The Gondola Maker

The Gondola Maker is the first book in Laura Morelli's Venetian Artisan series. It features a fictional young gondola maker named Luca Vianello who is supposed to inherit his family's esteemed gondola making business.  His parents want him to marry a girl from the glassblowing guild in order to strengthen their political ties in Venice. After a fight with his father over the poor treatment of his mother, the boatyard accidentally catches fire and is destroyed. Luca flees. He fears being charged criminally as well as being unsure about whether his family survived the fire.

Knowing he needs a job in order to eat, Luca hires himself out to the owner of one of the largest ferry stations in Venice. His job is to load and unload boxes of merchandise for customers. It is a menial job compared to the artistry he was used to performing at home. Soon after his hire, Luca gains the attention of a master painter named  Trevisan and Master Trevisan hires him to restore an old gondola that he inherited from his father. Luca works hard on the gondola so that he can offer a ride to a girl he has met at Master Trevisan's studio. However, the girl like many others Trevisan has painted will be sexually assaulted by the man who purchased her painting, with her father pocketing alot of money. The girl will have to go into a convent though, as she will no longer be marriageable.

The Gondola Maker shows the reader the level of craftsmanship that is required to construct a top quality gondola.  You also learn about the life of a 16th century Venetian, particularly the gondoliers with their secret codes for maneuvering the canals of Venice and their custom of making a few extra bucks with their dishonest practices. The author's knowledge of the era is evident. She paints a realistic picture of 16th century Venice with women being treated as non-entities, extravagant palaces for the rich and ordering into slavery any citizen who violates the laws.

While I enjoyed the book I have to say the second book in the series is better. The Painter's Apprentice was an exquisite tale of a female apprentice of Master Trevisan. Her main problem is preventing the boatman from telling everyone her secret. These gondoliers just can't be trusted but they sure are entertaining!

Forthcoming April Reviews

I have a stack of books from the library and from Amazon that I am ready to read and review:

An Island of Sea Women: Lisa See
The Malta Exchange: Steve Berry
The Enemies of Versailles: Sally Christie
The Gondola Maker: Laura Morelli
Peace Child: Don Richardson
Harvest of  Secrets: Ellen Crosby

I am on a wait list for Jennifer Robson's The Gown and expect that I will get it around the end of April. The Steve Berry book was reserved at the library in hardcover but I received an audio version of the book instead. I am not sure I will be able to handle that format. We shall see. In addition, I just bought Ken Follett's A Column of Fire but it's 916 pages will have to wait for another month.

April will be a month of exciting reading!

Book of the Month: March

My favorite book for the month of March is Dan Dougherty's Self Employee of the Month. It is a comic book and is the 4th book in the Beardo series.

This book was just plain funny. I laughed from the moment I began reading until I finished the book.  Beardo's comments about being at Comic Con are spot on and how he handled working at home was hilarious. This was the best book in the series.

Not all comic books make a reader laugh out loud. Self Employee of the Month is one of them.

The Miracle of Creation

This is the 5th and final book in the Beardo series. The comic strip has ended. The series is autobiographical and covered ten years of the author's life. The Miracle of Creation was published in 2016.

The story begins with the newly pregnant Meg (Beardo's wife) counting up the number of days she can take off for maternity leave. Their two dogs see the baby as competition for attention but once they realize that she will throw food on the floor for them to clean up they are happy. Beardo is still attending many Comic Cons throughout the year and brings the baby along after she is born. He is teaching at the International School of Comics as well as continuing to write his Beardo comic strip.

This book is more of a poignant end to the series than a humorous book. There is humor here, just more poignancy as the story is really about becoming a parent. Beardo, however, is supposed to be a funny comic strip.

I hate to rate the book 3 out of 5 stars as each of the other 4 books were 5 star books. It just wasn't as funny as the earlier books. However, as I was reading I felt like I was witnessing a friend having a baby. I have come to love the Beardo and Meg characters in the series and am sad that it is over.

Self Employee of the Month

Self Employee of the Month is the 4th book in the Beardo 5 part comics collection by Dan Dougherty. It was published in 2015. At this point there are only 5 books in the series but as Dougherty's life progresses I am thinking that there might be more coming in the future.  I hope so.  I love this series which is autobiographical.  I met Dougherty a few years ago at Chicago's Printer's Row Lit Fest.  He hasn't been there the past 2 years but I hope to see him there next month.  I will have read all of his books by then and have many questions to ask him about his work and about cartooning in general.

The story opens with Beardo writing an agenda for a self employed staff meeting. Interspersed throughout the book there is a roll call, productivity report, advertising report, an accounting report, a self employee of the month award presentation, and an annual Christmas party that gets changed to a holiday party in order to be open minded.  He attends Comic Con with the first 3 books in this series but only sells books when he is in the bathroom and his attractive wife is handling the sales.

The author shows the reality of life as an artist when he shows Beardo denying friends' attempts to get free art jobs out of him. The reality of being a cartoonist in the 21st century is also discussed with newspapers turning away cartoons that they like due to dwindling budgets. Of course, the need to get a "real" job comes up when Beardo begins substitute teaching in elementary school.

