L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

I don’t remember much more about Purple Passion beyond the fact that it tasted like grape-flavored rubbing alcohol. What else would it taste like? It was made from Everclear grain alcohol. I’m surprised I have any stomach lining or tooth enamel left after drinking this stuff.

Purple Passion’s sole purpose? To lead you quickly down the path to total blitzed status. If there’s another purpose for this drink, I can only assume it involves battlefield emergency triage. On the night I was introduced to it, however, it was about the blitzing.

My best friend was home from college for the weekend and excited to introduce me to this drink she’d discovered at one of the parties she’d been to on campus. And, yes, this would be the same BFF of the infamous sleepovers that caused me to charffle Dimetapp and pepperoni pizza. Apparently, she had a thing for getting me buzzed on purple things.

Slight problem: We weren’t quite 21 yet. I mean, we were emotionally way more mature than 21. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t acknowledge emotional age. Not that big a deal, though. We had one of her friends buy us a four-pack of this high-octane Kool-Aid. He then drove us around down all the rural backroads of the county where she lived while we sprawled in the backseat, splitting the Purple Passion bottles.

Oh, but wait. You have to have music for something like this, right? How about a cassette of The Fugees’ The Score, on constant rotation? I heard that damned album so many times that even while burning a hole through my central processor with grain alcohol, I was able to identify that they’d sampled Enya on their song, “Ready or Not.”

And now I’ve just outted myself as being familiar enough with Enya that I was able to identify her music.

Shut up. I hear you laughing.

You know what? For that, I’m leaving you with the Fugees/Enya song. I told you to shut up…

Not wanting the “Public Library” portion of my BookBin2012 widget to go unloved, and because I simply cannot stay out of a library as gorgeous as our neighborhood library, I bring you my latest discovery from the graphic novel section: Epileptic by David B. (or David Beauchard).

Originally released as a six-volume series under its French title, L’Ascension du Haut Mal (which translates as “The Rise of the High Evil”; also, “haut mal” is the French equivalent of the English term “grand mal” in reference to epileptic seizures), Epileptic is Beauchard’s retelling of his family’s journey through the sudden onset of his older brother’s epilepsy when his brother was 11.

Beauchard’s choice to approach his family’s story from his younger version’s perspective brings the narrative to a less convoluted, more accessible level. A story dealing with such a serious medical condition runs the risk of becoming overburdened by medical jargon; telling the tale from the perspective of the little brother who must process all these changes and ordeals as they are happening gave Beauchard permission to simplify his narrative without watering it down.

He balances the various family dynamics and reactions to his brother’s worsening condition, demonstrating not only the extraordinary measures to which family is willing to go in order to save their own, but also the disconnectedness and solitary confinement each member experiences, even in the face of familial cohesion in pursuit of a cure. Though they are together in family experimental journeys into alternative medicinal treatments and alternative religions, Beauchard explores well the varied and separate emotional responses he and his family experience.

Beauchard is not an overly sentimental writer, which I believe serves his story well. He is, however, a phenomenal artist. Just as I praised Craig Thompson for the artistry of his novel, Blankets, I believe that Beauchard is another whose artistic prowess has raised my opinion of graphic novels to an even higher plateau of respect. The inky intricacy of his oftentimes nightmarish tableaux roll over you in swells of beauty, horror, desperation, promise, resentment, and resignation. His artwork is unsettling, reflecting at times the disturbing aesthetic of a Grand Guignol influence.

[Or perhaps I merely think this because they're both French. This is sometimes how my brain works.]

Admittedly, the artwork is bold and distinct enough that it was a bit overwhelming at first. I pressed through my initial discomfort and soon found myself enraptured by the dark details of Beauchard’s beautiful black and white panels. His view of the world, both the real one and that of his exquisite imagination, is rich and complex and full of the fury and impotence with which so many families are familiar when faced with an intractable disease. At times I found myself lingering over a page long after finishing the text, simply trying to take in the layers hidden beneath the words…layers that provided a deeper narrative unhindered by the boundaries of letters.

