They say that too many cooks spoil the broth. I would say that, sometimes, it’s too many ingredients that spoil it.

Arabian Nights fell a little flat for me. I was excited when Willingham started including characters from the Arabian Nights world. But the storyline involving them wasn’t all that captivating. Also, one of the characters kept calling Sinbad, supposedly the head of this royal retinue, “sirrah.” I gathered that he meant it as a term of honor, but I couldn’t get over the fact that, in English, it has a negative connotation. If what they’re saying in Arabic is going to be translated into English, then shouldn’t that term be translated, too?

The one thing I will say is that Frau Totenkinder is pretty ossom. She’s the wicked witch of “Hansel and Gretl” fame. Her name is German for “dead children,” and she’s ossomly creepy, and Willingham uses her well.

There was a vaguely interesting secondary plotline involving a wooden soldier from the Adversary’s armies. Rodney, a wooden soldier, falls in love with June, a wooden “medic” — she repairs damaged wooden soldiers’ limbs. Together, they travel to find Geppetto and ask him to turn them into flesh so that they can marry and raise children. It’s a sweet, little love story, and a reminder that the soldiers in the enemy’s army are people, too, with cares and lives disturbingly similar to ours.

It’s a nice aside, but I still hope that the next volume gets back to top form again.

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This volume of Fables revolves mostly around Boy Blue. Unlike in the nursery rhyme, he’s actually a fierce warrior in addition to being a talented bugler.

His mission is to return to the Homelands, which have been taken over by the mysterious Adversary, and to rescue Red Riding Hood, the woman he loves, or die trying.

There’s plenty of adventure and subterfuge involved. Blue has stolen the Witching Cloak, a magical cloak that can teleport you to different places and hide items until you need them, and the Vorpal Sword, of “Jabberwocky” fame, which can vanquish any foe. He goes riding through the Homeland until he finds and confronts the Adversary.

We also get a short tangent about the life of Jack Horner, the “Jack” of all the fairytales and nursery rhymes. After the Battle of Fabletown, he steals a bunch of treasure from the Fabletown coffers, moves to Hollywood, and starts a production company (“Nimble Pictures”), which he uses to make a movie trilogy about “Jack.” The second movie, interestingly enough, is called Jack the Giant Killer. So, did I miss the first movie or what?

This volume is full of twists and turns, from the Adversary’s identity to Blue’s reunion with Red Riding to the truth about Blue’s quest into the Homelands. This series is going strong.

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The Mean Seasons is a solid follow-up to The March of the Wooden Soldiers. After the Battle of Fabletown, we get a nice expositional episode that ties up a few loose ends: Snow White gives birth, there’s a regime change in Fabletown politics, and we get to see behind the scenes into Bigby’s operations as Sheriff of Fabletown.

We also get treated to a scene from the past, from Bigby’s time serving in World War II.

And some new threads are also introduced: there’s a serial killer on the loose in Fabletown, we meet Bigby’s father: the North Wind, and Fabletown comes to the cusp of war with the Adversary.

There’s a lot of good exposition in this volume, and I appreciated the character development. Willingham continues to introduce plenty of new characters into the story, but doesn’t do so at the cost of putting any of the original starring cast on the backburner.

All in all, it’s a solid volume, and it made me eager to read the next one.

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A word to the wise: reading on the Kindle is great: you can take your book with you on the go and read without having to physically hold your book open.

But if you’re going to read Othello on Kindle, do your very best not to read the last act in public, and especially not while doing cardio at the gym. Reading it in public will rob you of the comfort of tears, and reading it on the elliptical machine will turn your workout into an ugly spectacle of snot, sweat, tears, and gasping.

I saw Othello before I ever read it. I studied abroad in England in the last semester of my senior year, and part of the program was to take weekly excursions all over England. One week, we visited Stratford-upon-Avon, and had the privilege of watching the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Othello.

I remember being profoundly moved by the last act, and I experienced that same emotion today on the elliptical machine at 24-Hour Fitness.

