Bookish Thoughts

It was a long wait for Allie Brosh's second book, but it was worth it. A lot happened to her in the years between books - a divorce, the sudden death of her sister - and the really informs her new stories. While her earlier work was hilarious and relatable, it also tended to stay on the surface. She started digging deeper at the end of her last book, and that same depth is present in nearly every story here. I'll be honest: I wanted a bit more of the surface hilarity. These stories hit hard, and I wasn't always ready for the raw grief that showed up. I also got unreasonably upset at the fact that her new husband was named Kevin, like she'd stolen him from me somehow. But I'm sure I'll keep revisiting these stories in the future, and I'll keep getting more out of them in the coming years.

This was a very cute story about growing up and being brave and not missing your chance. Deja and Josiah are best friends who've been working at the local pumpkin patch for the last three years. But now they're seniors and it's the last night, and Josiah still hasn't even spoken to the girl he's been crushing on for the last three years. Deja is determined to make him take his chance, and they set off on a fun night of adventure, finding new things and revisiting old favorites. It's all the fluff I expect from Rainbow Rowell with very little of the angst.

This book was absolutely delightful. It's a series of comics, charting the growing relationship between a vampire and a werewolf, from their meet-cute at a bar to happily ever after. It was a quick read. I read it in less than an hour (probably less than half an hour), and I had a huge smile on my face the entire time. This will be a good pick-me-up for years to come.

I've been following Stevenson's career since she was an art student with a tumblr making fun of Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games. I loved watching her get her big break and launch into the stratosphere. I watched her start to make the sort of stories she wished she'd read as a child. She accomplished a lot at a ridiculously young age. She's also had some struggles,and I've always been impressed by the way she's open about them while maintaining her privacy. Because I've been reading her blog for so long, I'd already read most of the comics in this book over the years. But it was nice to see it all pulled together in a single place. Stevenson has a long career ahead of her, and I'm excited to see what she does next.

In the third volume of Lumberjanes , the cast gets split up into two different stories. Mal and Molly head out on a picnic while April, Jo, and Ripley stay at camp and try to collect some easy badges. Unfortunately, April's competitive streak makes it difficult for her and her friends to complete any badges. Meanwhile Mal and Molly's picnic is interrupted by another weird adventure, this one involving dinosaurs, inter-dimensional portals, and a stolen pair of glasses. These comics are so much fun, and I'm really excited for my kids to be old enough to start reading them. They deal with all the problems of growing up against a backdrop of scary, supernatural adventures. It's like Buffy for a younger audience. I've fallen way behind on this series, but I'll have to start collecting them again. They make for excellent summer afternoon reads.

This is one of those stories that imprinted on me. I was slowly becoming obsessed with Neil Gaiman when I first read it, and I hadn't quite realized that you could do stuff like this, yet. Remix fairy tales, mix and match genres, change the perspective and the story so completely and yet leave it wholly recognizable. It helps that I've always loved vampires. But really, Snow White as a vampire just makes so much sense. When I first read this story, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it first. And I loved and hated Neil Gaiman a bit in equal measure giving me this beautiful, horrifying tale. This is about the recent graphic novel version of this story, though. It's gorgeous. The art is amazing and the perfect complement to this lovely story about a demon and the woman who tried and failed to save her kingdom. It's always haunted me, and now it can haunt me in technicolor.

It's been a while since I read or enjoyed The Oatmeal. I stopped finding it amusing fairly early on. But there's no denying that there was a time when it was everywhere. And when I saw this collection of his comics at the library book sale, I threw it in my bag without thinking. This collection is a bit of a throwback, containing a lot of his earlier work. As such, there was a certain nostalgia factor for me. These were comics I remember reading and enjoying back in the day when they all got passed around and linked. So I did enjoy this book. And I'm glad I picked it up for relatively cheap.

This was a cute collection of the online webcomic of the same name. I picked it up cheap at a used book sale and read it pretty quickly. The comics are all, of course, available online for free, but sometimes having a physical, curated collection is easier for me to read. The comics are vaguely organized by theme and interspersed with short stories and essays. They were, frankly, a bit weird, but in keeping with the overall tone of the book.

