4 books I read in June, ranked

Well, this is embarrassing.

I only finished four books this month. Five, if you count one I can’t talk about.

Pathetic.

I started a couple books and didn’t finish them, such as Tomi Adeyemi’s “Children of Blood and Bone” and Mary Robinette Kowal’s “The Calculating Stars.” Both of them were pretty great, but did not hold my interest past the midway point. I think a couple bad reads this month poisoned the well for everything else.

In June, I started knitting Christmas presents! IT’S THAT TIME, KNITTERS! As of July 1, it's 177 days until Christmas.

Also, I started volunteering at the Humane Society for 5 hours a week. More on that in a second.

So here are these books:

4.) Watchmen by Alan Moore: I can appreciate what Watchmen contributes to the comic book genre, much like I VERY MUCH appreciated what The Sandman contributes to the comic book genre. The difference is, I didn’t like this one.

3.) Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev: Ultimate Collection Book 1: I got my copy of this in a BOGO sale for Free Comic Book Day in May. This wasn’t so much about Daredevil as it was initially about 'Kingpin' Wilson Fisk and reporter Ben Urich. Daredevil just shows up to punch things occasionally. I liked that the art was in a similar style to Jessica Jones: Alias. It was watery and abstract and created a mindscape, instead of showing explicitly how people were feeling through facial expressions and dialogue. I like how the Netflix TV series shows the relationship Matt Murdock has with his faith. This comic series didn’t have that so much.

2.) Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery by Kurtis J. Wiebe: Friend Robert sent this my way at the beginning of the month. I read through it in one sitting and really enjoyed it. It was funny and empowering. I hope to be able to obtain other volumes of this sooner than later (and I’ll actually spend money on them this time because it’s worth it.)

1) Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: I’ve recommended this to soooooooooooooooooooo many people. I have the audiobook, and when I was done with the audiobook, I went out and bought a print copy. Lucky for me, it was on a buy-2-get-1-free table at Barnes & Noble when I went. This book has so many female characters who work hard to empower themselves. I refuse to say anything more, other than to strongly suggest you read this book immediately. You will not be disappointed.

Bonus content 

Since I didn’t have as much time to read this month, I hope you will forgive my short list and instead enjoy…

10 cats I pet in June, ranked 

1. Big Kitty: Was a stray cat before he came to the thrift store shelter I work at. In the morning, he leaves the cat enclosure and sings the song of his people loudly.

1. Gem: Already adopted because she was really cute. Looks like Toothless from “How To Train Your Dragon.”

1. Edith: The cat who has been at the shelter the longest, but who is not the oldest. She likes sleeping on her wicker chair and trying to keep up with the kittens.

1. Petunia: A pretty cat who likes people, but not other cats. I can’t relate to this sentiment, but she has the most adorable little mew.

1. Pebbles: A beautiful long-haired calico cat who was terrified of people and was taken back from the thrift store to the main shelter. I got her to purr a few times. She was a cat who loved to be brushed and enjoyed being bribed with treats and wet food.

1. Elsa: A really beautiful white cat who is also timid around people. She likes to have her ears scratched.

1. Bobbie: Has had a rough and tumultuous past that makes her mistrustful of people, which I’m sure many can relate to. I certainly can! Will submit to petting and purrs when she gets to know you better.

1. Patch: The oldest cat at the shelter. Growls at the cats who get too close to the lap he is sitting on, but he is a super sweet old man.

1. Selina: My cat who I have raised since she was a kitten. She is very fat, and she likes belly rubs. No, she does not need to go on a diet! She is beautiful as she is!

Ginger is my yarn quality assurance guru. 

1. Ginger: My other cat who is my best friend. She sits on my shoulder sometimes and sleeps on my pillow near my head while I sleep. When it storms, she hides behind the washing machine.

I'm hoping for more reading time in July!

What are you reading now?

The 14+ books I read in May, ranked

Well this month I did some traveling and had some extra time off work to pick up books that I've been meaning to read for a while that I just haven't. Some of these have much older publication dates. I lightened my reading load with City Book Review and got to work on a massive pile of library books and other unread literature that was flopping around my house.

Mmmm, look at all of those dark covers. I love how "Once & Future" and "Space Opera" had similar color schemes. Maybe I should write a post comparing them?

14.) “The Strain, Volume 1” by David Lapham, Mike Huddleston and Sierra Hahn: This was a graphic novel adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain,” in which a mysterious disease turns people into zombie/alien/vampires. The art was kind of generic and the story wasn’t that great. I would have much rather read the novel itself.

13.) “Fear” by Bob Woodward: I did not have the best attitude going into this book, but it’s not because of what you might think. For one, I’m not a huge nonfiction person. Since I work at a news organization, I get more than my fair share of nonfiction regularly. Second, I don’t like current event books in particular because they’re out of date within months. Just read the news if you want current events. (SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR LOCAL PAPER!) The third thing I didn’t enjoy about this book was that none of it was surprising, but it wasn’t really out to change anyone’s mind. If you dislike how the current administration is handling other countries’ leaders, you won’t be surprised to hear that according to the people interviewed in the book, the president approaches foreign policy with all of the sleek subtlety of a sledgehammer. If you’re a Trump supporter, you’ll chalk it up to “fake news” and not read it anyway. I read it because Bob Woodward is a respected journalist and I was interested in what he found in his research. I won’t make the mistake of reading a book like this again.

12.) “Ash Princess” by Laura Sebastian: I couldn't help but think the objective around this book was to construct a love triangle and every other plot element was just fodder to wrap around the heroine and her two love interests. I got the same vibes as when I read Victoria Aveyard's "Red Queen" last year. The indiscriminately evil despot was just a McGuffin, and the ultimate goal was pretty dresses and forbidden kissing. I’d really be interested in a more solid motivation for the big bad, and I think YA readers deserve more from their stories.

