I'll send you one if you promise to go all critical on it so I can start revising it.

I will gladly give you constructive criticism.

No Man's Land (and Dark Knight Returns came up on Amazon as graphic novels. The Vachss thing is actually pure novel -- all text, no illustrations. Struck me as very odd, but intriguing. I may go back for it soon just to see what it's like.

I do want to read Batman: Year One before the movie comes up. Googling Batman this morning, by the way, I found a website for Batman Begins, with nothing on it but a few early photos. Such a tease!

You can get NML 1-5 as graphic novels, but the shortform I rec is the Greg Rucka (and accomplished novelist in his own right, and former classmate of our own JZ), NML, which you can get in regular paperback.

For posterity, my current introset recommendations

• Batman: Year One (Frank Miller)
• Robin: Year One (Chuck Dixon)
• Batgirl: Year One (Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon)

This gives you a basis for the core three.

After that, recs get tailored to what you're getting into the 'verse for.

The No Man's Land novel rec is for those who want to get kind of up to speed with where things are at in the Batfam, but don't have the time or money to spend on the massive list of trades that one would suggest for that.

DKR is good, but I actually rarely re-read it, and while it's on the default list of "You Must Have This Book" for many people, I think it's not aging as well as many others.

Thanks for the recs! I definitely feel the beginnings of a new fascination coming on. (And I hope it's okay I called you Plei...)

Isn't the Vachss novel the one about child abuse?

Connie, yeah, that's what it said. And something in the bio said that Vachss writes primarily about that topic, and his law practice focuses on children and families only.

Thanks for the recs! I definitely feel the beginnings of a new fascination coming on. (And I hope it's okay I called you Plei...)

Yep! It's perfectly fine to call me Plei.

Vacchs, in his primary mystery series, does focus on child abuse and similar things. I stopped reading his a while back when things got too dark and nasty for me. YDMV.

I don't remember whether anyone has posted about Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff here. I'm about halfway through and enjoying it immensely. However I'm getting nervous that things are about to go desperately wrong for these people.

Add me to folks who can't deal with the darkness of what Vachss usually writes. And I like dark. His stuff is just too real.

Where I went to kindergarten in 1974 they were teaching some then-trendy reading technique where you learned the completly logical phonetic spellings of everything (including literature translated into such so you had third graders reading shakespeare and stuff). I don't know what it did for my reading, but I'm a lousy speller to this day (as are several other people I know who were subjected to that program). I wish I could remember the name of it... my kindergarten class picture has all the funny writing on the bulletin board behind us.

Back in my k-3 grade I got what was know as "whole language". Not phonetics at all. On the one hand, that is probably why I turned into a natural speed reader. On the other, I sometimes use it as an excuse for my inability to spell - though at my age the real reason has to be attributed to laziness.