Review: Unexpected Art, ed. by Jenny Moussa Spring

UNEXPECTED ART, ed. by Jenny Moussa Spring, spotlights installations and site-specific works from around the world. Each piece appears alongside an artist’s or curator’s statement (depending, I assume, on whether or not the artist was comfortable writing in English), while two introductions usher readers into public context of installations in general and these pieces in specific.

Said pieces are by more than fifty artists, some of whom work in teams or collectives where not every member is named on the page. Of those I could identify through Google, thirty-four are men, twenty-seven are women, and one appears to be nonbinary. Forty-two of them live and work outside the United States. Twenty-two of them are people of colour.

So basically, the book is geographically diverse both in terms of the artists represented and the locations where the pieces were exhibited. It zips close to but fails to maintain gender parity, though, and I wish there’d been more POC represented.

Barring that, the book is fabulous. Not only did it push a large quantity of excellent art in front of my eyeballs, but it got me thinking about how much I love installations.

"I love installations" is the year’s biggest understatement, so I fear this ain’t really a review. It’s an excuse for me to waffle on about this most beloved of art forms.

Review: The Dogist by Elias Weiss Friedman

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Dogs are my favourite. I want to meet (and hug) every last one of 'em, but since that isn’t possible I’ll settle for devouring as many dog pics as I can get my eyeballs on.

Which is where THE DOGIST [Amazon | The Book Depository] comes in. Before it was a book, The Dogist was a social media project run by Elias Weiss Friedman, a New Yorker who wanted something like The Sartorialist to showcase all the dogs he met on the street. I discovered it when Clare retweeted one of Friedman’s photos, and that was that. Of course I was gonna follow the hell out of this account.

And as soon as I learned an assortment of Friedman’s photos were slated for collection, I knew I had to get my hands on the book.

Now I'm pleased to report THE DOGIST is every bit as wonderful as I hoped it would be. If you share my love for dogs, you must seek it out.

Friedman begins with a brief introduction explaining how he became a chronicler of all things canine, his process when he meets a new subject, and a few of the things he’s discovered as he photographs dogs all over the world. After that, the photos become the book's abiding focus.

Review: March, Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Until two hours before I began the first volume, I thought MARCH [Amazon | The Book Depository], was a LITTLE WOMEN spin-off about the girls’ father’s time as a soldier.

In my weak defense, I’d only ever seen the cover in thumnbail form, rendering the people vaguely Civil War-ish. Also, the friends who raved about the book on Twitter are mostly the sort who do like LITTLE WOMEN and/or contemporary works that explore side storylines from classic lit. No one said much as to what the book was actually about; and, as a non-American, I wasn’t familiar with the author's reputation.

As you may have gathered, MARCH is not about Mr March from LITTLE WOMEN. It’s US Congressman John Lewis’s graphic memoir of his work during the Civil Rights Movement.

I might have remained ignorant until the very moment I opened the book (which I read through Scribd; hence the whole no-cover-larger-than-a-thumbnail thing), were I not in the habit of googling each writer and artist whose work I read. I manage my reading to ensure I don’t OD on white creators and/or books that ignore non-white experiences, so googling is an essential step.

Imagine my surprise when a quick search for "John Lewis comics" turned up not a veteran comics writer with a string of original graphic novels (and perhaps the odd superhero title) beneath his Wikipedia widget but a politician.

There had to be a problem with my google-fu. Surely politicians didn’t write comics. Surely all politicians were Very Serious People who dismissed comics as a medium for kids and individuals who refuse to grow up.

Nope. No mistake. John Lewis is a US Congressman, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, and the writer of a comic that chronicles his experiences in the 1960s.

Review: What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton

Earlier this year, spurred on by both Kelly’s enthusiasm and my own longstanding appreciation for both Jo Walton’s fiction and her online presence, I asked my library to buy WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT.

They must've thought I was asking a question, not suggesting a purchase, because they didn't.

This was a disappointment (and a surprise; I would’ve thought a book about books was right up the library’s alley), but not the Absolute End of Everything. Once I realized it was never gonna happen, I bought the British e-book ¹ and dove straight it.

What a great decision.

WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT is a collection of many, though not all (or even most), of Jo Walton’s posts for Tor.com. A voracious reader, Walton frequently revisits old favourites and writes about them from a fan’s perspective rather than a critic’s. I love her posts, but I’ve always limited myself to the ones that cover books I've already read. Since she’s far better read than I am, I’d only dipped a toe into Walton's oeuvre before I picked this up.

I now want to go back and read the lot (with plenty of attention paid to spoiler warnings, of course), because this collection is fabulous.