Our February 20 newsletter is out. Please check it out.

Time is something that humanity has always known and measured. Early humans marked the days of the year to know when the solstices were, when to plant crops, when to expect the monsoons. But we tend to think of timekeeping as a more modern device. Clocks to tell workers their shift at the factory, or when to expect the next train. (Time zones were the creation of the railroads to allow them to synchronize their schedules.)

The February 6 Newsletter is now out! Check it out for our reviews of Graphic Novels!
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This month we are featuring graphic novels, those beautiful volumes that marry artwork with storytelling. The stories can be as deep and as moving as novels that employ only prose, but their form brings both freedom and constraints to tell stories in a different way.
The freedom, of course, is the artwork. Settings, characters, emotions, actions can all be expressed by the artwork. By lifting that burden from the text, the author can concentrate on the dialog and the storyline. Working together, the art and the text tells a story in a different way than a traditional novel.
That format brings constraints, as well. Dialog can't run on for pages and pages. It has to be honed down to fit in the panels, where it has to take much less of the page than the artwork. Almost like distilling a scene or a thought to fit in the three lines of a haiku, the author has to think carefully about the impact of every word.
Most people know a few of the major graphic novels, especially those that have been turned into movies, such as Watchmen or V for Vendetta. We decided to feature a range of lesser-known titles that have entertained us. We hope you enjoy our selections.

From the January newsletter.
If this were a normal year, I would be in Japan with my family. I call my wife's mother's house "the last house at the end of the rice fields before the mountains." It's in a small village at the edge of a populous river valley. Beyond it are steep hillsides, often planted with rows of tea bushes. Wild boar and monkeys make their home there, requiring a defensive perimeter around the family gardens to stop their depredations. There is probably a local legend of the gaijin who once a year walks over the mountain to see the temple on top and the ruins of a castle that stood there four hundred years ago. The few other hikers stare, but bow when I wish them akemashite omedetou - happy new year - as I pass. Even up here, small shrines and buddha statues are tucked along the path, hiding among the gnarled tree roots.