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November Book Review Club: THE BOOK OF SPECULATION
We have exactly one tree left with leaves on it, so I guess it's time to admit that the Reading Season is upon us. Not to mention the Festive Holiday Madness. Here's a possibility for either or both, although with some reservations.
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The Book of Speculation: A Novel
By Erika Swyler
St. Martin's Press, 2015
First-person narration can be a risky business. The narrator has to do more than just tell the story—he has to share bits of himself along the way, endear himself to us even if he's a villain. A reader has to be willing to invest a chunk of time in this person.
Never in all my days did I expect to enjoy a novel with an essentially bland protagonist/narrator who learns next to nothing from events. THE BOOK OF SPECULATION is just such a novel—rife with good stuff that I really loved, but a struggle to get through at times because the narrator was just so colorless.
My man bought it for my birthday, having listened to it on tape while painting. "This is what you would write if you wrote for adults," he told me.
Thank you, schnookums. I think.
In many, many ways, this is a fascinating, beautifully written book. When we meet Simon Watson, he's a lonely reference librarian in a small town far out on Long Island. He's about to lose his job and erosion is about to send his lifelong home tumbling into Long Island Sound. He is stymied, unwilling to move because the house is the only place his younger sister, an emotionally unstable itinerant circus performer, can really call home. But he can't afford to shore up the bluff and save the place.
Out of the blue, an antiquities dealer in Iowa sends him a 200-year-old book, the diary/financial ledger of a traveling circus owner called Hermilius Peabody. Written in it is the name of Simon's grandmother, a circus performer who apparently had the book in her possession for a while.
Simon's curious but not that fascinated until he sees the 1816 notation of a woman's drowning—on July 24, the exact date when his mother left her children in the bluff-top house and walked into the Sound, never to return.
Curiosity becomes obsession, and we follow Simon as he does what a research librarian does best, tracking down names and dates and making connections between them. We learn that the women in his family have always had an uncanny ability to hold their breath under water, and for generations have worked as water-tank "mermaids," sideshow attractions in traveling circuses.
Simon's mother was a mermaid when his father fell in love with her. He and his sister, Enola, inherited the ability.
Enola works as a fortune-teller rather than a mermaid. Nevertheless, Simon is horrified when she unaccountably is drawn to revisit their seaside home in July. He finds evidence of more drownings on the 24th. The clock starts ticking—can he figure out what's going on before the fateful date?
The book alternates Simon's narrative with the tale of Hermilius Peabody and his circus, told in third person. Hand-drawn tarot cards come into play, along with infestations of horseshoe crabs and weird meteorological events. The metaphysical logic never gets spelled out, but who cares. It's marvelous.
Here's the thing: I found myself heaving a resigned sigh whenever Simon took back the narration. The chapters set in the 1800s are as textured and richly colored as a Persian rug. The modern chapters are beige vinyl floor tiles.
There are stirring events all over the place, and Simon's modern situation gets worse and worse in lively fashion. He tells us he's upset and worried about it all, but we never feel it, or at least I didn't. He does stuff, but his actions seem vague and indirect, never precise in their attack. As a result, even the July 24 situation lacks the suspense it should have.
The other characters in Simon's life are interesting, especially his sister and her circus boyfriend, who can turn lightbulbs on by touching them. But you never get deep enough, or even glean enough facts, to understand them or root for them.
In the 1800s, I rooted for everyone—I kept wishing the whole novel was back there. Swyler may be more comfortable and interested writing about the past.
I hope her next novel stays there.
(Dear FCC: As stated above, I got this book for my birthday. For the record, I don't actually call the man "schnookums".)
October Book Review Club: THE NIGHT GARDENER
I just spent a fun and funny week touring Oklahoma and Arkansas with Book Review Club members Barrie Summy, Jody Feldman, and Stacy Nyikos. And, boy, was it a hoot! (Pix are here.)
Now I'm home, the leaves are turning, and Halloween's around the corner. Here's a book to scare you silly.
Don't forget to click the link for more reviews!
The Night Gardener
By Jonathan Auxier
First sign of a stellar middle-grade novel: You find yourself wanting to reach in and give the main character a good shake. "Wise up!" you whisper, hoping she hears.
I'm looking at you, Molly.
