 So let's do the reviews first and then we're going to look at the comic book hauls. Okay the first comic book right is the one that I ended up getting in the spring and I and I've shown this to you guys and I showed it a couple of times during the live streams and this book is Monk by Yosef Dak Udi. Okay this book right here. Now I don't you know I'd never heard of Yosef Dak Udi right. I tried looking him up and I did look him up and it looks like he's not a fair bit of work. I believe he's releasing the books in French. I'm not absolutely sure on this right. I didn't dig too deep into who the creator of this book is. Know this name. I'm gonna keep my eyes out for this this person as well from now on for anything that they're putting out right. But the reason I bought this book was because of Monk. Thonomius Monk and I've mentioned Thonomius Monk before right. And as soon as I saw this advertised in previews because I look at the catalog that comes you know I get the previews catalog every month when it comes to the comic book store. He basically supplies free previews to anyone that has a subscription box at his comic book store so I get that every month and I flip through it and at the beginning of this year I believe 2019 I saw this, solicited it and I ordered it through the comic book store and it arrived in spring right. Now this book hands down is brilliant really. Let me show you some of the artwork right. And the reason that I picked up this book is because of Thonomius, this is the way you pronounce his name or Spella's name, T-H-E-L-O-N-I-O-U-S. Thonomius, hopefully that'll focus, Thonomius Monk. He was a jazz pianist, composer from the 19, I shouldn't know because I read this but the dates you know escaped me but from the 1950s, 60s and I forget when he passed away right. I believe it was last decade or so maybe 90s or 2000s like again I should know because I read this but I finished this a few months ago okay. And if you want to read an amazing biography on an amazing musician consider to be one of the greatest musicians ever really in some of people's top five greatest American musicians ever, top 10 greatest musicians ever, greatest composers ever, just an artist really. This is it, you need to read this okay. Now for me I had heard of Monk through a documentary that Dave Chappelle put out called Block Party right and Block Party was a sort of documentary Chappelle put out where he invited a whole bunch of musicians to come and basically have a block party right. He sent out some invitations and stuff and brought in Jill Scott and Dead Prez and Kanye West and Talib Cuell and Most Def right. They were also playing and there was a few other people playing right and I knew some of them and some of those people I sampled their music after watching that documentary okay. Now during the documentary if you haven't seen it I highly recommend watching it right it's called Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Now during the documentary Dave Chappelle mentions Phenomius Monk. It's just a really it's like a 30 second little or even a 15 second little rant that Chappelle does regarding Monk and then when I watched that documentary that sort of stuck with me and I checked into Monk back then but because I was sampling some of the other music that other musicians that were playing during a block party and he really didn't get a chance to go off on Monk right. When I ordered this when the book arrived right in spring of this year what I ended up doing was I already had Miles Davis on my MP3 player right. So I started listening to a lot of Miles Davis I started listening sort of looping that with Scars on Broadway the person that came up for System of Down right. So I was listening to Miles Davis and Scars on Broadway right. As soon as this book arrived thanks to recommendations from people on Twitch that know their music they recommended I had listened to John Coltrane as well. So I sampled a few albums from John Coltrane right. So I started looping Miles Davis and I started looping John Coltrane right in preparation to listening to Phenomius Monk and what I ended up doing I sampled some of the albums from Monk. Let me give you the list of the albums that I listened to right. Genius of modern jazz volume one and number two okay. Live at five spot. Mysterio Monk's music plays Duke Ellington. Straight no chaser. Columbia collection. Complete prestige recording and underground okay. Those are the albums of Monk that I ended up looping. So basically the way I prepped myself really and you have to prep yourself for this okay. The way I prepped myself I looped Miles Davis Scars on Broadway together and then I kicked into John Coltrane looping about five of his albums right a few times and then I listened to these albums from Monk okay. Once I had gone through one iteration of this because I needed to have an appreciation for what Monk's music was about right. Just a just a 15 second little rant that Chappelle had of Phenomius Monk. It was praise like leaps and bounds beyond one hour speeches of people praising other musicians right. It was amazing. It really stuck with me right. So I knew it was