11.) “Protect the Prince” by Jennifer Estep: I had mostly enjoyed the first book in this series, but I found this second installment to be insufferable, mostly because the main character had somehow grown whiny and ill-tempered in between books. Somehow I was supposed to care that people were trying to kill her. I did not care.

10.) “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft: This is a short story written during a time when it was perfectly acceptable to be blindingly, unabashedly racist. Lovecraft was one of those science-y racists who seemed to rank people’s intelligence based on skin color. “The Call of Cthulhu” is about a man who investigates a cult that worships an old god, Cthulhu. Cthulhu has fallen to earth from the stars and lives in a cave in the Pacific Ocean. He’s grotesque and smelly and the people who encounter him go mad with terror. The prose itself was beautiful, and reminded me of works written about the same time, such as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” There’s the same theme of unknown malevolence that binds together all of those works in my mind. If you want to read some gothy old stuff, pick up one of these books. If you’re looking for cosmic horror, specifically, go somewhere else because The Call of Cthulhu’s narrative foundations are preposterously racist.

 9.) “Harold in the Name of Love” by Chris Malone: This is the part of my list that begins the varying shades of good books I read in May. This indie book pleasantly surprised me. A former coworker, Hafiz, sent his author friend Chris my way for a book review, and I enjoyed it! This book had a lot to say about love, loss and moving on. Nancy’s character was just a little one-dimensional. She could have used a little more development. After I wrote my review on Goodreads, Chris tweeted, “Nancy was a tough character to crack, and given 100 more opportunities, I still don't think I'd ever get it right.” I think the biggest thing with Nancy was that she didn’t seem to evolve as a person over time, while Harold and Damon, the other two major characters, changed dramatically. I really loved how the friendship between Harold and Damon blossomed. It was a solid and unique plot with some dark comedic moments. Initially I was reminded of Fredrik Backman’s “A Man Called Ove,” but this was a much different story. I would recommend reading it.

8.) “Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet” by Ta-Nehisi Coates: This volume had a lot of plot threads that took some getting used to. I want to read the second volume to try to tie some of them together in my mind. The more I read volumes of comic books, the more I’m realizing that one volume that encompasses about five issues isn’t really ever enough to form an opinion on the series. There have only been a few exceptions to this.

7.) “Once & Future” by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy: This is a gender-bending sci-fi retelling of Arthurian legend. Happy Pride Month! The premise is that King Arthur is regenerated every so often to write the wrongs of humanity. This time around, the evil Mercer Corporation has monetized almost every facet of the galaxy, and only two planets are in revolt. Merlin, who ages in reverse through the years, comes back as a teenager to help the first female King Arthur, Ari, defeat evil for good. This book has hints of Doctor Who and Star Wars!!! I read Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in high school, and OF COURSE it was, dry, boring, heteronormative and patriarchal! It was written in the 1400s! Sometimes I think retellings like this are made only partly to drum up interest in the source material among teens. In this case, I’d rather be reading this book. You should experience at least a detailed synopsis of Arthurian legend because its plots and themes are a foundation for A LOT of literature through the ages.

6.) “The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang: This is a romance novel about how a woman with Autism Spectrum Disorder finds love by calling up an escort service to learn about sex and romantic relationships. It won a Goodreads Choice award for romance in 2018. I don’t read a lot of romance novels anymore (this is the first I’ve read in a while,) but I thought this was funny and romantic! One of the tropes in romance is that either one or both of the main characters are so disgustingly wealthy that they never have to worry about money throughout the course of the story. I think it helps to keep the focus on the development of the romance. Anyway, in this story, the heroine, Stella, as a dorky econometrician, is the breadwinner in the relationship, and I found that empowering. The other heroine in this story is Carly Robins, the woman who read the audiobook I listened to.

5.) “Shadow and Bone” and “Siege and Storm” by Leigh Bardugo: After the first book in this trilogy, I was interested in exploring this world more. The main character, Alina, finds out she’s a sun summoner, and that The Darkling wants to harness her power to widen the Shadow Fold and bring the adjacent countries to heel. I was late to the party on this, as Bardugo has several books now that are built in this universe, affectionately called “The Grishaverse,” and YA Twitter seems to really like it. I liked “Shadow and Bone” much better than “Siege and Storm,” as the second book had the sophomoric tendency to drag just a bit.

4.) “Uprooted” by Naomi Novik: At first glance, I thought this book was going to be a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, but it goes so far beyond that and makes itself into something entirely fresh and new. “Uprooted” has hints of Russian fairy tales, but also a dollop of “Stranger Things.” I felt the heroine, Agnieszka, was empowering, considering her circumstances. The way magic is portrayed in this book is really cool. Right now I'm reading Novik's other book, "Spinning Silver," that has been nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards this year. It is very good so far.

3.) “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler: This part of the list until the end is MANDATORY READING. We're all going to check back with each other at the end of next month to make sure we've read everything, right? HOLY MACARONI. This book was published in 1993 and takes place in 2025. I picked it up from the library because I heard there are some similarities between Butler’s writing and NK Jemisin’s writing. Parable of the Sower just blew my mind. It’s the diary of a teenage girl, Lauren Olamina, written over 3 years in a post-apocalyptic America. It’s supposed to be a bleak look at a near-future, but it includes themes of a drug crisis, global warming and extreme privatization of resources that are too close to reality today than mere hyperbole. The survivalist plot is super violent and visceral. How did I go so long without reading this?

