Biographic, Graphic and Curious books …

 

Inadvertently … I've found some genre of books … inspired from my introduction to Afrofuturism via Kugali (blog posts) in April and May 2019 … that I never thought to look at, or consider … but we get wiser as we get older – don't we - do we?!

Back cover

The first is Biographic Dickens … I borrowed from the library – and would love to read the rest … I've ordered Bowie, and one on Francoise Gilot – Picasso's muse and for a time wife – though I'm not sure it's from Ammonite Press – Biographic Lives in Graphic Form … anyway I shall see courtesy of the library …

This page shows their take on Victorian
Britain in Dickens' era

Other Biographic titles listed per their webpage – Prince; Van Gogh; the Beatles; Tesla; Sherlock; Shakespeare; Rembrandt; Picasso; Cezanne; Bowie; Austen; Audrey; Abba; Hemingway; Einstein; Dior; Beethoven; Hendrix; Dickens; Degas; Coco; Churchill; Monet; Marley; Marilyn; Leonardo; Klimt; Kahlo ...

Next the graphic novel author, Pénélope Bagieu (illustrator and comic designer), who profiles the lives of '30 Rebel Ladies Who Brazen Rocked the World' … all with indomitable spirits … such as (see below) Nzinga – Queen of the Ambundu kingdoms in present-day northern Angola …

... and Georgina Anzulata-Reid whose life story is told … who in the 1980s saved the Montauk Point Light for twenty years by planting reeds to shore up the bluff … at minimal cost …

... before the engineers took over its continuing restoration and protection in the 2020s … costing a mere $44 million! I mentioned her in my previous post.

I've added Temple Grandin's graphic – the Animal Whisperer - with many cows … her speciality …

... and Nzinga ... Queen of the Ambundu kingdoms ... 

The third book – 'The Art of Curiosity' – could have been written for me … but it gives a summary about 50 people who are visionaries, artists, scientists, poets, makers and dreamers - who are changing the way we see our world … that last phrase perhaps fits me in an old-fashioned way …

I'm going to revert to that book later … as there is one guy, about whom I want to highlight in another post …

Cheryl Lee McKenzie – mentioned another book 'Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime (A MusiComic Manifesto)' which is coming out later this year … by Ge Wang … who cannot be categorised … amazing man, by the sound of it.

Just occasionally I wish I lived in California … but I'm happy in my own little world of East Sussex! A quieter place perhaps ... though?! …

Then I remembered I'd bought 'The Complete Maus' by Art Spiegelman – which I will now read in this new genre that I'm beguiled by …

There are now two anthologies
here's the link

It looks like I'll not be reading reading books – but looking at comic, graphic and other types of books in future … though I suspect I'll revert to the written word …

Thoughts for the brain …

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Open Door theme prompt ...

 

I remembered my Write Edit Publish bloghop Caged Bird post from five years ago … into which the new theme could fit with some obvious changes – from closed to open … I need that closed one for another prompt next week … but …

What to post … so many rabbit holes I will be going down … graphic books, submarine canyons, Western Australian indigenous art, Siberian oil field exploration, lighthouses, nettles, blue stockings … and so it goes … and yes, of course, a fish banana recipe …

… then this week I remembered something I could write about for a prompt and a memoir note on an open door incident that happened in the mid 1970s … 'killing three 'birds' at once' …

A rather too posh
dormer window mine
was definitely plainer

... this probably happened in the very hot summer of 1976 when I lived in Arundel Gardens –which I wrote about in 2020, link below – when my sitting room balcony doors would have been wide open onto the tiny balcony of my card-house flat – up five storeys …

I lived at the top - where
those three bedroom
windows appear - the balcony
is on the south facing side

Suddenly at the doors there appeared a man – strange but true – five floors up – where from, and why … and what do I do … thankfully he was obviously not 'a thug' … but getting away from a drug bust in one of the houses further down the street – and had managed 'to escape' along the roof tops and balconies – thus avoiding the police.

I had no idea what to do – call the police, let him out, send him further along at five storeys up … so for a while we talked – I cannot for the life of me remember what about … I was bemused!

Graphic story about Giorgina Anzulata
from the book by Penelope Bagieu -
more to follow soon (see link below)

Anyway in the end after some time I let him downstairs … presumably by then he could evade the police … and I never saw him again – nor did I have another interloper high up in the skies above Notting Hill …

Here endeth this post … to solve one of my problems – another easy one after my fables … which yesterday claimed another thought process – when someone produced a dictionary of proverbs … and wondered about the term 'Belling the Cat' – attributed as a fable to Aesop – but set under Mediaeval attributions outside the Aesopic canon.

'Belling the Cat' - painting
by Breugel (1559)

I'd never heard of it … yet Gustave Doré created an illustration (1868), as too Peter Bruegel in his paintings of Netherlandish Proverbs (1559).

My sortie into May … gosh I waffle on – things might come straight sometime soon – if I'm lucky and all being well …......

Congo submarine canyon, west Africa

Welcome month of May and in the northern hemisphere some sunnier, warmer weather – well for us in the UK at least … I hoped!

Penelope Bagieu - illustrator and comic designer ...  see Wiki ...  

My earlier post on Portobello and Ladbroke Gardens estate in west London ... 

Caged Bird - Write Edit Publish post ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories