New from Quirk Books in association with The Library of Congress comes Presidential Campaign Posters – a beautifully arranged presentation of over two centuries of incredible election art. In its 208 pages, Presidential Campaign Posters contains one hundred ready-to-frame campaign posters from some of the most memorable winners and losers from two hundred years of American presidential campaigns.

Holding the rather weighty tome in my hands, the first thing that strikes me about Presidential Campaign Posters is the sheer quality of the book. Presented in full colour, and stunning detail, each campaign poster is supported by a textual description of the election campaign alongside key results and other useful snippets of information. This provides the reader with important contextual detail, and is a fantastic resource to support the posters which readers should note are presented with micro-perforations so they can be easily removed should the reader so wish. My only issue in this regard is that the book is so beautifully presented if you wish to use the posters for display purposes you really should purchase two copies of the book so you always have one available for reference!

It really is rather hard to find anything particularly negative to say about Presidential Campaign Posters. From a UK perspective, I suspect it will likely not do anywhere nearly so well over here as it will do sold in the US, but then that really is to be expected. For history buffs, or those with a particular interest in American Politics this book really is a fantastic piece of work, and is an essential purchase for anyone with even a vague interest in the subject area. History classes in particular will especially benefit from this beautifully presented, informative book.

Presidential Campaign Posters will be published in the UK on 15 July 2012. For purchasing information, visit Amazon.co.uk.

Penned by popular cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld, Goliath is a reimagining of the famous ‘David and Goliath’ story, told from the perspective of Goliath, a simple, yet earnest man who would much rather be doing admin work than issuing challenges to the Israelite army.  

For such a simple, short work, Goliath has incredible heart. Even a few days after having read the book cover to cover, I am still struck by the sheer humanity of the work. In Goliath, Gauld has managed to encapsulate a small part of the human condition, and through his reinvention of the David and Goliath tale, has created something that is once both bleak and yet incredibly moving. From my own reading at least, there is even something slightly absurdist about the tale that draws parallels with the likes of Beckett at al, which only serves to underline Goliath’s central messages.  

Even if you’re not a fan of ‘comics’ or ‘graphic novels’ I thoroughly recommend you give Goliath a try. It will take you less than an hour to read, and it might well be the best hour you spend reading this year!

He’s back. And he’s the biggest thing in politics.

He is the perfect presidential candidate. Conservatives love his hard-hitting Republican resume. Liberals love his peaceful, progressive practicality. The media can’t get enough of his larger-than-life personality. And all the American people love that he’s an honest, hard-working man who tells it like it is.

                There’s just one problem. He is William Howard Taft… and he was already president a hundred years ago. So what on earth is he doing alive and well and considering a running mate in 2012?

And well you might wonder, what is William Howard Taft doing running for president in 2012, and indeed, what is Jason Heller doing writing a book such as this?

Regular followers of my reviews will recognise Jason Heller as author of The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook, a novelty fan-book which I was rather impressed by, even though I admit, the Pirates franchise is not to my taste. With Taft 2012, Heller makes his professional debut as novelist, and I have to say, even though I had my doubts, he has done a really good job.

While Taft 2012 is most obviously a satire – a book designed to poke fun at democracy, the American presidential elections, and most obviously, ourselves as people, on satire alone, I don’t think this book would stand up. What makes Taft 2012 so impressive in my mind at least, is its human story. This isn’t a book about America, or even about William Taft per se – Taft 2012, is, at its heart, a book about people – a book about the human experience.

Taft himself is a quite brilliantly drawn character. Naturally, he’s a “larger than life” figure – on account of his girth more than anything else – but there’s something about him that really makes him stand out far beyond what on first glance appears to be a fat man with a big moustache.