Final Verdict: I hope that this novel has already found its way into another’s book basket at our library. Definitely another one for the Amazon wish list.

I’m feeling a bit peckish for horror this year, denizens. I recently reorganized some of my library and discovered that I have amassed quite a few horror-related novels throughout the years, including a rather impressive list of Stephen King novels never once cracked open in all their years of taking up a lot of room on my shelves.

Horror has been my favorite branch of the speculative fiction triumvirate since I was just knee-high to a corpse (I’d rank them horror, sci-fi, and fantasy a solid and very distant last), so I’ve decided that I need to focus a bit more on this part of my library.

First on my list? The Best of Cemetery Dance, Volume 1, a collection of short stories that I bought at a used book sale slightly more than a decade ago (at the same sale that I bought many of my King novels as well as this previous BookBin entry).

For those not familiar with horror-focused literature, Cemetery Dance is…well, allow them to explain themselves:

Cemetery Dance is the World Fantasy Award-winning magazine of horror, dark mystery, and suspense. Each issue is packed with 100 to 140 pages of short stories, articles, columns, interviews, news, and reviews! Plus stunning full-color covers and striking interior artwork! Covering the entire horror field — Books! Movies! Videos! Comics!

The world’s top authors in the genre are published within our pages, but Cemetery Dance is also the place to look for glimpses of the future. We’ve given more big names their “first shot” than any other publication in the last two decades, and many of those authors are coming back for future issues.

Over the years we’ve published authors such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Charles Beaumont, Graham Masterton, Richard Laymon, Bentley Little, Michael Slade, Douglas Clegg, Jack Ketchum, William F. Nolan, Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite, Ronald Kelly, Rick Hautala, and hundreds of others, including the best new writers in the genre.

They are, indeed, quite the big deal. When this anthology was first released as a hardback, both volumes were together. It wasn’t until the paperback edition that the publisher decided to split it into two volumes.

Everyone wants to make an extra buck or two.

Honestly, though, I think this first volume was not only a perfect size but it’s also a nearly perfect collection. First, allow me to offer you a list of this volume’s stories:

• “Chattery Teeth” by Stephen King
• “The Box” by Jack Ketchum
• “Halceldama” by Gary A. Braunbeck
• “The Pig Man” by Augustine Funnell
• “Mobius” by R. C. Matheson
• “The Rendering Man” by Douglas Clegg
• “Weight” by Dominick Cancilla
• “Layover” by Ed Gorman
• “Johnny Halloween” by Norman Partridge
• “Hope” by Steven Bevan
• “The Mailman” by Bentley Little
• “Silhouette” by Stephen Mark Rainey
• “Roadkill” by Tom Elliott
• “The Rifle” by Jack Ketchum
• “Pieces” by Ray Garton
• “Rustle” by Peter Crowther
• “When the Silence Gets Too Loud” by Brian Hodge
• “The Rabbit” by Jack Pavey
• “The Flood” by John Maclay
• “The Right Thing” by Gary Raisor
• “Pig’s Dinner” by Graham Masterton
• “Crash Cart” by Nancy Holder
• “Wall of Words” by Lucy Taylor
• “Metastatis” by David B. Silva
• “Wrapped Up” by Ramsey Campbell
• “Depth of Reflection” by David L. Duggins
• “The Mole” by David Niall Wilson
• “Saviour” by Gary A. Braunbeck
• “Great Expectations” by Kim Antieau
• “Shell” by Adam Corbin Fusco

As you can see, there are some rather recognizable contributors from the horror genre, including two offerings from Jack Ketchum that might actually be the best of what is already a rather amazing collection. Regardless of name recognition, however, I believe that this is one of the most solid selections of talent from the genre that I’ve ever read. There were nearly no misses in this list, even as the anthology neared the end (where composers of such collections typically tend to stick the misfit toys). True, some of the final stories aren’t quite as strong as the earlier offerings, but I think that tales like Gary Raisor’s “The Right Thing,” Graham Masterton’s “Pig’s Dinner,” and Nancy Holder’s “Crash Cart” are proof positive that sometimes they do save the best for last as well as the beginning and the middle.

