Book Recommendations

[Cyril Tourneur]

Amazon.com Review
Gould's Book of Fish, an extraordinary work of fact-based fiction by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan (Death of a River Guide) is a journey through the fringe madness of Down Under colonialism. Set during the 1830s in a hellish island prison colony off the Tasmanian coast, the novel plucks a real-life thief and prisoner, English forger William Buelow Gould, from the pages of history to act as protagonist-narrator. Through Gould's unique capacity to blend hyperbole, hyperrealism, and self-effacing honesty, the reader acquires a shockingly clear picture of daily torment on the island. Yet more remarkable is Gould's portrait of bizarre ambitions among prison authorities to further principles of art and science amidst so much misery. Key to such plans is Gould's talent as a painter and illustrator. The compound's surgeon, nursing hopes of publishing a definitive guide to the island's fish, leans heavily on Gould's ability to record the taxonomy of various species. Though Gould accommodates his masters, the manuscript, in his hands, becomes testimony to their perverse dreams of civilization and his own quick-witted survival instincts. Throughout, Flanagan never loses the well-imagined voice of Gould's candor or the character's dense descriptive powers, talents that translate into a thrilling text that reads like a blend of Melville and Burgess.

From Publishers Weekly
Flanagan (The Sound of One Hand Clapping) has written a Tasmanian version of Rimbaud's Season in Hell, a mesmerizing portrait of human abjection and sometimes elation set in a 19th-century Down Under penal colony. A small-time forger of antiques in contemporary Tasmania finds a mysterious illustrated manuscript that recounts in harrowing detail the rise and fall of a convict state on Sarah Island, off the Tasmanian coast, in the 1830s. The text is penned by William Gould, a forger and thief (and an actual 19th-century convict) shipped from England to a Tasmanian prison run as a private kingdom by the Commandant, a lunatic tyrant in a gold mask rumored to have been a convict himself. The prison world consists of a lower caste of convicts tormented with lengthy floggings, vile food and various mechanical torture devices by a small number of officers and officials. Gould finagles his way into the good graces of the island surgeon, Tobias Achilles Lempriere, a fat fanatic of natural science, who has Gould paint scientific illustrations of fish, with the goal of publishing the definitive ichthyological work on Sarah Island species. In Gould's hands, however, the taxonomy of fish becomes his testimony to the bizarre perversion of Europe's technology and art wrought by the Commandant's mad ambitions. Civilization, in this inverted world, creates moral wilderness; science creates lies. Carefully crafted and allusive, this blazing portrait of Australia's colonial past will surely spread Flanagan's reputation among American readers.

[Ligeia]

From Publishers Weekly
Revisiting the themes of deep friendship and separation Thompson surveyed in Goodbye Chunky Rice, his acclaimed and touching debut, this sensitive memoir recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author's rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity. Skinny, naive and spiritually vulnerable, Thompson and his younger brother manage to survive their parents' overbearing discipline (the brothers are sometimes forced to sleep in "the cubby-hole," a forbidding and claustrophobic storage chamber) through flights of childhood fancy and a mutual love of drawing. But escapist reveries can't protect them from the cruel schoolmates who make their lives miserable. Thompson's grimly pious parents and religious community dismiss his budding talent for drawing; they view his creative efforts as sinful and relentlessly hector the boys about scripture. By high school, Thompson's a lost, socially battered and confused soul-until he meets Raina and her clique of amiable misfits at a religious camp. Beautiful, open, flexibly spiritual and even popular (something incomprehensible to young Thompson), Raina introduces him to her own less-than-perfect family; to a new teen community and to a broader sense of himself and his future. The two eventually fall in love and the experience ushers Thompson into the beginnings of an adult, independent life. Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste. His exceptional b&w drawings balance representational precision with a bold and wonderfully expressive line for pages of ingenious, inventively composed and poignant imagery.

[Jeff Coleman]

Jean Amery



At the Mind's Limits:

Amazon.com: At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities: Jean Amery: Books

 

Amazon.com: At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities: Jean Amery: Books

On Suicide:

Amazon.com: On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death: Jean Amery, John D. Barlow: Books

 

Amazon.com: On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death: Jean Amery, John D. Barlow: Books

On Aging:

Amazon.com: On Aging: Revolt and Resignation: Jean Amery, John D. Barlow: Books

 

Amazon.com: On Aging: Revolt and Resignation: Jean Amery, John D. Barlow: Books

Jean Amery: A Biographical Introduction:

http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/amery.html

[Ilsa]

LENI RIEFENSTAHL
Schönheit im olympischen Kampf



A magnificent book of photographs of the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Leni Riefenstahl the photographer and filmmaker who produced Olympia, the film chronicle of those Olympics.
Olympia was a controversial film considered by many to be the greatest sports film ever made and by others as one of the great pieces of Nazi propaganda. Olympia won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, where it was shown in 1938, and has always been judged a magnificent example of cinematography. This volume of work was compiled by Riefenstahl while the film was still in production, and a number of the photographs at the end of the book show her working on the film.
Large folio volume of still photographs chronicling Leni Riefenstahl's filming of her motion picture Olympia. Generally considered the finest sports documentary ever produced, Olympia is well portrayed in this wonderful collection of photographs of the various sporting events of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Each of the full page photographs is captioned in English, German, Spanish, and French. At the rear of this 281 page coffee table book is a section showing many pictures of Riefenstahl shooting the film.

[Ilsa]

Jonathan Littell - The kindly ones

[Ligeia]

[Ligeia]

[Ligeia]

[G. S. Carnivals]

Aggeliki, the books on poisons and codes makes one wonder if you might not actually be involved in clandestine operations.

[flechtwerk]

CROSSED
by Garth Ennis (writer) & Jacen Burrows (art)

This is a brand new comic book series. Only issue #0 and #1 have been released so far, #2 hopefully coming to us soon!
Crossed is one of the best & most radical zombie stories around not only in comic books, but in any media, and we all know there is a lot of them around these days! (The Walking Dead, a nice comic book series too, feels like a picknic compared to Crossed.)
The zombies are not slow & stupid mutants. They are no "living dead" at all. They are just human people going completly insane, rejoicing in blood lust and sadism.

In an interview with CBR News Garth Ennis tells us the origin of Crossed:

The writer had been staying with some friends, and dreamed that their house was surrounded by zombies. “I was watching the action unfold from afar while being involved in it, in that weird way that dreams have where you can observe and participate at the same time,” Ennis said. “Then I realized that the crowd outside weren't zombies at all, they were simply people who'd turned evil-- deeply, irrevocably evil-- and were looking forward to indulging all manner of foul intentions as soon as they got their hands on their intended victims. The looks on their faces said it all, a sense of cruel yet delighted anticipation.”

The tag lines of the series are:

"There is nothing left but survival"
"There are no heroes"
"There is no help"
"There is no hope"
"No one is coming to save you"



Now, doesn't that remind us a bit of Ligotti...?

Avatar Press is a small and independent comic book publisher. It gives no restraints at all to the creators and deserves our love & support for that.

More info:
Avatar Press CROSSED
Comic Book Resources > CBR News: Double-Crossed: Ennis Burrows talk “Crossed�

Garth Ennis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Garth_Ennis