For about three months now I’ve been volunteering with the local branch of the Friends of the Library. If there’s a library in your community, they probably have a Friends organization too. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the FotL (I’ll be honest — while I’ve heard the name since I was a kid, I didn’t really understand until I started volunteering), let me try to explain.

Libraries themselves are government funded, but like most services, they face tight budgets and they wouldn’t be as robust an institution without a little extra help, both in volunteering and donations. Lots of people in the community want to help in spirit, either by donating books or buying books second hand. Friends of the Library basically facilitate that. When you “donate your books to the library,” it is very unlikely that your books will end up on library shelves. There are just too many books floating around, and most of them aren’t books the library needs more of. Most donations are either sold at Friends of the Library sales, or are distributed to other non-profits. San Francisco, one of the bigger FotL communities has two full-time stores selling the newer and more popular donated books at around 30-40% of the cover price, as well as weekly dollar sales throughout the summer and a HUGE (500k books) sale in the fall with everything priced at $5 or less. We move a LOT of books, most of that work being done by volunteers. And at the end of the year, the SF Friends donate a million and a half dollars to the library and literacy programs.

Libraries are all about access to books. The Friends of the Library program is focussed on redistributing books as efficiently as possible. In my novice experience, it’s a lot like a used book store (in fact, I work with a lot of fellow used book store veterans), only as a non-profit and community service, we aren’t picky and choosy in the way that a store can be. If you sell your books to a used bookstore, they might pick out a handful of the books that they think they can sell. Friends of the Library takes EVERYTHING. Sometimes that means you get a musty box of old marked up text books, more often than not you get yesterday’s best-sellers, and sometimes you get truly special gems. Like last week, we received a 503-year-old copy of Dante’s Inferno. The book was printed in 1507 and the pages were still as crisp and white as anything on the new book shelves, only this book will likely outlast today’s books as the cloth paper is so much more durable than the pulpy paper used today. A book like that won’t go on sale for $5 — the Friends sell the rarest books online at market values — but with so many books out there and more being donated every day, your odds of finding something cool and special go up every year. Of all those hundreds of thousands of books being donated, the vast majority will end up in the hands of a new reader, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Bottom line, it’s a tough time to make money selling old books (for profit), but it’s a great time to be a fan of old books!

So as long as we’re talking book people, here’s this week’s preview pic of bookworm Moulin and her m/other:

On a final book note, I have an enthusiastic recommendation for any gobblin readers out there who are even marginally interested in sci-fi or computers. Robert J. Sawyer’s www: Wake, a Hugo nominee for best novel, published last year, is both a can’t-put-downable page turner and a fascinating exploration of the emergence of consciousness in humans, apes and computers. This is the rare book that can make even the most Luddite reader feel like an equal amongst a cast of geniuses, with plenty of science lessons woven into the narrative that never feel intrusive or condescending. And best of all, it’s just the first book of a trilogy. The second volume, www: Watch, is out now but I’m still waiting on my copy from the library. Or I could just up and buy a copy and donate it when I’m done…

Oh, Skub, how you’ve grown on me over the years. Sometimes I wish I could do a whole series focusing just on Skub and the other goblins with nary a human in sight. Would people even be into a Goblins of Labyrinth story without Sarah, Jareth or Toby at its core? The formula certainly worked well for the Brian Froud & Terry Jones field-guide styled art book.

Well, it’s a week late in coming, but here’s a fresh preview page from the forthcoming volume 4:

At this point the book is about 99% done and on its way to the printers imminently. What to read while waiting? A couple weeks back I finally got around to reading the first collection of The Unwritten by Mike Carey, and I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve been following Carey’s books since his Sandman spinoffs, and without a doubt, this is his most riveting series to date. The series starts with major nods to Harry Potter and a similar vibe to Lev Grossman’s excellent The Magicians, but by the end of the volume, it’s clear that Carey’s planning bigger things than post-modern spins on pop-culture. It’s a story about the power of stories, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

On the books-without-pictures front, I just finished up Incarceron, which was the big fantasy novel of 2009 in the UK and seems to be making quite a splash in the US as well, at least judging by the huge waiting list I had to sit through to get my turn from the library. Catherine Fisher creates a truly unique world in which the future is a mockery of the past and a prison can be alive. So as not to get completely lost in fantasyland, I also read a memoir of rural life titled Coop, by Michael Perry, which made me a little homesick for country living (even though I absolutely hated being stuck on a ranch for the 4 years that I was there).

Next in my queue, www: Wake, the last of this year’s Hugo Award nominees that I haven’t read, and on the comics front, more Walking Dead. But then, something without zombies, faeries, post-humans or spaceships. Any recommendations?