Othello is a Moor. He’s the 16th century equivalent of a Huxtable: he’s black, but respected. He’s the general of an army, and the play opens with his elopement with Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian nobleman. Roderigo, another wealthy nobleman, is sulky because he wanted Desdemona for himself. This presents a golden opportunity for Iago, Othello’s right-hand man, who pretends to be loyal to Othello, but is actually eaten up with envy of the Moor. Iago and Roderigo conspire to deceive Othello and bring him to ruin.

Othello (Laurence Fishburne) and Iago (Kenneth Branagh) in the 1995 film version,

If you’ve ever been tempted to do something underhanded because you were jealous of someone else, you can understand Othello. But it’s also a cautionary tale, showing the dire consequences of jealousy. Iago himself ironically warns Othello: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;/It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on…” (III.iii.165-167)

(Basically, he’s saying, “Don’t be jelly, cuz it’ll eat you up.”)

Hugo Goulding (Josh Hartnett) and Odin James (Mekhi Phifer) in O, the crappy 2001 bastardization of the play.

We see the poisoned fruit that jealousy bears: Iago’s jealousy leads him to set the plot against Othello in motion. Roderigo’s jealousy leads him to get involved, which (SPOILER ALERT!!) eadslay otay ishay untimelyyay eathday. Othello’s jealousy, once sparked by Iago’s insinuations, leads him to destroy everything he has, including that which he loved most in life.

It’s Shakespearean tragedy at its best. The audience is helplessly pulled into the action unfolding before them, watching as Othello’s passionate love for Desdemona, nudged off-balance by Iago’s machinations, slowly but inexorably destroys everything in its path — and all in language that will make your soul shudder at its terrible beauty.

If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend that you try to see a staged production. Bring the Kleenex. Leave the elliptical machine.

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I’m glad that Bill Willingham thought to follow up the somewhat weaker Storybook Love with some good, old-fashioned war. It’s a smart move that gets us all back on the bandwagon of Fables = GOOD, Adversary = BAD.

We start with a seemingly unrelated tale: Little Boy Blue, who served as an aide de camp to the Fable general who led the last stand to protect the last gateway to the mundy world from the Fablelands, tells the sad tale of the fall of that army. In the process, he met and had a night of passion with Red Riding Hood (more nudity. It’s unfortunate, since it kind of tainted this volume for me). They were in love, but, thanks to a misunderstanding, she was left behind, while Blue made it out.

Aside: whenever I think of Little Boy Blue, I can’t help but to think of Michael Emerson:

Some of the art in the beginning of this volume is a little off. Hmm, never thought I’d have much of an opinion about that.

Anyway, so, Snow White is coping with her pregnancy as best she can when she has a dream in which she’s visited by the head of Colin Pig (who was murdered in Animal Farm), who warns her that great danger is coming. This dream puts her on edge.

In the meantime, the rest of Fabletown is dealing with the upcoming mayoral election, which will, for the first time in Fabletown’s history, have a candidate to vote for besides the incumbent, King Cole: Prince Charming.

But before the election can really get off the ground, Fabletown is faced with an unstoppable army that threatens not only to wipe out the citizens of Fabletown, but also threatens to out them to the mundys in the area. Reinforcements are called in from the upstate Farm, but Snow is worried that, without Bigby, who’s gone off to look into a troubling matter to the north, Fabletown won’t be able to hold its ground.

It’s all kinds of fun to see Fabletown gearing up for a battle royale, and to see some of the Adversary’s forces close-up for the first time. The battle itself is pretty epic, and there’s a good enough twist at the end to definitely make you want to pick up Volume 5.

Another solid “episode” of this series.

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I really enjoyed Storybook Love; I did. But, as ridiculous as this sounds, I did think that you had to… ahem… suspend your disbelief a little more with this one than you did in the first two volumes of this series.

The volume starts off pretty fun, with a glimpse into Jack Horner’s adventures during the Civil War. It’s funny and pretty charming; he cheats both the Devil and Death in this segment (nudity warning here. Jack be a player). It’s just an aside, so it doesn’t have much bearing on the main story of the volume.