In Jonathan Auxier's amazing THE NIGHT GARDENER, red-haired Irish waif Molly and her younger brother Kit have lost their parents at sea, stolen a fish cart and a horse called Gallileo, and set off across cold, wet rural England seeking employment. Molly is fourteen, but has lied about her age to get a referral to the Windsor household.
We learn on page one that the Windsors live in a place called "the sour woods," and that everyone has been telling the waifs that they're "riding to their deaths." We feel this might be ominous.
But Auxier instantly establishes Molly as A Girl Who Handles Things. Her younger brother is sick and they're both starving. Despite the elaborate kidnapping tale Molly tells Kit, their parents are almost certainly dead. They need this job to survive, and Molly's more than a match for any evil influence.
Or so we think.
The Windsor mansion proves to be a sagging wreck covered in black moss, with a giant, ill-favored tree growing right into its walls. The denizens—Constance, Bertrand, and their children Penny and Alistair—have dull, dark hair, pale skin, and dead-soul eyes. Constance has to be strong-armed into hiring Molly and Kit—"This house is no place for you," she says—and in the end she insists that Kit, at least, will sleep in the stable rather than the house. Is she being snooty, or does she have their best interests at heart?
Well, let's see. There's an ominous locked door at the top of the stairs which proves to have one of the tree's knots imbedded in the wall. Every morning, muddy footprints and dead leaves cover the house—Molly wakes from a nightmare to find them in her room.
The nightmares plague her every night. If she wakes up, she hears the moans of the house's other sleepers, trapped in their own torments. Also thudding footsteps.
Hey, is her red hair getting darker and duller?
Molly! Wise UP!
This is one of the creepiest books I've read in a while. But it's also lovely, dark, and deep, examining the nature of greed, the benefits of death, what stories do for us, and the difference between stories and lies. "A story helps folks face the world, even when it frightens 'em," Molly figures out. "And a lie does the opposite. It helps you hide."
I got a little tired of Molly and Kit's constant droppin' of terminal "g's," and I could take or leave the fact that they're Irish immigrants—it seems like an extraneous detail, inserted here and there for no particular reason.
Otherwise, this is a near-perfect book, the kind of rich reading experience that makes me glad there are middle-grade novelists like Auxier. I never read his first book, PETER NIMBLE AND HIS FANTASTIC EYES, and now I plan to. You should too.
Dear FCC: I got this book out of the Blue Hill Public Library. I had to reserve it, because people in Blue Hill, Maine, still are clamoring to read THE NIGHT GARDENER even though it's been out for more than a year. Nobody paid me to read it. In fact, I bet somebody would have bribed me for my place in line.
June Book Review Club: One Crazy Summer
The only thing crazy about summer this year is how long it's taken to arrive, at least here in Maine. Ah, but 1968--that was a summer. Reading about it has eased the wait.
Speaking of summer, the Book Review Club is taking a couple of months off. See you in September, and have a sane one. (Unless you'd prefer otherwise.)
By Rita Williams-Garcia
Harper Collins/Amistad, 2010
The year after it came out, ONE CRAZY SUMMER won a National Book Award Nomination and three of the American Library Association's top awards: A Newbery Honor, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
This gives rise to two questions: 1. Is the book worth all the hoopla? And 2. When did my teen years turn into historical fiction?
Answers: Yes, and I'm going back to bed now.
When I was a kid in New England, somebody said "Black Panthers" and you thought of a raised fist. In recent years, starting (for me) with Kekla Magoon's THE ROCK AND THE RIVER, the Panthers have gotten more credit for the community service work that went hand-in-hand with their political activism. ONE CRAZY SUMMER is welcome in that respect, but it's a gem because of its story and its richly varied cast of characters.
Our narrator, eleven-year-old Delphine Gaither, is the oldest of three girls. She's the only one who has even hazy memories of their mother, Cecile, who walked out on her Brooklyn, NY, family just after the birth of Fern, now seven, and when nine-year-old Vonetta was a toddler. Supposedly, Cecile was upset that she wasn't allowed to name Fern "Afua"—at least, that's the family mythology.
Names are important in this book. Delphine is disturbed that she doesn't really know where hers came from. Her story makes it clear that you can always choose your own.