gonna be magnificent. So I looped these albums once or listened to them once. Once I had gone through one iteration I started reading this and I listened to the albums multiple times right. I'm not sure how long it took me to read this. I savored it. There's times where I would just read a few pages right. Really just read a few pages and then I would listen to the music right. And this is basically a biography. There are other musicians that have appearances in this book right. Some of the stuff Miles Davis, John Coltrane right. They talk a little bit about it. There's a little bit of New York history with Roth trials being in here. That's how it started which blew me away right. And this book is created in a way that reflects Monk's music. Like I can't explain it beyond that because well let me try. This thing is sort of goes into sort of a dreaming to a certain degree. And that's what I found myself happening or what was happening to me when I was listening to Monk's music. Because when I was listening to Monk's music some of the stuff is offbeat. Some of the stuff is very mellow. Some of the stuff just goes chaotic. So basically I would go for two hour walks and listen to the music. I was traveling somewhere for an hour trip or hour and a half trip. I was listening to the music. And what I found myself feeling, experiencing was basically the same type of experience you would have if you were in a room with a lot of people where all of a sudden the conversation picks up and the volume in the room becomes grows and grows and sometimes just becomes overwhelming and then just dies down and there's whispers in the room and quiet where you can just sort of meditate and lose yourself in your own thoughts and then slowly the music picks up again and all of a sudden you find yourself sort of carried away in some kind of experience or conversation where it's picking up and it's lots of excitement and then all of a sudden boom. Right? That's the feel of Monk's music to me. Okay. And that was exactly the feel I got from this book. I know I'm giving it, like I'm really, I'm losing some of my words, right? Because reading this and looping Monk for, I don't know, it took me a couple of weeks, right? To, I took a little break in the middle and I looped Monk a few more times these albums and then I went back to this again, right? Because I really didn't want it to end and it was finding that I was reading parts of this and then I would have to go back and listen to the albums again and trying to catch some of the description, some of the feel of what the music represents, interpretation really of Monk's music represents and then try to listen to it, hear it on the albums, right? And I would, you know, they drop a few names of albums and songs in this, right? So I would go back to my playlist to make sure, you know, I had the music that I was, you know, that was being mentioned here in the albums that I was looping and some of them I did, some of them I didn't, right? Because Monk has, his library is enormous. I don't know who's a larger, Nino Simone's or Monk's. My guess is Nino Simone produced 38, I believe 38 unique standalone albums with a whole bunch of compilations of the best of and whatnot. I haven't looked into how many albums Monk released, his discography, but what I had, what I've been looping, what I mentioned, the albums that I listed, that's just a fraction of how much work he's produced, right? And a lot of those, well not a lot of it, but a fair bit of the classic stuff that they're supposed to be, they're considered to be classic are mentioned in this graphic novel. Highly recommend it, really, I could sit here for an hour talking about this, flipping through this, but I don't want to give too much spoilers if I've given too much already, hopefully I haven't, okay? Highly recommend reading this if you like amazing biographies, comic book, graphic novel biographies, and if you're a music aficionado, if you want to listen to someone which is unique, unique, unique, it will blow you away if for sure read the graphic novel at the same time because you'll have an appreciation for what's going on with the music, right? Because at first, first few loops that I did, I really didn't appreciate what was happening until I hit certain parts of the graphic novel that was talking about some of the tracks that I was listening to and then I would go back and listen to those albums, I would go, oh my God, that is brilliant, that is amazing, right? And then you can sort of try to focus in on the piano because Monk was the pianist in all of these, I believe, right? You can listen to the piano and try to catch the notes that Monk is playing, right? And then no matter how hard you try, you find yourself sort of lost in the music and the piano drifts away from you and the other instruments kick up and then once the sound, the rhythm hits a certain place where I haven't figured it out yet, but it's most likely when Monk is sort of slowly coming back into the conversation of the music you see it pick up again and you go, oh wow, wow, wow, boom, drop, right? Absolutely brilliant, highly recommend it, highly recommend it. Okay.