i got to meet paul stammets at a workshop in los angeles farmlab. he is a great character. but the book is beyond characters, it has great information, amazing information and very clever techniques for growing, and understanding fungi. i’m specially fond of the low tech stuff he put together and the research on mycoremediation (using mushrooms to clean toxic matter). this is one of the manuals for the future of our race and the planet we live in.

got it from bookmooch.com, this is the one that was sold in england. there are great stories here. some of my favorites are:

the body politic: very clever, hands take over.
babel’s children: another sarcastic play with international politics

Joe gave it to me. After reading Goodbye Chunky rice and Blankets i just needed to read more from craig thompson. i think it’s beautiful, it’s out there with the best traveling literature but, it’s comics!

read it in mexico. 98 i think. found a copy in a hotel in a small town in the south. now, i bookmooched this copy. i wanted to read it again. the starting story is very elegant (the book of blood) and i love “in the hills, the cityes”, i’ve described as plastic in the sense of being sculptural.

another pass down from friend Joe Linton (he’s really into alan moore). wendy, alice and dorothy (peter pan, alice in wonderland, wizard of oz) share erotic tales. i really liked the way some of the original stories became naughty tales of debauched liricysm. or something like that. it might be a little formulaic at some point but it does the job. the illustrations are a mixture of gracious and naive, beautifuly done. there is some cleverness in certain sequences (what would you expect from The Master of the sequential art form?). three volumes. time well spent. and yes, they Are erotic. at least i thought so. it makes good before bed reading.

this is one very special piece of work. here is the anthropologist-journalist-writer at his best pulling a piece of work that gives as many answers as it leaves questions in the reader. this is the sort of book that changes the way you see things. no visit to the supermarket will be the same. for days or weeks or (hopefully) months, you’ll think about every thing that goes into your mouth, the consumed, the consumer, linked in the eternal dance of the cosmos, the industry, the country, land, and death.
Michael Pollan prepares four meals, and he traces the ingredients to their origin. The stories he tells are marvelous, and the effort that went into making them and being part of them (in the purest anthropological of senses) is commendable. from the visit to the industrial corn farmer to going hunting for wild boar. good arguments around animal rights activism. and great insights into the industrial food chain.

the art is super nice. i like the contrast of the characters drawn with sharp lines and the sometimes more “messy” background. it’s sad, short, sentimental, cute. it manages to pull out some very cool comic-book effects with creative panel work and point of view.
it’s not as sophisticated as his other work, “blankets”, but it makes a good sit down one cold afternoon sip some tea sort of read.

at the begining i was uncomfortable with the format. no word baloons, all the words are below the illustrations. i was thinking, where are my word baloons. but you get over it, and it actually works. the drawings are simple yet expressive. the story if full of clever dialogue. hell, the story itself is kind of clever in an Annie Hall kind of way. you know, new york/california, etc. etc. yeah, now that i think of it, it’s kinda like a woodie allen meets female harvey pekar sort of thing. but don’t trust me on this one.

it really didn’t take me too far.

as much as i love american splendor. this is not the best of compilations. it collects a lot of post-movie stuff so you end up reading a bunch of repeated stories. it also includes a number of jazz player introductions. it gets better at the end, and you end up learning a lot more about the making of the movie. i liked the liner notes to the music in particular.