In the summer of 1968, over his live-in mother's objections, Delphine's father decides that his three girls should get to know their mother, a poet who now lives in Oakland, CA. Mindful of her grandmother's strictures, Delphine does her best to make sure her young sisters behave well on the plane—white territory—lest they disgrace their entire race.
Cecile, it turns out, has no desire to get to know her daughters and certainly no desire to behave well. Grudgingly leading them from the airport with her "man-sized strides," she takes them home to an empty house whose kitchen is off limits to everyone except her. Sent out to buy Chinese take-out, the kids eat on the floor and next morning are bundled out the door to find their own way to the Black Panthers' community center, where they and other kids get fed and learn about the Panthers' philosophy.
Delphine is her mother's match. One day, worried about her sisters' health, she uses the take-out money to buy chicken and vegetables, and barges into her mother's kitchen to make a real dinner. She finds a kitchen table covered with printing equipment—Cecile, known to the Panthers as "Nzila," is their printer as well as a poet. The police have their eye on her, and the situation is about to become even more uneasy for the three girls.
Delphine is an observant, sometimes lyrical yet cool-eyed narrator, only occasionally losing her sang-froid. She has all a young girl's preoccupations and fears—even a charming little crush—and doesn't completely understand everything she's told. Her rendition of her little sisters is a wonderful meld of annoyance, love, and insight—those two little girls are lucky to have her looking out for them.
We only learn at the end of the book how much Delphine has yearned for the mother whose toughness she inherited.
Cecile is not a nice mother, and if you're hoping she becomes one you should read something else. She's tough for good reason, and she had good reasons for leaving her family, although a nice mother might have ignored them. Her daughters, especially Delphine, have not fallen far from the tree—each has her own version of Cecile's stiff back. And yet by the end of the story they begin to look into one another's eyes. And that's more than enough.
The one bumpy spot (for me) is the moment when seven-year-old Fern takes the mike at a "free Huey Newton" rally to recite a poem she wrote outing Crazy Kelvin, an unpleasant Panther she saw hobnobbing with the police. I had trouble believing a seven-year-old would have that kind of political insight, although maybe I just don't hang around enough seven-year-olds who've spent weeks being schooled in politics.
I did love the poem, though. Here's my favorite line: "The policeman says, 'Good puppy.'/Crazy Kelvin says 'Arf. Arf.'"
ONE CRAZY SUMMER now has two much-celebrated sequels: P.S. BE ELEVEN (2013) and GONE CRAZY IN ALABAMA (2015). I can't wait to catch up with the Gaither girls.
Dear FCC: I got sick of not having read this book. So I bought it. Nobody cares.
Posted by Ellen Booraem at 12:02 PM 5 comments:
May Book Review Club: The Silkworm
I'm sure the rest of you are outside soaking in the sun, but here in Maine we're only just starting to think about retiring the storm door and putting up the screens. Nevertheless, it's never too early to think about beach reading. So here's a likely candidate.
The Silkworm
By Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Mulholland Books, Little Brown & Co, 2014
No matter what she calls herself, J.K. Rowling knows how to write a page-turner. She can wield a stiletto, too.
Even back in the Harry Potter years, it was clear Rowling had no use for the press. (Looking at you, Rita Skeeter.) She made that clear yet again in THE CUCKOO'S CALLING, the first crime novel she wrote as Robert Galbraith. This time around, she skewers the publishing industry—with humor and perhaps a tad more fondness. Perhaps. A tad.
Like all her other books, THE SILKWORM is rich in intriguing, compelling characters, starting with the protagonist, private detective Cormoran Strike. An Afghanistan vet who lost half a leg to an IED, he is the illegitimate (but acknowledged) son of a mega-rock-star and lives in a low-rent but scrupulously tidy room over his office. He's tormented by his ex-girlfriend, a gorgeous party girl who's about to marry a lord.
It's not exactly groundbreaking for a crime novel to feature a crusty, damaged, slightly soggy gumshoe who's perpetually short of cash. The thing is, though, Strike's a nice guy. Despite its best efforts, life has made him only a skeptic, not a cynic. He fires clients because they're creeps, takes them on because they need him. He's a terrible businessman. I'd have a beer with him in a heartbeat.
