Notable Book of the Year 2016 - The Saga Series

“Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid.
Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed.
Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep.
No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way.
They all end the same, too.”

This edition of Notable Books of 2016 covers Comic Books/Graphic Novels.

(A disclaimer: I will not cover essentials and must haves such as The Watchmen, Maus etc. You should read them as soon as you get the chance)

The best comic book series of the year came to me in late November. In the middle of solving Real Business Cycle Models and finding General Equilibrium Pareto Optima, I was handed the series by a classmate and friend... to whom I am eternally grateful.

Saga is by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. It's not new - the series started way back in 2012 - but it's still ongoing and is expected to continue for many more years.

To give you a tl;dr summary and at the risk of shameless self-indulgence this is what I wrote in my diary immediately after completing its third volume,

"Damn, it's been a while since I read a good comic book! The Saga series is just about everything you can possibly demand from an awesome comic book series and it's a gift that keeps on giving. A combination of satire and über-cool imagination laced with humor and gripping characters it comes at the top of any must-read book lists I can think of this year."

Two days later and all volumes down my opinion only metamorphosed from calm admiration to crazy addiction. There are six volumes that are out at the moment and the series has been met with wide acclaim from critics and immense love from a growing legion of fans.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35115924

Saga is what you get when you blend a story of war, of love in the time of war (with the lovers from the opposite camps), of robot royalty, of mercenaries, and, in general, of well chiseled characters that are surprisingly relevant in our own modern world.

The backdrop of Saga is a war between Landfall, a large and important planet in the galactic neighborhood, and Wreath, its satellite. The two worlds are vastly different from each other. For instance, people from Wreath routinely use magic in their lives (including as a weapon). Landfall and Wreath went to war a long, long time back and eventually wearied of it so much they decided to outsource the war to other worlds, recruiting or forcing other civilizations to fight on their behalf.

Alana (from the Landfall side) falls in love with her prisoner Marko (a native of Wreath) and that's disastrous for both sides, not least because Alana has given birth to a Landfall-Wreath baby. That's where we begin.

“Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you.”

Alana and Marko form the initial mainstay but they are soon supplemented by an impressive and intriguing set of characters who are slowly fleshed out in detail, their backstories opening up at different points leading inexorably to the impending grand finale. That's the thing that stands out for me in Saga - its medley of characters.

There are robots
A coalition partner of Landfall is Robot Kingdom, led by blue-blood robot royalty. The robots are fascinating analogues to Rorschach - inscrutable and hidden behind a veneer of inhumanity while burying a maelstrom of emotions underneath.

There are mercenaries
A neutral group of mercenaries can be hired by either side to execute more devious and nefarious plans. There are a bunch of them and their paths intersect, in wicked ways.

There's a lot more - a whole lot more

Making a list of all important characters is hopelessly futile - there are just too many - and pretty boring - for the writer and reader alike. The story makes you love them all and this is the moment when I should just ask you to go ahead and procure the series.

Before I conclude, however, let me note another praiseworthy feature of Saga. Through all the action and drama and laughs the series subtly weighs in on gender relations, on race and ethnic relations, and on the collateral damage a war creates. These are complex and multi-layered issues and Saga's magic is to elicit empathy from the reader, an invaluable and rare lesson newspapers and dry debates pathetically fail in achieving. All this without batting an eyelid or dropping pace. Indeed, you can probably finish the series in a day and leave yourself waiting until March 2017 (like me) when the next volume is scheduled for release.

Must Read. A story of war and love and, somewhere in between, a story of a family as it tries to sort itself out.

“All good children's stories are the same: young creature breaks rules, has incredible adventure, then returns home with the knowledge that aforementioned rules are there for a reason.
Of course, the actual message to the careful reader is: break rules as often as you can, because who the hell doesn't want to have an adventure?”

