Eric's Personal Tips for Blogging

Blogging is a unique kind of writing (and reading, for that matter). Since I've been blogging for about seven years now, I've had a number of friends ask me for advice about blogging and website development.  Certainly, I'm not an expert in these things, and regularly repeat the fact that I don't really have any polished, succint listing of tips that I've picked up through the years.  But I do typically try to share a few scattered ideas that might be helpful.  So since we're still in the early stages of developing this space, I figured I might share some of my perspectives here in this space as well. These are a few of the random thoughts that come to my mind:

• Quantity of posting is more important than quality of posting:  When it comes to generating web traffic and maintaining followers, it's important to post more often than to ensure that "the perfect post" is sitting there, waiting for readers.  The major search engines refer queries to the most recent posts on a given topic -- so it's important to always have something fresh.  I generally post 10-18 times per month (although I know other, more serious bloggers who do it much more frequently!).
• Use simple language expressing sincere thoughts and emotions, more than trying to maintain any slick PR presence.
• Encourage comments and make a point to regularly respond to comments (within the comment section of the blog itself), so people will keep coming back to carry on the dialogue within your web space.
• Write about stuff that's meaningful to you. For a friend of mine who was developing an Alpine adventure business, I suggested focusing on things like "a sweet spot you found to go fly-fishing… photographs from the excursions… specific, personal, bullet-point highlights from the excursions (i.e. "that morning when Alessandro fell into the river")… sharing the joys of the wilderness with your children… a great time of reflection that you had while hiking through the mountains… These are just a few guesses of things that you might be able to write about."  But it's most important that the material be interesting for you -- not what you think might be interesting for your readers.  This is the only way you'll be able to keep up any frequency of posting, and oddly enough this is what makes a blog most interesting to follow.
• Use a lot of sensory cues when you write (what things smelled like, tasted like, felt like, sounded like, looked like).
• Keep your posts short (500 words or less).
• If you don't feel like you're really going to be able to keep up a blog (at least one post per week), I would recommend that you just scrap the blog idea and keep your website to being a sort of on-line, electronic business card or brochure (which has its own usefulness).  A lifeless blog is worse than having no blog at all.

What do you think of these tips?  Would you agree with my advice, or would you contradict any of my suggestions?  Are there any other random tips that you would add to such a list?  It's interesting for me to note that I don't always stick to my own ideals, when it comes to blogging!  But these are at least interesting things to think about... I'd be very curious to get feedback from anyone else who might have his or her own opinions and experiences in these matters (and if anything good comes up, I'll pass it along to my friends, too!).

The Mumbai Blues

It is a foggy November evening.  I nod vigorously over a glass of Merlot whilst Lodewijk tells me of his years in Bombay. As he speaks of restaurants and spices, his eyes glitter and his voice takes on this excited animation.  His wife Brigitte remembers the gorgeous bolts of brocade she found in Khar market, sheets of raw silk that have now become much-envied curtains.  Another friend speaks of the sounds of the Ganesh festival, the Portuguese-accented Konkani and the characteristic hollow clap of the roadside hijra, the roadside eunuch. As each of them dwells on old memories of the city, I smile again.  This is a familiar scene.

It took me a while to realize a new life does not happen all at once. In fact, when I left Mumbai to move to Amsterdam two years ago, I did not see this coming. My new life was crafty. It seduced me, winked at me from corners and made promises of sparkling canals and fluffy snow. Although I did not know it at the time, everything was changing, slowly but steadily. It started with the most inane things – cold breakfasts and thick duvets – and did not stop until it deposited me in an entirely different world.

Life in Amsterdam is like taking a giant step into a modern village, with huge parks and bicycles paths everywhere. Moving from the incredible Mumbai pace to a sleepy complacent city needed effort, tons of it.  I slowly began to get used to sparkling canals, snow-clad roofs and the incredible summer weather. I made my peace with most shops shutting at 5 and staying closed on the weekends. I grew accustomed to the sea of black jackets walking around in winter and the fact that fashion here is very limited. I surrounded myself with endless books, joined a library and a writing group. I made friends from all over the world and realised that I actually loved my Indian family here. Like Amsterdam, my life became calm, more Zen.  

