I'm reading a scifi mystery called Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols. an astronaut Catherine Wells who's the sole survivor of a long term mission on a alien planet that found alien life reappears heading towards mysteriously after disappearing in a worm hole .She Has amnesia and Nasa is investigating what happened. this book is fast paced and well written.I really like this book alot .Reminds me of the Martian of Project Hail Mary by Andy weir.
I just did a Google search on it. Oh my.
Finished the whole, 300-plus page graphic novel last night. Very interesting!
I'd noticed the format myself, in the Google results. One of the reasons I invoked what had inadvertently become Sulu's (and George's) catchphrase. Although I'd have called it a "graphic memoir," rather than a "graphic novel," based on what little I saw: "graphic novel" implies a work of fiction.
Meanwhile, I stalled a few pages shy of finishing chapter 2 of Anabasis, because I was nodding off, and needed plenty of sleep because tonight's a concert night at the Bowl: Beethoven's Triple Concerto, and Fifth Symphony, along with a short work by a living composer. (It takes me well over an hour each way just to get to Hollywood and Highland, and another 15-20 minutes to walk up Highland Hill from the Red Line Platform to my subscription seat, and 12-15 minutes to get back down to the station platform after the concert.)
Meanwhile, I stalled a few pages shy of finishing chapter 2 of Anabasis, because I was nodding off, and needed plenty of sleep because tonight's a concert night at the Bowl: Beethoven's Triple Concerto, and Fifth Symphony, along with a short work by a living composer. (It takes me well over an hour each way just to get to Hollywood and Highland, and another 15-20 minutes to walk up Highland Hill from the Red Line Platform to my subscription seat, and 12-15 minutes to get back down to the station platform after the concert.)
It is indeed more a graphic memoir than a graphic "novel." I was just trying to distinguish it from a strictly prose book, since, for better or for worse, "graphic memoir" is not a familiar term.
To indicate the format rather than the content.
This is something I struggled with at Diamond on a few books over the years. Describing, for example, John Lewis' March as a "graphic novel" was, in some ways, a disservice, as there's nothing "novel" about it. "Novel" implies fiction, and John Lewis' experience in the Civil Rights Movement was not fiction. I think I used "graphic autobiography" in a piece I wrote about it.
Well, it's not like most of the things called "graphic novels" would qualify as novels anyway, since that requires being at least 40,000 words, which would come out to about 160 pages at a typical font size, and most "graphic novels" are less than half that page count and a fraction of that word count (unless you take "A picture's worth a thousand words" literally). "Graphic novel" has always been a silly, pretentious label used by people embarrassed by the term "comic book." (Although that's hardly an accurate label either, since it's divorced from the original definition of "comic" to mean "comedic." Unless you go back to the medieval definition of comedy as any narrative with a happy ending, such as Dante's Divine Comedy. Except a lot of comic-book stories have tragic endings.)
Neither the American Heritage Dictionary, nor Merriam-Webster, nor Webster's new World (I don't recall ever finding Thorndike or Barnhart online) specify any minimum word-count for a novel. AHD and WNW say "considerable length," and M-W merely says "usually long and complex."
Personally, I stick with "Long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest."
And my comics shelf is overwhelmingly given over to collected reprints of newspaper comics (mostly Beetle Bailey and The Wizard of Id), rather than to graphic novels, or the sort of periodical that "comic book" usually refers to.
Personally, I stick with "Long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest."
And my comics shelf is overwhelmingly given over to collected reprints of newspaper comics (mostly Beetle Bailey and The Wizard of Id), rather than to graphic novels, or the sort of periodical that "comic book" usually refers to.
They aren't fiction publishers. The standard industry usage is that under 7500 words is a short story, 7500-17,500 is a novelette, 17,500-40,000 is a novella, and over 40K is a novel. Case in point, my bibliography on the Internet Science Fiction Database counts all my works under 40,000 words, up to and including my 35,400-word e-novella DTI: The Collectors, as "SHORTFICTION" rather than novels.
Neither of which is true of a 48- or 64-page comic book, no matter how fancy the binding.
You can make a case that "graphic novel" is a good and useful term when it comes to something like Maus or Watchman, but, yeah, it quickly got overused and misapplied to any comic-book compilation aimed at the book trade.
To my mind, slapping six consecutive issues of The Amazing Spider-Man between book covers does not make it a "graphic novel," but I guess bookstores and libraries need some sort of label for comic-book compilations . . . .
To my mind, slapping six consecutive issues of The Amazing Spider-Man between book covers does not make it a "graphic novel," but I guess bookstores and libraries need some sort of label for comic-book compilations . . . .
Tragic book?
Hmm. Planet of the Apes.
I usually call them collections or collected editions, since I tend to think of graphic novels as something that was released as one bigger book, rather than a collection of individual monthly issues. So I wouldn't really consider Maus or Watchmen graphic novels since Maus was released in individual chapters in a magazine called Raw and Watchmen was a 12 issue miniseries first. Although now that I think about it, Maus could fit that definition since it's not that different from a lot of older prose books that were originally released in serialized format in newspapers and magazines, but are still considered novels.
*empowered* released almost yearly, 200-300 pages a volume, dense text on many pages (ifn ya don't think drawings replacing words counts, which it obviously does), definitely a graphic novel.
usually see collections of regular comics called "trade paperbacks" or "omnibusses"
usually see collections of regular comics called "trade paperbacks" or "omnibusses"
Or maybe "trade editions" if they're hardcovers?
We do have comic omnibuses now. It's all very confusing now that everything is digital.
And I went down a reading rabbit hole:
I'm half way through the Whisper in the Darkness, which leads to me The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen. Of course, Fritz Leiber used the main from Whisper in the Darkness in To Arkham and the Stars. Both of these I have been able to track down.
