"Byzantium: The Decline and Fall"

Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (John Julius Norwich)


Volume III of the history of Byzantium. Whereas Volume I has Justinian crafted out of mosiacs and Volume II has a gold and gem-covered Bible on the cover, Volume III has the none-too-pleased looking Mehmet II, conquerer of Byzantium. Volume II leaves off at Manzikert, so Volume III picks up at the greatest military disaster in Byzantine history and ends with the city being conquered and the resulting fallout as the coffin lid closes on the empire. Uplifting stuff, basically. To be fair, it's not all gloom and doom; There are several compitent if not great rulers in between Manzikert and 1453, and the author deals buisnesslike with the fall of the city and the aftermath.
What else can I say? The writing is as excellent as Volumes I and II, and I'm sad to be finished with the series. My only complaint is that the footnotes start to become slightly annoying at this point - over half of them are now "See (earlier volume and page number)", which, having read the earlier books, I don't particuarly feel a need to do. This is truly the smallest of nits to pick, however, and like the previous two volumes you really can't go wrong.

Grade: A

"Nazi Propoganda for the Arab World"

Nazi Propoganda for the Arab World (Jeffrey Herf)

Boy, this is a hard book to read. If you want to be bummed out for a while, here's one for you. I mean, what do you make of a book that has "Chapter 5: 'Kill The Jews Before They Kill You'?" The reason I got this book is because Nazi propoganda for the Arab world is such a bizzare idea to me; How do you reconcile the most racist political philosophy of all time with trying to appeal to arabs and muslims? As it turns out - and here I may be saving you $16.80, without shipping - the Nazis basically implimented a region-wide "No, we don't mean YOU" program, supplemented by a finger-pointing program accusing the Jews of, well, basically everything. The book is very well researched with endless quotes from primary sources and the author certainly knows how to write, but because of the subject matter it just becomes grinding after a while; The Nazis were very one-note, and reading about how "The Jew Roosevelt" is conspiring with the Zionists, the Bolsheviks, the British, the lizard men from Neptune, the UN, the New World Order, and Rainbow Brite just gets wearying after a while. The book is educational and sobering, but by the end I was counting the pages until it was over.

Grade: :(

"Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days"

Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days (Neil Gaiman - who else were you expecting?)

A collection of short stories. Two of these tie in with Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing" run, which I admit I've never read and know nothing about; I guess Swamp Thing is a good guy, but I keep thinking he's going to go Creature from the Black Lagoon and start killing teenagers.

Anyway! The first story, "Jack-InThe-Green" has Swamp Thing tending to one of his dying friends, and then burying him. Not very exciting. Neither is the second short, "Shaggy God Stories", where a sentient tree wanders around talking to a houseplant. Not off to a good start here. The book gets more interesting if not nessessarily much better in "Brothers", where Gaiman takes a looks at "Brother Power, The Geek", a legendary, horrible-looking comic from the 60's about a doll that gets dressed up in water and blood-soaked clothes, then he gets hit by lightening and comes to life with a million swinging volts. This story is a hot mess, and I guess I applaud Gaiman for trying to do something interesting with such a ridiculous charecter, but some ephemera really are better left forgotten. (See also his attempt to rehabilitate "Prez" - the teen-age president!!!!! - in the Sandman books.)

Next up is "Hold Me", a John Constantine story where John Constantine meets a ghost who wants to hug people, and hugs him, and the ghost vanishes. It sounds about as exciting as it is. Gaiman says in his introduction that it has some of his favorite comic book art and all I can say is that it may not be faithfully reproduced here, because unless you're looking at it under a powerful light it looks horribly dark and skritchy.