Next week, a new Riddle Club puzzle and two sneak-peek pics to make up for my tardiness.

-Jake

Fraggle fans and Henson devotees will definitely want to check out the new Fraggle Rock comic from Archaia. There is so much love and joy on ever page of this series, it’s really an amazing achievement. The project’s editor, Tim Beedle, who edited Return to Labyrinth for half its run, helped assemble a truly stellar group of artists and writers to bring the Fraggles back. Each issue features one longer story and two shorter back-up stories, as well as a bonus activity page. Issue one (of the first 3 issue run) debuts in comic shops today. If you’re on the fence or totally broke, you can still join in on the Fraggle fun this weekend as Archaia is giving away a special issue for Free Comic Book Day. (Hey, Free Comic Book Day and World Labyrinth Day fall on the same day this year #nerdholidays) The FCBD issue features a totally different story from anything in the main series, so if you’re really into Fraggles, you’ll want them both.

In case you’re wondering, my backup story, starring Boober in a musical number, will appear in a future issue — probably issue 4 (aka Series 2, Issue 1). Return to Labyrinth artist Chris Lie is also participating in a future issue (he’ll be illustrating someone else’s story this time), as is the amazingly talented Heidi Arnhold, artist of Legends of the Dark Crystal.

There’s a nice preview of Fraggle Rock issue 1 over at the toughpigs website if you want a better look.

After a string of nice inked and toned pages, this week we’re back to a rough sketch featuring Moulin and Nimbus.

In other news, lately I’ve been a graphic novel reading machine courtesy of the fine selection offered at the public library. I’ve been catching up on everything from the funky Umbrella Academy to the heartbreaking Footnotes in Gaza. After reading a couple dozen diverse titles, the one that I keep coming back to is The Rabbi’s Cat by French cartoonist Joann Sfar.  This gorgeous graphic novel explores faith, family, colonialism and compassion in a truly intimate and often funny way. And the smart-ass titular hero is one of the most memorable characters I’ve encountered in any medium. The Rabbi’s Cat gets my highest recommendation.

On the prose front, I just finished Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, first volume of a planned series called the Vineart War in which magic is distilled from grapes, like wine. It’s a concept that works surprisingly well, and Gilman does a great job introducing us to the intricacies of magical viticulture. The volume ends with a feisty princess, a sarcastic rogue and the promises of many cloaks, brooches and dirks to come — all the hallmarks of the kind of fantasy novel I’m not so into anymore — but as long as there’s more grapes to be stomped, I’ll give the series another volume at least.

Feel free to share your recent reads and recommendations in the comments!

When Alice in Sunderland came out a few years back, I always intended to pick it up. After all, it’s by Brian Talbot (Luther Arkwright, Tale of One Bad Rat, Sandman), a comics luminary every bit as brilliant as Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore (but who, since he draws his own stuff, is far less prolific). Plus it clearly references one of my (and everyone else’s) favorite classic stories, Alice in Wonderland. For whatever reason, I never picked it up at its release, but with all the new Alice in Wonderland posters around town promoting the movie, I was suddenly reminded of this book’s existence. However Tim Burton’s Alice turns out, I have it to thank for getting me to pick up Sunderland.

Only tangentially about Carrol’s book, Alice in Sunderland is the biography not of a person, but of a place. It spins a web of facts, legends and coincidences that show the wonderful way that history and geographical identity are born. The Alice portion involves the importance of Alice Liddel’s (the “historical” Alice) family in Sunderland’s history, Carrol’s long stint living there and the things that might of inspired him, and the way that Carrol’s classic novels have had a profound impact on so many aspects of art and culture since their publication.

The book is also an amazing use of the comics medium, with Talbot blending B&W drawings, painting, collage and fumetti to tell his very meta tale. The artist himself takes the form of several narrators, playing with time and toying with the reader, while the subject of his unusual biography toys with him. The closest thing to it I’ve encountered in book form would be Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, and in fact, Talbot takes the occasional detour from the Sunderland/Alice stream to comment on the history and form of comics, or just appropriate others’ styles out of sheer whimsy. But no matter how much Talbot strays, everything manages to turn back in on itself. This is a comics masterwork.

Whether you’re a fan of all things Lewis Carrol, interested in groundbreaking comics, or just find the idea of history as a living thing to be cool, please do yourself a favor and check out Alice in Sunderland. It’s a demanding read, but well worth your time!

Return to Labyrinth is often categorized as manga because of its publisher and format, but from a story standpoint, I like to think that it fits in with the rich tradition of fantasy comics not just from Japan, but from around the world.