The main storyline comes in two parts. The first is about a mundy reporter who documents the existence of the Fable community. The only thing is, he thinks they’re vampires. Bigby gets a crew together to neutralize the mundy and, in the process, makes an enemy of Bluebeard.

The second part results from Blackbeard’s beef with Bigby, and he enchants Bigby and Snow White and sends them into the Cascade Mountains to be assassinated by Goldilocks, who’s on the lam for her part in the insurrection we saw in Animal Farm. She’s been shacking up with Bluebeard, and he sends her to take down Bigby and Snow.

We see some romantic tensions slowly building between Bigby and Snow, which take a shocking turn at the end of the volume.

Bigby in wolf form with Snow. I want to pet him.

While it was still a fun read, there were a lot of little details that seemed a little sloppy to me. For example, Prince Charming begins spying on Bluebeard and discovers that he’s plotting to kill Bigby and Snow. How did he decide to start spying on Bluebeard? How would he communicate with the Mounted Police (Lilliputians riding on Fable mice) to put them on the case? What authority does he even have to put them on the case?

And the whole thing of Bluebeard enchanting Bigby and Snow to get them out camping in the Cascades seemed just a bit lazy to me. I mean, I know you’ve gotta throw them into some crazy adventure to bring them closer together, but, come on.

I can’t believe I’m essentially saying that this story about fairy tale characters living in New York City was a little too unbelievable for me.

But it’s still a fun read, and the characters still hold steady, even if some of the plotlines are a little shaky.

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This was a fun one.

So, we learned in Vol. 1, Legends in Exile, that those Fables (fairy tale characters) who couldn’t pass as normal humans in New York City live on a farm in upstate New York.

Snow White and Rose Red travel upstate for Snow’s semi-annual visit, but they’re met with an unexpected rebellion: some of the Fables living on the farm felt that living in a prison for your own protection is a prison nonetheless.

Although some characters really only make cameos, it’s still fun to see so many fictional characters all jumbled together, rubbing elbows: Shere Khan and Baghera the Panther from The Jungle Book, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and all of her spawn (who are armed to the teeth, by the way), and Reynard the Fox from Aesop’s Fables are all living together with characters from classic fairy tales like the Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Willingham’s handling of the animal uprising is a little predictable, but still fun. And at least he’s trying to inject some real-world themes into his work. We meet our first true villain of the series, and, incidentally, see our first true murder of the series as well. Because the tone of the novel is so fun, it was a little jarring to see such a serious and gruesomely portrayed incident. But it’s jarring in a good way; a stark reminder from Willingham that, while these stories are all in good fun, there’s a real world out there for which actions like these have dire consequences.

I thoroughly enjoyed this volume; it “read” like another solid episode of a TV show.

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ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” is getting mixed reviews: some people like it, and others hate it, and some are willing to give it a chance because it’s being produced by two of the writers from “Lost.” It’s drawn some comparisons to Bill Willingham’s Fables, but the producers claim that they’re “telling a different story” with the show.

After having read the first volume of Fables, I wish that they’d decided to adapt this for TV instead.

In Willingham’s world, the former residents of the Homelands — better known as characters from popular fairy tales — have been forced into exile because an Adversary has taken over their lands. The Fables, as they call themselves, now live in New York City amongst the “mundies” (mundane people like you and me) in a secret community imaginatively dubbed “Fabletown.” Unlike the wide-eyed innocents of the fairy tales most of us grew up reading, the residents of Fabletown are hardened, jaded, and about as human as fairy folk can get.

In this series, Willingham perfectly blends fairy tales and noir, which I would never have thought possible. His characters have a certain bite to them that’s missing from the ABC show. “Once Upon a Time” is still essentially about the fight between good and evil. The line between the two is deliciously blurred in Willingham’s series. While it’s generally accepted that Adversary = BAD and Fables = GOOD, that doesn’t stop the Fables from bickering amongst each other.