Even weaker contributions like “Roadkill” or “The Flood” retained some essence of fear that allowed the words to creep under my skin and nestle their icy presence among the sinew and ligaments within.

Final Verdict: Not only will I be keeping this volume, I’ve already added the second volume to my wish list. Of course, there is the slightest worry that this second volume will include the “misfit toys” that I mentioned in my review of the first volume since it is, after all, the original conclusion to what was once a complete anthology. However, I have enough faith in Cemetery Dance that I’m willing to take the chance…

A long, long time ago, I wrote about the joy of cereal box prizes. I mentioned that my favorite was Frosted Flakes. How do you not love the cereal with the mascot voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft?

(Don’t recognize that name? Don’t worry. He’s just a bad banana with a greasy black peel, denizens).

Ravenscroft provided the voice of Tony for more than 50 years. Perhaps it’s just me, but Tony hasn’t sounded quite the same since Ravenscroft died. Here’s one of his early commercials (black and white, even…and what’s up with his teeth? If that’s what Frosted Flakes does to your teeth, you might want to reconsider them as a balanced part of your sugar rush):

And then there’s this little gem. Well, hey there, “Cathy”!

I remember this commercial. I always thought it was a sad attempt by Kellogg’s to get adults who grew up eating Frosted Flakes to come back. You know, because it’s never too late to need insulin.

If I wasn’t flaking out, I was going a little fruity. Er, loopy. Fruit Loopy, with my home bird, Toucan Sam. I used to love eating a bowl a Fruit Loops and drinking a cup of coffee while watching Scooby Doo before school (and, yes, there are several things wrong with this sentence). Befitting, then, that I would find this commercial, as animated by Hanna-Barbera (watch closely and you’ll even see a guest appearance by the very first “ghoul” to ever haunt Scooby and those meddling kids):

And, before one of them prowled the woods of Sunnydale at the full moon or the other discovered he held the power to electrify the lives of our favorite (some might even say they were X-ceptional) FBI agents after surviving a lightning strike (impress me, denizens, by following this clue), these two up-and-coming Gen-Xers were getting their own Loop-on:

Other favorites? Trix, of course…and one of my favorite commercials was this two-parter in which Bugs Bunny tried to help the Trix Rabbit finally get his hands on his own Trix cereal. Didn’t he know? Trix are for kids.

And hookers. But that’s for a different story.

Then there were the chocolate cereals: Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Krispies, and (my personal favorite) Count Chocula. It’s not even that I really liked Count Chocula cereal. I just liked the mascot more than that annoying bird or those rodent-sized elves. Snap, Crackle, and Pop the hell away from my food, dammit.

How about a monster sugar buzz for breakfast today?

The true crime isn’t the fact that they now only sell Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry cereals at Halloween. It isn’t even the fact that apparently one or all of them disposed of the Fruity Yummy Mummy (probably as retribution for this commercial). It’s that they still sell any of these teeth-rotting concoctions at all.

Actually, that’s not true. The real crime is that many, many (full) moons ago, somewhere along a dark, lonely highway, Count Chocula and Frankenberry disposed of their first fruity competition, Fruit Brute. A moment of silence, please.

There are tons more of these commercials and cutesy cartoon mascots designed to trick kids into consuming more sugar in one bowl than you’re probably supposed to have in one week…Dig ‘Em the Frog, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bakers, Captain Crunch, Sugar Bear, Lucky, the Flintstones…not to mention the movie, TV show, or video game tie-ins like C3PO Cereal, Pac-Man, Ghostbusters, Smurfs…we truly were the marketed generation, weren’t we? Thank the prophets we were also the “Fluoride in the Water” generation.

As touristy and predictable as it is, whenever I go to San Francisco, I always end up taking an excessive number of photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. I simply can’t help myself. It’s stunning, no matter what time of day or what type of weather surrounds it. I’ve seen it damasked by fog, gilded by moon glow, and shimmering in the brilliant sunlight, and I’ve yet to tire of its beauty.