There’s something very real, and very moving about the way his whole experience is portrayed. Some of the most powerful examples of Taft’s humanity are to be found when Taft is in isolation – when he has a monologue with a statue of himself, or when he finally brings himself to confront the words read at his eulogy all those many years before. History, we learn, isn’t always as clear-cut as it might seem. There are some powerful messages to be found here, hidden within the human tale of Taft’s re-examination of himself, and it’s in these messages that we find a book of real power – a book of heart that very few might expect.

I worry that because Taft 2012 is very clearly a book of its time – a book about the 2012 presidential election, a book with a year in its title – that it might well fall victim to its own marketing. As I alluded to in my opening, Taft 2012 is so much more than a book about the American presidential election; so much more than a book about 2012, or even about Taft himself. It’s a book about us as people, and who we are. For this reason, I highly recommend it to anyone looking to read something a bit different this year, something with a little more soul. There is certainly a lot more to this book than meets the eye.

And another thing…

Before I end this review, I think I need to say a few things about the technical presentation of the book, and the way Quirk Books have gone about marketing it to the wider public. While in my main review I have focussed on the merits I feel Taft 2012 has as a book in itself, these two additional features, in my mind, make this book really stand out.

Firstly, readers will note I did not for one moment mention the style. You may be forgiven then, for thinking that Taft 2012 is your traditional novel. Well, you’d be wrong. The book consists of a number of different presentation styles, all very astutely woven together to create a coherent whole. There is on the one hand, the “novel” itself in the traditional sense, with chapters of text taking us from one scene onto the next. Between these chapters however, there are a number of additional sections, including news polls, media transcripts, radio conversations and even social media posts! While at first I was a little perturbed by this experimental style, I have to say in Taft 2012 it works really well. As a fully signed-up member of the social media generation, there is something about this style that really strikes a chord with me, and I can’t help but think we may find this sort of thing happening more and more in modern books – especially works of this ilk. Whereas with some books you would certainly say this sort of thing would distract from the main plot, in Taft 2012 the additional material actually adds to the book – it gives a real sense of the “Taft phenomenon” – of the way stories can grow in the press, and how the story of Taft’s appearance quickly became national news.

It’s testament to the author, that the style works so well, and doesn’t “jar” the reader as it so very easily could have. I’d even go so far as to say the style works so well, the book wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is without it!

This brings me on then, to my final point about Taft 2012: marketing. Readers will be interested to know that Taft 2012 has its own website www.taft2012.com. This in itself, is not a new thing, but what I think works particularly well in this case, is how the marketing team at Quirk Books have tied the two together. Part “real life” presidential page and part advert for the book, the Taft website is an interesting development in book marketing, and along with the advent of the “book trailer” has become one of my favourite examples of how print publishing is adapting itself for the modern world. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the book even contains links and references to the website!

To find out more visit the Taft 2012 website and see for yourself.

While I admit to previously having been aware of the Onion, up to now I have not been a regular reader. As a complete outsider then, Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters came to me as something of a pleasant surprise, both in terms of its quality of humour and in many respects, the deeper more subtle meanings woven into the news stories. One particularly standout story for me was “Best Man Has No Idea Of Why He Was Picked” – a report on how an office worker was picked as best man at the wedding of a colleague he hardly knows. Funny yes, shocking perhaps, but even more powerful for me was the underlying satire poking fun at the mundane and isolating nature of working life. Are we all really so shallow and so isolated from our fellow man or woman that this is what we have become? While there are doubtless those of you out there who would answer “no”, I for one certainly saw if not a small part of myself in this story, then a small part of the working world I inhabit. For me, this story really exemplifies the subtle nature of Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters which pushes it beyond the scope of other books of its ilk.

Of course this isn’t to say that Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is without fault. While at times the satire can be very strong and very affecting, the quality is not consistent throughout. Given the theme of the book (i.e., relationships), the material can also at times feel rather repetitive. As with so many humour books such as this, Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters, is not a book to be read in a sitting or two – more it is a book to be dived into for a few pages, then returned to at a later point in time.

