Okay, I really hate reviewing books, but I also want to keep track of the good fiction and comics stuff I’ve read lately, so here:

	Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine Not my kind of story, not my kind of style, but a really well-executed, 100-page story. I think Tomine’s a terrific artist, and I love his sketchbooks and illustration work (his New Yorker covers are always great). This book deserves the attention it’s getting. Buy it on Amazon Adrian Tomine’s official site Tasteful PBS segment on the book Tomine on Fresh air — (listen to Terry Gross talk about speech balloons)
	The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd Went to see Chip Kidd talk a couple of weeks ago, so I read his first novel. It’s very funny and a quick read, and anybody who’s been through an art-school critique would appreciate the great classroom scenes. (Kidd modeled the fictional Winter Sorbeck off his own professor at Penn State, the graphic designer Lammy Sommese.) And since so much of the action takes place in the classroom, it sort of functions as a wacky introduction to graphic design. I recommend it. Buy it on Amazon
	Crickets #2 by Sammy Harkham This is a comic book. For $5, you get a bunch of stories, all of them pretty wild and pretty great. Sammy is one of my favorite cartoonists, and I’d been looking forward to this for a while. It didn’t disappoint. Buy it from Drawn + Quarterly Great review by Ken Parille
	Big Questions by Anders Nilsen I’ve been following this series for a while. I found #3 last week in a bargain bin at my local Half Price books—it’s amazing how much Nilsen has grown as an artist. I buy everything he makes, and so should everyone else. Buy from Drawn + Quarterly Anders’ blog Interview My review of Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow
	The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch This is bathroom reading: most of the strips are the equivalent of a good dick joke. A good and hilarious dick joke. Buy it from Amazon Read the strip online

From the sketchbook of Adrian Tomine:

Mark pointed out this great excerpt from an interview with Tomine:

I went out to dinner with my wife at a sushi place in Brooklyn. Right as we were seated at our table, the couple at the adjacent table begins the following exchange:

WOMAN: So, did you read that book I gave you?

MAN: Which one?

WOMAN: The comic. Summer Blonde.

MAN: Oh, yeah. I hated it.

My wife and I locked eyes, like we couldn’t believe this was really happening. We sat there in silence, fakely looking through our menus while the guy proceeded to just eviscerate me in way that was not only cruel but also quite insightful and intelligent. The woman started to get kind of defensive, and she said, “Well, I don’t know. I thought the stories had kind of a nice poetic touch to them.” And that just set the guy off even further. He starts ranting, “No, no…you see? You’re falling for his bullshit! It’s not poetic! It’s like…he’s trying to seem poetic without really saying anything at all!”

I was absolutely paralyzed, and my wife couldn’t take it anymore. She asked the waitress to move us to another seat. They moved us to the sushi bar, but even from there, we could still hear snippets of the guy’s tirade. In particular, I remember hearing him say, “Oh, you must be joking. That was absolutely the worst story in the whole book!” When the couple finished their dinner and got up to leave, my wife started rising from her seat, apparently to give the guy “a piece of her mind.” I had to beg and plead and eventually physically restrain her from saying anything to him. The timing and coincidence of it all seems too implausible to believe, but I swear it’s true, and as far as I know, not some kind of elaborate prank.

Hysterical. Here’s another interview with The Believer.