Nor is it unusual for a gumshoe to have an admiring gal-Friday. But Cormoran's sidekick, Robin, is as endearing as he is. Taken on as an office temp in the first book, she succumbs to a lifelong, latent fascination with crime detection and stays on for good. This time around, she's trying to persuade Strike and her unpleasant fiancé that she should be less of a secretary and more of an assistant detective. She's a marvelous combination of clear-eyed realist (except about the fiancé) and pie-eyed enthusiast.
Of course, there's romantic tension between Strike and Robin. Part of you knows how cheesy that is. The rest of you is on tenterhooks.
Populating the rest of the book is a rogue's gallery of waspish publishers, editors, writers, and agents, each of them happiest when someone else gets a miserable review. Our corpse is one of them—Owen Quine, a formerly ground-breaking novelist looking for a comeback with a satire on his industry, his disagreeable characters standing in for real rivals, friends, and lovers. Quine's murder reflects the bizarre fate of his protagonist, and since the novel isn't published yet that narrows the field of suspects to those who might have seen the manuscript.
The book's title is Bombyx Mori, after a silkworm that is boiled alive in its cocoon in order to produce silk. (Side note: I'm never buying silk again.)
The police arrest Mrs. Quine, who already had hired Strike to find her missing husband. Our man feels sorry for her and her mentally disabled daughter, so sets out to prove her innocent.
In the best tradition of crime novels, huge complications end in satisfying simplicity. The murderer's revelation is a surprise (at least to me, and I have to admit I'm easy), yet makes perfect sense afterwards.
With beach-reading season coming on, this one belongs in your sandy satchel.
(Dear FCC: This was a Christmas present. Sadly, J.K. Rowling doesn't give two hoots what I think of her book.)
Book Review Club: March 2015
Sorry I missed last month--there was the small matter of a slip on the ice and a broken hip. This month, feet up, my only recreation is reading. There are worse fates.
Don't forget to click the icon above for the rest of the reviews!
Penguin/Nancy Paulson Books, 2014
Whatever you do, don't tell a potential young reader that BROWN GIRL DREAMING is a book in verse. (WHY do so many of us think poetry will be boring?) If the kid picks up the book and freaks out at the unusual amount of white space, say "Just read one page." You'll probably end up with a poetry fan on your hands.
From page one:
I am born not long from the time
or far from the place
my great-great-grandparents
worked the deep rich land
unfree
dawn till dusk
drank cool water from scooped out gourds
looked up and followed
the sky's mirrored constellation
to freedom.
I am born as the South explodes ….
Seriously, kid, how can you resist? Give this book a chance.
BROWN GIRL DREAMING won the National Book Award and a Newbery honor—with good reason. It's gem-like, heartwarming, funny, sad, sneaky, inspiring, and addictive. You may very well read it in one sitting, although you'll want to re-read it. These poems live and breathe.
Full disclosure: There's not a lot of action, and as I read I kept wondering if I would have objected to that at age 10. (I so hope I wouldn't have.)
Nor is this a polemic on race relations in the '60s and beyond, although it certainly offers insights. (Most chilling: If you were leaving South Carolina and your skin was brown, you had to go at night to avoid being stopped and beaten.) I'm praying the book's title won't relegate it to the sixth grade civil rights unit—kids should be free to love it in its own right.
BROWN GIRL DREAMING is the epitome of "show don't tell"—not so much a factual memoir as a direct experience of American girlhood, regardless of race and almost regardless of era. Being sketched in verse somehow heightens the impact.
It's got everything: sibling rivalry, hair, school troubles, an uncomfortable religion, the pros and cons of a dominant family, the death of a beloved grandfather, the fear that your best friend has found someone she likes better.
Also a mother sneaking out in white gloves to sit at a segregated lunch counter. But the best friend makes more of an impression.
The first controversy in young Jackie's life is that her father wants to name her "Jack," after him. "Name a girl Jack/and people will look at her twice, my father said." (To his annoyance, the women insist on Jacqueline.) Also, she's the family's second daughter: "... My older brother takes one look/ inside the pink blanket, says,/ Take her back. We already have one of those."
Later, when mother and children have gone to live with the South Carolina grandparents, leaving Jack behind in Ohio, the father's absence is "like a bubble in my older brother's life,/ that pops again and again/into a whole lot of tiny bubbles/of memory."
