Valerie

Buzz Aldrin is a pretty fantastic guy. I got to hear him speak at my semi-local library when his handler wasn't cutting him off for telling inappropriate stories. I still want to know about the iguanas, lady! Who cares if there are children present?

This book outlines Buzz's vision of both privately-funded and government space exploration with the ultimate goal of getting settlers to Mars. It's written simply enough (and with lots of pictures) that a non-scientist like myself can understand it and is well sourced among Buzz's fellow genius colleagues. He addresses both the science and the funding aspect to propose a very different mission from our space exploration forays of the past, one based on collaboration and long-term thinking rather than competitive races.

I'm not versed enough to speak to the validity of his claims, but as a fan of science and science fiction, I can say it's an intriguing future, and one I hope I live to see.

More Princeless is always a good thing. Raven Pirate Princess is the spin-off adventures of the Princeless character I'm most likely to cosplay. I feel like both the art style and the tone make this more of a teen/young adult comic than Adrienne's story which very much has children's book appeal (and pink, fuzzy dragons). Raven's adventures include a lot more romance, fighting, and just a more mature style to the art. Like Princeless, the Fight the Patriarchy theme is very strong, sometimes too strong perhaps, but that's much better the alternative. The scene where Raven basically interviews every guy in an online forum made me laugh pretty hard.

It's an enjoyable spin-off so far and one with which I'll definitely keep up.

I love Broodhollow a little more every time I revisit it. It is one of very few stories that makes me laugh hysterically while also terrifying me into hysterics. The art is simple but unique until things get real at which point it shifts to nightmarish detail. The characters are likewise simple on the surface, but the deeper we get into the town, the deeper we also get into these peoples' pasts and heads.

While all of Broodhollow is available online for free, I highly recommend picking up these collections to do a proper read through. When I read them online day by day, I find I forget key things (maybe that's The Fray working on me? WHAT IF I'VE READ ALL OF THIS BEFORE?!!!!!!), and the paperbacks are way easier to sift through hunting for clues without destroying your retinas.

I got this book during a kickstarter binge a while back because it was an illustrated novel about a Prohibition Era that included Magic Prohibition. The concept is great, and as a fan of both graphic novels and comics, the idea of an illustrated novel, a picture book for grown-ups, was deeply appealing. I wasn't disappointed. The art is gorgeous and complementary, helping this story move along when words to describe it would feel forced or inadequate. The writing, however, shares the stage with the art, and it is one of the better crowd-funded pieces I'ver read. The story is simple, maybe a little predictable, but still enjoyable, particularly given the length. You can easily read the whole story in a single sitting. Overall, for comics fans that would like a little more depth to the prose or fantasy fans with an artistic bent, this book is a great combination. I hope the team continues in this world for a few more adventures.

Princeless is one of my most stolen books in my classroom, so that always bodes well. This latest volume features Adrienne coming to terms with her hair, Bedelia coming to terms with her mom, and frank discussion about how you discover your own attraction to others and how no one quite figures it out the same way. Princeless is a comic with diverse enough cast that it is easy to find someone with whom to identify, and few things are more important in children's literature than that.

Thanks, Kickstarter, for continuing to bring me web comics I love in easy to re-read print editions. TOY is in its third volume, and while I sort of miss the early days, it definitely retains its charm. Also Alfons is a great addition to the character cast. TOY is a honest and charming romance. If that's your thing, give the webseries a go. Then back kickstarters for honest and charming postcards.

This is one of the best webcomics I've ever read. It's funny, poignant, sexy, sweet, and pretty much everything you could ask for in a less than epic road trip. It's now collected in a handy (re: needs two hands to lift) omnibus with bonus notes and scenes from out of print “Whisper Grass.” The art is gorgeous (though definitely 18+ rated) and the little nods to bits of America passing by are sure to make anyone who has ever taken a cross country road trip smile.

This book is full of good strategies, although not many of them were terrifically new to me. It's good advice that is much more difficult than the little vignettes make it seem to implement. Something about the author's tone is a little accusative, and made the non-strategy parts hard for me to get through. The author puts a lot of justifiable pressure on teachers to be the one thing that changes students lives. I get what he is saying, but at the same time recognize teachers need release too and making excuses is different from venting complaints about the odds stacked against us. Jensen leaves no room for that, and is pretty abrasive in his claim that kids are not the problem, you are.