With an RRP in the UK of £8.99 Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is probably placed just about right in terms of quality and quantity of content, or as I’d like to put it: “bang for your buck”. Ok, so given the nature of the book, perhaps “bang” is the wrong word, but I think you get my drift! While Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters is by no means the perfect humour book, I do consider it good value for money, and if nothing else, it will certainly prove a good conversation starter!

Penned by ‘voice of the Everyman’ Brian McGackin, Broetry is an attempt to reinterpret what McGackin considers to be an effete, rapidly-shrinking form of literature with ‘little popularity’. It is an attempt to make poetry accessible to men, who according to McGackin, find poetry of little relevance in the modern-day world.

Spurious assumptions aside (I will come to these later) the premise behind Broetry would seem to be quite a good one. Broetry takes us on a free verse journey through the life of a ‘typical’ young man as we follow ‘The Bro’ through high school, to university and later to unemployment and the protagonist’s ‘Quarter-Life Crisis’.

As an observer of human life, McGackin takes us to places most poetry simply doesn’t take us, with poems ranging from ‘Ode to That Girl I Dated for, Like, a Month Sophomore Year’ to ‘Final Final Fantasy’, ‘The Clown Outside the Department Store’ and ‘Morning Sex’. The titles alone give a good impression of what Broetry is all about and it’s fair to say you will either ‘get it’, or you simply won’t.

So we come to the question then, is the book any good?

The answer, I’m afraid, is not all that clear-cut. For a start, let me describe myself to you. I am, in every sense of the word, the key demographic this book is aimed at. I’m 20-something, I have no money, I’m in massive debt, I like girls, and I like the odd drink at the weekend. So why then, does Broetry leave me feeling so, well, empty? I don’t think there was a single point during my time spent reading the collection that I thought ‘oh yeah’ or found myself thinking about a particular poem after the event.

Having given the problem particular thought, I have come to the conclusion that the problems with Broetry are threefold.

Firstly, as I alluded to in my opening remarks, Broetry makes a number of sweeping, and in some instances, quite offensive assumptions. Of course there is an element of ‘tongue in cheek’ with the whole ‘Poetry for Dudes’ tagline, but to assume that all men are dumb beasts driven only by money, sex and alcohol is quite plainly wrong. This tacit assumption that we (men) are all simpletons incapable of appreciating poetry, and then to make the bold claim that poetry in itself is both effete and of ‘little popularity’, offends me both as a man, and as a literary critic.

This point links with the second tier of my complaints about Broetry and that is simply, that I don’t think this work, or indeed this ‘form’ of poetry has a future for McGackin. At its very core, the work is flawed.

Ask yourself: why do you read poetry, and more importantly, why do you read a certain poet? A few moments’ thought on the subject should tell you that you read a poet because of their voice; because of the unique perspective they offer; perhaps even because they offer something different to other poets. Clearly at this moment in time, McGackin ticks the third of these three points, but for how long? He has set himself up as the voice of the ‘Everyman’ and in so doing exposes himself to the criticism that essentially anyone with a reasonable grasp of English can do what he is doing.

Which brings us to the final problem I have with Broetry, and that is, simply, that I’m not sure the poems are any good. Obviously poetry is a subjective art-form, and there are doubtless thousands out there who will get some sort of pleasure from the collection, but for me, the poems just don’t do it. The fact they are for the most part free verse certainly doesn’t help. Take the following for example, an extract from ‘Final Final Fantasy’ (p. 49):

I will not spend one hundred and thirteen

hours of my life on a video game

ever again. I will not rationalize,

claiming that it is somehow “research” for

my future career as a comic book

writer. I will not allow myself to be …

As a writer in the games industry, it’s fair to say I know a fair few people who have probably thought, or even said a similar such thing on social media. But to call it poetry? I’m sorry, but from where I’m standing, that’s not the work of a wordsmith; that’s the word of someone doodling on the back of their folder in a lecture hall.

