BiblioAddict The First Step on the Road to Recovery

I was this close to not doing Teaser Tuesday.  I wanted to do it, I started to do it, but I had weightier things on my mind (see below).  Call it an existential blogging moment, if you will.  In addition, I’d already posted a review too, really, weren’t two posts two posts enough?

But well, I just read this and I couldn’t pass up the chance to quote this first paragraph from “Noah and the Ark,” the third short story in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!: Stories by Jonathan Goldstein.

Ladies and Gentlemen is a short story collection that irreverently retells popular biblical stories with a more modern twist and telling.  In “Noah and the Ark,” Noah is, instead of a pious man residing among heathens, the grumpy equivalent of the old man yelling at the crazy kids to stay off his lawn.  The story begins thusly,

Contrary to what most people think, the years leading up to the Great Flood were actually quite joyful.  The preflood generation saw that the random smitings, the slavery, and the backbreaking labor of the early days had left their forefathers bitter and hateful, and so they collectively resolved to live lives of greater ease.  Work, they realized, was overrated.  Two days of toil a week were plenty – and this way, they had time for hobbies! People drew pictures, played music, and danced.  It was a golden age of art, and the preflood generation really felt like they were on to something.

One man, though, felt that this whole whole business was ass-backwards and off track.  His name was Noah. ~ page 45

I am, I can’t explain why, a sucker for this kind of tougue-in-cheek humor.  It tickles my funny bone everytime.

Which reminds me, have you heard of the new graphic novel by J. Crumb, The Book of Genesis?  It’s a graphic retelling of, you guessed it, the book of Genesis.  Unlike Ladies and Gentlemen, however, The Book of Genesis is a fairly straightforward retelling.  Crumb considered drawing a satirical retelling but “he quickly realized he couldn’t sustain a satirical approach. He resolved to use the words of the Bible unabridged: ‘I did it as a straight illustration job.’”

Crumb is apparently a very well-known illustrator with a very distictive drawing style.  I don’t know much about illustrators to have an opinion either way, but the New Yorker excerpted a portion of his book its June 15 issue (it’s no longer available for free online) and some of those black and white panels were pretty nice to look at.  Example:

The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb is set to be released this fall in October.

Well, I think I guess that’s enough for one day.  I’m calling it a night.  As per always, happy reading.

**Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.  The rules (which I break every week) are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Popularity: 64% [?]