This past trip, I decided that I needed to mix it up a little bit…get a different perspective. I also wanted to visit yet another filming location from Vertigo, one of my favorite Hitchcock films. I ended up at Fort Point, right beneath the bridge and just as the sun was reaching a prime position in the sky for some gorgeous Golden Gate glow.

I would have liked to have gotten even further under the bridge or closer to the water’s edge for some of these shots. Unfortunately, the fort was closed and surrounded by a pesky security fence. Oh well. Perhaps next time.

Here, then, are my favorite shots, including one of a drippy-billed seagull who seemed quite amused by my impromptu photo shoot…

And, finally, here’s my favorite shot, which I took specifically as an homage to Vertigo. It came out so exactly as I had hoped it would that I couldn’t resist taking it into PhotoShop and turning it into my own “poster” for this movie:

First, allow me to vent for a moment to the companies, corporations, organizations, etc. who hide behind the “green” concept to keep more money for themselves. I’m talking about the businesses that do things like no longer provide printed instructions with their merchandise under the guise that they are “protecting the trees.”

No, you’re not. You’re saving yourself the cost of providing us with what we now must provide ourselves. I don’t think you’re being environmentally friendly. I think you’re being capitalist dicks.

[Yes, Loba is in a less than chipper mood this afternoon.]

Tangentially, I have a gripe about the local government where I reside doing something quite similar. Beginning January 1, 2012, all stores (with the exception of pharmacies and fast food restaurants) now charge 5 cents for each bag that they provide their customers. The stores get to keep 1 cent while turning over the rest to the government. The government claims that they are doing this to help reduce litter in our landfills.

Allow Surly Loba to call shenanigans.

Mind you, I have no problem with the concept of BYOBag to stores. We’ve been taking our own bags to the supermarket for almost 3 years now. Back then? Stores actually rewarded us eco-friendly shoppers by giving us…a 5-cent-per-bag discount on our bill. Now? Nothing.

Unless you don’t remember to bring your own bags.

I get it. Governments all across the country are strapped for cash and are trying to figure out how to bridge the gap in frightening financial shortcomings without raising the ire of idiotic TEA baggers by raising taxes. So they’re coming up with inventive ways of side-stepping the scary “T” word by doing things like this. But not only can I see through your rather flimsy “we’re being green” smokescreen, I can also do enough math to put 2 and 2 together and see that what used to be a positive reinforcement toward eco-responsibility on the part of consumers has now been turned into a big fat negative.

Essentially, they’ve taken the carrot of rewarding our conscientiousness and stuck it right…well, you know.

I guess what irritates me the most is that I’m tired of all the pretending that these things are being done for anything other than purely financial reasons. It’s for the same reason that where I live insists that I have Sammy inspected every 2 years to confirm that his emissions aren’t polluting the air and killing all the wildlife in the state. Oh, and by the way, that’ll be $14 for the hassle.

Are we as a society really this dull-witted that we don’t balk at such blatant manipulation…but we’ll go bat-shit crazy if the mere suggestion of raising taxes is brought to the table? Call me crazy, but I would much rather you just raise my taxes than nickel and dime me (literally) in these frustratingly capricious ways.

A little known fact about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine two-part episode “Past Tense” is how much it was altered between first draft and final product. While the storyline about Commander Sisko and Dr. Bashir becoming involved in the “Bell Riots” was always there, what wasn’t was the subplot about Jadzia ending up in the past with them and her quasi-romantic interaction with Christopher Brynner. In fact, there was a completely different subplot that involved Major Kira and Chief O’Brien getting lost even further back in the past during their trip through the timelines in search of Sisko and Bashir.