It was an afternoon leafing through a Steve McCurry book that triggered my Mumbai nostalgia. His photographs released a host of memories, bursting in like fresh sunlight after a storm.  Suddenly I began to notice the unremarkable Dutch food, the constant freezing rain and the surly service. The canals had become a murky brown and the cheery Dutch frugality began to get under my skin. The lack of sunlight began to unnerve me and even pesto would not help. One day it all came out in a sobbing and blubbering fit – until my husband gently sat me down to console me.

Even everyday life had dramatically changed. There was no Prithvi theatre to seek refuge at and no tiny lunch homes with unbelievable food. Now the morning azaan that used to echo in my neighbourhood had been replaced with the church bells from Westerkerk.  My daily pani-puri fix had been exchanged for caramel macchiato and if I needed a dosa, I had to make one. Desperate for any flavor of Mumbai, I watched Hindi movies that ought never be seen. I became that person who bores her friends to tears gushing about the food in Mumbai, humming terrible Hindi songs and following Bollywood actors’ love lives online. I missed the myriad colours I took for granted, the food and the incredible sun.

When I told my pragmatic mother as much, she scoffed down the phone.  She reminded me of the real world, of our maid in Mumbai who worked 5 houses a day to rent a tiny room, of the now almost-regular train blasts, of the time my father took me to a murky part of town to show me the slums, where each house had at least one member who went without food that day.  

Of course she was right. Mumbai is a very different place for some, a cruel, expensive and filthy city that is bursting at its seams. But that same city with all the beggars is the city that reached out to others, offering food and a roof to those stranded in the rains. The people who clean our houses also become part of our lives, joining in our celebrations and sorrows. The city with the filthy underbelly is also the one place where I feel completely safe. Where I delight in coming across the unexpected.  Where else do you see quirky Parsi colonies jostling for space alongside a Portuguese fishing village? Who would believe that in this bustling city, there are thousands and thousands of flamingos coming to roost in a marshland? 

I wish I could say this was just homesickness, but I think it is saying goodbye to one part of my life and making room for another. Mumbai is ever changing and now just two years later, is a very different place to the home I left behind. My husband and I often wonder if any future child of ours will be able to comprehend it at all, or if the words “Mumbai spirit” will ever mean anything to them? If they will ever understand the innate need of the city to help the needy, to party as hard as it works, to toughen you up properly for the real world.  Somehow, I doubt it.

That evening at the dinner party we ended up barbecuing butter-garlic crabs. We watched German-dubbed Hindi movies and discussed the best and worst of the new Bollywood crop. Someone had brought a crate of Kingfisher and we slowly drained it, debating Anna Hazare and the now-legendary corruption. We talked about our favourite Mumbai restaurants and changes in the school system.  We talked into the wee hours of the morning over makeshift brun-maska and chai, looking at old pictures of colonial Bombay, marvelling at the trees and brooks, Dutch, German, Indian and English accents mingling together to speak fondly of one city. The ability to bring people together, this is my favourite thing about Mumbai.

Top 5 Aussie books

For some reason, conceiving a top 5 for Australian literature has more weight to it than conceiving a top 5 for myself. Must be the burden of the home country: particularly one that is still under colonial rule.

1. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. An Australian epic. Although I still prefer his collection of short stories titled The Turning. The guy wrote his first book when he was 19 at university. At 52 he already has an unfathomable oeuvre.

2. An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, the most underrated of all Australian writers for mine. A cut at Ovid's exile in Tomis from the Roman empire executed with brilliant simplicity, respect and modernity (somehow). You can't go wrong with Remembering Babylon (winner of Dublin Lit Award, Prix Baudelaire) and Johnno (bildungsroman) by the same author.

3. To a more overrated Australian author (now deceased): Patrick White. Probably because he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the only Australian-born citizen to do so. I tried reading The Vivisector one time without success. I want to read Voss (his other best, supposedly) or The Tree of Man.

4. A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (2008). Another one I have not read, but judging from the reviews and reception, this book will become a firm member of the Australian canon.

5. ? No clear winner for this spot. A bunch of potentials. Time will tell.

When Science Fiction Gets it Wrong (Horribly Wrong)

"The recorder in his backpack vibrated noiselessly to make a holotape recording of the network of buildings ... the Colony was ten kilometers farther on, but electronically enhanced lenses brought its low buildings close enough to touch."  

