Author of My First Kafka and his wife are pretty cool Brooklynites!
“Creating everything from hip dining to children's literature, Itta Werdiger-Roth and Matthue Roth have become Brooklyn's Jewish power couple.
The couple met in 2004 when they were both visiting the city. Now married and living in Brooklyn, they have three daughters, ages 6, 4 and 3 months. Their newest family addition has caused Werdiger-Roth to take some time away from her other baby ¡½ her kosher, Prospect Heights restaurant, Mason and Mug.”
Read the full article here on The Jewish Week:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/36-under-36/mason-and-mug-and-beyond
Schoolgirl is the English translation by Allison Markin Powell of ½÷À¸ÅÌ, which was published in Japan in 1939 when Osamu Dazai was twenty-nine or thirty. It's narrated in the first-person by a young student, maybe in her early teens. She relates one day of her experience, from ¡ÆLaying in bed each morning, I'm always so pessimistic' to going to school to eating dinner to trying to sleep and sleeping. She does this by selectively presenting her internal monologue to the reader and sometimes commenting on it in a manner that is consistently endearing, surprising, moving, insightful to me. She often describes her behaviour and thoughts and feelings as occurring ¡Æfor some reason' or ¡Æsuddenly'. Schoolgirl is a short book. I've read it 4–5 times. By my estimate it's 20 per cent shorter than the short story ¡ÆGood Old Neon' by David Foster Wallace.
read the article here:
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Three-Japanese-Books
Italian writer and music journalist Danilo Deninotti was, like myself and many others, greatly affected when he first discovered the music of Nirvana. After he changed the face of rock music, the legend of frontman Kurt Cobain has only grown since his suicide in 1994. When Deninotti decided he wanted to create a graphic novel about Cobain, he chose to avoid the much-written about years of drug use and crippling celebrity and instead focus on Cobain's childhood and the early, pre-Nevermind years of the band.
Read the full article here:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/56235/most-interesting-comics-week
This slender volume contains retellings of three Kafka pieces. “The Metamorphosis,” of course, along with “Excursion in the Mountains” and “Josefine the Singer or, The Mouse People.” The latter two I am ashamed to admit I was completely unfamiliar with, so this book was my first experience with them.
This is a beautiful book which stands alone as a piece of art. That's my appraisal. The artwork is just extraordinary. Edward Gorey is, I think, the first reference-point many will make, but the line-work is much more detailed than anything Gorey ever did. Look at the full rolls of thick beards of the “three strange men with long beards” who have moved in with the Samsas, the way their beards roll and tumble like tiny strands of insane pasta, each individually realized.
Read the full article here:
http://www.picturebooksreview.com/2014/05/my-first-kafka-2013.html
Italian writer and music journalist Danilo Deninotti was, like myself and many others, greatly affected when he first discovered the music of Nirvana. After he changed the face of rock music, the legend of frontman Kurt Cobain has only grown since his suicide in 1994. When Deninotti decided he wanted to create a graphic novel about Cobain, he chose to avoid the much-written about years of drug use and crippling celebrity and instead focus on Cobain's childhood and the early, pre-Nevermind years of the band.
Read full article here:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/56235/most-interesting-comics-week
Japanese Psychological Astrology Researcher Ryuji Kagami brings 30 years of Astrology expertise to the United States and Tarot.com. Kagami is a celebrity in Japan, well known for authoring and translating more than 100 books about Astrology, Tarot, divination and mythology, and for his many appearances on TV and radio
Read the full article here:
http://www.tarot.com/bios/ryuji-kagami
One Peace Books confirmed with ANN that it has licensed the Raqiya manga by Masao Yajima and Boichi for release in North America.
The manga series launched in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 2008 and the fifth and final volume shipped in Japan in 2010.
Yajima wrote the Human Crossing manga with artist Kenshi Hirokane and it was later adapted into an anime series in 2003. Geneon Entertainment released the anime version in North America in 2005. Tokyopop released Mochizuki's Dragon Head manga between 2006 and 2008.
Korean artst Boichi is currently serializing Sun-Ken Rock in Shonen Gahosha's Young King magazine. Crunchyroll is publishing the series digitally. Boichi is also drawing the Sun-Ken Rock spinoff Wallman in Shueisha's Grand Jump magazine, Boichi also contributed to the one-volume Trigun: Multiple Bullets anthology manga, which Dark Horse Comics released in North America last year.
Click here to see the article:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-03-30/one-peace-books-adds-masao-yajima-and-boichi-raqiya-manga
Comic book biographies have got a bit of a bad name for themselves these days – mostly thanks to Bluewater.
This looks like something else entirely.
Kurt Cobain: When I Was An Alien is the Italian comic biography of the legendary Nirvana frontman, 100 pages long, written by Danilo Deninotti and drawn by Toni Bruno. It will get an English translation in April by One Peace Books.
Read the full article here:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/24/when-kurt-cobain-was-an-alien/
Matthue Roth (no relation to Penina Roth) ¡½ whose latest book, My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs, is the kind of children's story that adults love ¡½ wrote a different sort of Orthodox memoir, Yom Kippur a Go-Go. Described as a ¡Èmind-blowing meeting of pop culture, Orthodox faith, and hipster poetics,¡É Roth's story is basically the opposite of what Auslander and Feldman have done. Despite the peyos(side locks) and yarmulke that identify him as a Hasid, he dresses more like the kind of guy you would skateboard with than the type you'd meet at synagogue. With his head and heart in the Hasidic world, Roth also celebrates his secular tastes throughout his memoir, striking a balance between his old-time religious beliefs and modern-world interests, from poetry to hip hop.
Read the full article here:
http://flavorwire.com/436087/leah-vincent-deborah-feldman-and-the-cultural-fascination-with-orthodox-jewish-memoirs/
osa said graphic novels have been one of the biggest trends in science books this year, appealing especially to children at the middle and high school level. Several graphic novels made the holiday list, including Ian Flitcroft and Britt Spencer's Journey by Starlight: A Time Traveler's Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything. In their story, a young Albert Einstein and his companion travel on a beam of light to explore some fundamental concepts in physics and cosmology.
Read full article here:
http://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-science-books-film-publishes-2013-holiday-gift-guide-0