Snow White invites herself to become part of Bigby Wolf's investigation.

In the first volume, Legends in Exile, Willingham introduces us to the main characters. Snow White is the Deputy Mayor of Fabletown. While the Mayor, King Cole, is the figurehead, Snow’s the one who’s really running the show. She’s smart, tough, and determined. Bigby (short for “Big Bad”) Wolf is a reformed villain who now works as Fabletown’s sheriff. The two are forced to work together when Snow’s sister, Rose Red, goes missing. Bigby proves himself to be quite the detective, and the story moves at a solid pace while introducing us to various characters in the Fable world.

The story is smart and entertaining, a novel spin on the fairy tales of your childhood. The artwork is also pretty classic, which adds to the fun of the series. Legends in Exile read like an episode of a television crime procedural to me, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You know I loves me some “Law & Order.” If this volume is the graphic novel equivalent to a pilot episode, then I’m looking forward to the rest of the “series run,” so to speak.

On an unrelated note: I think I watch too much television.

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Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like a depressing tale of ruin and social stigma to kick off the New Year.

I’d heard the title of this book many times growing up, but had never actually heard what it was about. Then, right before I started reading it, a friend told me that it was just really depressing. I enjoy a good, sad book (Of Mice and Men, anyone?), so I decided to plunge in.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles taught me that there is a big difference between good sad and bad sad. Good sad has some redemption involved that kinda makes the sadness worthwhile. Bad sad is just depressing, and even if there’s a little redemption or at least some social value, it doesn’t really make it worth how depressing the story is.

Tess Durbeyfield is a simple peasant girl who lives a simple peasant life until, one day, her alcoholic father hears from a parson that the Durbeyfields are likely the descendants of the D’Urbervilles, a noble family fallen into ruin and obscurity. Hearing that there might be some distant (and wealthy) relatives living nearby, John Durbeyfield determines that he and his family ought to get a piece of that pie and sends his pretty daughter Tess to go and collect.

What was supposed to be a golden opportunity for Tess ends up leading to her ruin (you can probably guess how. I mean, it’s a book about social stigma back in old-timey England. You do the math).

It was a scandalous book for its time. It involves a taboo subject, and, at the time, probably shed some light and helped people to reconsider the justice of how “ruined” women were treated. Because of this, it’s also an important work.

But, man, it’s a sad book. Poor Tess never meets a man who does right by her, from her father to her would-be noble relative, to the love of her life, to her employer. The only man in the entire book who shows her the least kindness is an old dairyman. This book isn’t really sad in a way that makes you think of noble things and want to be a better person. It makes you think of injustice and makes you despair of ever living in a world free of it.

In that way, I suppose it’s almost as important as Native Son, which was probably the best book I read in 2011. But I think Bigger Thomas was a more realistic character than Tess Durbeyfield, whose blind devotion to the man of her dreams and patience under unjust suffering make her seem rather two-dimensional to me. The way Wright wrote made me want to stand up against injustice, whereas Hardy’s book made me want to buckle under the weight of it.

I can appreciate Tess for its literary achievement, and acknowledge its social and historical importance. But I can’t say that I enjoyed reading it, or that reading it really did me any good.

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And, for what it’s worth, this is the Tom Hardy I prefer to come to mind when I hear that name in the future:

10. Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

This is actually a graphic novel series in ten volumes, and not a single book. But it’s a graphic novel, so it’s a quick and fun read. The premise of the story is that a mysterious plague has caused every male organism on Earth to die: except for Yorick Brown, an aspiring escape artist, and his helper monkey, Ampersand. It explores a lot of gender issues, but does so in a witty and interesting way. There are plenty of meta references and jokes, and a few parts even made me laugh out loud, which rarely happens when I’m reading.

But this is a graphic novel series for grown-ups, and not a comic book for kids, so be forewarned that there are some squicky parts that prudes like me don’t appreciate, including some nudity.

9. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Culture changes with every generation. The dominant people of one generation can quickly become obsolete and shunned by the next. Things Fall Apart explores what happens when someone cannot let go of the past in order to adapt to the future. Okonkwo, the most powerful man in a remote Nigerian village, is unable to change as the times do, with tragic consequences. This book is a quick read, but a heavy one.

8. John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock by Iain H. Murray

Iain Murray is, in my opinion, one of the finest biographers of our day, and certainly the foremost Christian biographer of our generation. His proto-biography of John MacArthur is a brief but encouraging look at the life of one of my spiritual heroes. Murray himself reminds the reader that a full biography can’t really be finished until the subject’s life and testimony are complete, but this is a great glimpse at what that full testimony will look like when it’s ready to be written.

I can only wonder who will write Murray’s biography when he is gone.

7. John Adams by David McCullough

John Adams is an historical figure who doesn’t get much play time in the American classrooms of today. But he’s certainly one of the most important patriots who ever lived, and historian David McCullough brings him to life in the pages of this book. Adams was a man of deep integrity and passion, and I appreciate that McCullough chooses to write about men of character instead of those who lived more glamorous and superficially exciting lives.

6. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

This is a book that will speak to anyone who’s ever loved and lost and pined after someone they couldn’t have. Hornby has a knack for writing about common human experiences with a humor and with that makes them seem somehow glorious because of how pitiful they are. Rob Fleming is everyman, and laughing at his romantic misadventures helps you to laugh at your own.

5. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

One of the few books I re-read in 2011, I was surprised at how much richer this book was for me upon re-reading it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown to appreciate God’s love and care for His children since I first read it back in high school, but I was very personally encouraged by this book, and the testimony of Corrie ten Boom’s life, especially in how God used her time in a German concentration camp during WWII to teach her more about His power, grace, and love. This is a book that I’ll keep in my heart for the rest of my life.

4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

I hear that the movie version of this book is retaaaaahded, but don’t let that stop you from reading this beautiful, tragic, poignant book. One of the first novels to be set against the backdrop of 9/11, it came under some fire for being “manipulative” because of its setting. But I think time has been kind to it, and I found the story of young Oskar Schell’s search for a way to make sense out of life after losing his father in the 9/11 attacks to be profoundly moving.

3. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

What High Fidelity is for relationships, Black Swan Green is for growing up. Jason Taylor is unpopular, unconfident, and uncomfortable. His parents are on the verge of splitting up, the girl he fancies fancies the class bully, and, to make matters worse, he has a stammer that makes King George VI look like Cicero. He’s the Rob Fleming of junior high, and David Mitchell writes this semi-autobiographical character with honesty, compassion, and feeling. It’ll make you look back on the miserable memories of junior-high awkwardness (if you have them. I have them in abundance) with fondness — not because they weren’t really miserable, but because that misery shaped you into the person you are today.

2. Native Son by Richard Wright

Native Son may well be one of the most important works of American literature. It’s well-written, thought-provoking, and harrowing. It tells the tale of Bigger Thomas, a black man ironically forced into a terrible situation by the kindness of people in a class oppressing his own. Part of me wants to say it’s a sad story, but it’s also a very cold story. Wright himself described it best when he said of its creation, “I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.”

1. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Tim Keller

I guess you could accuse me of copping out because I put a Christian book at the top of my list. But while this book may not change the world at large, it certainly changed my life, and my view of God’s love and grace. We’ve all heard the story of the prodigal son, and we think that the word “prodigal” means “lost” or “wayward.” But what it really means is “wastefully extravagant,” and Keller posits that the real prodigal in this story is the Father, who lavishes his love and riches on a son that doesn’t deserve it. I can’t even write about this book without being moved to tears because I know that God has given me so much more than I could ever hope to deserve. Because of His prodigal love, all the riches of heaven are mine, and there’s not a thing I can do to lose it or earn more of it. This book is a must-read for Christians who want to glimpse into the depths of God’s love for them.

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What were your favorite books of 2011?