The last story and as far as I'm concerned the best is "Sandman Midnight Theatre", featuring the pulpy 30's noir Sandman - a guy with a gas mask, big trench coat, fedora, and gas gun - meeting the other Sandman, the Gaiman-created embodiment of mortal dreams. Now don't get too excited - the actual meeting takes place in a two-page spread and is more of an interesting pit stop, since the Gaiman-created Sandman is currently enclosed in a glass prison that he will not escape until his own series starts proper; He actually plays no part in the story and is just a neat little cameo. With that being said the actual story itself is very interesting, and the artwork - although at times almost becoming as dark as "Hug Me" up above - is very evocative and sets the mood very well.
So "Sandman Midnight Theatre" is very good, but is it worth buying the whole book for? Probably not. Even if you're a Sandman completest, he's in the book for two pages and doesn't do anything. Interesting read for Gaiman or, I guess, Swamp Thing completionists, but otherwise you're probably safe taking a pass.

Grade: C+

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Phew! I finally finished this book. I've been reading it for months now. Although, I was reading it on my iPod Touch the majority of the time.

Nicholas Ostler starts at the first known languages and ends with English, along with speculation about the future of languages. Some of the history is familiar--Norman French's near extinction of English--the history of Arabic and Chinese less so.

While the book is very well researched and informative, I found myself skipping ahead every so often. A good book but be careful and intersperse it with lighter fair.This book is not for recommended for anyone not really interested in diphthongs and glottal stops as Ostler goes into great detail about such details.

"Watchmen"

Watchmen (Alan Moore)

Well, what can I really add to this? If you've heard that Watchmen is a modern classic and a must-read for any comics fan, you've heard right. Even if you've seen the movie, I'd recommend reading through the book, which has a significant difference in the ending. Now I feel bad taking a great book like this and making most of the review two issues that bugged me about it, so bear in mind that the two issues I'm about to list are both minor and should in no way dissaude you from reading, but only points to be aware of as you do so.

The first issue is that you can safely skip the Black Freighter parts; This is a comic within the comic that frankly isn't very good and has no bearing on the story I could see. Honestly it reads like an eight year old trying to top himself as he rambles on for why his homework didn't get done: Then a storm hit and then zombies attacked and then I had to ummm I had to make a raft out of um dead zombies to get home and then the dog ate my homework. Just skip it, you won't miss anything.
The second issue is that the artist eschews primary colors to give the book a distinctive look. This succeeds as the book does look very distinctive indeed, but after a while I almost became nautious under the noxious assualt of pinks, greens, and browns. If you read the book in one go - as I did since it becomes engrossing very quickly - you may never want to see off-pink and lime-green again by the time you're done.

Oh, and also, Doctor Manhatten wears less and less clothes as the book goes on, with the artist apparently "selecting carefully when full frontal shots would occur", which may not be the best note to end this review on, but I don't really know how to top it.

Grade: A

Batman: Night Cries

The episodes of SVU with children as the victims are the hardest to watch. Reading Batman: Night Cries is like one of those episodes. The victims in this book are children. It explores the terror of being a child currently in an abusive situation and the haunting memories of adults coping with an abusive childhood.

I felt a little better reading this book than watching SVU, knowing Batman was on the case. His justice goes beyond the technicalities or bungled testimony that lets monsters sometimes go free on SVU. We often see Batman tackling the more visible crimes of theft and murder, but rarely have I ever seen a superhero try to stop crimes like child abuse.

The story stars both Batman and Commissioner Gordon. I started to enjoy the interaction of the two characters with the recent Batman reboots and felt there was never the sense of partnership between them on the 90s animated series. Commissioner Gordon is a new commissioner in this book and must now juggle the political demands of the office along with his strong desire to continue being a cop. Someone also notices the aftereffects of a night as Batman on Bruce Wayne's body at a point in the story, which was a nice touch.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it for Batman fans. But...go into it knowing it's about child abuse.

"Byzantium: The Apogee"

Byzantium: The Apogee (John Julius Norwich)

Volume II of the history of Byzantium, picking up at the year 800 and covering until the disaster at Manzikert (from which the empire apparently never recovers, thus promising a very uplifting Volume III). This volume goes on pretty much the same as Volume I, and is just as recommended; Really, I don't have much to add here, so I'll just direct you to the review for Volume I and all I can add is that this book is just as good.