Reader's Corner & Visuals

Hi everyone,

I’m the producer (and proud dad) of my 9-year-old son’s podcast, Join the Fray. We recently sat down with Dr. Ted Gervan, and I thought this community might appreciate his unique perspective on how the industry has shifted over the last two decades.

Before he became an educational leader at institutions like Sheridan, Capilano, and the Centre for Digital Media in BC, Ted worked as a prosthetic makeup artist in Hollywood. He was part of the talented team that brought the original X-Men (2000) to life. [Ted got the chance to support the super talented team of Evan Penny or Ann McLaren who designed the look for Mystique and Sabretooth!]

He contributed to the character designs (including the drawings for Sabretooth) and helped building specific costumes, pouring and coloring the silicone, painting nails, and applying the makeup once the initial sculpts were molded.

Fraser and Ted had a great discussion about:

• The Reality of the Makeup Lab: The technical process of pouring, coloring, and detailing silicone prosthetics for a major film production, and how that hands-on experience shapes his view of modern 3D pipelines.
• The Evolution of the Craft: How he sees the industry shifting between physical, high-touch lab work to digital-first workflows, and how education needs to adapt to teach both.
• Advice for Future Artists: His take on "the fear of building"—how he teaches students to bridge the gap between a design idea and the messy, physical/digital reality of actually building it.

It’s a non-monetized, fun interview and thanks to the Mods here to enable me to share it.

Spotify Link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/53jpLDHotOh8mE8Vo6jgc8?si=Koxoja8jTwWTW0bBUTpLoA

Enjoy folks and thanks for the opportunity to share this fun chat!

I am halfway through my (theoretical) goal of 104 books this year. Theoretical because I'm not sure I will (or maybe even want to) maintain this pace and so might change it.

Titles, authors, and translators to follow in a comment.

Takeaways:

• Why'd I take so long to read The Age of Innocence?
• A book about cycling (The Rider) can be interesting even if all you know about racing going in is, "people pedal fast maybe?".
• Some kinds of dated sci-fi are more enjoyable than others (e.g. The Radium Age short stories, while from the 1900-1930s were in some ways less dated than Asimov and Bradbury)
• Reading in translation will sure widen your reading horizons. Even if you don't like the book that much (e.g. No One Prayed Over Their Graves), you get a fascinating glimpse into another part of the world.

Looking for something really engaging that sucks me into it. I really love thrillers and horror and haven't looked into what any of these books are about, I like going in blind. Thanks in advance!

Here’s the next installment. See anything appealing to the eye? Some fairly popular recent titles here, and some older wondrous titles as well.

This book is AWESOME !

This was so refreshing because I’ve had a run of so-so books and this one seemed to really shocked me back out of a daze. I know this is an older one (2017) and I’m a bit late to the party but I just kept seeing it everywhere and decided to give it a shot. And I’m so glad I did, because it’s been a while since I haven’t been able to put a book down.

This is an epic multi generational tale of a Korean family living in Japan spanning over most of the 20th century. It explores identity, family, love, success, culture, everything. The characters are so vivid, the history comes alive, it just feels grand in scope and depth. It’s heartwarming, it’s tragic, it’s entertaining, it’s educational. Everything just grabs you.

This was a DELIGHT to read, and one of the top books I’ve read so far this year.

This is meant to be a "new" purchase from retailer I never used before.. Never again

I don’t know if this subreddit is open to non-traditional books. I love to make handmade books of all kinds!

Look at how gorgeous it is.

Reencuadernación de Obras Escogidas de H. P. Lovecraft, una edición de 1966.

Este es el libro que me inició en los mundos Lovecraftianos me lo prestó mi hermano cuando era yo un niño porque se la pasaba hablando de Brown Jenkin, la rata de rostro humano que era el mensajero entre la bruja y el Diablo en Sueños en la Casa de la Bruja... el primer relato que leí de este autor y con el que me atrapó de por vida...

Este libro también se lo leía mi papá a mi mamá para terrorizarla cuando eran jóvenes...

