Glee!

[blahflowers]

Been to a proper grown-up meeting of staff about the restocking of The Closed Library. It was even in a room with poor air conditioning and a glass of water that had been there for several days. There was a flip-chart in the corner but sadly it was left alone.

Things would be going surprisingly well if we'd had this meeting several months ago. Unfortunately we weren't, so there's a mild sense of crisis. I think it was roughly two thirds of the money to restock the library has been spent. Problems such as me being given £500 to spend on an area of stock on the computer which turned out to only have about £40 of stock were aired. It caused some amusement about the fact that anything remotely porn-related had fallen to me to buy, I really need that 'Librarian - Pervert - Warrior' T-shirt made for the reopening in the Autumn.

But the really good news is I've been given another £1000 to buy graphic novels for TCL. I'll be going on my own this time, so should give me a chance to get the things like Ultimates that I didn't get last time. But if anyone can think of anything that hasn't already cropped up here that's available in the UK let me know...

Comments

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Alison Bechdel, graphic novel collection of Dykes to watch out for

Glorious. go buy. and read

[carrot-rope.livejournal.com]

I'd defnitely reccomend getting some stuff by Adrian Tomine, Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown, Seth et al... It's incredibly obvious for me to do that, and I don't know if it's specifically what you're interested in here - but they all most definitely have some amazing work, collected in really lovely books. I've only ever seen work by Daniel Clowes in libraries out of all of them, and I think they are some of the most talented people working on comics today.

I'll just pop a little list of the absolute best (that I know of) in here, and most of them should be available from Amazon and Page 45.com if nowhere else... I think all of these would add a nice bit of variety to your list.

Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde
Chester Brown, I never liked you + Louis Riel
Seth, It's a good life if you don't weaken
Daniel Clowes, Ghost World (although every library I know of now has about 3 copies! Just always in the kids section...) David Boring, Caricature (I'd say more, really, but these are the only collected ones I can vouch for)
Jeffrey Brown, Clumsy

Some Eddie Campbell might be an idea as well, and there's always stuff like Blankets, although that's a big and expensive book and I'm not sure how well it would fare in a library. (I always worry for the big volumes of Akira, which are rather like the Essential series of Marvel books).

I hope this helps a little! Just ask if you need some elaboration on any of this. There's obviously a lot more that I've merely heard of rather than got round to looking at myself, but I can most certainly vouch for the quality of practically everything from Drawn and Quarterly (and they have a lovely website should you need to research!).

[carrot-rope.livejournal.com]

Gah, sorry if that's just totally indulgent! They are my big comic loves.

Also: Page 45 is a shop in Nottingham, I just wasn't sure whereabouts you were based, although I'm guessing London (from remembering about all the meet stuff I've read about).

[blahflowers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, London, and I have to buy stuff from Gosh! only, though they can order stuff in that they haven't got on shelf.

[carrot-rope.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they'd have most of the stuff I mentioned, it's all pretty popular and well regarded stuff.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__bedhead/]

Yeah. The Drawn and Quarterly compilations: 3, 4, and 5 are all great. Big, magazine-sized format: thick like a book, clever like the cool kid you want to be friends with. Mix of really old material and lots of brand new stuff, American and European. Oooh, and lovely design.

Um. Krazy Kat. And Leviathan by Peter Blegvad. And Maakies!

Er, those, and ‘Black and White’ by Taiyo Matsumoto. 3 tiny volumes. Oh man, if you’ve never seen this, please look it over, it’s great. Two juvenile delinquents taking on a bunch of rotten nasty gangsters, but in ever such a sweet way. One of my all-time favourites, everyone should see it and love it.


Gosh, but you’re going to have a fun day. Lucky you.