Locke & Key Vol.1 Issue 1

I said that I would read the Jerome K. Jerome book first. But this one was too tempting!!! So I went ahead and read this book instead. I had to read the book twice. Once for the story, and once to really enjoy the artwork and take in everything. That iss how I like reading comic books. I am so hungry for the story that I just read all the dialogues, look at the expressions and move one. I then sit back a second time and pay attention to the artwork, the details, every expression of every face, the position of objects in the background, the sky, the window etc. It helps me to connect to the story better. Comic books are awesome in this way - they tell a story in words and in pictures and you need to put both together to get the whole story or you are left with only a partial story.

Okay. Comic books in general are awesome. But what about this one? Well, I think this one was no different. At first it seemed a bit confusing, since the author is telling the story of the past and present at once and if you are reading only the dialogues, you will get muddled up completely. So I went back and looked at the artwork and found that there is a difference in the way things are drawn and of course there was this box which said something like `before` and `after`. One thing that I really liked was bringing in characters without introductions. I was able to guess who they were based on the protagonist's previous dialogues and imaginations. This was really cool. This kind of thing expects us as a reader to immerse ourselves into the comic book and experience the story rather than just observing the story unravel.

I am trying to write without including spoilers in this post. So I am going to just end it here and say that I am going to go ahead and continue reading the rest of the volume(s). This book has me hooked.

Before Reading - Locke and Key Vol.1, Issue 1

 

So I am back after a long gap. I haven't completed reading the previous book. I am going to finish reading and blog about it in some days. In the meantime, here is what I think about the next book in my weird series of Before Reading posts. 

The second book on our lists is Locke and Key Vol.1 Issue 1. I did a Google image search for Locke and Key volume 1. There were a lot of images with scary looking faces and antique keys. I think that this book is going to have some keys or at least one in it as the main protagonist. The cover page of this issue reminds be of blood and gore. There is a building that I am assuming is a haunted house where these keys (or key) will come into play. Skull on the key = death!!! On the whole this gives me the idea that this is a horror or a slightly scary graphic novel that I am definitely not going to try to read at night!

My plan now is to finish reading the first book and posting about it.

Before Reading 'Three Men in a Boat'

Why would I want to post something about a book even before reading it? Just for the fun of it! We have all heard of the saying "Never judge a book by its cover" and although it is not meant in the literal sense, we do it all the time; with both books and people. Frankly, we just can't help but judge a book by its cover these days, what with all the amazing cover art that is coming up. So I decided that it would be really fun to pen down my thoughts of what I make of a book by looking at its cover and then compare it to what I think of it after actually reading the whole book.

Pillaiyar suzhi for this task is with Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. Google Aandavar helped in the quest for cover images of this book. I found so many different book covers! This is when I realized that the book has a tag-line "To say nothing of the Dog"!!! After looking at many images and also having heard before that it sits in the humor genre, I think that the book is about the misadventures of three men and their pet dog in a boat. There are two cover pages that made an impression on me. Shown below is the one that I loved best. The simplicity and elegance with which the idea of all the things that can go wrong with these three men and their dog is expressed enamoured me a lot.  

 

The next cover page (shown below) made me feel that the three men along with their dog are out to conquer the world. It gives out a sense of hope for good things to come rather than pointing to anything that could go wrong. Perhaps the holding of the flag and the manner in which the men are seated gives that illusion. Such a contrast to the other cover pages! 

I have ended up with two opposing thoughts about one book, based on the varied cover pages. Let me see what the book is actually like now!

Wishlists 2014

The List of books for each contributor is published below :

Anjana
 
1. Rise and fall of the Third Reich – William L. Shirer
2. And Quiet Flows the Don - Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
3. Everybody loves a good drought – P.Sainath
4. Motorcycle Diaries – Che Guevara
5. Something like an Autobiography – Akira Kurosawa
6. Catcher in the rye – J.D.Salinger
7. White Mughals – William Dalrymple
8. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
9. Caesar’s women/ The grass crown – Colleen McCullough
10. Three men in a boat – Jerome K. Jerome
11.  A Terry Pratchet/Neil Gaiman/ Arthur C. Clarke novel/Graphic novel

Nameeta 

1. Inferno by Dan Brown

2. Steve Jobs: The exclusive biography

3. The Rozabel Line by Ashwin Sanghi

4. The devotion of suspect X by Keigo Higashino

5. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

6. The murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Bhavna

1. Far from the madding crowd- Thomas Hardy
2. Emperor of maladies - Siddarth Mukherjee
3. Phantoms in the brain - V. Ramachandran
4. Roots-Alex Haley
5. One of P.G Wodehouse's novels (Something Fresh)
6. Animal Farm- George Orwell
7. White Mughals - William Dalrymple
8. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
9. Tuesdays with Morrie- Mitch Albom
10. Mahabharatha - Kamala Subramaniam
11. Discovery of India - Jawaharlal Nehru

Nandhini

1. Kite Runner - Khaled hosseini

2. Mahabharatha - R.K.Narayan

3. Something fresh - P.G. Wodehouse

4. Girl with the dragon tattoo - Stieg Larsson

5. The Financial expert - R. K.Narayan

6. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Divya

1. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
2. My life in France by Julia Child
3. Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
5. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
6. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
7. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
8. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
9. My last supper by Melanie Dunea

Nithya

1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

2. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

3. Maus I and II (Graphic Novel) by Art Spiegelman

4. Welcome to Lovecraft (Locke & Key Vol I) by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

5. The Pregnant King by Devdutt Patnaik

6. Dune by Frank Herbert

7. Ender's game by Orson Scott Card

8. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

9. Mort by Terry Pratchett

Elizabeth

1. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
2. Corduroy Mansions - Alexander McCall Smith
3. In Xanadu - Willian Dalrymple
4. Three men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome

5. Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
6. A Tale for the Time being - Ruth Ozeki
7. Magician - Raymond E Feist
8. The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara
9. R A Lafferty - Short Stories vol 1
10. Epileptic - David B (Graphic Novel)

Reading Wishlist - The Beginning...

It all started with this little germ of a midnight idea of what if we could read some books together and then blog about it .. And within 2 minutes we were already on the phone discussing it  and before you knew it, this idea was sailing right out into the world wide web to reach the in-boxes of other people who swear by their books..

Reading wishlists were promptly dispatched. Entries were wide and varied with an eclectic mix of thrillers, autobiographies, satires, fantasy, horror, mythology, travelogues, historical fiction, science fiction & graphic novels. 

And then came the dilemma of choosing..

Finally, a set of rules were arrived at such that a semblance of impartiality could be attributed to the final list. 

And with that the Short List for this blog was created.

1. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K  Jerome

2. Welcome to Lovecraft (Volume 1 of Locke & Key) - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

3. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

4. The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara

5. White Mughals - William Dalrymple

6. Something Fresh - P.G.Wodehouse

7. The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino

8. Steve Jobs : The Exclusive Biography - Walter Isaacson

9. The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri

10. Personal Selection - Your Must Read which did not make the list

So true. But with this blog we will hopefully inch a step closer :)