- The Legacy of Heorot, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Steven Barnes, Copyright 1987. 

“Anachronistic science fiction” is my term for SF writing that posits a future we now know never happened. The above is a great example of why I love re-reading it: unintentional entertainment value. In Heorot, humans travel through interstellar space (at FTL speeds) and work with the technologies of suspended animation and genetic engineering, yet are forced to haul around a cumbersome recording device that sounds suspiciously like an 8-track tape deck combines with a laser disc player. Why?

In 1986, most U.S. homes were still using 5 3/4 floppy drives and the digital compact disc and laser discs were just making headway. Media storage still “felt” big and bulky. I’ve no doubt the “holotape” sounded really cutting edge. Or perhaps it was just plain laziness (I love the fudging when they get to "electronically enhanced lenses" - hilarious!) since digital recording technology - compact discs to you and me - were being tested in the R&D labs of Philips as far back as the mid-1970s.

Dick Tracy ca. 1961: He understood Moore's Law

NB - the holotaping didn't detract from the over-arching story in Heorot - a cautionary tale of how not to mess with nature when colonizing a new world. I've no doubt the script writers for Avatar were probably inspired by it.

While it’s entertaining for me to see how an SF writer’s then-contemporary view of technology was convincingly extrapolated into something we now know to be off-base, what I love most about anachronistic science fiction is the way it reflects the collective anxieties, conscience, and popular culture of the period during which it was written. It’s a form of nostalgia, really. 

Inspired by Heorot’s holotaping session, I conducted an unscientific survey of my SF library to find other examples of “anachronistic SF”, trying to understand what it told me about the author’s choice’s and if those wrong choices really mattered.

Unsurprisingly, I was able to easily group my findings:

Cloud Computing & the Power of the Network

William Gibson popularized the notion of a global information network (called "the Matrix" in his seminal 1983 book Neuromancer), describing it with unmatched prescience. Yet even he forces his protagonists to chase down a ROM construct - a piece of hardware - as his novel's McGuffin. In Snow Crash (one of my favorite SF novels ever), Neal Stephenson can't help himself when a library's worth of information is transferred from one computer to another via virtual reality interface:

My UK first edition – with stock photos from 

Max Headroom, apparently

"The world freezes and grows dim for a second... Clearly, his computer has taken a major hit; all of its circuits are busy processing a huge bolus of data - the contents of the hypercard."

How clumsy this sounds today, downloading terabytes when it's all in the cloud. Will the average household be saving anything on a hard drive at all in five years? (Many don't now thanks to Spotify, YouTube, Wikipedia, Dropbox, etc.) I think it's difficult for anyone born before 1980 to let go of the diskette, the disk, the chip (including the ubiquitous “credit chip” - the universal monetary unit throughout the galaxy in numerous books!), the tape, the coins, the cards, the medium.

It's a guilty pleasure seeing Stephenson get it wrong - especially since he's always so damned right. His most trenchant observation in Snow Crash is one of human nature and technology, namely, our willingness to give up hours and days and weeks - and for some, the rest of their lives, to hang out in virtual reality. People are doing this already using only boring "flatland" applications (using Stephenson's parlance) like Facebook rather than the 3D VR Matrix.

The (living) Red Planet

Starting in 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote and published the adventures of John Carter, a Civil War veteran mysteriously transported to Mars. The red planet he describes has the canals and breathable air. We know today that the canals we thought we saw on Mars in 1912 aren’t canals at all, and that everything else Burroughs posited about Mars is bunk. The thing is, Burroughs’ Mars was ten times better than the real thing, with warring aliens having at it with 1912 (or is it 1865?) technology, leaping at each other from wooden-decked airships wielding swords and long rifles. As a 13 year-old walking hormone in the 1980s, those Frank Frazetta covers pulled me in and the swordplay and outrageous racial (as in human) chauvinism of the hero that kept me there. The inaccuracies didn't matter. That a nine-figure film has been produced suggests that I'm not the only one with this opinion.  

The Soviet Union

For amber waves of - uh oh...