 2.) “The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman (Vols. 1-10): I wrote about my experience reading one of the greatest comic book series of all time here. The separate post is mainly to spare you from having to scroll through all of my truly insufferable literature snob thoughts about it. They are embarrassingly dorky, and I could have said much, much more. Halfway through May, this was the best book (errr, collection of books) I had read, and I thought it would stay that way, but it was overcome by…

1.) “Space Opera” by Catherynne M. Valente: This book is so earnestly joyful and dire at the same time. The author drew inspiration from Douglas Adams, David Bowie and Eurovision, and improves on all of it. If you’re one of those book snobs who think a writer’s style only belongs to them and no one can imitate it, you might take it personally that this novel has strong whiffs of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I think the added themes of corruption, gentrification and modern-day corporatization freshens the Adams random sense of humor into something more coherent, enduring and meaningful.

Road to 200 

According to Goodreads, I finished my 100th book this month. It’s a little deceptive because that counts five single issues of “Die” by Kieron Gillen and seven single issues of “Captain America” by Ta-Nehisi Coates from earlier in the year. I read them both twice. Still, if those two things were lumped into books on their own, I’d still be hovering around 90 books, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. How did I get there? I've tried to either listen to an hour of an audio book OR read 150 pages of a book every day. My commute to work alone is about 30 minutes long, so it hasn't been difficult to do.

 My favorite book podcast 

Here's a link to my favorite book podcast, "372 pages we'll never get back." It's hosted by Conor Lastowka and Michael J. Nelson from MST3K and Rifftrax. They pick books they anticipate they won't like and make fun of them. Beyond the usual roasting, they write skits, respond to reader feedback, hold meme contests and other general silliness. Their first episodes were about "Ready Player One," one of my least favorite books, and right now they're reading "The Mister" by E.L. James. It's funny and enlightening to hear two men talk about their experiences reading their first romance novel.

 Do you have a favorite book podcast?

Random thoughts about a little 30-year-old comic book series called “The Sandman”

“The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman is widely regarded as one of the best comic book/graphic novel series of all time and one of the greatest achievements of the medium. Until last month, I did not know that. Soooo, there’s that.

The other thing I didn't know was its run started in the year I was born. That will be relevant to know later.

This is the cover of my 30th anniversary edition of Vol. 1 that I got on Free Comic Book Day. You'll see in the most minuscule writing it says, "Introduced by Patrick Rothfuss." I can't escape him. He keeps showing up in my life. Please help me. I'm stuck in a Rothfussian hellscape and I can't get out.

Also it’s likely going to be the best thing I’ve read all month, and rather than write all of this in my monthly rankings, I’ll just write a separate post here, so you can read my ramblings about it if you feel like it.

On Free Comic Book Day (always the first Saturday of May, in case you didn’t know,) I got the first volume in a BOGO sale at the comic book store that is within walking distance of my house, along with a comic book adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain” and a Daredevil book I had been considering.

So here are 1,500 words worth of thoughts I had about it. I mean, I had many more other thoughts, but they are less coherent.

How I read it

I read all 10 volumes of The Sandman over the course of three days. It was a really intense experience. The whole of the series encompasses millennia, and tells stories about The Endless, seven siblings named Dream, Death, Destruction, Delirium (formerly Delight,) Despair, Desire and Destiny. The stories mainly focus on Dream/Morpheus, and the beings (not always humans) he affects. There are old gods who grow frail because there is no one around to worship them. There’s an inn at the world’s end where transient beings swap stories until the storms of their lives pass.

My favorite volume was No. 5, called “A Game of You,” where there’s a being called The Cuckoo that displaces the dreams of a young woman. It had notes of Doctor Who and Labyrinth, I thought, and a really interesting storyline that had very little to do with the Endless. Part of the conclusion questions whether beings like The Cuckoo should exist.

The more things change, the more they stay the same (and more on my favorite volume)

“A Game of You” in particular could have been written today, but almost any of them could. It was a series that truly stands the test of time. In “A Game of You,” there was a trans character, Wanda, who was aggressively misgendered by her conservative family. When Wanda dies (SORRY SPOILERS), her friend, Barbie goes to a comic book store to get her favorite comic book to place on her coffin. When she goes to the comic book store, the owner objectifies her. I think this is 1.) representative of some elements of comic book culture where a few (mainly white men) make things miserable for the rest of the people who want to enjoy things and 2.) shows how Wanda is accepted as she is in one sphere (the comic book store) where Barbie isn’t, and Barbie is accepted as she is in the world at large and Wanda isn’t. Does that make sense? Probably not.

I think it’s important to see that there is LGBTQ+ representation in comic books written in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of how marginalized groups are still treated today. It’s a horrible travesty and a failure of society that a series like “The Sandman” was ahead of its time in 1988 and is STILL AHEAD OF ITS TIME in 2019. COME ON HUMANITY, GET IT TOGETHER. I think that’s all I really want to say about that. If you know me for 10 seconds you’ll know that I think everyone should be intersectional feminists and fight tirelessly for the downtrodden in solidarity, but I don’t want to turn this blob into my feminist rage. (For feminist rage, you can read April’s book rankings.)

We (and this series) contain multitudes 

The last thing I want to talk about with Vol. 5 is my favorite thing Barbie says at the end:

“Okay. Here goes Barbie’s idea. It’s like, that people… well, that everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world – no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Isn’t that a weird thought?”

First of all it was about Barbie, who has just had a horrifying nightmare ordeal that affected the waking world.

