Category: Books

There’s a precision and specificity to Helen DeWitt’s writing that I find utterly charming and disarming. If you like getting your toes wet before jumping in the deep end with a novel, these stories are an excellent intro to her writing.

Many of the stories seem to focus on the difficulty of dealing with the world when you care about things that most people don’t care about that much. Like precision in language or hearing foreign language books read by native speakers who also need to have an aesthetically appropriate name. (“Entourage” is a pretty searing indictment of billionaires.)

“My Heart Belongs to Bertie”, “Brutto”, “Improvisation is the Heart of Music” were three that I especially liked.

(It’s a smorgasbord! Sometimes I think, I haven’t been reading that much, and then I go back over my list of recently read books…)

The Wild Storm v1 & 2 by Warren Ellis: Back in the Noughties, I read pretty much all of Warren Ellis’ comics. He’s really tops when writing team books (see also: Planetary, Nextwave, Injection, and others) and this series sees a return to form. Deeply mysterious, witty banter, and the art’s gorgeous. I look forward to seeing where it goes.

Clean Room v1-3 by Gail Simone: Bright, vibrant colors make the creepiness and horror muchly more so. If you’re prone to nightmares, definitely stay away from this one. 

Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe by Dean Radin: This book’s got the most succinct and thorough overview of the history of Western occult practices and movements that I’ve ever read. Worth it, just for that. Unlike much occult writing, extremely readable.

All-New Wolverine Vol. 1: The Four Sisters by Tom Taylor: Absolutely injected new life into the whole Wolverine thing which–at this point–is feeling pretty tired. (See also: Old Man Logan.) A nice balance of humor and high stakes.

The Mighty Thor Vol. 5: The Death of the Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron: I’ll read pretty much anything Jason Aaron does at this point. Brings the Jane Foster/Thor story to an excellent conclusion. I look forward to seeing what he does next.

Lady Killer by Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones: A showcase of Joelle Jones’ excellent artwork. I don’t have much stomach for gore these days or I might’ve enjoyed it more. ’50s housewife is secretly an assassin. Very Mad Men-y. She’s doing a new Catwoman series. Could be good! Regardless, the art will be great.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith: Read this one for my book club. I’ve been seeing this book displayed prominently in bookstores for what feels like years and years. It had a definitively mixed reception from my book club, but I quite liked it. “Hysterical realism” is a phrase I ran across on the internet related to this book and I think it’s extremely on the nose. I wasn’t sure about this book until about the mid-point, but then it really gets cranking and I was very much onboard at that point, thoroughly enjoying the ride. Some useful insight about the immigrant experience, I’m thinking. At the sentence level, the writing is swooping and fantastically exuberant.

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente: Perhaps the most worthy successor to Douglas Adams, re funny science fiction. Boundlessly creative, it really is almost too much at times. It’s hard to imagine one brain coming up with all this stuff. But then one only has to read her other books to realize this isn’t just a one-off kind of thing. Me, I just imagine painstaking and painful wordsmithing. Still, a joy to read if you love to see words bouncing around all over the place. Eurovision in Space! Brilliant!

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins: A book about magical “librarians”. (Apart from getting their magical powers from books, I didn’t find them very librarian-y. A minor quibble.) I kind of had to read it. Sometimes you want to just eat some popcorn, you know? Gonzo, bonkers, magical weirdness. I dug it.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle: (I liked Universal Harvester more.) (Yes, it’s that John Darnielle. Of Mountain Goats fame.) Captures, in a way that’s harrowing, that dangerous time of life from about 15-22 years old. The protagonist has an adventure-game-by-mail business that’s quite alluring, although I wanted it to be more fantastical. The image of the “wolf in white van” definitely sticks. This book has the kind of eye for detail that makes me think “boy, I really haven’t been paying attention to the world around me…”

Equinoxes by Cyril Pedrosa: It’s the details that stuck with me, even as the “plot” of the thing eludes me. The small ways that people are decent (or indecent) to one another. The weight of history. The ways in which people relate to art, photography and painting. The small moments that heap together to make a life. It’s a beautiful book.

My Pretty Vampire by Katie Skelly: A silly comic about a vampire. Kinda sexy, in a campy vampire sort of way. Reminded me a bit of Mac Wellman’s Dracula play.

If Found…Please Return to Elise Gravel by Elise Gravel: One of the most charming and delightful books I’ve seen all year. On its face, just a bunch of doodles. But so endearing and heartwarming.

Hellboy (Library Edition, Volume 1): Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil by Mike Mignola: When the Hellboy comic first started coming up, it was a recurring topic of conversation among my friends and I. (We were so excited for that movie!) I wanted to see if 1) my kid would like it, and 2) if I’d still like it. No to 1 and yes to 2. The art is so great. Worth picking up, for sure, if you’ve never read it.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West is one of the best books I’ve ever read–and I’ve read a few of them. The writing in this book is so exquisite that I often had to set the book down. At one point, I shouted after reading something so profound. This book was so incredible, to me, that I almost don’t even know what to write about it.

Have you ever read a book by a dead author and mourned their death, because there’s not even the slightest change that you would ever get to meet them? For me, Rebecca West is one of those writers. 

So what’s it all about? It’s a 1930s travelogue of the Balkans. It sounds fairly innocuous, but when reading this book I felt like I was peering into the secret history of the world (or at least the European portion of it). When King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in Marseille, France (an event I’d never read about!) Rebecca West decided that she would travel to the Balkans for the express purpose of trying to understand why this region of the world kept setting Europe on fire and why, she correctly intuited, it would do so again. I think she succeeded.