I think some of the shine is wearing off this series. It might just be that it's so spread out. I go so long between volumes that I can barely remember who some of the characters are. That doesn't make it particularly easy to sympathize with them. But also, all this tragedy is getting a bit boring. Sure, they do a decent job of balancing it with hope and alternating happy endings with sad ones. And sure, the series is ultimately about war. But three characters died in this installment, and I barely felt anything. Maybe it would help if I actually went back and read the whole thing from the beginning, like I've been meaning to for a while now. I'm sure some of these hits would land harder if I could remember why I should care. Then again, the comic is now taking an extended hiatus, so who knows when the next volume will be released. By then I'll probably have forgotten it all again. At this point I think I'll wait until the series ends before investing any mo...

The third volume of the Sandman  series isn't an overarching arc at all. Rather it collects four individual stories into a single collection. Given that, I'm going to take each story separately. Calliope:  Initially, this was one of my favorite stories in Sandman . When I was first collecting the series (a process that took me years), I revisited this story again and again. In later years it lost it's shine somewhat, and I became hugely critical of it. Now I think I've landed somewhere in the middle. This is a story of exploitation. Calliope is a muse who has been captured. She's held hostage by an author who literally rapes her as a way of getting new ideas. When he sells her to another author rather than setting her free, as he'd promised, she loses her last shred of hope and asks Dream to help her. My issue with this story basically comes down to Calliope and her treatment, both by the fictional authors who hold her hostage (Erasmus Fry and Richard Mado...

For years I claimed to hate horror. I can see now how absurd that statement is. When I was growing up, my favorite television show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer . And while it's a bit trite to say that Sandman  changed my life, it certainly awakened any number of nascent interests in me, from mythology to non-linear story-structures. Two of the most formative works from my teenage years, and both are classic examples of horror. But for a long time I didn't know this. In my world, both of these series were classified as fantasy. Horror was Scream  and it's various sequels and spin-offs. Saw  and Halloween  and Final Destination . All those movies were characters died in ever more gruesome fashions. It's a subset of horror that's been popular for a while now. So popular that I thought it was the whole of the genre. It wasn't until I heard someone describe Sandman  as horror that I began to open my eyes and understand how much I actually loved this genre. I like...

The final volume of Y: The Last Man delivers a mostly satisfying, somewhat tragic ending that wraps up Yorick's epic quest to find his lost love. Everyone converges on Paris for final confrontations, epic reunions, and a few surprising revelations. And then life goes on, as it must. I'm going to have to re-read this whole series again at some point. It took me far too long to pick up on the slow burn romance between Yorick and 355, maybe because it was such an incredibly well done slow burn. But, like Yorick, I was blinded by the quest for Beth. I couldn't see what was right in front of me.  His resolution with Beth (and even Beth 2 and Beth Jr) was fantastic. It hit all the right beats of joy and awkwardness and betrayal and despair. Things were broken between them, and she was ultimately more of a fantasy than a real girl. I'm glad he was able to let her go in the end. I'm mad, though, about 355's death. It was shocking and jaw-dropping and ultimately fr...

I loved this volume of Y: The Last Man. We're heading into the endgame, so obviously it's time to back up and see how everyone got here. There are a handful of arcs that move the plot forward. But there are also a lot of one-off issues that give us flashbacks of all the main characters. I loved learning more about them and what their lives were like before the "gendercide". As for the main story - the main group is forced to split up. Everything moves forward. Doctor Mann tracks down her mom, walking right into the trap Toyota set for her. Yorick is finally reunited with Ampersand and learns that Beth is headed to Paris. Beth 2 has a baby (!) and she and Hero head back to the Hot Suite in Ohio. There are kids again, which is fantastic. Except that hope gets yanked away with the return f Tse'elon right at the end. But it's all the flashbacks that really sold this one for me. We get a look at 355's early childhood and her recruitment into the Culper Ring...

The third installment of Y: The Last Man  sees our trio on more adventures. They finally reach Dr. Mann's lab, only for Ampersand to be kidnapped, kicking off another journey. Yorick and Hero are finally reunited in a non-murdery way. And we meet some pirates! This was basically a series of exciting adventures. I enjoyed them, though not quite as much as the previous arcs. It was fun to meet another Beth, and to get confirmation that the original Beth is still alive. Ultimately I don't feel like I have a lot to say about this book, though. It was fun and entertaining. The main mysteries are still chugging along, though it doesn't feel like we're any closer to solving them. This is a middle book. No intriguing beginnings or astonishing endings. Just lots of treading water. Though there are those pirates I mentioned. Sigh, I should have written this review earlier. When this volume wasn't all mixed up with the next one in my head. That'll teach me to fall so...