More broadly, it was about all of the worlds, still within the series, waking and dreaming, beyond Barbie: The places where The Endless live, and where all of the old gods wait to fade out of relevance. And it doesn’t just apply to the physical settings in the books. There are so many tiny threads in the grander story. For example, there were two beings who worked at the Necropolis who told their story at the inn at the end of the world in Vol. 8, and when I read about them, I wondered why their story was relevant until I got to Vol. 10 when they came back for a… gathering. I WON’T SPOIL ANY MORE. But there were so many characters and stories that were so beautifully and artistically woven together. So I don’t think “The Sandman” is just the best graphic novels have to offer, but it’s a shining example of storytelling for those who like books without pictures, too.

On an even more macro level and outside of “The Sandman:” The last part of this is getting a bit personal, but I believe that everyone has a secret world inside of them, and that when books are written, humanity can catch a glimpse of others’ secret worlds. Over time, I’ve mostly softened my judgment of a lot of books and other things because of this realization.

SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare shows up twice in the 10 volumes because he promises Dream he’ll write two plays for him. One is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the other is “The Tempest.” I’m really annoyed with myself that I’ve never read either of them. “Titus Andronicus” is my favorite Shakespearean tragedy and I played Viola in “Twelfth Night” in my last semester at college, for heaven’s sake! They're both more obscure works! Doesn't everyone read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" in high school? Not me, apparently! I took a college class as part of my English major specifically FOR Shakespeare, but somehow those two plays have never crossed my radar. So I wish I could say I appreciated the Shakespeare parts of “The Sandman” better, or what those two plays meant in particular to the story “The Sandman” was trying to tell.

I still have my college copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, so I can read those plays whenever I want! 

Whether you love or hate Shakespeare, comic book writers seem to be obsessed with him. I’ve read about Shakespeare’s perceived ubiquity in an Ed Brubaker interview in the monstrous Captain America tome I read last month. He described Stan Lee’s vision of Captain America as Shakespearean, and why not, because Shakespeare is for the masses, he said, and in his iteration he tried to keep with the theme. And now Shakespeare is here in “The Sandman.” Where else will he turn up?

The blast radius (what I read afterward)

Sometimes when you read something particularly awe-inspiring, it can be difficult to get back into the same genre, or even pick up another book. Book Twitter calls this a book hangover, and I had a major one after finishing all of “The Sandman.”

I took sad naps between volumes. I felt disoriented. I had a headache (though this could be because I was reading it on a tablet in the car – yes, I can read in a moving vehicle.) I picked up books, read a couple pages, and put them back down. I went on walks. I gazed poetically into the middle distance. You know, the usual.

It was all very dramatic.

I read “The Strain,” which was a stupid comic book adaptation of a novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan (sort of mentioned above.) I don’t know if it was stupid because I just finished one of the most mindblowing pieces of literature I’ve ever read in my life, or because it was truly stupid. That’s the problem with a book hangover. Everything else just has a bland chalky taste and makes you feel sort of sick reading it.

Finally, I listened to Helen Hoang’s “The Kiss Quotient” on my Libby app, and that seemed to snap me out of it. It was a romance novel on audiobook, a different genre and medium, and it also was pretty steamy. After that, I got back into my normal routine.

I still don’t think I’m quite over it, but I’m taking it one day at a time. 

Ok, enough drama. Let's wrap this up.

Final thoughts

I know this is not an all-encompassing look at “The Sandman." The closest thing I can compare this to is my experiences reading both “Saga” by Brian K. Vaughan and “Die” by Kieron Gillen, mostly because both take place in expansive worlds and/or over long stretches of time.

I really like reading literary think pieces, so if you have one you like about “The Sandman” in particular, I’d love to read it. I'm sure there's been a lot written about it. Also, I’m always looking for comic book recommendations to expand my worldview.

The 12+ books I read in April, ranked

Was a book with pictures my No. 1 true love in April? (SPOILER: YES.)

Hey kids, patriarchy!

My daily routine was jostled a bit this month, resulting in less time to read. I did have a nice vacation toward the end of the month, for which I packed about 20 books and read 7 of them. (Whew! I almost ran out! It was a close one!) I’m currently 81 books into my 200-book goal for the year. Anyway, here’s what I got this month!

12.) Infinity Wars by Gerry Duggan: I’ve been trying to get into comics all year, and sometimes, just like sports or learning a new language, the best way to acclimate yourself to a new concept is to just immerse yourself in it whether you understand it or not. This was probably my least-favorite comic book I've read all year, but it can likely be attributed to me just not understanding what was going on. If it can be believed, this book had even more plot elements packed into it than the 800-page "Winter" (mentioned below.) I think I would have appreciated it more if I had read more of the storylines leading up to it. It was an event comic so I had no context. My favorite part was the origin story of Drax the Destroyer. Aside from that, I was so confused.

11.) Gillyflower by Diane Wald: This was an odd little novella about a woman, Nora, who gets to meet her celebrity crush, Hugh. This book has a lot to say about revering celebrities and the foundations of enduring love in a short amount of time, and it does it well. Since I like a good, pointy adventure, this isn't ranked as high as it could be, but I'd definitely recommend it.

10.) The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss: This is the second book in the Kingkiller Chronicles that started with “The Name of the Wind,” and I listened to it on audiobook. The aspects of these books that were good were really really good, but the bad stuff was insurmountably terrible. “The Wise Man’s Fear” continued Rothfuss’ unfortunate trend of objectifying women, #notallmen-ing rape victims, and other nonsense shenanigans. The good parts were mundane in the best way. Our lord and savior Kvothe the Bloodless/Arcane/Ladykiller continued his plodding adventures from the University to Severen to the Eld, the Fae, and finally to Ademre, where he learned some fancy warrior rituals. The slow pace was soothing, and I was able to power through the final 50 (yes, 50, mostly awful) chapters on a long drive from Florida to Pennsylvania.