And I went down a reading rabbit hole:
I'm half way through the Whisper in the Darkness, which leads to me The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen. Of course, Fritz Leiber used the main from Whisper in the Darkness in To Arkham and the Stars. Both of these I have been able to track down.
I just finished a week of re-reading some favorites from the 1990s:
Star Trek: Vengeance, Dafydd ab Hugh
Star Trek TNG: The Forgotten War, William Forstchen
Star Trek Stargazer: Gauntlet, Michael Jan Friedman
I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy
ST TNG: Dark Mirror, Diane Duane
I wanted to read Here there be Dragons, but I can't find it in my stacks. Hope it didn't get lost during a move or something. That one is fun because it has humans living in a medieval world that stays medieval because of dragon-like reptiles who prey on the human cities.
Just starting David McCullough's Truman, so I may not get to looking for Dragons for a while.
Star Trek: Vengeance, Dafydd ab Hugh
Star Trek TNG: The Forgotten War, William Forstchen
Star Trek Stargazer: Gauntlet, Michael Jan Friedman
I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy
ST TNG: Dark Mirror, Diane Duane
I wanted to read Here there be Dragons, but I can't find it in my stacks. Hope it didn't get lost during a move or something. That one is fun because it has humans living in a medieval world that stays medieval because of dragon-like reptiles who prey on the human cities.
Just starting David McCullough's Truman, so I may not get to looking for Dragons for a while.
Sherlock Holmes and the Chronicles of Excalibur, by Karthika Kannan.
This popped up in my Facebook feed yesterday in one of the Sherlock Holmes groups I belong to, and the idea of Sherlock Holmes and the Matter of Britain intrigued me.
The book's -- novelette's, really -- description sounded like LinkedIn, and the author bio definitely sounded like LinkedIn, which put me off a little, but the price was low, so why not. (LinkedIn has a very bizarre tone. Everything is a brand, everything is sales, and there's an off-putting lingo. I hate it.)
The novelette was decent. I finished it in about forty-five minutes. The LinkedIn speak in the description makes me wonder how much, if any, AI assistance was used in the writing of this, and I'm not sure. The overall tone of the thing felt right to this long-time Sherlockian, though, and the Watson voice was better than most.
It's more of a character study of Holmes -- why he does what he does, and why he pursues the cases that interest him -- than a mystery. (To be fair, most Holmes stories aren't mysteries in the sense that the reader is not meant to solve them.) Right from the start Watson tells you who did it, and much of the story is about what the "it" was.
A prominent antiquarian has found Excalibur. Lestrade, for reasons, shows Holmes a photograph of the sword. Holmes feigns being impressed, and after Lestrade leaves he explains to Watson that, from the photograph alone, the sword is not a sixth century artifact but a modern forgery, probably made in Birmingham. Holmes then embarks on an investigation into artifact forgery and blackmail of several important figures, including peers of the realm and military officials, before he and Scotland Yard collar the person responsible.
As I said, the writing and the tone felt fairly good to me. Watson plays no role in the adventure; Holmes undertakes several important steps off-page and relates them, and his conclusions, to Watson later. The villain has some interesting characteristics; I found him a bit Arsene Lupin-like, honestly, though not French. And the puzzle of the piece serves to explore some questions about Holmes and his motives.
Other than a sword (off-page) called Excalibur, there's no real Arthurian content here.
I'd give it 3, maybe 4 stars at a stretch. The AI question nags at me -- it didn't feel AI assisted to me, but the AI-esque description makes me wonder -- but overall it's a fairly straightforward pastiche.
This popped up in my Facebook feed yesterday in one of the Sherlock Holmes groups I belong to, and the idea of Sherlock Holmes and the Matter of Britain intrigued me.
The book's -- novelette's, really -- description sounded like LinkedIn, and the author bio definitely sounded like LinkedIn, which put me off a little, but the price was low, so why not. (LinkedIn has a very bizarre tone. Everything is a brand, everything is sales, and there's an off-putting lingo. I hate it.)
The novelette was decent. I finished it in about forty-five minutes. The LinkedIn speak in the description makes me wonder how much, if any, AI assistance was used in the writing of this, and I'm not sure. The overall tone of the thing felt right to this long-time Sherlockian, though, and the Watson voice was better than most.
It's more of a character study of Holmes -- why he does what he does, and why he pursues the cases that interest him -- than a mystery. (To be fair, most Holmes stories aren't mysteries in the sense that the reader is not meant to solve them.) Right from the start Watson tells you who did it, and much of the story is about what the "it" was.
A prominent antiquarian has found Excalibur. Lestrade, for reasons, shows Holmes a photograph of the sword. Holmes feigns being impressed, and after Lestrade leaves he explains to Watson that, from the photograph alone, the sword is not a sixth century artifact but a modern forgery, probably made in Birmingham. Holmes then embarks on an investigation into artifact forgery and blackmail of several important figures, including peers of the realm and military officials, before he and Scotland Yard collar the person responsible.
As I said, the writing and the tone felt fairly good to me. Watson plays no role in the adventure; Holmes undertakes several important steps off-page and relates them, and his conclusions, to Watson later. The villain has some interesting characteristics; I found him a bit Arsene Lupin-like, honestly, though not French. And the puzzle of the piece serves to explore some questions about Holmes and his motives.
Other than a sword (off-page) called Excalibur, there's no real Arthurian content here.
I'd give it 3, maybe 4 stars at a stretch. The AI question nags at me -- it didn't feel AI assisted to me, but the AI-esque description makes me wonder -- but overall it's a fairly straightforward pastiche.
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