Purchased from Forget-Me-Not Used Books.

Jack is a fellow who falls asleep, and stays asleep, at the most inoppurtune times. When he awakens one Sunday to find that he is being arrested for murder, his whole life is thrown into chaos. It's an interesting whodunit/what happened story. I enjoyed it.

Mailed to GoryDetails to kick off my Graphic Novel/Manga bookbox.

I chose this book from AKSarah's manga/graphic-novel bookbox because the title and artwork caught my interest. Looks like an unusual thriller!

Later: Very unusual indeed, from the stark outlines of the artwork to the twisting premise of the story. It opens with the main character and narrator, scruffy and beaten-up, riding a bus somewhere, and telling us his story. He claims his habit of falling asleep anywhere, at any time, isn't actually narcolepsy, but he has no other name for it, though it's apparently ruining his life; he went to bed with a beautiful woman, and woke to find himself being arrested for her murder, which he slept right through...

And then he's released ("They let you go," says a mysterious stranger), and finds a disturbing letter in his apartment ("This will not end well"), falls asleep, wakes to find a strange man with a knife threatening him - the guy is definitely not having a good few days here. And that's just the beginning!

Very noir, full of threats and betrayals and twists.

I'm putting this book into AKSarah's graphic novel/manga bookbox, which will be on its way to BCer quietorchid in Minnesota soon. Hope someone enjoys the book!

*** Released for the 2012 TICK-TOCK Challenge. ***

An endless dream
Where reality is just a few moments
in time.

What becomes of your life
with eyes wide shut?

Back into a bookring box

I'll be keeping this one.

Read today.

A one night stand is brutally interrupted by two masked gunmen, resulting in the murder of a woman named Jill. As she lay dying, her partner Jack sleeps peacefully. Jack suffers from a condition which sounds an awful lot like narcolepsy - although he insists it isn’t – and by the time he wakes up the murderers are long gone. Jack becomes determined to solve the mystery of Jill’s death, because even though they had just met he’s pretty sure she was The One and he’s madly in love. As he follows a series of notes and clues he’ll run afoul of more gunmen, strippers, a transvestite pimp and the law.

As a noir crime drama, the story is OK. Cursing the main character with narcolepsy makes it a little different from most tales in the genre, since Jack actually has a legitimate reason for blacking out and missing key moments. But the trade-off is that Jack’s constantly falling asleep and waking up with an unexpected visitor in the room. It gets really repetitive after a while. I guess I’m not much of a believer in love at first sight, because Jack’s attachment to Jill after knowing her for only a few hours seems very unbelievable. So that was another thing that bothered me as I read. But the biggest problem was the total predictability of the story. Every major twist to the story could be seen coming from a mile away.

But it’s a familiar yarn well told. Brian Koschak’s illustrations suit the mood of the story perfectly. His women are gorgeous and sexy and his bodyguards hulking and menacing. The main character is good-looking in a bedraggled sort of way – just what you’d expect from a man who has been running around on adrenaline for a couple of days.

The one oddity is that the final chapter suddenly switches panel format. Up until that point, the story employs the standard left-to-right one page comic book style of storytelling, but it suddenly changes to stories that move across a page spread instead. It took me a page or two catch on to the transition, and in the meantime the narrative got really confusing and stopped dead. It’s not that I have any problem with two-page spreads specifically, but if the device hasn’t been employed at all and then suddenly becomes the dominant mode of storytelling, it’s jarring.

But if you like mysteries with plenty of boobs and bloody violence, Narcoleptic Sunday may be right up your alley.

adding to the Graphic Novel Shrinking Bookbox!

Took this out of GoryDetails's graphic novel shrinking bookbox. Not sure about "plenty of boobs and bloody violence" (as k00kaburra described it), but I'll give it a shot.

Finally got around to reading this one and found it an interesting ride. I'm glad Jack rides the bus because I wouldn't want to be a passenger if he was driving!

Left on the ground floor of the convention center during the Amazing Hawaii Comic Con. Seems to me we haven't really had a comic con for years, and this year there are two! This one is part of a large mainland commercial enterprise, so unsurprisingly they had better publicity and more attendance, but to me Comic Con Honolulu also had a lot going for it. This one is more focused on comics - I believe the majority of the special guests were connected with comics or cosplay, whereas the earlier events guests were more SF types.

Released for Plum-crazy's September Sapphire challenge.

(Larger photo here.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm so glad you've found this book!

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It's now your book, for you to do with as you please: keep it, pass it to a friend, or maybe even leave it where someone else can find it!

If you've ever wondered where your books go after they leave your hands, join BookCrossing and you may find out: you'll be able to follow the further adventures of your books as new readers make journal entries - sometimes from surprisingly far-flung locations.

(Think of it like Where's George for books...or a little like geocaching - you can follow the book's journey every time someone makes a new entry. Some BookCrossers even leave books *in* geocaches!)

BookCrossing: making the whole world a library!