On I wrote When the meme comes around, on the subject of Web.
blah blah blah meme blah blah blah fifth sentence on page 56 of nearest book blah blah blah.
"Thorn, that's beautiful!"
Not much of a sentence. On the other hand, the book is The Complete One-Volume Edition of Bone, the graphic novel.
Memo to self: do not search the internet for "bone" again in a hurry.
Page 56 is about as far as I've got with the book so far. It's pretty heavy going, what with it being 1400 pages and all. I was lent it by Tim when I issued a cry for help for not having books. (All my books got packed up when I assumed I'd be moving house in short order...and then the economy swirled down the toilet and no-one's buying houses. So I have a big house that I rattle around in on my own, and no books. Tim delivered me a box full just to keep me going after I was reduced to reading the back of tomato ketchup bottles just to stay sane. And then the first thing I read from his delivered collection was the incredibly cheery Maus.)
Has anyone else read this Bone thing? If you have, did you enjoy it? If you didn't, did you keep reading anyway? I feel guilty if I abandon a book. Something about erudition. But if I didn't read then I'd have to read Twitter all day instead and I'd go out of my mind.
(Yeah, yeah, go outside and enjoy the sunshine. Whatever.)
Did you know that Wikipedia does ISBN searches? Oh, you did. OK.
Stormy
Chuck
I got about half way through the series as it was being published in comic book form. At the time I found it to be a solidly written story.
Life happened and I dropped out of the comic reading phase due to cost and time constraints. After seeing that book on a friend's shelf I have it currently third in my list of things to read.
My advice would be at least try reading the first ~300 pages or so and that will give you the first 15 issues or so and a good idea of the story.
G.
Chuck's right, give it a bit more time. The first few chapters, as I recall, are very heavy on the comedy- it gets a bit darker once the main plot kicks in, and you should be hooked by then. I remember the last 400 pages going by a lot quicker than the earlier ones.
Mike
Heavy going? I've read all 1000+ pages of the Bone book to my 5-year-old son multiple times. He loves it; I love it... It's brilliant, really. -shrug-
- Mike
Giacomo
Bone was born as a comic book series, which was then collected (and continued) in several volumes, until eventually the "one-book" edition came about.
It's considered very good, mainly because of the art (the author used to be an animator at Disney); but obviously it really depends on what you like in a graphic novel.
The first half of the series is good for comedy/satire; the second half is pretty much 100% fantasy, with heavy tolkien-esque tones.
I personally preferred the more original first half, but it might be because I read it in short episodes (which were spectacularly well-written, with lots of cliffhangers and subplots in all the right places). I don't think that collected editions were as powerful, so I'm not surprised that you are not enjoying the one-volume version.
I used to feel like I had to finish every book I started and then I realized there were just way too many good books out there to waste time on ones I didn't like.
I hope you found a good one!