America's bogey man for five decades, it goes without saying that a raft of exploitative SF novels were written (especially in the 1980s) where the Soviet Union - godless, monolithic, and populated with sinister men all named Dragonov – challenged America’s sovereignty, invaded its shores, took control outer space, and tried to destroy democracy. These writers were addressing what so many of us felt was an inevitable showdown. For years, the Soviet Union was unbeatable on the field of battle or sport, so it seemed logical they’d eventually triumph. Only they didn’t.

The worst of these books can now exclusively be found in the bargain bin at a garage sale, yet even “good” SF novels sometimes can’t resist citing some eventual triumph by the USSR in their pages. In Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, the Soviet (and Chinese) space programs rival those of America, and Clarke can’t help but sprinkle the names of prominent Soviet political dissidents like physicists Andrei Sakharov and Yuri Orlov into the pages.It’s less intrusive in other books (e.g., Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game), but it doesn’t take much to make an otherwise good story hopelessly quaint.

World War III 


The study of Apocalypse literature is worthy of a blog entry (or a book) of its own, but WW III goes hand-in-hand with the Soviet Union as an anxiety that was at the front of everyone’s brain for decades.

Hint: We’re doomed to repeat ourselves

If you did duck and cover drills in the 1960s, or watched a television “event” like The Day After in the 1980s, you were anxious about it; and how we would deal with the war and its aftermath have been the subject of countless books and movies. The literature on the subject ranged from real “literature” to fair-to-poor pop culture-ready Road Warrior rehashes.

The “literature” of this genre (A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., On the Beach, by Nevil Shute) focused on literary themes like the nature of man and the role of hope while following the survivors.

The action-oriented Road Warrior rehashes (Damnation Alley, by Roger Zelazny, the Traveler series, the Survivalist series) were exactly that: action, violence, and plain fanboy fun. As a young teenager, my favorite was by far and away Traveler series. 

Those who wrote the series under the pseudonym D.B. Drumm had the acumen to include absolutely everything: a deadly loner with a dark past (natch), awesome vehicles with crossbows and flame throwers, hot damsels in distress who have sex with the hero, punked out, road marauding enemies (who always get their just desserts), mutants, outposts of civilization and hope, and remnants of the U.S. military pursuing the hero (but who always got their just desserts); like I said, they left out nothing.

Allohistorical, antiquated, or just plain awesome?

The “trashier” books are probably lying in the bargain bin with the “Soviet domination” books, but the “literature” end of the spectrum still holds up. In Liebowitz, the initial nuclear conflict (whoops, spoiler!) is the launching point of the novel, which is far greater than the sum of its three parts.

I would love to hear of any other entertaining examples if you’ve got ‘em. I would distinguish anachronistic SF from the now-popular allohistorical fiction (AKA, alternative history), which are deliberate “what if” studies.

The lesson here is that the more existential the SF author keeps the science and future events, the longer a shelf life the story will have. Easier said than done. We know the keyboard won’t last much longer (the QWERTY array is almost 125 years old), and Moore’s Law says supercomputers shouldn’t take up a whole room like the HAL 9000 did (or real supercomputers do), but if you know a credible way to describe what will replace them, there may be better money for you as a futurist than an SF writer.

 - Chris

Then They Came for Me

Lately all of my reading has been about Iran: afternoon sessions with the reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Amnesty International, The Committee to Protect Journalists; evenings with journalist and documentary filmmaker Maziar Bahari’s oddly funny and tragic book, Then They Came for Me.

In his book, Maziar vividly captures the optimism of a particular moment in post-revolutionary Iran when it seemed that people would have a chance to open their country a bit and make the reforms so many of them desired. The 2009 presidential elections in Iran, with the energetic campaigning and televised debates felt to many like the beginning of democratic change. His friend tells him of participating in one of the pre-election demonstrations, which brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of Tehran wearing green and carrying signs of support for the candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, “It was like being in a World Cup final, Maziar, but more exciting.”

Stolen Elections

Soon after the elections, which were unashamedly stolen, Maziar Bahari was rousted from his bed in his 83 year old mother’s house by revolutionary guards who had come to arrest him. They tore apart his room looking for contraband, while his mother -- who had plenty of practice with the arrests and imprisonment of loved ones -- made tea. Her calm was powerful.