Jadzia (who stayed on the Defiant when Sisko and Bashir attempted their ill-fated beamdown to their present-day San Francisco) ended up losing Kira and O’Brien as they materialized in 1960s Haight-Ashbury San Francisco. The episode then alternated between Jadzia and Odo working to rescue all four lost officers, Sisko and Bashir in the Bell Riot timeline, and Kira and O’Brien in their own hippy love-in timeline. This subplot was meant to provide the humorous juxtaposition to Sisko and Bashir’s story and showed Kira and O’Brien forming a band as a means of making enough money to get a place to live and food to eat while they tried to figure out how to contact Dax and Odo. Their band, Prophets’ Pogue, was a BajoraCeltic folk fusion that almost instantly caught on because of the familiarity of the Celtic sound mixed with the exotic alien stylings brought in by Kira’s Bajoran roots. Soon, they found themselves with a recording contract, mingling with the likes of Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Doors…all wanting to know more about that groovy, trippy sound and the weird lead singer who always wore a band-aid over her nose.

There were even hints at a developing romance between Kira and O’Brien when they began to lose hope that they would ever get back to their time and their respective partners. Though lost to this two-part episode, this concept would later appear during the Season 5 storyline in which Major Kira plays surrogate for the O’Briens after Keiko is injured and Dr. Bashir is forced to perform an emergency transfer of the fetus into Major Kira in order to save it.

Unfortunately, the cost of the royalties and the CGI to add the likenesses of all these famous 60s rock musicians became too prohibitive to completing the subplot as originally envisioned (it wouldn’t be until the fifth season episode “Trial and Tribble-ations” that they would finally get the opportunity to mix the DS9 cast with CGI characters from the past, only this time it would be Captain Kirk and his crew). Also, the writers realized that they needed a subplot that worked more in tandem with the primary storyline rather than detracting from it the way they ultimately felt this subplot did. The script was reworked, that subplot was traded in for the Jadzia subplot, but in deference to the idea, the writers left in Kira and O’Brien’s brief moment in the “peace and love” era.

One of the recently discovered props that was prepared for the original script was this cover for the Prophets’ Pogue debut album, póg mo hiomairí…which, roughly translated is Gaelic for “Kiss My Ridges.”* It was to be O’Brien’s and Kira’s own private joke regarding the Bajoran’s constantly hidden alien feature.

*I don’t speak Gaelic, so for all I know this means something utterly offensive. If it is, I’m sorry. Blame Google Translate.

I promise, this will be the last book review for a while. It will also be much shorter than my last two reviews. I don’t want to overload you.

I’m now finished with the stack of CSI graphic novels that I purchased last year, with the fifth in the series, Secret Identity. I thought this was the last one illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, but it looks like there might be one more, although it doesn’t seem to be part of the longer serial novels. I think it might be a one-shot novella done back when Ashley Wood was still doing the abstract artwork. More investigating is required.

For Secret Identity, Rodriguez again paired with Steven Perkins on the abstract art. Steven Grant took over from Kris Oprisko as the writer of this story. It’s a shame that this was the last novel Rodriguez and Perkins worked on together, because I believe this is the best of the bunch. Not only did these two artists’ divergent styles merge beautifully for this novel, Rodriguez really came into his own for the main artwork. He invests a great deal of care and creativity into exploring the space of each page, each panel, bringing a sense of grace and artistry to what is also the darkest, and in my opinion, best written story from this batch of five novels.

Steven Grant did a tremendous job writing this story, giving readers something that not only can compete with a television script, but might in some ways surpass what we’ve seen from the show (especially in recent years). It’s refreshing to see such a cumulatively extraordinary effort put toward a medium that, when done in such a mass market style as comic book tie-ins to television series, typically tends to suffer from mediocrity and apathy from all involved. Case in point? Go flip through a stack of hastily written/drawn/published Trek comics and tell me what you think…you know, after you finish peroxide-washing your brain and eyes.

The coloring is again superb, drawing from a palette of soothing to passion-infused, and enhancing the almost cinematic-quality angles of Rodriguez’s cleverly drawn panels. Also, IDW Publishing returned to the standard size for this graphic novel (although it looks like they also offered it in the smaller “New Format” size; avoid this one at all cost), which means larger space for artwork that truly deserves every inch and more.

