Monday Reviews - The Whisper Collector by Anaïs Chartschenko

Not all whispers are sweet, but these are beautifully raw

Anaïs Chartschenko has a knack for writing things that disarm me. Rarely if ever do you read anything that emotionally naked and disarming. But it is not vulnerable or weak. These whispers are barbwired, they’re raw, they’re deep, and they are intense. Chartschenko pulls no punches and if you’re looking for red roses and blue violets, look elsewhere. If instead you want poetry that bites, then read The Whisper Collector. 

There are five collections within this volume and each varies in intensity and format. Some have poems with long lines, others are short rapid fire lines that stab the flesh of your emotions. I am certain some people who are more sensitive will either be offended or shocked by the lines here. But for me, I was amazed at the raw beauty she once again captures. 

At times lyrical, you could easily envision poems in song form or spoken over a dirge-like piano and I wouldn’t mind these collections coming as a booklet in a CD. These are poems that are vivid though quite often very direct. What’s amazing in these collections isn’t in the metaphors but in the pure emotion you find within these verses. Once again, Chartschenko proves that there is beauty in scars, in darkness, and in whispers.

Monday Reviews – Chinese Hero Volume 3

To offer something a little different, I’d thought I’d focus today’s review on a Graphic Novel. You see, while other people’s favorite comic book characters are Spider Man, Iron Man, Super Man or any other type of man, I am a huge manhua comics fan and my heroes as a kid were Hero Hua, Ghost Server, Lohan, all of the Oriental Heroes, the Iron Marshall and the list goes on and on. Name after name of obscure Chinese comic heroes that to this day remain some of my most prized stories.

I loved the rich narratives, mature subject matter and beautiful artwork and although it may be a bit questionable some of what I was reading (think of an assassin that demanded to eat freshly killed newborn babies), it helped me be the writer I am today, so it can’t all be bad.

The latest compilation I’ve read was Volume 3 of the Chinese Hero saga, a translation and adaptation that has some issues I might take note of simply because it’s different from what I read as a kid in the original translation of the Blood Sword… and because, quite frankly the name changes from one version to the other irked me and the translation flows a bit clunkier.

Regardless of those quips, Chinese Hero Volume 3 still possesses enough Kung Fu extravaganza to make me further wonder how the movie adaptation could have been so sloppy. I won’t go into any detail of the plot and will simply invite you to look up Chinese Hero or the Blood Sword comic books as an option if you want to broaden your reading horizons and read something that is as beautiful as it is brutal.

Peace, love and maki rolls.

JD

Monday Reviews: These Days by Jack Cheng

Time is the most valuable asset you have to invest in your life. Although intangible, it has its own weight, its own personality and cannot be recovered once spent. You can't earn more time than what you have in this life, for however long you live. Those are some pretty deep thoughts to come from reading a book, the thing is that reading These Days, I read myself in one of the characters while being able to compare the value of life experiences.

The details in life, the unexpected, the thrill of success, the pain of failure and disappointment, the elation of joy, the desire to switch an answer after you handed in the test, the exhaustion we sometimes go through, the satisfaction of knowing you did your best and the end result, be it good or bad just for the sake of closure. All of these things floated up while I read.

If I had to compare this book to anything, I'd compare it to a good cup of tea. You see, tea has nuance, it has structure, it is delicate, it has minutiae, it begs to be drunk slowly. This is not a book to blitz through; it's one to enjoy a sip at a time. For me, tea keeps me grounded, it's something I use as a reboot or a stabilizer... it's something that forces me to slow down or get burned. These days is a book that after finishing it is like a wonderful cup of tea. It's a book about time and technology, about how we use the time we have and how technology can either bring us closer or break us apart.

A wonderful read that urges the question, what is the next book going to be about?