2025 book 155

 Mimi Pond’s Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me

Look, I’ll read any bio of the Mitford sisters, but one that is ALSO a graphic novel? *Chef’s kiss* Anyway, this isn’t breaking new ground if you’ve read any of the other bios, but it is much FUNNIER than the other bios. There are also some autobiographical interludes that I’m not sure were necessary but I enjoyed nonetheless. My only complaint is that the book is a lovely blue monochromatic work, but sometimes there was white text on a light blue background that was very hard to read—this may work better in print, and I do have a print copy pre-ordered because this needs to live on my shelves! A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on September 16th.

2019 book 7

Faith Erin Hicks' Comics Will Break Your Heart
I am not super into YA romances, but I am here for books about nerds into comics AND for books by Faith Erin Hicks (this is her first novel that isn’t a graphic novel) so here we go. The story starts with Miriam, working in a comic book store in a small Canadian town, when a cute new boy walks in—who turns out to be the heir to a major comic book company, whose new movie is about to premiere. Except her grandfather co-created those characters, and their families were involved in a messy lawsuit for years. Oops! Obviously Hicks nails the comic book nerd aspect, and the two protagonists are likable enough that I was not annoyed by their romance. She does the family stuff well, but subplots involving Miriam's friends were kind of underbaked. Still, a very enjoyable and fun nerdy read! B+.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in February.

Favorite stuff of 2016!

2016 was not a great year by any stretch of the imagination, but there were some bright spots.

I did read a lot of really good books this year, but not many that I flat-out LOVED. So first up, here are my top five favorite books of 2016--plus two more that will be released in early 2017! And then some other things I loved this year. :)

Top Five Fave Books (+2!)
-- Louise Erdrich's LaRose
-- Melina Marchetta's Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil
-- Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial
-- Emma Straub's Modern Lovers
-- Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn

Plus two:
-- Kayla Rae Whitaker's The Animators
-- Shannon Hale and Dean Hale's The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World

Top Five Fave Albums
-- Eric Bachmann, Self-titled
-- Beyonce, Lemonade
-- A Giant Dog, Pile
-- Lady Gaga, Joanne
-- Ladyhawke, Wild Things

Top Five Comics
(I am seriously behind on my comics to-read pile, so I am probably missing something awesome that came out in 2016--oh well!)
-- Ghosts (by Raina Telgemeier)
-- Lumberjanes (ongoing)
-- March (by John Lewis et al)
-- Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (ongoing)
--The Wicked and the Divine (ongoing)

And finally . . .

Number One Clothing Item Purchased
-- Sherpa cardigan from The Gap. So freaking cozy.

Oh, and also this. We all need comfort food to cuddle in these troubled times.

2016 book 187

Shannon Hale and Dean Hale's The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World
I am being one hundred percent sincere when I say that this may be the best book I have ever read. It was completely adorable and hilarious--I was giggling out loud all evening--and it honestly restored my faith in humanity during a dark time. This Squirrel Girl origin novel--focusing on a 14 year old Doreen starting a new high school in New Jersey--totally channels the humor and personality of the comics and kicks it up a notch. Plus it is effortlessly diverse and effortlessly charming. I love all of Hale's writing, but Hale doing Squirrel Girl is a complete dream team. Seriously. GREAT. A.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in February.

2016 book 115

Bob Proehl's A Hundred Thousand Words
Proehl's debut novel was right up my alley--and will probably be right up the alley of any comic book or sci-fi nerd. It centers on a woman who once starred on an X-Files/Fringe-ish tv show, and married and had a child with her co-star--but after things went badly, she took the little boy and headed to New York. Now she's on her way back to Los Angeles for the first time in years, stopping to make appearances at comic book conventions along the way. We also get the POV of her son, a budding storyteller, along with the only woman comic book writer at a DC-ish comic book company (or maybe it was the Marvel counterpart--I got a little confused with the fictionalizations of all the real life stuff), and a young male comic book artist working on a smaller press book. I actually thought this was a really woman-friendly book--I worried about how the issues surrounding women and comics would fare with a male author, but he did a pretty good job (I especially appreciated his takedown of the Alan Moore analogue). The writing here is strong--I like stories about stories--and I found it all satisfying--I loved how all the threads came together. I /did/ wish for just a little bit more from the ending, but I can see why Proehl wrapped it up the way he did. Really, I had no major complaints--this managed to be both fun and moving. A-.