I loved when he and his wife Meg went on a date to the Art Institute in Chicago where I live and visited one of my favorite exhibits, the Thorne Miniature Rooms. This exhibit has been open almost 100 years and has 68 miniature rooms decorated from time periods covering the 1600s to the 1930s. Chicago is the setting of the story probably because the author lives in the suburban area. Part of the setting included our town's first polar vortex in 2014.

I think this book is the funniest one in the series. With Beardo's sarcastic quips about working from home, his imaginary alcoholic cat friend Whiskers, and comments about being at Comic Con, he had me chuckling throughout the book.

This is the best book in the series. Way over 5 out of 5 stars!

'Til Debt Do Us Part

'Til Debt Do Us Part is the 3rd book in Dan Dougherty's 5 part Beardo comic book series.  I read the first two books in the series last year and loved them.  I just had the next three books in the series delivered in the mail and immediately began reading.

The story opens with Beardo and his girlfriend Megan getting engaged while on a cruise. Upon their return to work at a coffeehouse, Beardo quits his longtime job as a barista to focus on his cartooning. Meg continues to work there as a manager. With wedding bills piling up, the wedding planning going awry and his art business not taking off as he expected, the stress mounts and Beardo considers joining another band and getting a bank loan. Before the big day arrives Meg thinks she has become pregnant.

I love the  Beardo and Meg characters. They seem perfect for each other. When one is down the other is up and vice versa. The secondary characters from the coffeehouse and the band are sufficiently weird to bring humor to this book.  Beardo himself is hilarious and is definitely the star of the series.

The author uses bright colors with oversized fonts in a horizontal comic strip format that is traditionally used in Sunday newspapers. It makes for comfortable and fast reading. I love that Dougherty uses vivid colors in his comics. In fact, I try to only select graphic novels with colored graphics to buy.  When I am feeling down, the colors on the page just speak to me. I am an artist on the side as Beardo was for many years so perhaps that is why I love to see those vivid colors.

This installment of the series is a great addition to the series.  Beardo's life moves along at a quick pace and he makes everything about life seem funny.  5 out of 5 stars!

Behind Putin's Curtain: Friendships and Misadventures Inside Russia

I received an advanced review copy of Behind Putin's Curtain through Librarything's Early Reviewer's Program. It is a travelogue of Stephan Orth's 10 week trip inside the republics that make up the Russian Federation.

Orth begins his journey in Moscow where he had advance "hotel" arrangements through couchsurfing.com. In fact, all of of overnight stays were arranged through this organization. The results were usually comical but sometimes dangerous. Orth stated early in the book that he "wanted to spend time with normal people doing the things that they normally do and not focus on politicians, activists, or intellectuals, as is the usual practice of journalists." The purpose of the trip was to understand what was on young people's minds and to understand the Putin phenomenon and its effect on people.

My first impression of this country was that it was truly poverty stricken. I always believed otherwise. While I knew there were parts that were poor my general impression was that Russia was a comfortable country that I would like to visit one day. This book changed my mind. Russia seems to be the kind of country my church would have a practical mission trip to in order to construct a building or fix one.

My first impression of the book questioned how the author could stand these strange people he stayed with. My next thought was how did these folks become so strange in the first place? Russia is a country of many accomplishments yet the people are quirky and they are living like they are in a third world country.

While their living conditions are not so great, i.e., food and electrical shortages, they seem to love Putin as he is a strong leader.  They see him as being able to bring back national pride and that is more important than their personal struggles. When Putin invaded Crimea, they felt proud of the accomplishment. When Putin looks superior to other world leaders they are similarly proud.  When Russia gets blamed for interference in international affairs the Russian people feel proud that they have power again.

The author made an in incredibly astute assessment of the world's political situation. During the months before and after his trip the British voted for Brexit, the U.S. elected Trump as President, Igor Dodon became the President of Moldavia and Rumen Radev, the new president of Bulgaria, took over the presidency of the European Union. All of these events happened exactly as Russia would have wished. They all strengthen Putin's position in the world. I haven't heard any of the U.S. news stations report on Putin's political power in the world as the author has reported.

The author never stayed in one place more than a few days. He maximized his interactions with people and summarized his experiences at the end of some of the chapters with what he calls truths about Russia. They are comical but true. An example is Truth #6 "The words 'That's Russia' explain many things for which there is no logical explanation."

However, the book was slow reading perhaps because of the journalistic format. Most of the interesting assessments of the Russian people and of Putin were at the end of the book. The reader does get a feel for what it's like to travel within the country via train and plane. The psyche of the Russian people is evident in the stories the author told from his interactions with his various hosts. You only get that from the format the author used where he shows you what the Russian people said and did when he was with them. He doesn't tell you in a summary. While it seemed the book read slow, I don't know that the reader would be able to surmise the Russian psyche without this particular format. It was necessary.

I find it hard how to rate this book on my 5 star rating list. The author made some incredible political assessments. He showed us what makes Russians tick. However, it was slow reading. Even though I think the way he wrote it was necessary, it was slow reading for me. I am thinking 3 or 4 stars for its entertainment readability but if you consider the book's duty to inform it might be a 5. I cannot decide so I won't rate it.  Read it yourself and you decide.