The eighth volume of Saga is all about the families we make and all the different ways we go about making them. It deals with some heavy issues, and I occasionally felt that it was a bit heavy-handed. That said it was nice for the authors to take such direct and clear stands on abortion and trans* issues. And it's all part of an ongoing story that's fantastic. So if I found a page or two a little after-school-special-y, well whatever. At the end of the previous issue, the fetus Alana was carrying died. Now the family is racing to find a doctor willing to abort it before Alana dies, too. Along the way we get a nice little story about what might have been, if Hazel's brother had been born, that dovetails nicely with a teaser ending about the (non-biological) brother she eventually finds. That's the other thing this issue has: long awaited reunions. And dedicated issues to catch up with a few other characters. No jumping around and only the bare minimum of teasing. It ...

The seventh volume of Saga deals with love and loss, mostly loss. Hazel and her family find themselves stranded on the comet Phang while their ship refuels. Phang, the book reminds us, is where The Will found Sophie. It's a poor, exploited, downtrodden war zone. But Hazel and her family end up enjoying some of the best months of their lives their. Right up until it all turns to shit. Hazel's older now, and it's fun to see her as a bratty six-year-old. She's dealing with conflicting feelings about her mom's pregnancy, lashing out at her baby-sitter, making new friends with the locals. It's all very sweet and heartwarming, but the impending doom adds a lot of tension. Things go belly-up pretty spectacularly. A new assassin has been sent after the family, but the two warring nations are also conspiring to just get rid of Phang once and for all. Why continue to expend resources when you can just cut your losses? It's always sad to lose characters, but if I...

I was never really in to Archie comics as a kid. I knew the names of the main characters, but I never sought out or read the comics. Which means that, even though I watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch religiously when it was part of ABC's TGIF lineup, I had no idea there was any connection between it and those comics. But with the success of Riverdale , a dark, edgy Archie, Sarbina's getting a similar makeover. My familiarity with the TV show helped me orient myself in this comic. I already knew most of the major players: Aunts Hilda and Zelda, Salem the Cat, Harvey the boyfriend. But the comic takes that cast in a very different direction. The series is set back in the 60s, and it is straight-up sensational horror. This presented a bit of a problem in the first issue in that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. These are horrible people (literal Satanists) doing horrible things. Things improve as Sarbina grows up and becomes slightly more ambiguous, being...

The sixth volume of Saga takes a much-needed leap forward in time. While I've enjoyed the series a lot so far, I was starting to feel daunted by how long it was potentially going to last. If it was supposed to cover the life of Hazel and she spent the first 5 volumes as an infant (maybe she aged up to toddler? I can't remember), then the series would never end. But when the story picks back up, Hazel is school-aged, probably 6 or 7 years old. It's refreshing to have Hazel take a more active role in her own story. She makes new friends, pushes the plot forward, and is generally a lot more interesting than she was as an infant. It's nice that everyone else has been propelled into the future, too. It's allowed for some new normals to take hold, for characters to establish patterns and relationships rather than being in a constant state of upheaval. I'll admit that I was somewhat lost in parts of this volume. Even moreso than when I read volume 5, where I was ex...

Although Lumberjanes has since been promoted to ongoing comic, it was originally intended to be 8 issues long. As such, the first and second volume (which contain those 8 issues) make for a nice, complete story. Which means that, as much as I've enjoyed this series, I'll probably stop here. But this was a great story about girls at camp confronting supernatural creatures. I probably should have re-read the first volume to refresh myself on the story so far. But it didn't take me too long to settle back into this story. And I was able to figure out most of what I needed to know from context. I probably missed out on some suspense, but that's alright. I can always read the two volumes back to back in the future to get the complete story. For now, the back half of the story actually works pretty well on its own. It helps that the main villain is introduced here, having lurked in the shadows for the first four issues. And now that the friendships between the main girls...

I was hesitant, going into this volume of Saga. The fourth volume felt like so much treading water, moving pieces around without really advancing the story. Then there was the fact that it's been so long since I last read any Saga that I wasn't sure I'd still be able to follow the plots. I considered re-reading the whole thing. But I ultimately picked up just the fifth volume, figuring I could go back if I needed to. I shouldn't have worried. This volume does a good job of catching everything up in the first issue. I was a little lost on one or two characters, but it didn't matter too much. I was able to follow the story well enough and the emotional beats all landed as intended. Most importantly, I really enjoyed this volume, and I think that's because a fair number of plot points finally get wrapped up. There are new plot threads spinning out, but there's also a significant time jump which necessitates a few endings. Prince Robot IV finds his kid, The...