Book Review – Painting from Photographs

Painting From Photographs by Patrick Seslar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m an awkward fit for this book. Many of the watercolor techniques used by the author and his wife are well beyond me, though I hope to get there someday. On the other hand, I found a lot of the photography advice too basic (not to mention badly outdated). As the artists tend to use photos in combination and often modify them considerably, initial photo quality wasn’t all that big an issue. Indeed, in some places I found myself wondering why they bothered with photos at all rather than just painting from memory or imagination. However, the practical examples did a good job of moving from “photo sketching” through interim steps to end result.

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Book Review – The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back by Donald F. Glut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in the early 1980s, KC’s Fine Arts Theater was in the same strip mall with Rainy Day Books. Finding myself with nothing to do between pictures in a James Bond double feature, I strayed down to the bookstore and bought a copy of this book. Which I subsequently forgot and left behind at the end of the second movie. So finding a copy more than 40 years later is probably a personal record for length of time taken to finish reading a book. The text itself is standard fare for a quick novel based on a pre-production copy of the script, but it turns into a fun “spot the difference” between book and movie (for starters, in this version Yoda is blue). The illustrations are Ralph McQuarrie’s concept sketches, so they’re good without being purpose-made for the print edition. Fans of the movie may get a kick out of this, but fans of literature most likely won’t.

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Book Review – Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators: Learn How to Paint Landscapes, People, Still Lifes, and More. by D.K. Publishing
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well written and copiously illustrated, this text covers a range of watercolor-painting-related topics from beginning elements to advanced techniques. This might work better as a reference kept at hand while one pursues the art. Thus I somewhat regret reading it cover to cover without stopping to actually do any of the lessons. But it was a library borrow and had to be returned.

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Book Review – Making Nonfiction Comics

Making Nonfiction Comics: A Guide for Graphic Narrative by Shay Sarah Mirk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good book about the title topic. But be warned: the first half treats “nonfiction” and “journalism” as synonyms. So if your interests lie elsewhere, start reading with the chapter on memoirs. Even if you do want to explore 20th century news styles, you’ll probably need something more in depth than this, especially if you’re new to interviewing. However, when it gets good it really is good. The advice tends to be helpful, and there’s enough variety in the approaches to make it likely that you’ll find something that fits what you want to do and how you want to do it. A lot of the interviewees (and both the authors) are veterans of The Nib, so if you were a fan then this will feel like a reunion.

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Book Review – Ugh! As if!

Ugh! As If!: Clueless by Veronica Litt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Veronica Litt writes a charming little critique of a charming little movie from 1995. The picture was one of Hollywood’s “progressive for its time” productions, which makes it hard to analyze 30 years later. Does one emphasize the positive (directed by a woman at a time when that rarely happened, Black and gay characters treated as human beings) or criticize the narrative’s shortcomings (trivializing teenage girls’ hatred of their bodies, “colorblind” treatment of race as if it doesn’t exist)? The author does a loving job of striking a balance between the two. Now I need to go back and re-watch the movie.

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Book Review – Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up based on Darcy Armstrong’s recommendation in her Great Courses series on the Black Death, and I’m glad I read it. I particularly loved the view of the 1665 plague from the perspective of a woman living in a fictional version of Eyam, the English village that shut itself off from the rest of the world in an effort to keep the infection from spreading. Geraldine Brooks is an excellent writer, and she uses her talent to explore several aspects of human behavior in extreme conditions. The last chapter and epilogue go a bit too far afield in search of a happy ending, but the bulk of the book was outstanding.

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2025 Year in Review

 In 2025 I finally made it to a goal I’ve pursued for decades: I read 52 books in a calendar year. It turned out to be quite an experience, including a range of types and quality levels.

Though my usual practice is to create lists of eight favorites (a legacy from when all this was on 8sails.com), I’m going with a top ten for books. And even so, this required a few uncomfortable cuts.

• The Icepick Surgeon
• The Secret Loves of Geek Girls
• Sex Lives of Superheroes
• What If?
• War Against All Puerto Ricans
• James
• Mavericks
• How to Hide an Empire
• The World Remade
• Good-Bye to All That

This is also my first year including Goodreads reviews on this blog. Jury’s still out on whether I’ll go back and retroactively add previous years.

And while we’re on the topic of books, I want to extend a huge thanks to the Kansas City Kansas Public Library. Between dead tree books borrowed from the library and ebooks supplied by the library’s Hoopla subscription, I was able to reach my book count goal and save hundreds of dollars in the process. 

On Hoopla I finished 260 titles. Mostly graphic novels, though there were some plain old novels, non-fiction and how-to guides in the mix. To get this down to eight favorites, the first four are series of multiple volumes (most of which were particularly good).

• The Breaking Cat News series
• The Punisher MAX series
• The Gunsmith Cats series
• Godzilla vs. US cities series
• The Stringbags
• Trench Dogs
• William of Newberry
• Big Happy Mushy Lump

In the movie department, it was a year of highs and lows. The highs:

• Weapons
• Red Ghost: Nazi Hunter
• The Long Walk
• Abigail
• Mascots
• Monster Island
• Flu
• The Menu

And the lows:

• House of Long Shadows
• Into the Abyss
• Killjoy
• 28 Years Later
• Everybody Wins
• Gladiator 2
• The Exorcism
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I also encountered a rare moment: I reviewed Playback way back in 2012 and completely forgot that I’d already seen it. It didn’t even seem familiar on rewatch this year. Sadly, I’m guessing the lower rating in 2025 is a result of paying more attention to it this time around. I’ve decided to leave both reviews on the blog. I also seem to have reviewed Flu twice, so perhaps I should be more cautious about checking before posting.