9.) Winter by Marissa Meyer: This book was a lot. It was just a lot in the best and worst sense. It was the wrap-up to an intricate and well thought out series, but it was 800 pages long. Literally every loose end was left flapping in the breeze at the end of the third book, Cress, so everything needed to come together in the end while introducing an entirely new character and giving her a story arc of her own. The series as a whole was amazing. I might have missed a lot of the hype around this series when it first came out, but I feel like not enough people know about these books. Much like ice cream, I can’t resist fairy tale retellings. This was enjoyable, but long, and will try the patience of anyone.

8.) Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior: This is a special book I received from Netgalley. If you like romantic stories from authors such as Nicholas Sparks, you will love this book, which features a flighty poet and a neurodivergent hero who makes sandwiches and is obsessed with creating unique Celtic harps. The narrative helps to foster deep connections between the reader and the characters. As a trigger warning, it does contain some domestic violence scenes, but it is overall a fairly pleasant read. Its expected release is May 2, 2019.

7.) Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1: I was told, after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Captain America to read Ed Brubaker’s Captain America to understand how Captain America is written today: as sort of a pulpy, noir-style political thriller. This girthy tome included the Winter Soldier and a bit of the Civil War stories. It was only mildly disorienting and gave me a good sense of how Captain America and Bucky were written for the movies. More importantly, it included some interviews with the author in the back and I learned a lot about Brubaker’s military background and the works that inspired him to write Captain America in the way he did, which shaped Captain America for the modern day. Fascinating!

6.) The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing: I tend to view stories in a very macro sense of what they mean and contribute to their genre. As a result, I tend to come up with some odd perspectives and gloss over details others readily absorb. With this, I was really impressed by the theme of dysfunctional father/son relationships viewed through the lens of horror. In the end, don't we all adopt our parents' worst tendencies? If this seems like a weird reading of a superhero comic book, it is. And this is how I read literally everything, so if you don’t like it, you’re on the wrong book blog!

5.) Giant Days, Vols. 2 and 3 by John Allison: I read Vol. 1 of Giant Days back in February, and picked up the second and third volumes from Kindle Unlimited. I’m finding myself growing increasingly attached to the three college friends, Susan, Esther and Daisy. The humor is well-timed, but there are plenty of heartwarming and compassionate moments as well. As an aside, stories like this are making it difficult to not read comics all the time. I feel like this month’s reading list was unintentionally saturated with comics. I’ll do better to read more books without pictures next month for the sake of my health and your sanity.

4.) Thor: God of Thunder, Vol 3: The Accursed and Thor: God of Thunder, Vol. 4: The Last Days of Midgard by Jason Aaron: I was told to read this to get the origin story of Malekith, the big bad in this series as well as in “Thor: Goddess of Thunder.” Everything makes sense now! And I’m really annoyed at how Malekith was portrayed in the “Thor: The Dark World” movie now that I know how truly sinister and awful Malekith can be in the comics. He’s so gross and horrible!

3.) Bitch Planet, Vol. 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick: I picked up this fun read from Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia while I was on vacation. It’s a feminist story, by one of the authors who wrote Captain Marvel, about how a bunch of “noncompliant” women are shipped off to a prison on the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, colloquially called “Bitch Planet” by the old white men who have vested interests in it. The women are imprisoned for dumb things like “disrespect” and “being a bad mother” but the imprisonment really boils down to the noncompliant women not living their lives solely to please men. One of the imprisoned women, who was a professional athlete in her former life, is encouraged to start a team to play Megaton, a violent sport akin to rugby or American football. Most of the story made me really angry, but there were plenty of really funny parts, too. If you like “Orange Is The New Black” or “Handmaid’s Tale,” you’ll probably enjoy this. My favorite part was the humorous ads at the end of every issue that advertised everything from Agreenex, a pill to make women agreeable, to posters for the comic book itself. The little banner headline above the ads said, “Hey kids, patriarchy!” and it made me laugh every time.

2.) We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia: At the same time I was reading “Bitch Planet,” I was listening to this story on Audible. It was a delicious pairing. In this book’s particular dystopian society, each rich man weds two women: a primera, whose primary objectives are to be a partner and “equal” to her husband, making decisions for the good of the household and carrying out her husband’s vision in society, and a segunda, who is responsible for bearing children and being emotional. The Medio School for Girls splits women into these two categories and trains them to be perfect wives. When two women, Dani and Carmen, marry a despotic tyrant, they do everything they can to undermine him, including participating in political espionage! This story had a lot to say about loyalty, misogyny, oppression, consent and immigration. I would highly recommend it.

1.) Thor, Vol. 1: Goddess of Thunder and Thor, Vol. 2: Who Holds The Hammer? by Jason Aaron: I have a hard time describing just how much I loved this. This version of "Thor" was so awesome, it killed me. I am dead now, and writing this blog post from beyond the grave. Here's what I liked:

- It SMASHED THE PATRIARCHY: Odinson and Odin both flopped around and whined a lot, and it was pretty great. At one point, the woman who had taken on the mantle of Thor told Odinson (formerly Thor) that he should stop worrying about what makes her worthy to wield Mjolnir (the hammer,) and instead work on his own worthiness. Eventually he gathers together a bunch of badass lady superheroes to help Thor vanquish a monster that Odin and his brother, Cul, conjure up to reclaim Mjolnir. Seeing that kind of male allyship from Odinson after a long struggle with his biases hit me with all of the feelings.