I took a lot of notes, wrote down some strategies I thought might work with my kids, but at the end of the day, it didn't present me with the most achievable vision of success. He advises choosing one strategy and honing it until it's right, which I think is the best advice in the book.

McSweeney's' always delivers beautiful short stories, and this issue is no exceptions. What made me particularly happy was several that dipped into the genre side of fiction with a healthy slice of magical realism and even some vampires. Some stories in this volumes are queer characters in queer stories. Others are queer characters who just happen to be queer in a story unrelated to their orientation/gender identity. I really enjoyed that balance, and I recommend McSweeney's to anyone who wants a quarterly burst of literary excellence.

My resolution this year is to read more nonfiction, and this was the first NF book to come up as I scrolled through my nook tars. Oddly enough, I read most of it on Tolkien's 127th birthday. This is a very easy to read, sometimes speculative look at Tolkien's life mostly before his epics. It does an especially fine job chronicling his relationship with his wife and his Inkling friends. I learned a lot of new things about him and would recommend this to any LOTR fan who wants a quick look into the life of this astonishing person.

TOY comics are always sweet. I find as they go on, there's a bit less tension than there used to be, but they are always a nice light diversion from the real world and reading them in print is much easier than in webcomic form.

In general, I'm not a fan of time travel stories. I've been really waiting for the exception to that rule, and I've finally found it. The Doomsday Book was absolutely riveting. The time travel itself isn't the main draw, I found, but rather the dual apocalypses. I do love a good plague (though I think reading this with a slight cold was maybe not the best idea), and the parallel narratives kept the story engaging and the pacing moving despite the novel's length.

While a few characters were a little stock, the main two of Kivrin and Dunworthy as well as pretty much all the Middle Ages characters were interesting and made sensible if often wrong choices. Honestly, once I got over the initial silliness of sending a 19 year girl back to the Middle Ages by herself when no one had actually done it before, the rest of it flowed along well. Bonus: I got to dust of my own Middle English which I haven't gotten to use since undergrad.

I've never read Willis' work before, but I'm definitely game to keep going through her bibliography.

I bought this book as research material for a new project and found it extremely helpful. If you have an interest in Pre-Celt Ireland, this book is a great source. It's written with a sense of humor and language even an archaeology novice like myself can handle.

While the last one in this series through me for a couple of loops, this one leading up to it maintained the pace of the other four. Beautifully illustrated, complex intertwining of visual and prose storytelling, great cat.

I read this book for research for a novel, and I got so much information out of it. I had no idea about so many elements in Celtic and Pre-Celtic societies. Easy to read even for a novice historian like myself and a wealth of material.

Maybe my favorite issue of McSweeney's yet. I loved the theme of duplicity and double lives, the speculative twists of Carmen Maria Machado and Laura Van Den Berg, the heart-wrenching parenting tale of Andrea Bajani, and the evocative illustrations of Daniele Castellano. I've got a backlog of McSweeney's that were delivered to my old house over the last year, and I'm excited to get back into reading the rest.

I was out of literary fiction on hand that I wanted to read as part of my out-of-genre resolution, so I decided to go back to the Harvard 5-foot shelf. This was the next book, and it was an interesting look back in time if not something I would typically read for fun. It's the journal of an 18th century Quaker abolitionist at a time when even most Quakers were like, “Eh... slavery is probably bad, but us white people are just benefitting a lot, so...” The pro-slavery arguments Woolman deals with are fascinating and often frighteningly close to anti-BLM arguments today. The whole, “Well, their lives were so horrible in Africa, we're actually doing them a favor,” is particularly disturbing. I enjoy Woolman's biblical shutdowns about racial inferiority (you can't believe in the race of Cain and also believe in the Great Flood), and his painful explanation that slaves might be “lazy” due to being horrifically treated and forced to labor in something that benefits them not at all. Seems obvious and yet modern day systemic racism prevails.