Maybe I’m missing something, but the more I think about it, the more I think I’m right. Quirk Books have taken a risk with Broetry — of that I am in no doubt. I am also in no doubt that the risk will pay off in the short term while Broetry remains a novelty. Long term however, I don’t see the Broetry phenomenon taking off. 

Clearly I’m not a Bro after all…

To tie in with the impending release of the fourth film in the ever popular series, Quirk Fiction has released The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook, a swashbuckling guide to all things pirate-y. With chapters ranging from how to become a pirate to maritime skills and that age-old question ‘how to cope with mermaids’, The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook is a book brimming with features on the many aspects of pirate life.

The first thing that comes to the attention of the reader the first time they get their hands on The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook is the quality. Quirk has done a really good job both in terms of the production and the materials used in the construction of the book itself. The nicely designed hardback cover feels sturdy in the hands, and goes some way to helping justify the £12.99 price tag. But it’s in the book’s interior that it really starts to shine.

Author Jason Heller has done a really fine job of writing an interesting and engaging book that balances just the right amount of ‘ye olde English’ with text that is easily accessible to the book’s teenage target market. As a writer myself, I really admire the nice balance of function and form in the book’s text. While it could certainly be criticised for perhaps lacking in enough detail — enough facts — for a more advanced market, I feel what Heller has produced here places the content at just about the right level, and is complimented nicely by a range of stills taken from the Pirates film series.

I have to say it really is hard to find too much wrong with The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook. While it had the potential to be yet another low quality film tie-in, my initial fears for The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook were quickly assuaged by what is a good, solid, quality product written and produced to a high standard that sets a fine example of how any film tie-in should be done. Coming from a non-fan such as myself, there really can be no higher praise.

So we come then to Quirk Classics’ latest offering, The Meowmorphosis, a book based, as its title suggests, on Franz Kafka’s original work, The Metamophosis. As with all Quirk Classics productions, this too is a classic work with an added twist. In this case instead of awaking one day as an insect, here our protagonist Gregor Samsa is turned into a cat.

And there’s really not much more I can tell you about the plot of this novel without giving much more away. Those who have already read Kafka’s work will find this Quirk Classics adaptation follows a fairly similar line to the original with the notable exception of course that instead of an insect, our ‘hero’ Samsa is turned into a cat.

As you might appreciate, this particular concept comes with a number of flaws. For a start, the whole point of Kafka’s original work was that Samsa was a ‘crushed’ man — a man with the mentality of an insect, who is as a consequence of his nature, turned into one. Though Coleridge Cook does try and explain how someone in the exact same position as the character in the original doesn’t have the soul of an insect but instead has the soul of a cat, the concept seems confused from the start.

Which brings us on to the other major issue I’m still trying to get my head round…

As I sit back and reflect on what is in all honesty a fairly well written book of remarkably consistent style, I have to sit here and have to ask myself why?

Why did Quirk Classics choose this text above all others to apply their ‘quirky’ style to? Why, above all other works in the canon of literature, did they commission a book that so obviously doesn’t lend itself to an interesting (and funny) reinterpretation?

Yes Samsa is turned into a cat instead of an insect, but in all honesty if I wanted to imagine that I could just read Kafka’s original and imagine a cat instead of an insect. To me there just doesn’t seem to be a point in ‘reinventing’ a classic book such as this in the sense that there really is no need for it. Even Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters had a good concept of sorts, but The Meowmorphosis, The Meowmorphosis is just… ‘meh’.

And what makes my saying this all the more harder is that The Meowmorphosis isn’t even particularly bad in any way. As I have already mentioned, the style is remarkably consistent, and at no point did I find myself obviously aware of the shifts between the prose of the original or that of the new author Cook. Some people may well argue that a fairly dry style such as Kafka’s translated text reads isn’t the hardest style in the world to replicate, but from a personal perspective at least, I don’t see this as a problem. Given his starting premise, Coleridge Cook has done a remarkably good job. It’s just a wonder to me how anyone can justify the existence of a book that just doesn’t have anything to sell itself with.