As many RTL readers I’ve met are either new to comics or read primarily manga, here’s a list of some of my favorite fantasy comics series that are highly recommended to Labyrinth fans:

Fables

Fables, written by Bill Willingham and published by DC’s Vertigo imprint, is my favorite ongoing comics series. The premise, that fairy tale characters are living in exile in modern day New York City while their homelands are occupied by a dark empire, could have easily ended up a silly mess, but Willingham not only keeps a straight face, but he brings an amazing about of weight and complexity to characters whitewashed by years of residing in the Disney vault. The series starts out with a hard-boiled mystery, but give it a couple volumes and Fables becomes seriously epic, with politics, espionage, family drama, culminating in all-out war. And that’s just the start of the story! And the James Jean covers are gorgeous beyond words (see art above). With 12 volumes of the main story, a collection of side-stories and a stand-alone novel, there’s plenty of Fables to catch up with until the next volume comes out in January. (Rated for mature readers – basically PG-13)

Sandman

Neil Gaiman’s brilliant Sandman was the series that got me (and countless others) hooked on comics. It wasn’t the first comic I’d read by any measure, but it was the series that made me start exploring the format and sparked my interest in writing comics. Sandman is a tough series to sum up, but at its core, it’s about Dream of the Endless, the immortal personification of dreaming, who must rebuild and protect his kingdom, connect with his alliterative family and atone for past sins. The series blends elements of horror and high fantasy and basically wrote the style book that DC’s Vertigo imprint would follow for the next decade and beyond. Sandman can be a tough series to get into at first, with art that runs the gamut of styles and a plot full of detours, but it’s definitely worth your time. The series spawned the also wonderful Lucifer, Books of Magic and other shorter Vertigo series. (For Mature Readers – a soft R rating)

Bone

Bone is a brilliant fantasy epic that chronicles the adventures of the three Bone brothers – everyman Fone Bone, greedy Phoney Bone and happy-go-lucky Smiley Bone – who gets lost and wind up in an idyllic valley, home to simple villagers, talking animals, savage creatures and a lost kingdom. It’s alternately funny, sweet and scary with gorgeous cartooning work from creator Jeff Smith. The series was originally created in black and white over a period of 14 years and collected in 9 volumes, but now you have a choice of the “one volume edition” brick of a book that includes the full story in B&W, or the new Scholastic editions with the 9 volumes rendered in full color. Bone is so charming, it’s hard not to love. The only complaint I had with the series was having to wait months between issues, but now that the series is finished, there’s no reason not to check it out! (Recommended for readers of all ages!)

Courtney Crumrin

Like Bone, Courtney Crumrin is the work of a solo writer/artist, in this case the super-talented Ted Naifeh. The Oni Press published series shares creepy sensibilities that will appeal to fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but unlike many of the “goth” comics born around the same time, Courtney Crumrin never sacrifices story and grounded characters for the sake of style. Think Edgar Allen Poe meets Alice in Wonderland. I love Naifeh’s creature designs – they are terrifying without resorting to gore. There are currently four numbered volumes and two  stand-alone graphic novelettes. (Recommended for all ages. It’s basically PG.)

I’ll write up mini-reviews of more of my favorite series later. In the meantime, besides Return to Labyrinth, what fantasy comics do you enjoy?

When I put out my call for book recommendations, Diana Wynne Jones was the author whose name came up the most. At the time, I said that I’d never read Howl’s Moving Castle, just seen the movie. Amongst other titles, I added that one to my book queue and set to reading it last week.

…a second time it turns out, as the further I got into it, the more I realized that my best memories of the movie were actually from the book. Before the American release of Miyazaki’s adaptation, I wrote an article on the movie for the LA Times and I read the book then as research. How I could forget that reading experience is a mystery, as rereading the book now, it is an absolute gem.

Sophie Hatter is such a fantastic protagonist. The way her latent pride manifests as she slips so effortlessly into old age makes for such fun sparks with Howl. And for someone with no compunction about speaking her mind, Sophie is quite the unreliable narrator.

Howl, of course, is one of the most loveable rogues ever put to paper–a master slitherer outer who might not eat hearts, but effortlessly captures them from readers. The book might be 23 years old, but Howl hasn’t aged a day.

As crackling as the chemistry between Howl and Sophie is, what I love most about the novel is how it works as a “domestic fantasy.” The tight family unit of Howl, Sophie, Calcifer and Michael (as well as the Man-dog and chattering skull) are such a wonderful ensemble that even though the lion’s share of scenes are set inside one cramped room, every page is packed with whimsy.

