What Happens When Nothing Happens

Boredom and melancholy in the experience of reading Contemporary graphic novels show an interesting shift from the extraordinary to the ordinary in slice-of-life stories in which nothing happens. Present-day graphic accounts are inhabited by melancholic characters whining about the lack of meaning in life. This book examines this intriguing transition and brings a historical, aesthetical and narratological approach to comics in which boredom is not only a topic, but also awakens a deliberate affective response in the very experience of reading. This volume brings together close readings of work by Lewis Trondheim, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. With a foreword by Raphäel Baroni (University of Lausanne).

Eriksson explores our perception in relation to movement and our ability to find meaning through repetition. What Happens When Nothing Happens is Erikssons third book with walking as its starting point.

Through films that alternate between containment, order, and symmetry on the one hand, and obsession, explosiveness, and a lack of control on the other, Chantal Akerman has gained a reputation as one of the most significant filmmakers working today. Her 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is widely regarded as the most important feminist film of that decade. In Nothing Happens, Ivone Margulies presents the first comprehensive study of this influential avant-garde Belgian filmmaker. Margulies grounds her critical analysis in detailed discussions of Akerman's work--from Saute ma ville, a 13-minute black-and-white film made in 1968, through Jeanne Dielman and Je tu il elle to the present. Focusing on the real-time representation of a woman's everyday experience in Jeanne Dielman, Margulies brings the history of social and progressive realism and the filmmaker's work into perspective. Pursuing two different but related lines of inquiry, she investigates an interest in the everyday that stretches from postwar neorealist cinema to the feminist rewriting of women's history in the seventies. She then shows how Akerman's "corporeal cinema" is informed by both American experiments with performance and duration and the layerings present in works by European modernists Bresson, Rohmer, and Dreyer. This analysis revises the tired opposition between realism and modernism in the cinema, defines Akerman's minimal-hyperrealist aesthetics in contrast to Godard's anti-illusionism, and reveals the inadequacies of popular characterizations of Akerman's films as either simply modernist or feminist. An essential book for students of Chantal Akerman's work, Nothing Happens will also interest international film critics and scholars, filmmakers, art historians, and all readers concerned with feminist film theory.

Reader, don’t waste your time with this book. You might as well stick this book back on the shelf. Or toss it under your bed. You don’t need to read it because nothing happens. Or, wait, is that something? It’s a trumpet without a trumpeter. And there’s a tiny car without a driver. And a baton without a twirler. Maybe if you keep turning the pages, you’ll find out who is missing these items. Maybe they are all together, about to do something surprising. Maybe something does happen after all — something amazing! Kids will be hooked as they embark on a quest to find this (seemingly) missing story!

Robert Ringer's books have created a revolution in the self-development genre and shown millions the way to personal and professional achievement. Now, in his latest and most eye-opening work, he reveals the key factor that leads to success in all areas of life. "As the years have passed, I have increasingly zeroed in on action as the most important success habit when it comes to determining how an individual's life plays out," Ringer writes. His conclusion evolved as a result of years of observing how four powerful action elements work in concert to give a person the capacity to overcome virtually any obstacle in his path. These elements include: Nothing happens until something moves, God helps those who help themselves, The Law of Averages, Action produces genius, magic, and power, Ideas, preparation, knowledge, and wisdom are all but useless without action, because action is the starting point of all progress. One of Ringer's most important rules is that action must precede motivation. Take action first, and motivation will follow. Filled with humorous and enriching anecdotes, Action! exhorts the reader to "Forget about taking action next week; forget about taking action tomorrow; forget about taking action in an hour. When you close this book, get up out of your chair and take action now. Action is life, and life is meant to be lived -- which is why happiness is a natural consequence of an action-oriented life."

Jeffrey Reiner is a middle manager’s dream. Predictable, almost invisible, and lacking ambition, he’s held the same tedious job for eighteen years, typing up the calendar listings for a South Florida weekly. As the economy and the newspaper industry crashed around him, Jeffrey kept his head comfortably in the sand until he was terminated in the middle of his lunch hour. Suddenly Jeffrey is staring at a deadline of twenty-one weeks before his severance pay and unemployment benefits dry up and he has to figure out what to do next. Plunged into the bizarre world of unemployment, Jeffrey’s attempts at networking lead him to his slacker neighbors, an unorthodox state facilitator, and a 1-800 mental health counselor. What’s even worse is now that he has no job to fill the daytime hours, he can’t ignore the fact that his family life is unraveling: his wife communicates almost solely through detailed daily honey-do lists; his mother seems determined to get herself kicked out of her assisted-living facility; his teenage daughter has no use for him and seems wiser to the ways of the world than he’ll ever be; and his son has taken up a disturbing form of pest control to help make ends meet. Even his dog finds a way to let him down. With his job search going nowhere amid the wreckage of the American economy, Jeffrey has no choice but to push beyond his comfort zone. He takes on a string of ridiculous odd jobs for a guy known as “enterprising dude” that include dressing up as the Statue of Liberty and breeding fish in a tub of mud. But as Jeffrey stumbles from one comic catastrophe to another, he realizes that in opening up to the world, he no longer wants to go back to his safe, sheltered corner. Full of whimsy, wry humor, and surprising insight, Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You is a weird, wonderful journey of self-discovery that proves there’s life after the pink slip after all.

Warm and hopeful, this is a touching and honest depiction of a family changing together-and staying together. "I wonder what people would think if they could take the front off our house like a doll's house and watch us. All in the same house, but everyone separate. No one talking, but everyone thinking the same thing. Will we ever be a normal family again?" Izzy's family is under the spotlight when her dad comes out as Danielle, a trans woman. Izzy is terrified her family will be torn apart. Will she lose her dad? Will her parents break up? And what will people at school say? Now all eyes are on Izzy. Can she face her fears, find her voice, and stand up for her family and what's right?

1973. Mervyn Kavanagh travels home to the small Irish town of Carmincross for the wedding of his favourite niece. As he nears the town, Mervyn is haunted by dark thoughts of bombs, rubber bullets, political murder and terrorism. Somewhere, it seems, the past and present are bound to collide.