Sorry Quirk Classics, but this book just doesn’t do it for me. 

The novel opens with a quite natural scene of Elizabeth and her husband Fitzwilliam Darcy strolling through the countryside. Because she is not a married woman, Elizabeth is no longer a warrior and is struggling to come to terms with her new role as wife. As she strolls with her husband however they are soon set upon by a recently zombified young Master Brayle and Mr Darcy receives an unwelcome bite which as readers of previous books will be aware, will soon turn Darcy into one of the “unmentionables”. Naturally Elizabeth should slay her husband at this point and save him from the ignominy of a cruel demise into zombie-hood, but something stays her hand and she decides instead to cover-up her husband’s accident and seek a cure to his infection.

Finding a cure is not easy however, and Elizabeth must confront her arch nemesis, Darcy’s aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh if she is to save her husband — and even more importantly in 19^th century England — save her marriage.

Dreadfully Ever After is the second novel by Steve Hockensmith in the Pride and Prejudice series, and just like his other work, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, this latest novel is great fun to read. While in my mind at least the plot does seem a little weak in sections, with the multiple narrator strategy seeming a major departure from Austen’s original style, I don’t think the book loses anything in terms of its overall “feel”. Indeed what perhaps it loses in terms of its narrative it gains in both humour and characterisation as Hockensmith expands on characters such as Mary and Kitty with surprising and at times hilarious consequences. Kitty at last actually becomes a substantial character, as opposed to being the bit-part player she is in Austen’s original work.

For me, I quite like this. It certainly takes a fair amount of bravery to step out of the Austen shadow, but then at the end of the day, that’s exactly what these books are supposed to do. These Quirk Classics adaptations shouldn’t just be clones of famous literature. They are after all supposed to add something to their parent work — provide something different and amusing that gives readers a reason to want to pick them up and give them a read.

Dreadfully Ever After does this perfectly for me. While in previous reviews I have complained about other Quirk Classics titles for being either too dull, or too messed up, Dreadfully Ever After strikes a nice balance between being an independent work of humorous fiction in its own right, and being an adaptation of an Austen classic. While I still don’t think this book’s predecessor is a good book in the slightest, Dreadfully Ever After is for me, a fitting conclusion to the trilogy, and another fine work from its author. 

Unfortunately like its sister title, S+S+S (or perhaps, S3), shares a number of problems inherent in this rather unique ‘classic/humour/horror’ hybrid genre — not least of all, that it doesn’t make much sense. Now I know I was not overly positive in my review of P+P+Z — I found the book distinctly un-funny, and had some serious problems with the story-telling — but I really did do my best to approach this book with an open mind. Having recently read the remarkably good Dawn of the Dreadfuls, I hoped that S+S+S might have more in common with the very good Dawn of the Dreadfuls, and far less in common with P+P+Z. Unfortunately however, I’m afraid to say the latter is the case.

I think what strikes me most about S+S+S is that while P+P+Z certainly had its failings, S+S+S does at least try and address many of these problems. Take the writing for example. In my P+P+Z review I noted that there was a distinct problem in trying to insert very noticeably different zombie scenes in a book that utilises Jane Austen’s very specific form of writing. S+S+S tries to address this in a number of ways — not least by making significant attempts to blend more directly with the Jane Austen elements of the text. While I applaud the attempt of Winters to try and at least make the book more consistent in its style one wonders why he bothered at all when half the book is set in… Sub-Marine Station Beta!

Yes I kid you not, half of S+S+S is indeed set within the confines of a Sub-Marine station complete with Submarines, deep-sea diving suits, and a Colonel Brandon character who, as the cover clearly shows, has a face afflicted with tentacles.

The question I found myself asking then, as I struggled to work out at some points what on earth was going on, was: ‘Why even attempt to pretend this is a book based on Sense and Sensibility at all?’