The South Carolina poems are idyllic—breezes are fragrant, the family so strong that its members simply rise above the fact that it's not safe to shop at Woolworth's or ride in the front of the bus, regardless of the law. When the scene shifts to Brooklyn, Jackie begins to experience universal growing pains: difficulties in school (especially following a brilliant older sister), a mother who's just a tad stricter than most, a church (Jehovah's Witnesses) that makes the Woodson kids walk out on birthday celebrations at school.
But also there are joys: A Puerto Rican best friend whose family absorbs Jackie and feeds her arroz con pollo; the dawning realization that, despite her school troubles, she is destined to be a writer.
Sprinkled in between the longer poems are numbered three-liners called "How to Listen." Here's #9:
Under the back porch
there's an alone place I go
writing all I've heard.
Thank heavens for that alone place, and for this beautiful book.
Dear FCC: I got an autographed copy of this book because I donated to We Need Diverse Books. Which we do.
Book Review Club: January 2015
Happy New Year! Barrie Summy, fearless leader of the Book Review Club, reports that as a group we published NINETY reviews last year. If you're looking for a good book to while away the winter nights, click the icon above and all will be well.
By Christina Baker Kline
William Morrow, 2013
The past leaves its taint, but it can offer redemption.
Also, move over David Copperfield.
Tough call, which of my Christmas books to read first. I ended up going with ORPHAN TRAIN simply because I'd been seeing it around for a full year and it had been nagging at me. It was the right choice for post-holiday recovery—absorbing, harrowing in its quiet way, not GAME OF THRONES but not—praise heaven—"It's a Wonderful Life."
Molly Ayer, 17, a prickly goth, has gotten used to being abandoned on the rock-hard face of the world. A serial foster child, her father dead and her mother a drug addict, she's now in the Spruce Harbor, Maine, home of Ralph and Dina, who argue loudly about whether to keep her.
Vivian Daly, 91, also knows the world's rocky face. An Irish immigrant, she lost her impoverished family to a New York tenement fire in 1929, and was sent west on a train full of orphans to be handed over to anyone who wanted them. Her future, like that of her fellow travelers, was a craps shoot: Maybe she'd find a nice family who treated her like a child, or maybe she'd be a nine-year-old hired hand, over-worked, unloved, barely kept alive. She lost the bet at first, facing first a sweat shop, then a desperately poor, abusive household before finally finding a safe (if constrictive) home.
Having attempted to steal the local library's third and most ragged copy of Jane Eyre, Molly has been assigned to fifty hours of community service. Her boyfriend gets her a gig with Vivian, his mother's employer. After school and on weekends, Molly will help Vivian sort through the eighty years' worth of memorabilia in her attic.
The story alternates between third person for Molly's story and first person for Vivian's recollections, which dominate and horrify. For all the sadness and mistreatment Molly has experienced, her troubles pale before the often Dickensian fate of an orphan in the 1930s. Like David Copperfield, Vivian sees humanity in all its cruelty and degradation before finally landing in a caring home, where a change of name signals a new destiny.
Vivian's troubles are not over, however. Scarred and numbed by her past, she can't embrace life. Like Molly, she's built walls that protect but also isolate.
We benefit from her tale, and so does Molly. The book's ending is a bit tidy for my taste: Loose ends tied up, everyone is content. But there's a great deal of satisfaction in seeing two damaged women find solace. Kline gave us the ending we wanted, despite our better judgment.
Dear FCC: Ho ho ho.


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Lifestyle Magazine Press
"Baldwin must be responsible for my daughter's death" – News – Life
Posted on December 20, 2021 | Posted on john555
Although the parents of the victim Halina Hains did not initially convict actor Alec Baldwin for this incident, the injured producer's father changed his mind due to some of his actions.
Source: B92 Monday, December 20, 2021 | 16:53 -> 21:23
Photo: Profimedia
That is to say, Anatoly Androsovi cannot understand that Alec Baldwin does not assume part of the blame and responsibility, as well as his procedure for removing the tweets he published after the tragic event.
Also, Halin Hains' father doesn't understand why the actor denies that he pulled the trigger when it was the only way for the shooting and the murder to take place.