Why did World War I start? The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is the first thing that springs to my mind. I know there were other things too, but the why of that event never went deep enough for in explaining how that event caused the human abattoir of that War to End All Wars. Now, I feel like I understand it in my bones. I feel like understand, emotionally, how and why that thing happened and how it fed into the bloody massacres that followed, the ones we’re all still reeling from, even though we don’t quite realize it. It wasn’t a quick process. I had to read ~1100 pages to get there.

But okay, you may be thinking, What’s the big deal here? You understand how and why WWI started. Is that really worth all the time and energy you put into this?

Yes.

I don’t know, you kind of have to take my word for it. I’m still struggling to fit this book into my brain. I’m not sure I ever will. It’s one of those books I was tempted to start re-reading as soon as I’d finished it.

Check it out. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

(Warning! No actual samurai appear in this book, unless you count the film samurai from the movie Seven Samurai, who do.)

As my old friend Eric wrote, this book is a “Stone cold masterpiece”. I whole-heartedly agree. Seriously, this book is really great. I can’t say enough great things about it. It’s funny and moving and clever and is probably one of the most insightful novels written about fathers and sons and mothers and sons and children and parents generally. It’s got a lot on education and human potential and it makes it seem like learning languages is not so hard. (I found learning languages extremely difficult, but maybe I just didn’t think of it the right way.) Also, it made me want to watch Seven Samurai again.

A book that’s very much worth reading. You won’t regret it.

This book is much shorter than I expected, but then it is a couple of lectures that have been turned into essays. The essays are quite smart and highlighted some things I’d certainly never considered.

The first essay begins by focusing on a scene I’d never given much thought to: in the Odyssey, Odysseus’ house is filled with suitors who want to marry Penelope, the assumed widow. A bard starts playing a sad song about all the men who went away to Troy and died. Penelope is overwrought with sorrow and asks the bard to sing a different tune. Telemachus rebukes her and tells her, basically, go do a bunch of womanly things, public speech is men’s work and I’m in charge here! Beard then goes on to draw parallels between that scene and other pieces from art, history, and literature from then to the present day.

The second essay is more about the ways that women are permitted (or not) to engage in the political sphere. She makes a compelling case that, even though we may not consider it, art and literature from the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds cast a long shadow that influences us still today. (For example, the imagery of Medusa as it’s been used through time.)

The only quibble I’d have with the book is that it’s not a manifesto. Beard has no call to action, no ideas for what to do. That being said, I think she’s doing a valuable service raising these parallels between the culture of antiquity and that of the present. Check it out! It’s a quick read.

I finished this book last week, but I’m still not quite sure what to say about it. It’s so beautifully written. The internal lives of its characters are almost too rich to fathom. When reading, it was impossible not to feel Baldwin’s constant presence. In a similar way, the novel is haunted by Rufus, a black musician who falls into such despair that he jumps off a bridge early in the story. (It was only later that I read an interview with James Baldwin and he mentioned a friend of his who killed himself by jumping off a bridge.) It’s a book that captures a very specific time and place (New York city in the 1960s) but that feels infinite in its scope–infinite in the microscopic sense, there’s always deeper and smaller to go. I can’t think of another book that captures how fraught with danger (emotionally, physically, spiritually) sex can be between human beings. Or even just a seemingly casual conversation. The kind of book that sort of makes me want to go shut myself away from other people and just read books forever. Also, there’s a party scene in this book with publishing elites that made me infinitely glad that I’ve always lived on the West coast. It’s an amazing book, but I think I got a bit more out of Go Tell it on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time.

Did you ever wonder what was all the fuss about people like Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza, but couldn’t get past the mountains of pages? Never fear! This comic book provides an entertaining summary and historical context for some of the most influential thinkers of the 17th century. Seriously, they should probably give this book to college freshmen. The art’s a lot of fun too.

It’s a Batman story from the 80s! The Wrath is an obscure Batman villain who has an identical origin story, only its a cop who kills his (criminal) parents. This comic is kind of weird and delightful as only Batman stories can be. I finally read it because I’d renewed it 26 times from the library. That seemed like enough, so I decided to finally read it. It was an easier read than this James Baldwin book I’m trying to read for my book club. James Baldwin is an amazing writer, but he’s tough to read when kids are bouncing around the house.

Anyway, Batman: The Wrath. I have no idea why I checked it out. I probably read about it online somewhere or heard about it on some podcast. It was pretty good. The art definitely felt like 80s Batman art, but it works. They were definitely going for a grittier, edgier kind of thing. Maybe this was a deliberate Batman, house-style kind of thing?

I’m digging this alternate take on the Batman thing. Instead of rich, Gotham socialite Bruce Wayne dressing up like a bat and flitting around town, we’ve got rich, Gotham socialite Violet Paige dressing up in a stark, white outfit (it doesn’t seem to have an animal theme to it) and tromping around town. It’s super dark, but no more than many Batman stories I’ve read. I liked it well enough to read the second collection. It’s good to see an alternate take on the whole Gotham-city vigilante thing. I hope it is a nice long run. I dig some of the art a lot, some of the art a bit less, but the writing is solid.

If you like Batman, give it a go.

It’s part of Gerard Way’s DC Comics Young Animal imprint. I’ve been impressed with the stuff they’ve been doing, including Shade, the Changing Girl and a new Doom Patrol run.

(You really want to start with volume 1 with these.)

If you liked the show Stranger Things and you like time travel, changes are you’ll like this comic. It’s about four paper girls who end up traveling through time. Similar to the way that Saga deals with parenting and war, Paper Girls sort of explores themes of generational conflict and misunderstanding.

There’s a lot to like in these books and the art by Cliff Chiang is fantastic.