2016 book 115

Bob Proehl's A Hundred Thousand Words
Proehl's debut novel was right up my alley--and will probably be right up the alley of any comic book or sci-fi nerd. It centers on a woman who once starred on an X-Files/Fringe-ish tv show, and married and had a child with her co-star--but after things went badly, she took the little boy and headed to New York. Now she's on her way back to Los Angeles for the first time in years, stopping to make appearances at comic book conventions along the way. We also get the POV of her son, a budding storyteller, along with the only woman comic book writer at a DC-ish comic book company (or maybe it was the Marvel counterpart--I got a little confused with the fictionalizations of all the real life stuff), and a young male comic book artist working on a smaller press book. I actually thought this was a really woman-friendly book--I worried about how the issues surrounding women and comics would fare with a male author, but he did a pretty good job (I especially appreciated his takedown of the Alan Moore analogue). The writing here is strong--I like stories about stories--and I found it all satisfying--I loved how all the threads came together. I /did/ wish for just a little bit more from the ending, but I can see why Proehl wrapped it up the way he did. Really, I had no major complaints--this managed to be both fun and moving. A-.

2015 book 263

Ursula Vernon's Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible
Vernon's latest is in the model of her Dragonbreath books--mixing comics/illustrations with text, aimed at like the 8-10 year old crowd. It is also a super cute and funny take on the Sleeping Beauty story, with hamsters! Hamster princess Harriet is cursed to prick her paw on a hamster wheel on her 12th birthday--but she realizes that means she has to REACH her 12th birthday, and is thus INVINCIBLE, and thus can go on all sorts of crazy adventures. Of course, the curse does catch up with her eventually, and it's all full of Vernon's trademark wit. Great stuff. A-.

2013 book 217

Ryan North's To Be or Not to Be
A choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet is clearly the best idea ever, which is why this raised over half a million dollars on Kickstarter. And yes, I'm counting it toward my book totals, b/c it's over 700 pages long (some are illustrations, but still) and it took me more than a few hours to go through. I'm like 97% sure I got to every ending thanks to a system involving lots of page-corner-turning and several bookmarks! And it was so worth it--this was REALLY well done. I have never chuckled so much at Hamlet! Granted, I have never actually chuckled at Hamlet before, to my knowledge, but I certainly appreciated it much more this time around. I also liked how North editorialized about some of the choices that stick to the text, particularly the ones involving Ophelia. But there's also ghost time travel and a lot of swordfighting pirates, for those who don't want to be judged for making sexist choices as Hamlet would. It's all very clever with a GREAT execution. Plus illustrations by all the awesome indie comics people of the day! How can this not get an A?

2013 book 172

Marta Acosta's The She-Hulk Diaries
Guys! This book is LEGITIMATELY GOOD. I mean, I'm not one for chick lit--I hate how predictable it is--but it turns out I am way into chick lit when the chick is a superhero. Take note: Superhero Chick Lit needs to be a genre. Anyway. As you can probably tell by the title, the book is the diary of She-Hulk--or really her alter-ego, lawyer Jennifer Walters--as she makes some New Year's resolutions and tries to get her crazy life together. Soon she's involved in a big case and running into a hot ex, plus there are a bunch of other things going on--and all of it is HILARIOUS. Seriously, I loved the narrative voice so much that I might try and read something else by Acosta. It's been a long time since I read any She-Hulk (I think since the 90s comic) but this is pretty spot on, canon-wise, and fits really well into the current Marvel/Avengers universe. Oh, someone please put She-Hulk into an Avengers movie! She and Tony would banter so beautifully.

ANYWAY. This was a lot of fun, and much better than a Marvel novel might be expected to be. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book is available now.

