Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Top 5 Books I Lie About Reading

Sadie Mattox recently posted the top five books she's claimed to have read in the past, but really hasn't. I'd actually been thinking about posting a sort of confessional along those lines myself, so I'm going to treat it as a meme.

Except, of course, I don't think I've ever actually claimed to have read something I haven't. So here's the top five comics that I really should have read by now.
  1. Tintin -- I've thumbed through a few of Herge's books, but I've never actually sat down and read any of them. In fact, I've spent more time reading ABOUT Herge than I have reading his actual work. Doubly atrocious is that I have digital versions of ALL these books for a couple years now and I've never read any of them. I don't have a good explanation for this.
  2. Hernandez Bros. -- Not strictly true; I have read the handful of Mister X issues they did under Dean Motter's direction, but that was only in the past year or so. But that has been it. I've never even picked up, let alone browsed through, Love & Rockets or any of the reprints; I've just always seemed to find other things that struck me as more intriguing.
  3. Dave Sim -- Never read anything by him at all, comics or otherwise. I do have a copy of Spawn #10 that he worked on, but I've never cracked it open. That's the primary reason I've never weighed in on any debates about Sim's socio-political views; I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge or experience to base my opinions on. I think I've largely been dissuaded from reading any of it precisely because of all the vitriol that's been thrown against Sim himself.
  4. Scott Pilgrim -- I've seen some of Bryan Lee O'Malley's work on web sites and whatnot, but it never sparked that much interest for me. I honestly don't even know what the hell Scott Pilgrim is about. For some reason, this has absolutely not captured my attention in any capacity.
  5. Popular manga -- I have read some manga, but primarily somewhat "off the beaten path" series that have only lasted a handful of books. I've never looked at Naruto or DeathNote or Bleach or anything along those lines. I flipped through One Piece once, but not enough to get a good sense of anything. Too daunting to try taking on such long works, perhaps? I haven't exactly jumped on to any long-running superhero books either, and I suspect that if I really understood how much I'd missed before I started reading Fantastic Four I might well have decided to give it a pass. To be fair, I have read the 28 volumes of Dark Horse's Lone Wolf & Cub reprints, but those are really in a class by themselves; it'd be like comparing Watchmen to... well, anything else DC published.

So there's what I haven't read. Anyone else?
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