Final Verdict: Definitely a keeper. I’d vote this the best of the first five CSI graphic novels, hands down. If you’re at all interested in seeing what the comics can offer you, this would be my top recommendation.

And so it begins, denizens—another year of documenting what’s being read here at the lair. I know that many of you take on the annual 50 Book Challenge or some variation on this theme. I applaud any sort of challenge that encourages more reading. As a victorious participant in such a challenge a few years ago, I’m satisfied in knowing that I was able to meet this number once. Now, my personal challenge continues to be about sifting through my continuously growing library, reading the books that have been patiently awaiting their moment in the spotlight, and deciding if they deserve to remain a part of Loba’s Book Worship Society.

(Truth is, I really don’t like parting with books at all [except for those written by people with names like Stieg Larsson or Bret Easton Ellis]. However, I’ve yet to inherit any long-forgotten ancestral castles, so I must remain vigilant that my addiction to books does not outpace the space available to me.)

This year I’m going to focus even more on my own library rather than books I discover at the local library. I know, I said this last year…although, in my defense, I did read more of my own books than library books last year. Of the 45.5 books I read in 2011, 28 of them were previously unread books from my collection; only 18 were library books (including that abysmal one that I refused to finish). Of the 28 reads from my collection, I ended up donating 6 of them to the local charity shop. Of course, I then ended up buying my own copy (or rather, receiving it as a present) of one of the books I borrowed from the library and adding three more to my wish list for future purchase.

Still, progress was made!

On to 2012 then. You’ll notice the breakdown of my “BookBin2012″ progress list is a little different this year. Really, I’m just breaking down the process to keep better track of my tally. You will notice, however, a new set of options: “Save” or “Delete.” These would be in deference to the gorgeous Amazon Kindle I received for my birthday last year.

Yes, I have entered the digital age in regard to my reading.

That, in fact, is really what this particular book review is all about. Yes, I did recently finish reading Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This is not the first time I have read it, and it won’t be the last. I’m quite fond of Irving and have already discussed my particular soft spot for Ichabod Crane. I think Irving’s quaint, creepy tale is a magnificent novella worthy of the few hours that it will take you to enjoy it.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the experience of reading my first eBook. First, I have to say, I adore my Kindle. It’s not one of the new Kindle Fire tablets, so there are no flashing colors and Wi-Fi temptations of online surfing or Netflix streaming. This is as it should be, in my nerdy, hipster, literature-worshipping opinion. It’s bad enough that you can play games on the original Kindles.

Okay, honestly, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with my Kindle since I received it. I downloaded Scrabble and a Word Search game (I am a Word Search BOSS), and they have served as suitable distractions from actual reading. This is a problem.

The primary problem, however, is I have some sort of strange aversion to reading books in an electronic format. I don’t really know how to explain it any other way, and I’m not sure how I can completely overcome it. It’s been a part of my collection of proclivities for a while, though. Way back when I first entered the PC world, my uncle gave me a CD-ROM that contained a huge selection of classic literature. It was with this disc that I made my first attempt at reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Something about reading it on a computer screen, however, became a huge hurdle that I simply could not surmount, and a few weeks later I ended up purchasing a copy of the book so that I could read it that way.

Guess what’s loaded onto my Kindle as my next eBook experience? Oh, Count, you will be conquered electronically. I swear it.

Admittedly, the most off-putting aspect of this first attempt at reading a book electronically was the distracting and somewhat painfully bright white screen. The Kindle’s screen, however, is remarkably deferential to a “real” book page. The background color is soft and muted, the text is crisp, and the screen is dulled to prevent accidental glare-induced blindness. It still took me a little while to get into the groove of reading on the Kindle (something about the text being a little too crisp became my latest distraction), but I was able to finally let go and read.

Was it enjoyable? Yes. The Kindle 3G (the version I have) is a perfectly acceptable size, especially when placed inside a cover like mine is. Not only does the cover protect my Kindle when I slip it into a backpack, it also serves as another means of fooling my brain into believing that I’m reading an actual book.

