanding of Spider-Man’s Clone Saga or the aftermath of that particular story, I enjoyed the collection. It’s the story of Kaine, imperfect clone of Peter Parker with facial scarring and a terminal clone disease, now freshly healed with a new lease on life, trying to figure out how to be his own spider-powered man in the city of Houston, TX. Christopher Yost puts together an interesting group of supporting characters that help keep Kaine tied to a community that he’d just as soon abandon if given the chance, and he gives the stories a bit of humour while making it very clear that Kaine is no friendly neighborhood hero. And Ryan Stegman, penciler on 5 of the 6 issues in the collection, is dynamite, though anyone currently reading Superior Spider-Man already knows that. Some things about Kaine weren’t terribly clear to me as a newcomer to the character, especially some of the powers that came out of left field. Apparently he has an acid touch and forearm spikes, not something I would have expected from a spider-hero, but then again: the whole point of Scarlet Spider is playing with the apparently familiar and throwing a twist in when it’s not expected, so I was able to roll with the punches.

Well, that ended up being a LOT longer than I thought it was going to be, so though I have a few more things that I wanted to talk about (the season finale of “Almost Human,” Laurel & Hardy short films and Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth to name just three), I’m going to stop here before I overdo it. Don’t want to pull a writing muscle on my first day here.

See you in seven days!