While writing this post, I was talking with a good friend who was arrested in Iran during the revolution. We were both crying as I described Maziar’s family -- the imprisonment of his sister who experienced torture and mock executions and died young of leukemia; his father’s advice about dealing with interrogators, “don’t give any names.” She told me of her own experiences being arrested shortly after the fall of the Shah and her interrogation by a well-educated man who used cogent arguments to try to dissuade her from her Marxist politics. Maziar’s interrogators, on the other hand, didn’t know who Chekhov was or that The Sopranos was not porn despite the letters p-o-r and n jumbled in the title. 

The story of his arrest and torture powerfully illustrates the tragedy of an entire nation. Maziar and others wanted so little: a small opening, a voice, a bit of freedom. In return they got imprisonment, torture, crackdowns, and a more divisive nation.

Introduction by Way of Recommendations - Eric Asp

Introductions

Isn't it fascinating how much one can learn about a person by simply tuning into whatever he or she is watching, listening to, or reading? To me, it feels like this is almost more informative than listening to that person's introduction of himself or herself? (For the record, however, you'd be more than welcome to look around my own website, www.ericasp.com, if you want to know more about my perspective of me).

So let me introduce myself a bit by way of some book recommendations. My first three recommendations are automatic, no-brainers. The last two were more difficult, but I ended up choosing books that might offer a more unique, personal perspective (as opposed to simply listing the "greatest works of literature" in my mind). Take 'em or leave 'em, for whatever they're worth:

The Gospel of Mark, by John Mark

To recommend the Bible as a whole would be a cop-out (since it's really more of a collection of books than a single book of its own), so I recommend this particular section of the New Testament which is widely believed to be the earliest account of Jesus' life and ministry. It's shorter and it reads more quickly than the other gospel narratives, but it's also remarkably beautiful as a work of literature. As a person of faith I believe that everyone would do well to understand and deliberately address his or her own personal beliefs about Jesus -- but I also recommend this book purely for its literary merit, as it seems to me that the stories of Jesus (and of the Bible in general) are essential in understanding so much of Western literature over the last 2000 years.

Life After God, by Douglas Coupland

Despite the book's title, this one is not at all religious. It's written by a Canadian writer who I believe is an atheist. But in any event, I recommend this collection of short stories simply because it moves me. The writing style is simple and elegant. The stories are compelling and meaningful. And I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, each of the 10 or 12 times that I've read it.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

This one perhaps deserves mention among the "greatest works of literature" of all time, so its inclusion on a recommendation list such as this one shouldn't be too surprising -- still, I personally include it because of Steinbeck's writing style and his sense of place (his essential Americanness). Personally, I also think it's astonishing to see how timely the book is -- how accurately it describes our world today -- even though its subject matter is Oklahoman migrant workers in the time of the Dust Bowl in the first half of the 20th Century! Themes of the earth's resources being mindlessly used up, soulless corporations chewing up people to stave off their own extinction, and "regular" people trying to figure themselves out and determine their place in the world in the aftermath... It's really remarkable to see how relevant it is for our current world situation.

The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis

I think "children's stories" are often greater, not lesser, works of literature than many of the high-brow pieces that we often include in conversations such as this one. This particular story is one of the more obscure stories in Lewis' famed "Chronicles of Narnia," but it's one of my personal favorites. It's set off from the rest of the Chronicles, in that the main characters from the other stories only play a minor role in this book -- but it still demonstrates all of the brilliance of Lewis' writing, which can be read on two levels (literal / children's and symbolic / adult's). It's a story about identity and purpose. And I loved the book so much that I named my youngest son, in part, after the main protagonist in the story.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

An early-American classic about a woman ostracized from her community for bearing a child out of wedlock (even though it turns out that the baby's father happens to be the town's popular young minister). The story is particularly interesting to me because of its themes of hypocrisy and (in)fidelity. Still remarkably accessible, 150 years after its publication.

The Slap by Tsiolkas delivers exactly that to reader

As an Australian reading an Australian-Greek author, I expected cringe-worthy cultural familiarities and uncomfortability when I picked up The Slap from my bookshelf. And I got them. In abundance. But that is Tsiolkas' intention, whether you are an Ozzie reader or not.