That being said, I simply don’t foresee the Kindle ever replacing real books, either in general or for me in particular. I know, I know. Vinyl records gave way to CDs. Video tapes surrendered to DVDs. Film cameras are on the endangered species list thanks to digital cameras. There’s a difference, though. All these other replacements improved upon their predecessors (for the most part; my video tapes never stopped me from skipping all the advertising flotsam at the beginning of the movie). Books, however, are different. Books can go anywhere. I can take a book on a plane and never be told that I have to put it away so the captain can land. I can accidentally step on a book and it’ll survive relatively unscathed. I can read a book in the bathtub and if I drop it, I dry it out. If I drop my Kindle in the bathtub…very bad things happen, denizens.

Plus, let’s not forget the beauty of the discounted and/or used book. I say it all the time, I love things like Amazon Marketplace or the bookstore bargain bins. There’s a certain satisfaction in finding a used book in perfect condition and for an even more perfect price.

Also, there is something about the tangibility of a book that simply cannot be replaced. There’s the supple give of the cover, the crackling of the spine, the soft scratch of the pages between your fingertips…reading a book is a ceremony of singular joy.

I’m probably deluding myself into believing that books won’t one day be replaced by eReaders. Although, it wasn’t a Kindle loaded up with the complete works of The Bard that Captain Picard kept in his ready room, now was it?

Of course, there is the sanitary aspect of the eReader that I find appealing. For all my support and love of our local library, there’s always that part of my brain that I struggle to silence when reading a library book. It’s that part of my brain that wants to constantly remind me that many others have handled this book…molested it with sticky, germy hands…taken it places that I really don’t want to think about…done things with it that I struggle to resist imagining…

Okay, I need to stop now before I ruin the library for everyone.

Even putting aside my strange bibliogermophobia, however, I still salivate whenever I see a large collection of books. This past weekend, for example, we walked past the Parkway Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia. I bet you can still see my nose prints on the glass as I peered longingly in at All. Those. Books.

Do I see my Kindle replacing my book collection? No. Do I see it augmenting my reading experience? I think so. We’re going to give it a proper go this year, for certain. I’m going to try to read at least one eBook every month throughout 2012. I’ve already collected plenty of reading options, thanks to Amazon’s Free Collection. Plus, with options like Open Library, Project Gutenberg, or ManyBooks, as well as more and more libraries providing eBooks as a borrowing option, I could theoretically spend the entire year reading nothing but what’s on my Kindle.

But then what would I do with all these books?

Final Verdict: I’m saving The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and keeping my fingers crossed that my Kindle experience continues to be an enjoyable one.

No, that isn’t a mistake, denizens. This will be the final book entry for my 2011 reading endeavors. Even though I was in the process of reading several other books (my attention span seemed to shrink significantly toward the end of last year), I decided I wanted to end the year on a fluffy note. Therefore, the stack of CSI graphic novels that I picked up from Amazon Marketplace a while ago seemed like a great place to go. Besides, as I mentioned in my last post, there was road-tripping to be done this past weekend, and since I wasn’t driving, I chose to entertain myself with reading.

Okay, so here’s the deal: After reading the first CSI graphic novel, Serial, I decided that—true to my obsessive nature—I wanted to read more CSI graphic novels to see if they improved upon what I considered to be a relatively sturdy foundation. I purchased the next four novels. There are more graphic novels beyond five; however, these are the only ones illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. I mentioned in my review of Serial that at some point the artwork for these CSI novels turns quite mucky. However, Rodriguez’s artwork in the first novel was impressive enough to assuage my fears that he might be the tainted artist.

In all honesty, it’s Rodriguez’s art and coloring that compelled me to continue reading these comics. His grasp of illustrating our favorite band of Vegas criminalists continued to improve throughout each of these three novels. The disproportionate appearances that I noted in my review of Serial continued through Bad Rap and Demon House, but definitely began to diminish.