Thanks for getting me to revisit this wonderful book. I can’t wait to see where Jones’ imagination takes me next!

From about the fourth grade when I graduated from mostly kids books to mostly mass-market paperbacks through high school, the Fantasy/Sci-Fi aisle was my bookstore haunt. I’ve always found it a little bit odd, if admittedly efficient, the way that Balrogs, Skrulls, Gethenians and D20 dice are all lumped together in a nerd ghetto. Would aliens (or elves) classifying all Earthly literature with fresh eyes (assuming these aliens have eyes) ever conceive of a classification system that would put Ben Bova and Terry Brooks side-by-side? In any case, it worked pretty well for a while. These days, nerds are pretty much taking over the bookstore, as evidenced by the boom of YA fantasy, Sookie Stackhouse and graphic novels.

It was shortly after graduating from high school that I turned my back on the old Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves. I still lined up for the latest genre movie, but with the exception of stopping by a few times for Neal Stephenson’s latest, I started giving my old haunt a wide berth. On the one hand, it was high time I broadened my horizons, but I was trying a bit too hard to “mature” my tastes. I probably went a full ten years without reading a book with spaceships!

Long story short, picking up where my reading habits left off, I just discovered Joe Haldeman’s seminal sci-fi novel The Forever War and it knocked my snooty spaceship-and-military-fiction-averse socks off. Quick summary for those who haven’t read it yet, the Forever War is about one soldier’s experience in a war between humans and an alien race that, due to time dilation from faster-than-lightspeed travel, lasts over a thousand years. While there are a few battle scenes, the novel isn’t about tactics or technology at all, but rather it’s a timeless soldier’s story about loss, alienation and hurrying-up-and-waiting, very much like recent films Stop-Loss and Jarhead , or the classic Full Metal Jacket. While Haldemam wrote the novel in response to Vietnam (himself a Vet), The Forever War feels even more relevant for today’s world, where war is paradoxically both more clinical and abstract than ever. It’s a fast read, but one that sticks with you. It would make a great film or miniseries, provided the filmmakers were more Terrance Malick than Michael Bay. Anyway, I know most people who come to this site are more into faeries than phasers, but if you’re at all hard SF tolerant, give The Forever War a read!

Next up on my genre reading list — Bones of Faerie. I’ll report back soon.

There are only a few webcomics that I follow daily, but sometimes I discover a new strip or story that just hooks me and has me spending hours going through the archives. Such a comic is The Princess Planet by Toronto artist Brian McLachlan, a weekly gag strip that takes place on a planet of princesses and fantasy hijinks. Think… Fables meets Perry Bible Fellowship?

Of coruse, as soon as I saw the following , I knew it would be a hit with Gobblin readers:

Click on the comic above for the rest of the strip and be sure to return often — I know I will!

After a detour to the Half-Continent to battle monsters with D.M. Cornish, I returned last week to Crackpot Hall, home to Flora Segunda, her Butler and a pack of red dogs. Flora’s Dare, the second volume of Ysabeau Wilce‘s Flora Segunda books, picks up right where the last volume left off, quickly recapping things with a “how I spent my summer vacation” style recap of volume 1 and moving on to new troubles right away. I enjoyed volume 1 a great deal, but volume 2 was even better. I admire the way that Wilce juggles multiple plotlines, turning what at first seems like a chaotic weave into one that’s perfectly tight, but not overly tidy. Flora is always jumping from frying pan to fire; she’s never quite in control of the situation, but she’s always learning so that next time she’s up against a 10th order stink demon, for example, she’ll definitely have things well in order.

The first volume which takes place on the eve of Flora’s 14th birthday, but now, a few months later, she is decidedly on the path to womanhood. Flora has a flirtation with the mysterious and dangerous Lord Axacaya, a figure in the Jareth mold – dangerous and seductive. She learns to see her family with the greater understanding and sympathy of a nearly-grown-up. Instead of just parroting the truisms of her mentor, Nini-Mo, Flora approaches trouble with caution culled from experience. It’s great character work.

Wilce continues to mingle fantasy and reality in new and unabashedly American ways, a nice change from the ubiquitous psuedo-European settings that dominate the category. (Again, it doesn’t hurt that as Flora dashes from place to place in fictional Califa, I can recognize the routes from their real-life San Francisco inspirations.) I also appreciate how vibrant the world is. In Califa, fashion is every bit as important as power, with men as well as women–especially with men, in the case of Flora’s best friend and dandy-supreme, Udo.

I can’t wait to see where Flora’s adventures take her next.