Llevaba eones entre mis libros esperando a ser reparado, y llegó por fin el momento, decidí utilizarlo para un primer ejercicio de relieves orgánicos en piel... Me gustó bastante el resultado, y definitivamente la piel para hacer este tipo de trabajo es el peligüey y la vintage, hacerlo con pieles mas gruesas y rígidas es un dolor de cabeza y se pierden los detalles...

Los cuadernillos mantenían el suficiente buen estado como para poder coserlos de nuevo, uno por uno...

El ojo es una obsidiana cuya forma me tomó un rato encontrar...

🦑

I was reading Stages of Rot last night, and I realised that I have a real love of sci fi and fantasy that delves into ecological systems that are strange, otherworldly, and perhaps unknowable, where people are subsumed by the ecology. I am looking for other books in this vein.

Here’s a list of books (and some animation) give you an idea what interests me:

Stages of Rot - Linnea Serte

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki

Aama - Frederik Peeters

Edena - Moebius

The Extraordinary Part - Ruppert & Mulot

Ant Colony - Michael Deforge

Scavengers Reign (TV)

Princess Mononoke - Miyazaki again

EDIT: a few more that I like:

Flood (film)

Safari Honeymoon - Jesse Jacobs (honestly, anything by Jesse Jacobs)

Big Questions - Anders Nilsen

I‘m just 100 pages in

This is incredibly well written. Should’ve probably read this in winter..

I am bookbinding for the first time and ive run into an issue. The spine is larger than the stack of pages (on the right side). This makes the front cover slope down.

What do yall recommend I do to fix/prevent this?

Estava tudo dando certo, até eu montar e perceber que coloquei o elástico do lado errado kkkk. Acha que devo tirar o elástico ou mantém? Será presente para os membros da minha banca de mestrado.

Outer Dark is my second Cormac McCarthy novel, with Blood Meridian being my first. I truly admire McCarthy’s writing style, I have yet to encounter anyone who can match him. Outer Dark is an unflinching look into a “godless land” with irredeemable characters. It’s bleak, desolate, and hopeless.

For those who aren’t familiar with this book, Outer Dark is about a brother (Culla) and Sister (Rinthy) who live in the Appalachian Mountains. They engaged in an incestuous relationship, which leads to Rinthy bearing her brother’s child. Rinthy gives birth and Culla wants nothing to do with the child, so he waits for Rinthy to fall asleep and he abandons the child deep in the wilderness. The following morning, they have a falling out and they embark on separate journeys. Rinthy hopes to find her child while Culla leaves home to find work and distance himself from his situation at home.

*Stop reading here, to avoid spoilers!*

The writing from start to finish was insanely beautiful with a good helping of dreadfulness. My favorite part of the book was Culla’s last encounter with the three strangers and the interaction that ensued. The amount of dread and anxiousness I felt, weighed on me a lot. By the time the encounter ended, my jaw was already on the floor. Then Culla’s interaction with the blind man and the marshlands… although I’ve only read two of McCarthy’s novels, I’ll continue to sing his praises till my last breath! I’m eager to start my next CM novel! What are your thoughts on Outer Dark?

I’ve always defended audiobook listeners because, at the end of the day, you still consumed the story and the content of the book. Personally, I don’t listen to audiobooks because I zone out too much, but I never saw them as less than reading.

But after finishing Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden and going through the reviews on goodreads (Americans, before you come for me: I’m not from there and I will not be boycotting Amazon), I noticed something interesting. A lot of the people giving the book less than 3 stars had listened to the audiobook instead of physically reading it.

And it made me wonder: how sure are you that you hated the actual writing and not the narrator’s performance? A bad narrator can completely change the experience of a book the tone, pacing, emotions, tension, even how intelligent or annoying characters sound. Some narrators overact, others sound bored, and some voices just don’t fit the story at all.

So then I started checking reviews for other books, and I noticed the same pattern. A surprising number of negative reviews mention that the person listened to the book rather than read it. At that point, it stops feeling like they are only reviewing the author’s work,sometimes they are also reviewing the performance of the narrator without separating the two.