Now, I'm not a Christian, so Woolman's attitude towards the morality of dyed clothing is a little much for me, but he does also manage to explore how damaging capitalism can be, how we should really think about where products come from rather than just gratifying our every wish in the most convenient way possible. He also talks about the immorality of paying taxes knowing that those taxes are funding wars against indigenous peoples. These sorts of philosophies are definitely still worth reading about today, and are are probably why this book has a place in a library of modern knowledge. If you are looking for some firsthand moral philosophy and some excellent shut downs of 18th century racists, give it a go.

I came to G. Willow Wilson's work through her incredible novel “Alif the Unseen.” Back when we could do things like hang out in bookstores together, I saw her speak at Boulder Book Store about her second novel, “The Bird King” and also picked up this copy of her memoir. The memoir itself is not what I expected necessarily, and at times it challenged me on a cultural level the way her fiction never has. It covers the time from her initial dabbling into Islam through her conversion, move to Egypt, marriage, and gradual transformation into Muslim and Egyptian citizen. It made me reflect on my own time living abroad, on falling in love with a culture not my own, but also feeling frustrated with what felt like limitations to me. When I lived in Japan, I was still definitely American, though I tried my best to be a respectful, aware, and sensitive American. I definitely still held (and hold) judgements about things that felt backward to me (though I just as often complain that America needs to get its act together and be more like Japan).

Wilson's experience is extremely different, largely because it is so rooted in her religious conversion. While I'm certainly not a person who thinks all Muslims are violent extremists and the religion should be abolished, I am an atheist who is particularly wary of Abrahamic traditions and the way all three are frequently used against women. Wilson paints a picture of Islam much closer to my picture of traditional Christianity, a core of spiritual fulfillment and a path to a right life that is easily corrupted by those in power, especially men. She draws a distinction between traditional Islam and what she calls the Islam of Bin-Laden. Nonetheless, this was extremely challenging for me to read with an open mind. Anything that divides the sexes so completely is so foreign to me that it is hard to learn about judgement free. Still, Wilson does the best of anyone at explaining the philosophy and culture to a westerner like me. I don't think my opinion of Islam or religion in general changed reading this, but I think it was a good exercise for me to read it and look through Wilson's unique window.

I was lucky enough to be taught by David Hicks for a few years back at Regis, and he was always one of my favorite teachers, which makes me a super bad person for taking this long to read his book. I'm glad I finally got to it, however, as it's a beautiful piece about love and grief, about the importance of figuring out who you are in order to be there for those you love. It's about fathers and children, and about the curves life can throw you, and about books. Lots and lots of books. Highly recommended if you are looking for some literary fiction that maintains as sense of hope and perspective even in the darkest parts.

McSweeney's is always a good collection, but this one had a couple of stand outs. The first one is “Dog Lab” by T.C. Boyle. Incredibly moving and philosophical piece on ethics and humanity. The second is “The Little Men” by Carl Napolitano which is the kind of weird magical realism backed with massive literary skill that I love so much.

I like the steampunk art style, but the story didn't grip me as much as I'd hoped. It begins as a very standard magical girl portal story right down to stock bullies. Once we got rolling in the other world, the story picked up a little, but so far it's a little too familiar for me. I'll probably keep going with the series a bit to see if the story gets a bit more developed now that the intro arc is over.

McSweeney's is always a treat, but the Sasha Pearl poetry collection included in this one really made it exceptional. It made me laugh and made my heart hurt and made me want to get back into writing poetry.

This issue of McSweeney's is focused on colonialism and what it's like being an indigenous person in a colonial world. Like all McSweeney's, it's excellent. I think “El Señor de La Palma” was my favorite but mostly because MLM's fascinate me. I'm a little behind on my McSweeney's, but it felt good to get back into these beautifully crafted short pieces.

I didn't have huge hopes for this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. The characters are sharp and clever, the plot is twisty without being overcomplicated. It's a cop story that recognizes a lot of the problems with cops. I think I might have enjoyed it more had I had a more knowledge or any experience with London itself, but even as an American who spent 2 hours at Heathrow once, I didn't have trouble following the story. This actually might be my new favorite popcorn series. If you're a fan of things like Dresden Files or Wellington Paranormal, this is a fabulous series.

Another quarter, another great edition. I particularly loved “Serranos.”