- It had ALL OF THE GIRL POWER: The Goddess of Thunder just had a different thought process and approach to her powers. She felt like she was worthy of her powers, but not entitled to them, and that was really cool to see. Thor normally has a little more swagger and braggadocio, but the down-to-earth version was SO COOL. When Thor encounters Absorbing Man and Titania, there was a lot more talk and mutual respect between women, and Titania eventually surrenders, knocking Absorbing Man out with his own weapon. It's scenes like these that draw into sharp relief how ridiculous a male Thor can be sometimes. There’s so much more to say about “Goddess of Thunder,” but I want to keep these descriptions short. I loved these volumes so much I read them twice.

UNRANKED 

"The Shapeshifter" by Claudia Navone

PREVIOUSLY UNRANKED (but now I can talk about it) 

I did a sponsored book review for City Book Review for a book called "Radical Revolution: The Fight for Animal Liberation" It was a 500-page scholarly work on the animal liberation movement, that argued animals ought to be given equal rights as people. It had a very forceful and abrasive tone, and I hated tone-policing someone else's deeply held beliefs. I am no longer vegan or vegetarian, but I was at some points in my life, and I'll still make vegan and vegetarian food and opt to eat vegan or vegetarian when I go out to eat sometimes. I found that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (a cruel non-vegan metaphor for attracting non-vegans) when trying to make people understand how you feel. A vegan cookbook containing a delicious recipe for vegan peanut butter cups will make people be a lot more sympathetic to your cause than a 500-page rant about how animals are people too. I saw and understood the argument. I don't think it's changing any minds.

The 16+ books I read in March, ranked.

I didn't read quite as many books as last month, but the books I did read were weightier.

16.) Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James: I wrote a “good, bad and ugly” post on this book, and I’d rather not talk about it again. It sucked the impact out of every other violent thing I read for two months. This was the only truly intolerable book I finished this month. The marketing for this book was absolute scorched earth, and I was shocked to see The Mary Sue, a site for nerd culture for women, advertising this book on Twitter when the narrative is so brutal toward women.

The rest of the books on this list are just splitting hairs over various degrees of goodness and what I happen to be in the mood to read at any given moment.

15.) In The Woods by Tana French: This was a recommendation from my friend Abby during The Great Book Slump of 2018. She said she liked the storyline. My mom read it, too, and said it was "creepy." It was a methodical murder mystery where every detective got drunk and didn't do a great job... doing their job. The murder was eventually solved, but the story didn't grip me immediately. I think it had something to do with the sleazy detective telling the story. I wasn't crazy about him. I don't normally gravitate toward murder mysteries, either. I appreciated reaching for something that was outside of my comfort zone, though!

14.) Cress by Marissa Meyer: Last month, I read “Scarlet,” the second installment in this saga, and this month, I listened to “Cress” on audiobook with my Libby app. It’s Rapunzel… IN SPAAAAAAACE! This book was very emotional, with Crescent (Rapunzel) falling in love with Thorne (kind of a Han Solo type of guy) and having to survive a desert and make it to civilization after her surveillance satellite crashes to earth. I loved it.

13.) Jessica Jones: The Pulse: The Complete Collection by Brian Michael Bendis: I was going to group Alias and The Pulse in the same entry, but The Pulse was so markedly different in tone and content, that I decided to split them up. The Pulse focuses on a press initiative by J. Jonah Jameson of The Daily Bugle to cover the lives of superheroes in the city. Also, it focuses on Jessica and Luke Cage's relationship. It's not as dark as Alias was, and parts of it had crispy, clear art, as opposed to the watery, moody art of Alias. Jessica's personality was really different, too, and not in a good way. I was not as impressed with this iteration of Jessica Jones, and I got the sense that the writers didn't seem to know what to do with her, but she's still my favorite superhero.

12.) The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: I enjoyed this book for its deep mythos, world building and setting, magical mechanics, and entertaining characters. I’ve already started the second book, "The Wise Man's Fear" in this unfinished trilogy. It reminded me a lot of the writings from one of my favorite fantasy authors, Robin Hobb. I did not enjoy it for its benevolent sexism and casual ill treatment of women. As insurmountable an obstacle it might seem, it is not difficult for men to regard and speak to women like they are equals and real human beings. When women are treated as others, and not seen as people, it is a stepping stone for them to be mistreated more cruelly elsewhere in literature and in real life.

11.) House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig: I received this book from NetGalley and wrote a review of it, and my feelings about fairy tale retellings, here. This was awfully dark, but really quite good.

10.) All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: This book was very well written, but since historical fiction isn’t really my thing, it’s farther down on the list than might be comfortable for some people. It won a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2015. I felt like this book was a little too compassionate to Nazis, especially in the current political climate, which I wrote about here.

9.) Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight by Kelly Sue DeConnick: I read this ahead of the movie to get a sense of what Captain Marvel was all about. The greatest joy I derived from a dour fan who wrote after Issue 2 that he was sad he couldn’t drool over a nonautonomous lady in a swimsuit anymore (this is a vast oversimplification of the tone of his message, which was straight sexist trash garbage.) After subsequent issues, Captain Marvel fans raked him over the coals. I didn’t just like this book, but I loved the Captain Marvel movie. It’s taken time, but Marvel movies have grown on me. I think they just needed to grow beyond origin stories and the subsequent “Do we really need superheroes?” conversations to evolve into something deeper.

