In the past few days I had the pleasure to read Headcases #1 that AJ O. Mason was kind enough to send me. I also read the memoir of Mathew Perry, and am getting ready to read Terry Pratchett’s biography (let’s hope I bought enough tissues).
Let me start with Headcases #1
A comic book by Lesly Julien and AJ O. Mason (co-creators and co-writers), Paulo Sampaio (art), Warnia K Sahadewa (colors) and Micah Myers (letters). I got my eye on this while I was still on Twitter, before I went off social media for almost a year. Sadly, with all the other stuff I was dealing with, I missed the crowd funding campaign for the first issue. I was pleasantly surprised when Mason and I started chatting on Instagram and he offered to send me a copy.
The comic starts off with two kids heading to school and on an impulse deciding to snatch a bag from a suspicious looking man on a train. A bag that turns out to have a severed head in it. The action is quick and the kids are pushed into a chase for their life, with FBI and mafia on their tail. It is a comic book with a really cool premise and great art, that ends with a cliffhanger and makes me wish issue two was already out so I could find out more. Who’s head is it? Why was it cut off? Will the kids get to safety? If you want to take a look, you can do so on GlobalComix where the first 8 pages are available as a preview.
The late Mathew Perry’s “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir”.
I admit, I bought this book on a whim while taking a walk two days ago. I left my house and told myself “no book buying, you have no space”. But as I walked around the town aimlessly, I passed the bookstore and saw it on display in the window. To be clear, I like “Friends”, I watched the show as a teen, I liked Chandler’s character because he was sarcastic and cracked jokes just like I did, but it was never an obsession for me. I briefly looked at it in the store window, then moved on. It was on my way home, later, when I entered another bookstore to quickly look at the comics, that I decided to get this book after all even though I suspected might regret this purchase.
I read it in one day.
This was not written as a chronological biography retelling major life events. It’s a first person recounting of one man’s struggles with addiction, loneliness, fear and feeling of not being enough (which lead to more loneliness). Told in a way you’d hear a story in a conversation, jumping between events as they connect, with a lot of sarcastic humour Perry was well known for. It’s a heavy story. Painful in its hopeful ending of a brighter future I know never came true as I read it now, after the author’s death. It left me with a lot to think about.
TBR and future plans
When I got Perry’s book, seeing that I was already breaking the “no book buying” rule, I decided to get the “Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography” I was planning to get when the next pay check arrives. The tissues are ready, and hopefully there’s enough of them as I know I’ll be crying through this one. Pratchett’s books were a source of joy through the past 14 years of my life and kept me going through difficult times. I still don’t have all Discworld novels if you count Tiffany Aching books (not all are published here). The rest I’ve collected over the years, and if you’re wondering what the correct reading order is – it’s from start to finish. Miss me with that “reading it by arcs” nonsense.
Other books on my TBR at the moment are the “Empire of Vampire” by J. Kristoff, “Speeches that Changed the World” by Simon Sebag Montefiore that I’m halfway through.
I’m trying to revive this blog and post every Saturday or at least every other week. Let’s see how it goes.