About BenI was born and raised right here in Dubuque before I headed out for awhile, traipsing about the country in search of work until I settled in California for a spell, writing for Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends. When I got home, I ended up buying the comic shop I went to as a kid, so now I proudly own Comic World & Games. We moved over to Dodge St, up the hill from the Hy-Vee Gas Station. It provides a great excuse to read twenty comics a week and keep shelves full of gently-loved books close at hand!
(See the past Reader of the Month posts here)
Q & A with Ben
Q. What is the best book you have read within the last year (or ever)?
A. I’m pretty confident that The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is an experience worth going through. In comics, Al Ewing’s run on Immortal Hulk and Chip Zdarsky’s Daredevil have been jaw-droppingly incredible for sustained periods over the last year.
Q. What is your ideal reading environment (location, sound, snacks, etc.)?
A. There’s a chair in my living room made of clouds that you can just sink into, like plush chocolate velvet. The lamp next to it has a warm, diffuse light that really brings out the colors in a well-drawn comic.
Q. What book are you most excited about reading next and what about it is most exciting?
A. Next up is my semi-annual re-read of the Lord of the Rings. I’m actually a little late starting it, but the shop’s been hectic lately. It’s always a shot of nostalgia, and it’s one of the rare books worth reading aloud to savor the flavor of Tolkien’s poetry. Dude clearly loved words.
Q. What book do you think more people should read and why do you think they should read it?
A. Any of the pretentious door-stop bricks by overconfident white dudes. Infinite Jest mostly succeeds as an examination of addiction, and you’ll feel awkward déjà vu at some of its prescience. There’s great bits about skill progress and pursuing your dreams. Ignore the footnotes, honestly, if you want to. Don’t let someone tell you how to read any of ‘em. Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are both worth it, and you can find something in them even if you can’t read them the way your first-year professor wanted you to. Gravity’s Rainbow, same thing. A ton of Shakespeare is genuinely belly-laugh-in-a-room-full-of-strangers funny, and some of it more so even if you don’t know the exact pronunciation of a line to make it iambic pentameter. That’s a whole bunch of words before I got to why, so I’ll keep that bit short: cuz they are fun and full of gorgeous verbs and witty metaphors that’ll make you grin, as well as grim nouns and dour similes that’ll bring you to tears and make you feel stuff. That’s all you can ask of a story, right?
Q. What book has been the most challenging for you to read? How did it challenge you?
A. Twilight, the whole saga, really, was difficult to appreciate at first. It’s chugging-maple-syrup sweet in places, with fizzy writing that can feel limp at first glance. Coming to recognize the genius of Bella’s sparse self-description, the way Meyer invites the reader to really escape into her world, just the rawness of a feminine power fantasy in a time when that still wasn’t acknowledged (look at reviews of the books written back then, dismissive and patronizing), it took me longer than I’d prefer to admit. But the series genuinely earns a place in any sensible American literary canon, even with the odd werewolf/baby stuff in the last book.
Q. When do you decide to stop reading a book? (In other words, do you read every book to the last page, or is there a moment when you decide to stop?)
A. True story, it wasn’t until I was thirty-one years old that I learned it’s possible to stop reading a story.
Check out more of Ben's Favorite Books
Apply to be the next C-SPL Reader of the Month!
No comments:
Post a Comment