Plot
A man slaps an unruly child that is not his own front of extended family and friends at a bbq. Was it right or wrong? The book thankfully does not provide an answer, but nine characters over nine chapters have to deal with the consequences of the act that are greater reaching for their families, loved ones and friends.

For reading it
It's a courageous attempt by the author to address the diversity of Australian culture, of any multicultural culture, and he pretty much pulls it off excluding the typecasting of some minor characters into their cultural box. The prose is fluid, verbose, explanatory but it works and my eyes skimmed easily and patiently through the chapters, reading it like a soap opera with a whiff of erudition on the outstanding question of: who is in the right? Particularly for the teenage Connie and grandfather Manolis chapters: this is Tsiolkas in his element. It is also a modern day shot of the less-noble side of Australian culture which screams of moral compasses lost, begging questions of transformation to be raised.

Against
The meticulous effort put into building up tension between the families and characters is overshadowed by Tsiolkas' black and white treatment of his characters, their flippant and capricious changes in mood and behavior and slapping overdoses of sex, infidelity and drugs. But Tsiolkas would argue, this is modern day Australia in the 2000s and he wouldn't be wrong. However, the characters are shot in their stasis and they transform little, in part because of their two dimensional roots (excl Connie, Manolis, Anouk, maybe Richie) and on-off dispositions. The author tends to opt for the extreme to elucidate behaviors and thoughts that would be better handled with care and subtlety. In fact the characters get the equivalent of an author slap, but more than one, and even Richie, celebrating his zenith moment in the final chapter, opts to blow his brains out on speed and ecstasy on a dance floor for the book's closure, something that to me, reeks of non-foreclosure (unless we are a going for a sequel?)

Take-away
There are some real gem moments, writing and characters in here, kudos for author bravery and courage in the endeavor which hits many of its marks, and you could read it on those grounds alone, but I took little away from this other than rich insights into Greek-Australian culture, some eloquent youth and female character writing, and relief that the 2000s are over for my country.

My Literary Bucket List

My Literary Bucket List

Okay, here's my Top five (note: the film adaptations of all five books are piss poor to middling):

Grendel, by John Gardner - some people moan that he sounds like a whiny teenager, but who better to ruminate on good and evil, existence itself and the folly of man in the early days of his awakening than the homicidal beast who preys on them?  Read a summary of the legend of Beowulf if you're unfamiliar with Beowulf's antagonist.  "Poor Grendel's had an accident, so may you all."

The Van, by Roddy Doyle - I just love this book, not just because it's the best story about male relationships ever. Breeze through it once just to let the Irish brogue wash over you and marvel at the myriad of uses for "feck" in everyday North Dublin speech. Read it a 2nd time to understand the conflicts within the gormless antagonist, Jimmy Rabbitte Sr., whose lost his gainful employment and ends up working for his even more gormless best friend. Read it a 3rd and 4th time to truly understand the fantastic supporting characters Doyle has created and how they respond differently to Jimmy Sr.'s bullying. I've two copies if you care to borrow them, yeh feckin' eejit, yeh.

Catch 22, Joseph Heller - you know it makes sense. I laughed out loud, was awestruck by the desensitized brutality, and impressed by his war-for-profit prescience.

Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis - Kazantzakis is totally underrated in English-language literature.  This book share some DNA with Catch-22 in its depiction of how cheap life can be, but with an even more vibrant lead to show us the way. I also found the narrative voice an incredibly convincing Anglo-Saxon who gets pulled into Zorba's world. The book also reveals that the shining bright line between Europe and Asia Minor begins somewhere well north of Athens.

The Watchmen, Alan Moore (illustrated by Dave Gibbons) - What if the "superman" existed and he was American? For starters, an American victory in Vietnam, a fourth presidential term for Richard M. Nixon and a noire study of human nature, society and power and how it can erode ones humanity. Do not be put off by the fact that this complex and incredibly compelling story appears in "comic book" form. Superheroes are characters in the book, but the tights do not get in the way of a literary experience that a traditional book will never achieve. It's chock full 'o symbolism, overlying themes and an incredible intertextuality that's only possible when combining words and images into one story. There's a reason this "graphic novel" is in Time's "Top 100 books of the 20th century".

That's me done! Who's next? I dare you to constrain yourself to five.