Honorable Mentions
I am late to works by Joe Sacco but I would highly recommend them. Safe Area Gorazde (duh, I can hear the fans saying) must be read. Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage was also a smooth read. And the graphic novel I would've covered if I hadn't read Saga? Daniel Clowes' Patience. It's just awesome.

What was your favorite work this year?

(This is second in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year. The last one was an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include non-fiction, fiction and science fiction novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Notable Book of the Year 2016 - H is for Hawk

"Prisonface is terrified of life; he is a chameleon, a mirror, existing only through his reflection in the eyes of others."

H is for Hawk is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an obscure book. If you wind the clock back a year and peruse through any best books list from 2015, you'd find its name there, typically at the top.

The first time I attempted to read the book was in early February. I failed. On that balmy day, with the sun dazzling through the oily leaves of the tree in front of dorm 10, I propped the book open on my lap and spent the next ten minutes absorbing its premise. And even in the Ahmedabad sun - the unrelenting, unremitting Ahmedabad sun - I experienced a chill down my spine. I couldn't read it. Another nine months went by till the day I eventually sat down on a blustery morning in New York to read through it, an intensely rewarding experience which prompted me to write this review.

To explain why I couldn't find the courage to proceed in my first attempt, you must understand what the book is all about.

At the core of H is for Hawk is the question of how people make sense of their lives by putting their selves in a symbol that they hope represents everything they were meant to do (or be) in life. The symbol can be anything but it stands untarnished by compromise; unencumbered by bonds of love or pangs of suffering.

H is for Hawk is an autobiographical account of Helen Macdonald as she fights through the grief of losing her father. This is the essence of the story - a gut wrenching journey where the author spins hopelessly away into the void; struggles to stay afloat; closing down the world around her; a magnificent and ancient creature - a goshawk - her only company and Patronus.

To merely say the above, though, is to completely miss the point. H is for Hawk transcends genres - as a story about a young girl who only always desired to fly with majestic birds of prey; as a gorgeous handbook on falcons and the history of falconry; as a commentary on the quintessential English countryside; as a disturbing and piercing biography of a famous writer of the previous century.

By the way, a goshawk looks like this:

Reading H is for Hawk can be difficult. Helen's personal sorrow drips out of every page. It imbues a melancholic strain that lingers, even when you've set the book aside to get back to your own existence. At times, this affects you. There was many a time when I flipped through the pages to the back cover, to find myself staring at Helen's face and her brooding eyes. Eyes that seem heavy with sadness and a weight that looks almost impossible to bear.

The reader will persist. The prose is beautiful and Helen mixes up a story of depression and misery with the magical description of her Goshawk, Mabel. In one of the lighter moments in the book, she talks how giving a "tough" name for a hawk is a sure recipe for disaster.

"There's a superstition among falconers that a hawk's ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all."

Helen is a practicing falconer herself - becoming one was a childhood passion of hers. Helen teaches you to love what she loves and it all comes so naturally that you hardly notice it, and yet when you close the book you'll never see a bird of prey the same way again. H is for Hawk also has rich and intimate descriptions of the English countryside. Of course, the size of the demographic who enjoys this is understandably fledgling but I put it out there, just in case.

Darkness and despair doesn't merely run through Helen's own story. An important and intriguing element of the author's narration is the parallel account of T H White (author of the famous The Sword in the Stone series). White's life acts as a compelling counterfoil throughout the book, as he narrates a tortured existence and how he desperately attempted to tame his own goshawk, Gos. White, former headmaster of a school, a misfit since childhood carrying many ghosts of his past tries to find refuge in the training of his hawk. The book moves back and forth between these two solitary and anguished narrators as Helen tries to make sense of her own sorrow. It's a moving and powerful literary device.

Customarily, a book review must include perceived shortcomings. Allow me to end with one. Autobiographies by their nature can be one-dimensional and therefore it's a mark of how well Helen has finessed her story that you end up demanding (unfairly) more details about the other characters in her life, who have a fleeting presence, being part participants exiting the stage almost as soon as they enter it. I struggle to find more flaws in this exquisite book.

