To the extent that each reaction I offer for a book is a here’s what I found helpful about this, then it is further up to us (you, me, us) to correct, refine, trash and start over, this or whatever it is we see as potentially helpful toward making the world a better place. There are some in the world who expect everyone to be omniscient and can’t be bothered to engage in a human dialogue toward figuring out how to make the world a better place. I may say stupid stuff, poorly informed stuff. In general, these amount to assessments of in what ways I found the book helpful somehow.Ĭonsequently, I may provide spoilers, may misunderstand books or get stuff wrong, or get off on a gratuitous tear about the thing in some way, &c. These reactions will not be Amazon-type reviews, with synopses, background research done on the author or the book itself, unless that strikes me as necessary or if the book inspired me to that when I read it. I have the same task this year, and I’ve added that I will write a book reaction for each one that I finish (or give up on, if I stop).

Last year in 2012, I set myself the task to read at least ten pages per day, and now I’m not sure if I kept up. The multi-talented Thomas Ott makes animations, is the lead singer of a band called The Playboys, and on top of this, he makes political satires, comics and caricatures for various newspapers and magazines.How does the word work in a wordless world? Among his other books are ‘Cinema Panopticum’, ‘Greetings from Hellville’ and ‘The Number 753-6-96-8’. Since 1995, he is a regular contributor to Lapin, the publication of the French publisher L’Association. The titles of his books, like ‘Tales of Error’ and ‘Hellville, Tales from the Edge’, already suggest that he is fond of the darker sides of life, which he depicts in his books with painstaking clarity. His work was published in various European magazines, including Ahai, Hochparterre, Okay Erotik Magazin, Strapazin, Tagesanzeiger-Magazin and Weltwoche in Switzerland, Boxer, Geo-Spezial, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Tempo in Germany, as well as El Vibora in Spain and Bulles Dingues, Culte, L’Écho des Savanes, Libération, Stronx and Vogue in France. Luckily, the Swiss artist Thomas Ott makes wordless scratchboard comix, which helps in making his work known in the rest of the world.īorn in Berne, Ott studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and began working in the independent comics scene in the second half of the 1980s.

There aren’t many comix artists from German-speaking countries whose work has been translated into other languages.

Cinema panopticum thomas ott