Let's get graphic!

After my instant love affair with Mma.Ramotswe and my self-proclaimed submission to Pottermania, I have a new fascination. The nice thing with fictitious characters is that you can fall in love with as many as you like and the others never mind. Of course, that's hardly news to me, having had a long list of imaginary paramours.

* Violins interlude while we trip down memory lane *

Heading the list of my early obsessions is Fredrick Algernon Trotville a.k.a. Fatty of the Five-findouters. And soon after, almost as naturally as the transition to adolescence came the deeply fascinating Jupiter Jones of The Three Investigators. Ah...I've always had a thing for intelligent men...and apparently it was a taste acquired very early in life. If either of these characters had been real, I would have been their best buddy-girl friend.

There was a brief liason with Howard Roark (but that's so predictable for any teenage girl who loves books, isn't it? A sort of rite of passage into the world of thinking). I neatly bypassed Holden Caulfield and when we did meet, I was faintly disgusted with his teenage tantrums.

For awhile I was also taken in by the P.G.Wodehouse cast with a special fondness for Lord Elmsworth and a not-so-secret crush on Psmith. For awhile, I was even a member of a group where everyone took on the name of one character. I was holding out for Madeline "The stars are God's daisy chain"Bassett but since that was already taken, I settled instead for the formidable Lady Constance Keeble (more appropriate for me, wouldn't you think?)

And most recently I've been enchanted by the worlds of Milan Kundera and Alexander McCall.

* End of interlude *

I've been hearing about graphic novels for a fair bit now. At the Landmark sale (still on), I bumped into fellow-blogger Vijay and a friend of his. Friend in question (also blogger whose link I've forgotten) had a pile of what I recognized as graphic novels. I picked it up and opened it (much to his dismay we think, judging from the expression on his face) only to be confronted with...errm...let's just say I quickly shut it and said,

So that's why they call it a graphic novel!?!

A short discussion ensued and he ended up picking out one for me to try out. So after all this long-winding talk, this is a thank you to him for introducing me to another great reading experience. The volume I bought that day was the first part of the Fables series called Fables: Legends in Exile. I read it through the night and over the next couple of weekends, I've managed to collect a few more in the series. I'm now missing a few in between but quite firmly entrenched in the plot and engrossed in the lives of Snow, Bigby, Boy Blue, Flycatcher, Charming and the others.

And yes, fellow-bloggers who have recently been made aware of this new fascination of mine, I do read comics!! (Bloody expensive ones, may I add?) But then what else were Asterix and Tintin? These are their more recent forays into our reading.

As a part of the same drive, I also chanced on another book called De: Tales by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. Brilliant is all I can call it. You know the best kind of stories are the ones you can't figure out why you like and you have to keep going back to, to try and understand. This is one of them.

Here then to my new loves....bookstore, here I come!