At first glance, Ross Horsley’s MY FIRST DICTIONARY could indeed pass for something you’d find on your kindergartener’s bookshelf. Then you notice the alphabet blocks stacked by the character on the cover: They spell “vodka.”
“What the hell?” you might say, and randomly flip open to the “L” section, which kicks off with the word “Last,” teaching young minds its definition by using it in a sentence: “Billy’s horse finished last. Billy’s horse finished after all of the others.” Nothing unusual about that, except that the accompanying illustration is of Mom picking out a cut of meat at the butcher’s counter.
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Aaron Leighton’s SPIRIT CITY TORONTO is an interesting little work. The square book, about as thick as a pencil split in half, presents one to two photographs per spread of the Canadian city’s alleyways, sidewalks and parking lots.
And then Leighton plops in creatures of his own creation into them. The quasi-construction paper monsters — cute and non-threatening, one and all — peer from behind corners, hang from telephone lines, or stand front and center. There are no words; the images say it all.
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Who’s Ryan Mecum?
He’s written WEREWOLF HAIKU.
It will make you smile.
First he did the vamps
Then he wrote about zombies
And now the werewolves
And, yes, his haikus
are pretty effing clever —
way better than mine. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
THE BIG LEBOWSKI is one of my go-to movies. No matter how many times I’ve watched, I’m more than willing to revisit it. So when Adam Bertocci’s TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEBOWSKI arrived, I was a little leery. I’m not a fan of the recent spate of mash-up books where they stick vampires, zombies and whatever monster they can think of into classic titles. But this little number has a premise that fans of the film will love: What if William Shakespeare wrote THE BIG LEBOWSKI in his time?
Let that idea sink in your head: the whole movie in Elizabethan English, written as a play that could have been performed at the Globe. Bertocci had his work cut out for him by messing with such a cult film, but not only did he nail it perfectly, but included some literal laugh-out-loud moments.
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