[Loba Tangent: If the cover art for Demon House looks a little familiar to regulars here at the lair, it's because I used it as the inspiration for my CSI: Bajor spoof cover, Blood Prophecy. You're welcome.]

By the time I started Dominos (yes, I know the title is misspelled; yes, it did irritate the hell out of me), I was noticing a definite balance in proportions. Also, the likenesses became even more refined with each effort (with the continuing exception of Greg Sanders…I don’t know what it is about our favorite Lab Rat, but Rodriguez simply cannot get him right!). In fact, the only nitpick I can come up with is a minor one and really only something that would bother me: In all three novels, Rodriguez gave Sara Sidle long, sharp fingernails with a dark red polish.

Er, no.

Seriously, find me three instances on the show of Sara Sidle wearing any kind of nail polish and I will send you cookies.

The real beauty of each of these novels, however, is in the coloring. I think Rodriguez did the coloring, but I might be wrong. Fran Gamboa is listed as being responsible for colors in Bad Rap, but that’s the only time someone else is listed. Regardless, whoever did the coloring for these graphic novels did an amazing job. The attention to shadows and lighting gave the panels a gorgeous dimensionality that often is missing from mass-produced comics. The lighting closely mimics the lighting as seen in the television show, which adds a nice connection between the printed and televised worlds.

The flashback and speculation scenes for all three novels were still done in a different, more abstract style than the primary artwork. Ashley Wood continued to do these watercolor renderings for Bad Rap and Demon House. Steven Perkins took over for Dominos. I appreciated Perkins’s abstract style to Woods’s work. Woods’s take on these scenes seemed to degenerate throughout each story, becoming more abstract and less interesting with each offering. Toward the end of Demon House, it seemed as though the abstract artwork became nothing more than scratched-out stick people over a sickly mottling of drab olives and browns. Perkins brought back a more refined level of artistry with his take on the flashbacks, keeping them stylistically different from the rest of the story while imbuing them with an appealing sense of sophistication.

As for the writing, Max Allan Collins stuck around after his first crack at graphic novel storytelling to write the stories for Bad Rap and Demon House. They were acceptable stories, but nothing that would push the boundaries already established by the show. One thing that I’ve always liked about the Trek universe’s forays into comics and novels is the fact that the stories there tend to stray from the canonical path. With few exceptions, nothing shown in either written world is ever viewed as “truth” to the filmed Trek universe. I guess that’s not the case with the CSI universe, because not a whole lot new is revealed in these graphic novels.

Kris Oprisko took over the writing from Collins for Dominos. Again, nothing too different, although Oprisko enjoyed invoking a darkness in his tale that Collins very seldom embraced. Dominos had a much more brutal feel, which inspired equally brutal imagery from Rodriguez and Perkins. It was in these aspects that I felt the graphic novel finally started to reach beyond the boundaries of the show…although that’s not really the case anymore. Ever since CSI switched to a later time slot, they’ve definitely been exploring the reduced level of restriction in what sort of gore they can show their audience.

All that being said, if you’re a fan of the show, you’ll enjoy these dalliances. Are they worth purchasing? Again, if you love CSI, then they’re worth owning if only for the enjoyable artwork. That reminds me: Here’s a more objective nitpick, not necessarily about the artwork but more about the skimping the publishers did to the artwork. Whereas Serial was printed in what has become a “standard” size for many graphic novels, these three were printed in what IDW Publishing called the “New Format.” Reduced size, which means: A) The artwork was skimped the way comic strips get skimped in newspapers; and B) these books now look ridiculous on my graphic novel shelf. All the other books there are a relatively standard size. Even the fifth CSI novel, Secret Identity, went back to the standard size. Guess they realized their mistake and corrected it.

Oh, and if you’re interested, I’m nearly finished with Secret Identity. I promise my comments on that one won’t be nearly as long as these comments.

Final Verdict: I’m keeping these three for now. I like my obsession-related collections. Prophets know I have plenty of Trek-related books. While my CSI collection will never grow to that level of insanity, I’m having a fun time collecting for a new obsession…at least until the Buffy collecting bug kicks in…