8.) "Die"(the first four issues) by Kieron Gillen: I found this series on one of those “100 NEW BOOKS YOU NEED TO READ YESTERDAY” listicles. The easiest way to describe this series is that it’s a cross between Jumanji and D&D. There’s a healthy dose of darkness, adulthood trauma and Lord of the Rings references, which is always a plus. I feel like the first four issues said a lot, but I need to spend more time in the universe to get a feel for whether I like it or not. It seems promising. The compilation of a handful of issues comes out in June, if you prefer that format. I read the first four issues and pre-ordered the fifth.

7.) Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: Nope, I didn’t have nightmares after reading this, not me! I read Flynn’s “Gone Girl” a couple years ago, which was ultra creepy, but Sharp Objects was even more disturbing. I must have been in the mood for a creepy story, because this one left me dazed and enthralled. I'm going to have nightmares about missing teeth for the next month. I read it because I was curious about the HBO series that was based on this book. The themes reminded me of the real-life news story where a girl planned the death of her mother because she was the victim of Munchausen by proxy.

6.) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: This book is about a Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who moves to America, lives there for a while, and then moves back to Nigeria. This book was A LOT in the very best way. It had a lot of the same conceits as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years In Power” (see below,) but also it had a fictional story that covered all the nuances between being African-black and Non-African-black and made observations about racism in America through Ifemelu’s blog posts. On top of all that, it had a romantic story arc that reminded me of something straight out of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” only modernized of course. There was a quote in there about how the word “nuance” is just code for making white people comfortable, ("Nuance means keep people comfortable so everyone is free to think of themselves as individuals and everyone got where they are because of their achievement.") but I felt this book was nuanced in the sense that it gave me more information about the subtleties between black people in a very clear way.

Here’s another quote from “Americanah" that I felt was really pointed:

“You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you’re going to write about race, you have to make sure it’s so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn’t read between the lines won’t even know it’s about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.” 

5.) Saga Vols. 7-9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: Hazel’s monologue at the end of Vol. 7 got me right in the feels. I’m only a little disappointed that the series seems to have backed off the role of the romance novel in causing unrest. The end of Vol. 9 was a big surprise in the most tragic way, but I’m not necessarily buying it. I mean, if The Will is alive to mess things up for the good guys, this most recent development doesn’t really hold, does it? I have hope. And no, I won’t spoil it.

4.) The Vision (Two volumes: “Little Worse Than A Man” and “Little Better Than A Beast”) by Tom King: This story was heartbreaking, but I really loved how it married the superhuman and mundane. It’s difficult to describe, but watching Vision’s family, who are invincible, work through common domestic issues, was the most interesting. If I were a habitual re-reader, I’d probably read this again.

3.) How Long Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin: I got some Black Mirror vibes, whiffs of fairy tales, and some sharp, calculated social commentary from these short stories. In one of the stories, a king eats the heart of a dragon and learns about the folly of taking and using power that isn’t his. Another one is a “proof of concept” story from the Broken Earth trilogy (my FAVORITE books.) One peculiar tale is called “L’Alchimista,” which is about a demon who plays “Chopped” with a chef. He gives her a sack of weird ingredients, and she makes him food. The way the food is described is the way I talk about books sometimes, which is why I found it charming. Some of these stories were perfect vignettes, but I hope Jemisin uses others as a foundation for a new trilogy because I wanted to know more.

2.) Jessica Jones: Alias Vols. 3 and 4 by Brian Michael Bendis: Jessica Jones is my favorite Marvel superhero because you don’t have to look too hard to find real life in her. I watched the Netflix series first, and I was instantly in love. I read Vol. 1 and 2 of Alias about a year ago, and just got 3 and 4 recently. There’s so much to like about this series: There are illustrative comedic bits where Jessica listens to her clients impassively. She’s dating Ant-Man, the Avengers make appearances and her best friend is a pre-redesign Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel swimsuit-ogglers, eat your heart out.) Her struggle with the Purple Man doesn’t happen until Vol. 4, and I was a little disappointed at how it was resolved compared to how Jessica "defeats" Kilgrave in the Netflix series. (It was still good! No spoilers here.) I’m still drawn to the way Jessica Jones perfectly illustrates how it feels to be in an emotionally abusive relationship (especially the self-blame, the struggle to get out, and people not believing/seeing what you’re seeing.)

1.) We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Facebook post about this book turned into a little mini book club and I was all about it. Good talk, friends. Anyway, this book deeply affected me. I’m not going to go on an anti-racism tirade here, but I have lots of feelings about Coates’ ideas and evaluating my own role in perpetuating white supremacy as a straight white lady, and then actually DOING SOMETHING about racism in America.

UNRANKED

Me and White Supremacy Workbook by Layla F. Saad: I’m not ranking this because it’s personal, and I'm not going to rank it on its literary merits. I'm only mentioning it because if you want to read it, it’s free and the author kindly sends emails about other resources you can use. I learned about this book in the midst of some racist things going on in the knitting community (and now the romance author community.) If you're a white person, you should read it to interrogate your own role in white supremacy privately.


YOU'LL SEE IT NEXT MONTH

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian
Winter by Marissa Meyer
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Review: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

“House of Salt and Sorrows” by Erin A. Craig is a grim retelling of a Grimm fairy tale, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Set in the fictional coastal estate of Highmoor, tragedy befalls the Thaumas family when the mother and four of twelve daughters (Elizabeth, Ava, Eulalie and Octavia) die in quick succession. With a bleak mourning period ahead of them, Annaleigh, one of the remaining eight daughters, tries to investigate her sisters’ deaths as murders. But something haunts the remaining sisters’ dreams, and the youngest, Verity, begins to see visions.