Alec Baldwin for the first time after the tragedy: "She was my friend" VIDEO
"I don't understand Alec's behavior. That's why he asked for his tweets when it became clear that there was a rehearsal shooting? And that's why he fired in preparation?" taken from his hand, so it's hard for me to understand how he can't be partly responsible for my daughter's death, "said the father of the late director of photography.
Is he still guilty? "Baldwin was playing Russian roulette"
According to The Sun, Anatoly also referred to her nine-year-old granddaughter, Halina's son Andros.
"Andros is slowly coming back to life, but this is a big blow for all of us," he said.
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disposable: random essays on skateboard art
the online extension of "disposable: a history of skateboard art" and "the disposable skateboard bible", published by gingko press.
« November 2009 | Main | January 2010 »
postpartum bible depression, part 1: the first zorlac john gibson
Never fails. In the months to follow the publication of Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art there were a number of decks that I'd failed to find after years of searching that suddenly surfaced out of the dusty blue. Fortunately, I was able to go back and make a few of these key additions with subsequent reprints, but this time around with The Disposable Skateboard Bible there will be no such editorial shenanigans (well, aside from the one previously noted here).
Of course, I say this somewhat ruefully now, because a few days ago I received an email from John "Tex" Gibson saying that he was recently helping his mom clean out an old storage space when he was shocked to discover his first pro model on Zorlac, circa 1982, in unskated condition. I, too, was equally shocked, because this was the first and only production example of the original Gibson board that I've seen in any condition. And believe me: I've been looking. If there was a Top 10 list of boards that I'd hoped to unearth and include in the '80s section of the Bible, this was definitely on it.
Gibson suspected that less than 600 of these boards were produced back in the dog days of the skateboard industry (prior to the release of his second and much more well known graphic in 1983), so I guess its dearth really isn't that surprising.
Anyway, it's good to see one now and know that at least one NOS version is still in existence*. It's sad, I know, but these things do concern me from time to time.
Incidentally, back around 2004, at least three reproductions of the first Zorlac John Gibson were created in green, orange, and white dip with two-color prints.
* By no means am I claiming that others don't exist, but if they do they're buried under a strata of dust I was never able to reach throughout all my contacts. Plus, to date, it has not been made clear what if anything Jeff Newton, the original founder of Zorlac, may have held onto in way of company archives.
Posted at 01:21 PM in Art, Books, Skateboards | Permalink | Comments (3)
wes humpston: the godfather of skateboard graphics
When I started skating in 1986, Dogtown was still in its transitional phase right before Wes Humpston really started doing any serious work for them again (an artist by the name of Michael Sieff was doing most all of the board art right then). I was naturally drawn to graphics of a more illustrated slant, so my immediate influences came from the likes of V. Courtlandt Johnson, Pushead, and Jim Phillips. Well, I was also just a dorky little kid hopping up curbs in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and didn't think I had the balls required to own a Dogtown board*—a total lack of sack that just didn't seem to jive with the hardcore imagery of the DT cross and the Venice scene depicted in the mags. Hence my beeline for the Bones Brigade, I guess. It wouldn't be until many years later that I really came to respect the work of Wes and understand the profound influence the initial Dogtown designs had on the decades to follow. His graphics in the '70s were a template from which all others were to stem: a strong central image, symmetrical design, clean line work, an efficient blend of mysterious totems and icons—in a sense, truly making him the godfather of skateboard graphics. But don't take my word for it. Watch and learn from The Run Up series, courtesy of Walrus TV / Upper Playground (an oddly timely follow-up to yesterday's post about Boulder Boards):
Continue reading "wes humpston: the godfather of skateboard graphics" »
better late than never: a history of boulder boards
This has been stated so many times before that I don't even know how to say it any other way now, but my primary impetus for beginning work on what would eventually become The Disposable Skateboard Bible was to tie up a few loose ends that I wasn't able to find or include in the first book—several of which were only made possible in the years following its publication. For this reason perhaps that's why I dragged my feet for two and a half years to compile material for the Bible, because just when I was about to theoretically call it done I would inevitably find one more board or story to follow up on, e.g. the random time I met Rich Harbour's daughter at a backyard Banta party. I could have gone on indefinitely in this manner had I not finally committed to a delivery date with the publisher in April 2009, and it was an oddly bittersweet moment to at long last say, "It is finished." Not only that but I kind of felt like a dink for calling it the "Bible" when I knew there were still a few outstanding historical pieces to the puzzle. Seriously, God left Himself a really, really big loophole with that ambiguous book of Revelations.