The main selling point of Sense and Sensibility, like most of Jane Austen’s work, is her depiction of middle-England, and of course her astute observations of character. Here, we have a story set in a Sub-Marine base, we have random attacks of sea monsters for no obvious reason, and we regularly lose our focus on what was in its original form, a powerful and moving story.

At least with P+P+Z, while the zombie parts were in my opinion at least, not very well done, the main core of the story was still there. Indeed even the very notion of the Bennet sisters as sword-wielding maniacs did for a short while at least, hold some sort of humour value. This though, this is just silly.

I have to admit I really struggled with this book. As a fan of 19^th century literature I even confess to preferring Sense and Sensibility to Pride and Prejudice in many respects, but this Quirk Classics adaptation just doesn’t work for me.

Maybe it’s the premise. Moving away from the whole zombie thing, to something a little more daring, a little more ambitious, is certainly to be applauded, but to me the whole thing with the sea monsters and all just doesn’t work. If I’m honest I will even go so far as to say this book is less funny than P+P+Z. While I admire what Ben H. Winters has tried to achieve here, the fact he is on the one hand trying to write a novel about sea monsters, he is on the other hand all the while tied to the plot of the original work, and is as such already writing with only half the freedom he might otherwise have. This is why for me, Dawn of the Dreadfuls works so well, but P+P+Z fails. In Dawn of the Dreadfuls Steve Hockensmith is free to literally just take the Austen characters and create a story with them. In P+P+Z however, Seth Grahame-Smith is bound to work within the tight confines of one of literature’s classic novels.

It is fair to say then, that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters was to a large extent, doomed from the start. While I applaud Ben H. Winters for his efforts with what must have been a difficult task, the book is just too jumbled, too strange, and just too devoid of humour to be a worthwhile recommendation. If you want to see how humorous adaptations of Jane Austen classics really should be done, try Dawn of the Dreadfuls instead. 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was without doubt, a poor book. It was clunky, poorly conceived and distinctly lacking in humour. Essentially, it didn’t know what it wasn’t to be. It sold itself as a ‘quirky’ take on the Jane Austen Classic, but failed to be either decidedly original or indeed even slightly ‘quirky’. You could easily argue then that Dawn of the Dreadfuls was almost doomed from the start...

Penned by award-winning author Steve Hockensmith, Dawn of the Dreadfuls is set four years before the events of P+P+Z, and describes the events that lead the Bennet sisters to take their first fateful steps on the ‘path of the warrior’. While P+P+Z took the Jane Austen original and essentially just threw zombies into the mix, Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a far better conceived — and far better written — take on the period-romance-with-zombies genre. Free of the constraints of the Jane Austen original, Steve Hockensmith has taken full advantage of the setting given him and has, I have to say, done a really good job at balancing humour, zombies and Jane Austen-style romance in a book that is both engaging and remarkably enjoyable to read.

While P+P+Z seemed to take me an age to get through, Dawn of the Dreadfuls was an absolute breeze. Nearly every problem I had with the first book just isn’t an issue in its successor. Sure the horror elements are cheesy, but then again the book is supposed to be cheesy — it’s the nineteenth century and there are zombies for goodness sake! The great strength of Dawn of the Dreadfuls is that it gets its tone pretty much spot on. Every zombie incident and every joke is written with an extremely large amount of tongue-in-cheek, and while the first book suffered from being directly tied to the Jane Austen original, Dawn of the Dreadfuls is free from this same inherent problem.

Here in Dawn of the Dreadfuls, the Jane Austen setting is just that — a setting. Dawn of the Dreadfuls doesn’t try to replicate Jane Austen. It doesn’t need to; that’s not the point. What we have here then is a ‘liberated’ book — a book with far better direction and far better writing that its predecessor. Essentially, it’s everything Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should have been, and then some.

I now look forward to the upcoming third book in the series Dreadfully Ever After with a renewed sense of hope!