Customer Reviews

All Over Coffee

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been a big fan of Paul Madonna's exquisite drawings and thought-provoking captions since All Over Coffee debuted in the SF Chronicle. I left SF nearly 3 years ago and his strip on the web kept me connected to home. The book was very enjoyable because it documents the evolution of the strip, and has forever put to rest the question: "but what does it really mean?"

Do you love San Francisco? Do you appreciate finely rendered drawings of unique architecture or everyday things most people overlook? Ever wonder how much work a working artist really does? Do you like to eavesdrop on strangers' conversations and try to put the fragments of what you hear into context? If you answered yes to any one of the above, you will enjoy "All Over Coffee."

Thank you, Paul for giving your fans something tangible to linger over, with a good cup of coffee.

I ended up buying this one essentially sight unseen, after seeing a couple of excerpts on the Comics Journal blog. And excerpted is probably not the best way to comprehend this - Madonna's art is stunning from the get-go, and any individual page has a really satisfying (and very 1970's-ish) feel. But as comics, it doesn't ever come together, particularly when read grouped.

Madonna's vibe seems to be a captured moment, and having 200 or so captured moments in a row doesn't do anything to increase their impact - if anything, it dilutes the strength of whatever standout strips there are.

I give it a four-star review because as a reprint volume, the standards are some of the highest I've ever seen. The sepia washes are rich and nuanced, the color is sharp and vibrant, the paper stock is top notch, etc. If you are already a fan of the strip, or really have a yen for moody yet celebratory renderings of San Francisco, this is quite a gem. If you're unfamiliar, I would recommend finding more than a few of Madonna's strips to read over and then decide if you're on his wavelength or if you want to fork over the cash for what amounts to a nice urban sketchbook with some random dialogue thrown in for effect.

I have never written a review of anything, but Paul Madonna's "All Over Coffee" is so brilliant, I can't not write one. "All Over Coffee" is not just a comic that appears in the SFC, or, maybe, to some, that's all it is. But if you take the time to look at each drawing and really reflect on it, the drawing and accompanying text will likely become so much more. Some drawings and textss are simply windows into poignant moments, but others are so startling and arresting that reading them will make you stop what you are doing and reconsider what you've just seen and read, only this time, with regard to your particular station and situation in life. I bought this book at City Lights Bookstore while visiting San Francisco in June 2008. The cover interested me, so I picked it up and looked inside. I opened to drawing #299 (not page #299), "It's more than possible that all sides are wrong." I knew I had to have this book. I have purchased, to date, eight copies of this book for other people. Everyone I give it to finds new things in the drawings and in the texts, and not just new, but different than what I found when I looked at the same drawings and texts. Buy this book! Not every drawing may speak to you immediately, but they likely will at some point. And when they do, they will mean something to you. And there's a good chance that what you see is altogether different from what anyone else saw. That's the genius of Paul Madonna!

I love this book! Madonna is superb illustrator with a mischievous wit and Zen spirit. A native San Franciscan, the Victorian and other architectural details of the old neighborhoods are familar to me, and it is fun to determine locations of his panels. He forces us to be aware of similar details of our lives, of the juxtapositions of form and space, and in but a few words, like a haiku, he captures relationships, moods, and the human condition. Even if you are not rooted in The City, this book deserves study, whether you are an artist or a philosopher. I look forward to a second collection, for Paul Madonna continues his work at the SF Chronicle. What joy!

Length:: 1:08 Mins

All Over Coffee is one of the best sketchbooks I've ever seen, and now one of my favourites.

All Over Coffee is actually a comic strip for the San Francisco Chronicle. It's a comic strip without the comic. The strip is about San Francisco paired together with Paul Madonna's writings. The book doesn't collect all the strips, but you wish it did when you're on page one.

Paul Madonna's art is wonderful. His style is loose yet controlled. The location drawings of San Francisco evoke a strong sense of presence, of being there, looking through Paul Madonna's eyes.

Each piece is rendered with beautiful ink wash, tones carefully placed. Even the texture of the paper he uses seeps through to give the drawing personality.

The architectural details are captured wonderfully making this a book that you always go back to, to get inspired. In some ways, you can never finish reading this book because of that.

Highly recommended.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Paul Madonna's stories and art of San Francisco are heart-breaking and beautiful. This book is brimming with love for the city. Each page shows a wonderful snapshot of a moment in the life of that city. Nothing big, nothing flashy...just real life. Nothing could be more beautiful.

I've been following Madonna's work since he first began publishing in the San Francisco Chronicle's "SFGate" website. The drawing themselves speak a language that is universal. Anyone who has doodled in a notebook at a coffee shop will immediately relate to the style, but Madonna takes it further with his ink washes that give texture and depth to simple (but detailed) line drawings. He's a natural. What comes out are beautiful artworks that say something more about their subject than a photograph or a carefully painted landscape. The text is another matter. Madonna has drifted far from his original concept of "overhearing a conversation" in a coffee house. You can be drinking coffee anywhere, any time. His musings sometimes are simple and profound. Sometimes they are oblique and take a while to simmer in your consciousness. You let them, because the artwork invites them in. Then sometime a day or two later, you get it. He swears it's not autobiographical, that it is all fiction, but sometimes his character seems an awfully lot like an artist drawing line drawings on the streets of San Francisco with a voice that's just burning to get out. It doesn't matter where his text comes from; ultimately it's all Paul Madonna, and in my opinion, Paul Madonna is a brilliant creator of visual and textual imagery: poetry.

Try removing the text from the drawings, separating them. Neither seems as powerful as when they were intertwined together, even though they may not seem related on the surface. But enough analysis: The book is beautiful, a collector's item, superbly laid out and published with fine binding and paper. The reproductions are first-rate. And it's very interesting to watch Madonna's style and voice mature and evolve from his older works to his newer ones. (they are not necessarily in order in the book, btw) I've collected every single panel he's drawn since his first one at SFGate, many years ago, and this is one of the things I look forward to each week. The book will make you a fan. You will start reading his strips if you don't already. It's not just for San Franciscans; it's for people everywhere who get that feeling that there is more out there than they've been seeing, and who want to stretch their minds while enjoying a different kind of "nature." Nature is us. Madonna makes that very clear. -- Shooshie

Easily one of my best random bookstore finds of my life. My eye was somehow drawn to this, and this guy immediately became one of my favorite artists, the second I opened it. I've never kept it on a shelf-- this book deserves to be left out, capable of being opened to a random page at any time.

Paul Madonna's book is delightfully quirky, in an inoffensive yet bitingly honest way. I read the whole thing through in one sitting, enjoying the detailed (yet almost sloppy) pen and ink drawings.

I am thoroughly bored and very, very unimpressed with the comics page in my local newspaper. Besides a small handful (RIP Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side . . . you are missed dearly) they are tedious, repetitive, and uninspiring. All Over Coffee is the opposite. Every scene is delicious; perfectly composed and rendered with such grace the light feels like it comes straight from the sun. And the text, while sometimes a little odd and perhaps a bit too "make you think", it consistently makes me smile, makes me shake my head and chuckle, and even, yes, make me think. Which is a good thing.

The artwork is glorious and the writing sublime. I highly recommend this book.