One of the ways in which the The Disposable Skateboard Bible differs from its predecessor is that on occasion it does stray beyond the graphic norm and delve into the more specialized arena of board construction. This happened in the '70s gallery a few times; not only because there wasn't a whole lot graphically going on then but it was a period of fast and furious innovation right up until the early '80s when 7-plies of Canadian hard rock maple became standard manufacturing procedure, give or take the occasional epoxy, fiberglass, foam, or titanium deviation. One of the more interesting companies that I'd hoped to provide a bit more manufacturing insight on was Boulder Boards, but most all of my half-assed efforts to find out something of a historical nature fell short. None of the people I contacted could recall much of anything and the online trail eventually went cold, the book went to print, end of uneventful story.
A week ago though, an auction* appeared on eBay for the "original master prototype of the last and only unreleased version of the K Beam Series, the Tri-Beam." The board was cool and all, but the real gem for nerds like me was the auction description itself: a full blown history of Boulder Boards. Once upon a time this would have been the type of thing to make me take pause and go, Hmmm ... do I dare take a piss on everyone that has already purchased the book and make a few revisions? but rest assured I won't be doing that. Especially since I have this little online blooger to pick every now and then. That said, reprinted here is a more pictorially fleshed-out version of the Boulder Boards story, as written by Scott Peck.
Continue reading "better late than never: a history of boulder boards" »
Posted at 09:36 AM in Art, Books, Skateboards | Permalink | Comments (10)
disposable: a history of skateboard art – the 2009 hardcover edition
Ever since Gingko Press formally picked up the publishing rights to Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art in 2007, I'd been periodically hounding them to release it in hardback form. Concrete Wave Editions/Blitz Distribution did a limited hardback edition of 1000 copies in 2005, but those sold out pretty quick and in the years to follow I continued to receive requests for it. Gingko was reluctant to do this at first (which I found somewhat funny since they'd gone back and re-released Fucked Up + Photocopied in hardback), but I finally managed to twist their arm enough to where they agreed to run off a limited amount of 250 hardback copies in conjunction with the most recent softcover reprint.
For those about to grab torches and storm the castle, please wait: I give you my word that this edition is essentially the same old book with just the added benefit of a hardcover to wrap the guts up all nice and tight (well, that and it does go very well together on the shelf next to its bigger little brother The Disposable Skateboard Bible). So if you missed out on the first Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art hardback edition, this is your limited window of opportunity to now pick one up.
I have a very, very small stock (like 20 odd copies) of this new hardback on hand to sell if anyone would like me to scribble my name inside and, if so desired, personalize. I also have a buttload of The Disposable Skateboard Bible in stock and occupying way too much space in my living room for the holiday season, so for more information on obtaining either of these books in autographed form please go here. In the event you don't give a good goddamn about my stupid name, I'd suggest contacting Gingko Press at 1.510.898.1195 to order direct or inquire about any other retail outlets that might be stocking the book in the weeks to come.
Special thanks to Eric Simpson, the graphic designer on both Disposable books, for shooting these nicely lit product shots. I would've done a far crappier job.
Sean Cliver
Hand Outs
Help an Addict
Art, Skateboarding and Life
Built to Grind: 25 Years of Hardcore Skateboarding
Bulldog's Wes Humpston Book/Pictorial Skate Art
Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art
Stalefish: skateboard culture from the rejects who made it
The Disposable Skateboard Bible
The Skateboard Art of Jim Phillips
random inanities
online linkage
Andy Howell
Andy Jenkins / Bend Press
Art of Skateboarding
Ed Templeton / Toy Machine
Eric Simpson Photography
Jeff Tremaine's Art
Jim Phillips / Phillips Studios
Johnny Mojo / American Sideshow
Marc McKee / Skateboard Graphics
Ron Cameron Graphic Design
Shari MacDonald Photo
Skate and Annoy
SkullandBonesSkateboards.com Forums
The Pushead Tribute Page
Todd Bratrud
Todd Francis and his Pantload of Graphics
Wes Humpston / Bulldog Skates