I haven’t made it out to the bookstore yet this week but I’m sure my husband and I will find time over the weekend to go visit one. I’ve got coupons and lots of suggestions on love stories to check out thanks to you guys but in the meantime I have gotten two books this week.

First, I’m super excited about Pretty In Ink by Karen E. Olson. She was kind of enough to send me a copy of her latest Tattoo Shop mystery featuring Brett Kavanaugh, tattoo artist and owner of The Painted Lady, a Vegas tattoo shop.

“If your name is Britney Brassieres, being taken down by a tsunami of champagne might seem only fitting.”

After that opening line I can’t wait to see what Brett gets up to in this installment. By the way isn’t the cover art great? Anyway, I also hope to have a Q&A with Karen so stay tuned for that.

My other book came via BookMooch. Lately I can’t seem to find any books I want to mooch and my wish list just keeps growing. Anyway, I was excited to get a copy of Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan. I had put that book on my wish list quite a while back and I could barely remember anything about the book.

From the synopsis: Highly original and darkly funny, Clare Allan’s debut novel explores the relationship between N., a patient in a mental institution, and Poppy Shakespeare, a new and disturbingly ‘sane’ arrival who finds herself having to feign mental illness in order to be released.

I’d love to start one of these now but I am so behind on my mystery book and I want to finish it in time for book discussion on Tuesday so these will have to wait a bit. How about you, is there a book you can’t wait to start?

“You thought you knew suburbia. Then you meet an exchange student from another world, discover a secret room that lets you escape to a place of perfect beauty, find a neighborhood where brightly painted missiles decorate every yard, and wait for a blind reindeer who demands a very special offering…”

What a fun and magical book Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan turned out to be. I wasn’t sure what to expect but this collection of 15 short stories is all about making the ordinary a little bit more magical. There are fantastical characters, strange occurrences and basically suburban life is turned into a place with much more excitement and happenings than you could have ever imagined.

Not only were the stories exciting but the artwork is really beautiful. Whether it’s a colorful picture that goes with a story or drawings that are more broody and dark they all complement each story so well. It really makes me wonder though whether the pictures came first or the stories, or maybe it’s a combination of both creative efforts.

To me that is actually the hard part of a graphic novel. I want to soak up the words but I also don’t want to miss out on any of the visual elements. I know I’ve mentioned that I rarely do re-readings but with graphic novels I do re-viewings I guess. I do like to go back and just look at the pictures to see the lines, the shadows, the little things that make a picture great.

Back to the stories in this collection though. One of my favorites was Eric, which is about foreign exchange student. Eric does things a bit differently, for example, he sleeps in a teacup in the pantry but he is polite and asks a lot of questions. The drawings show Eric focusing on a stamp, a bottlecap and other random things. One day Eric leaves and his host family is unsure if Eric enjoyed his stay but when they go to the pantry they will learn just a little bit more about Eric and a bit more perhaps about appreciating the little things.

Another story that I really liked was Distant Rain which asks what happens to all the poems people write. If you’ve ever written a poem or tried to write one, then you will really like this. It talks about poems that are burnt, shredded or flushed away but on rare occasions some words will escape. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens to those escaped words and verses.

I really loved this book and hope you’ll add it to your stacks.

Source: Library copy