H is for Hawk is good literature that's accessible to all kinds of readers. It makes you realize, as all good books do, that our smallest and most private tribulations have been expressed by the great artists of language.

"You are exercising what the poet Keats called your chameleon quality, the ability to 'tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment.'"

The book is destined to be a modern classic, a story that leaves you with strength and hope, yes, but also little tidbits of enlightenment. For instance, Helen describes a tragedy as:

"...that it is the story of a figure who, through some moral flaw or personal failing, falls through force of circumstance to his doom."

H is for Hawk is a must read in every sense.

(This is the first in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year. The first one (as you can see) is an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include non-fiction, fiction and comic books/graphic novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Exams

There's something about exams that's hard to pin down with ordinary run-of-the-mill feelings. Stress? Fear? Irritability? That's the school boy essay writing set that'll come in along with the occasional "excitement" thrown in to speculate on some counter points.

As I study in the East Asian Library of my University with a huge stack of lecture chapters, problem sets, recitation notes, supplementary research papers, previous examinations and H Is for Hawk (a man has to read after all) I only feel numb.

The boring question, "Should I begin from the first chapter or start from the end," seems resolutely intangible. I don't feel like preparing for this. There's so much more fun in staring down the barrel with one Matrix move to save yourself. Being a PhD student does mean taking these exams seriously.

Back to work.

The Greats

I like to follow the actions and achievements of the Greats across all fields spanned by humans, in the present and from the past. What amazes me constantly is how they managed to balance out their focus across different areas of self-improvement. That kind of judgement is rare.

In the midst of the three M's, I am spending days and nights together to get there. Not sure if I will. Each small let-up costs a lot.

The dream lives on. 

A Gem from Zen Pencils

My set of "Favorite Zen Pencils cartoon strips" has just welcomed a new member.

Art has no limits

This is more or less exactly what I feel about achievement and, associated with that, the overwhelming sense of worthlessness when you realize how much there is to know and to do.

Change

For the first time in my life I am training to be properly good in a subject. And I have to cover a lot of distance. A lot of it. It reminds me of the time I was in the 9th grade and I had to teach myself more chemistry after a sizable jump in effort was demanded. Thankfully, things smoothed out eventually back then. Yet to see what happens this time.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

Ithaka, here I come.

(For the previous post in this series: http://haarisian.blogspot.com/2016/04/change.html)

Another Excerpt from She by H Rider Haggard

Been a couple of weeks since I read She but sharing one more (and last) excerpt:

' "Who is she?" I asked, as soon as I could take my eyes off the statue.
    "Canst thou not guess, oh Holly?" answered Ayesha. "Where then is thy imagination? It is Truth standing on the World, and calling to its children to unveil her face. See what is writ upon the pedestal. Without doubt it is taken from the book of Scriptures of these men of Kor," and she led the way to the foot of the statue, where an inscription of the usual Chinese-looking hieroglyphics was so deeply graven as to be still quite legible, at least to Ayesha. According to her translation it ran thus: —
    "Is there no man that will draw my veil and look upon my face, for it is very fair? Unto him who draws my veil shall I be, and peace will I give him, and sweet children of knowledge and good works."
    And a voice cried, "Though all those who seek after thee desire thee, behold! Virgin art thou, and Virgin shalt thou go till Time be done. No man is there born of woman who may draw thy veil and live, nor shall be. By Death only can thy veil be drawn, oh Truth!"
    And Truth stretched out her arms and wept, because those who sought her might not find her, nor look upon her face to face.
    "Thou seest," said Ayesha, when she had finished translating, "Truth was the Goddess of the people of old Kor, and to her they built their shrines, and her they sought; knowing that they should never find, still sought they."
    "And so," I added sadly, "do men seek to this very hour, but they find out; and, as this Scripture saith, nor shall they; for in Death only is Truth found."'