Strangers in Paradise Volumes 1-6 by Terry Moore

This is a review two to three years in the making.




I'm not sure when I started reading Strangers in Paradise but I loved them so much, I had to take a break before reading the last in the series. Once I finished volume 6, it would be all over. I knew Terry closed off the series at the end of volume six. I didn't want to live in a world where there was no more SiP left to read. Perhaps it was a holdover from the shock of no more Harry Potter but still, it would have been a sad state.

Strangers in Paradise was a long running comic book brought together in graphic novel form. Mostly it is about love and loss and all our crazy issues that keep ourselves from finding our true happiness. Katchoo is secretly in love with her best friend Francine who is with a horrible guy named Freddie. Katchoo meets art fan, David, and he seems to have a thing for Katchoo to give us a lovely love triangle. Then we find out that Katchoo has a mafia past and in the next six volumes, it all plays out in so many different and surprising ways. It felt a little soap opera in parts but it was written at a time when the mere idea of these complications of love would never have dared been breathed on national television. Not to mention, the story was told in a semi-nonlinear fashion that really appeals to me.

Moore trusts his audience to have a brain and isn't afraid to craft his story around that notion. He drew all the art himself and I love how much he mixes up styles to match the scene. Frantic, intense moments are drawn with a quick lack of detail that hurry you to the next panel. Quiet moments make you want to pause and take in all the detail that he has provided on that single page before moving on. I realize that is likely graphic artist 101 but it never gets tired.  He mixes light and dark and never wastes either to make his statement. The scariest part is his ability to write women so well that everyone should be able to find a character they identify with or wished they were.

So now my beloved SiP is all over. Surprisingly, you can choose to hold onto the last volume for three years and jump right back in as if you read the previous five just last week. As much as I liked having that one volume left to read and hold onto, a person has to move on. I'm sure I'll find something else to love just as much and I can always revisit my books any time I need a Katchoo fix.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Another finished book. Long weekends without any definite plans and a lot of stuff around the house you are trying to avoid doing will give you good reading motivation. Long weekends are great.


But I really don’t have much to say about The Reader. I had seen the movie when it was in the theatres and loved it. A friend lent me the book and it has lived on my shelf for way too long. I’m going through my books and trying to make progress on what I have and what I need to return to people. At least I have one less borrowed book.

As for the book, it was beautifully written. Not a long piece and it gives an interesting perspective of the effect of the war on the German people, even to those in the next generation. Though it was a short read, every chapter felt like a piece of the puzzle that defined that man’s life in three acts to display how one person can become interwoven into the fabric of their character.

That might be a very bad description of what the book was about. I highly recommend the book and the movie. The movie was a faithful representation of the book and you could choose one over the other and not feel cheated out of the story experience.

Now, must find a happy novel to read.

Staked by J.F. Lewis

Vampires are back. Well sort of. You see them all over, especially when a new movie is out but those aren’t real vampires. Vampires are monsters, just like werewolves, sea creatures, goblins, etc. Making your vampires cute and cuddly is an affront to the monster community and they should take a stand for their rights to be seen in an unflattering light. They should garner the respect that only true fear can accomplish. Anything less goes against the monster code.

There. Got that off my chest and I think I should be awarded points for not using the word glitter. It was hard but I suspect everyone knows what I’m talking about anyway so I won’t bore you with that.


As for today’s novel choice, we have a book that I only picked up because I wanted something as ridiculous and schlocky as I could possibly find. I chose Staked because it came with a scantily clad woman on the cover with a gun in her hand. Not to mention a summary on the back that sounded like the guy version of chick-lit: girlfriend pressuring him into turning her into a vampire, business trouble at his co-owned strip club, and after a weird turn of events, the local werewolf pack is after him. Is it every guy’s dream to own a strip club? For the record, I don’t really want an answer to that question but I can’t imagine anything more depressing.

As for the book, it runs pretty much exactly like the back summary describes. The only surprise is that he turns the girlfriend pretty close at the first of the story and it isn’t a pretty sight. Blood and gore and they really should make an informational video on it ‘cause it would make anyone not to want to go through something so gross. Not to mention, character-wise, I can’t imagine why he would want to choose to spend eternity with this person, nor why she with him. Perhaps in that sense, they are made for each other. After the whole turning, they really didn’t spend all that much time together and the story splits off into two directions: Eric dealing with his werewolf issues and Tabitha getting Vampire 101. Basically, I spent a lot of the first half of the book asking myself why I was still reading.

It wasn’t a completely horrible book to read. It was starting to get good when it abruptly ends. I suspect the author wrote a really, really long book and the publisher decides to cut it off there to split it into two books to be more profitable. It included the first chapter to the next book and that little bit of plot really needed to be in the first book. Not sure what happens after that little piece but the ending just seemed awkward to me after finally starting to like the characters a little bit.

If you are willing to invest into a new vampire series and read more than just the first book, then I can recommend. If you like your books more stand-alone so you can move on to other things, I’d leave this one on the shelf. J.F. Lewis gets extra points in my book for making his vampires (or werewolves or whatevers) monsters in the truest sense. They are not nice, they kill, are not to be trusted, and make choices out of personal gain. And that makes them monsters, just as much as humans can be.

Now I’m off to do something productive and perhaps unmonster like. Cross fingers.