If it weren’t for my intense curiosity for so many other genres and my new and persistent comic book habit, I’d read fairy tale retellings all day, every day. It’s probably a guilty pleasure at this point, since this book is clearly for people half my age. My favorites, and probably the most common, are retellings of "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast." This retelling, shaped from a lesser-known fairy tale, is so unique in its execution, so haunting and emotional, that I couldn’t help but love it.

Authors can’t go wrong with a good fairy tale, especially in the Young Adult genre. I have a theory about why this is, so bear with me: Fairy tales normally target young children. Young Adult literature targets teens, usually with a focus on highly emotional content to help teens deal with all their own heady emotions. A fairy tale retelling bridges the gap between the books we reach for as children and the themes we want in our books as teenagers and adults. It’s why they work so well, I think, and partially why I reach for them so often. I always like to see what various authors do with the stories everyone knows.

“House of Salt and Sorrows” has a hefty helping of death and grief, and all the things people do to cope with it. After the sisters’ mother dies, their father remarries a mysterious woman named Morella who just seems to want to belong to the family. The book addresses Annaleigh’s feelings toward Morella, which are mostly civil-to-welcoming, but it also validates Camille’s emotions, which focus on hostility and the feeling of being replaced.

Whenever I read a book, I feel like a sommelier tasting wine: I caught hints of :: sip :: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, of course, but that was overshadowed by :: SLORP :: Jessica Cluess’ “Kingdom on Fire” trilogy, which I did not like at all and :: slurp :: a Goodreads reviewer said Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” and I have to agree and :: sip :: possibly the parts of “A Song of Ice and Fire” that deal with what happens on Pyke, but not a lot, just the smallest hint. This book has an element of true horror, with enough decay and scary childbirth and bodies falling from vast heights to go around.

I was intrigued to see “House of Salt and Sorrows” was a standalone novel. It would be interesting to see other obscure Grimm fairy tales told in the same universe, especially since the author makes it clear there are other parts of the world to entertain, as well as a rich pantheon of supernatural beings to consider.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. “House of Salt and Sorrows” will be released in August.

Other fairy tales, retold 

One of my favorite retellings is the OG, “Ella Enchanted” by Gail Carson Levine.

I’ve enjoyed working my way through Marissa Meyer’s “Lunar Chronicles,” which include “Cinder,” “Scarlet,” “Cress,” and “Winter” in a sci-fi quasi-dystopian war between earth and the moon. It’s SO cool.

In January, I read “The Beast’s Heart” by Leif Shallcross.

I’ve heard good things about Anna-Marie McLemore’s “Blanca & Roja.”

Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf: The good, the bad and the ugly

In a nutshell, Marlon James' "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" is about an oddball group of characters that goes on a quest to find a boy in the African wilderness. The story is told from the point of view of Tracker, a nonbinary person who loves children, but whose softness for children is masked with anger and violence.

The story is structured nonlinearly, with Tracker telling an inquisitor what happened on the quest, and why the boy he sought was now dead. All of the press I've read on this book suggests that the other two books that have yet to be written will detail the same story from different points of view.

The good

I preordered "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" in January on Audible and listened to it in audiobook format. The guy who reads the book, Dion Graham, is a supremely talented reader. I could recommend this book on his talent alone, but I cannot recommend this book for any of its other components.

As someone who majored in English in college, and as someone who reads A LOT, I understand the literary merits of this book. The prose is almost stream-of-consciousness. The African mythology is pretty cool. The story is altogether solid, but ultimately, it's not about a whole lot. The experience of listening to this book was a dream-like jostling through fights and travels and stories on top of other stories.

The bad

Early on, "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" was touted as an "African Game of Thrones." Then, after all of the pre-release hype died down and books were sold, the author came out in subsequent interviews saying that comparison had been a joke.

The language, the time jumping and the literary elements point to this book being for an advanced niche reading audience. Aside from a thin storyline about a debate over a young boy being the rightful king, "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" has very little to do with "Game of Thrones." If you're looking for "African Game of Thrones" in this, you're not going to find it.

The ugly

"Black Leopard, Red Wolf" has its merits, but it is all overshadowed by an oozing, crusty scab of graphic violence. This book has everything you need to make you cringe and clutch your pearls: rape, gang rape, torture, pedophilia, bestiality, graphic murder, mutilation and incest. If you are not utterly put off by all of those things, you're in for a liberal sprinkling of casual and overt misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. There are orgies, physical and emotional abuse and graphic sex scenes. I don't know that this book should have been advertised to such a vast audience in the way that it was, when it's clearly a tough book to get through.

James himself has spoken about how he writes violence in The Guardian:

One thing the new novel shares with its predecessors is a uniquely intense presentation of violence. I ask him whether he ever feels that his work strays close to gratuitousness, to a kind of willful lingering over scenes of pain.  

“You have to risk it or you won’t get close to the power or the horror of it,” he says. “You have to risk going too far. Man, I sound like Foucault. I actually think this kind of antiseptic, clipped, edited version of violence I see in literature sells it short. If you don’t read the scene of the murder of a child and find it unbearable, then that scene failed. I think people are used to violence, but they’re not used to suffering. In Hollywood films, we see violence, but we don’t see suffering. In my writing of violence I do not escape suffering and I think one of my violent scenes is equivalent to 30 of someone else’s. I get this rap of being too violent, but actually what I’m saying is that violence comes with consequences and suffering and I don’t blink at either. So it’s going to reverberate longer in my books.”

I would argue that the book's violence doesn't just stray close to gratuitousness, it is gratuitous. "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" was A LOT for me, someone who can tolerate violent content fairly well. It's the most disturbing book I've ever read. If you're sensitive to such things, I'm warning you away from them right now.

The way this book was marketed is much different from what it actually it is. I would not recommend reading it.