2013 book 170

Christine Woodward's Rogue Touch
Marvel Comics has always been willing to play around with different things to get beyond its typical dude comic-book-fan audience--and this isn't even the first time they've tried novels marketed more at the female audience; they put out a couple YA books about Mary Jane from Spider-Man a few years ago. But now they're aiming for adult ladies, and targeting the paranormal romance fans, if this one is any indicator (I have slightly higher hopes for the one about She-Hulk, who's a lawyer). ANYWAY. This is a novel about Rogue from the X-Men. I have been a big fan of Rogue since the 80s X-Men cartoon (and can still hear her voice from that very clearly), so was kind of excited to read a novel about her! Here, she's just put her high-school boyfriend into a coma and is on the run, when she meets a mysterious guy (NOT Wolverine--and in fact, to my disappointment, NO other X-Men appear in this book!) and they go on the run together, dealing with problems from his world. I'm pretty sure this is all out of continuity, and I didn't really care about this guy or his world or their inevitable romance. But I'm not a fan of paranormal romance, I'm a fan of comic books! I think romance fans might like this better. B/B-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on Tuesday.

Favorite Books of 2012!

Without further ado--the books I loved, recommended, couldn't stop talking about, etc, presented alphabetically by author:

Ayad Akhtar's American Dervish
Chris Bohjalian's The Sandcastle Girls
Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Louise Erdrich's Round House
Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl
Rachel Hartman's Seraphina
Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child
Patrice Kindl's Keeping the Castle
Nina LaCour's The Disenchantments
Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies
Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles
Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper
Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
Elizabeth Wein's Code Name: Verity

And, for a bonus, here are my favorite comics of 2012.

Drama!

I don't usually review graphic novels in a formal way (b/c I don't count them toward my yearly book totals) but got an advance copy of Raina Telgemeier's Drama and wanted to talk about it b/c it's awesome! Telgemeier is, of course, the author of Smile, the MG graphic novel that has won more awards and acclaim than any other that I've ever heard of (deservedly--it's cute and very compelling too), as well as adapting the Babysitter's Club GNs. Telgemeier manages to avoid sophomore slump with Drama, a work of fiction about the stage crew of a middle school play. There's lots of boy drama and drama-drama, but heroine Callie is completely adorable and relatable, and I loved this. Telegeimeier totally nails middle school in a really fun way.

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An e-galley was provided by the publisher. Drama will be released in the fall.

Comic Book Column

Hey folks, I know you must be all, "Alicia, you were reading a book a day, but it's been TWO days, what happened!" And what happened is:
a) The book I'm reading right now is pretty long, and
b) Other stuff is happening! Like Wednesday I had a crazy allergy attack and spent the evening in a benadryl coma instead of reading, and tomorrow I'll be seeing THE HUNGER GAMES MOVIE instead of reading.

Expect book bloggin' to recommence this weekend. In the meantime, I've been writing a column about comic books! It appears every Friday morning--there's a link down on the right-hand sidebar, but I figured now was an opportune time to officially announce it (which I have done repeatedly on Twitter and Facebook, but whatever).

Locas -- The Love Bunglers

I've been thinking a lot about Jaime Hernandez's conclusion to his Locas story "The Love Bunglers" (from L&R New Stories vol. 4)--mainly b/c it was such an incredible piece that I cry every time I read it. I even recently threatened to force a friend to read all the Locas stuff, because it's so freaking good. But then I started wondering--is it as awesome if you read it all at once? I discovered Love and Rockets when I was like 19, thanks to the fine folks at Comic Swap in State College, PA, and that's when I totally fell for Maggie (and Ray). So this story, for me, was 13 years in the making. I grew up (into adulthood) with these characters--is it the same if you read it as a 30-something?

I'm going to reread all the little Locas omnibus volumes in the next few weeks, I think. Let me know if I can lend them to you and see if you're an L&R convert too. :)

some book links

Sorry for the lack of updates--the new Murakami book is long! Have some book-related links to make up for it.

The Millions on Dumas.

The NYT on Lynda Barry!

awesome comics

Some awesome awesome awesome comics came out this week and I've been busy reading them, hence the lack of book posting. First up, Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant book--I mean, ok, you can read all those comics online but the book format is great, just a really attractive package, and it's so nice to giggle over jokes about history and literature. And mystery-solving teens.

But what I am REALLY excited about is that Love and Rockets New Stories vol. 4 came out this week. Jaime Hernandez is just blowing my mind these days, between the stuff in here and the stories from vol. 3--moving along Maggie's story especially, but filling in these huge gaps in the story of her childhood as well. I cried three times while reading and am already reading the whole thing again. I can't wait till these stories come out in one of those cute little Locas books.

Americus

I don't count graphic novels toward my book totals, so I usually forget to mention the ones I'm reading (and most are volumes of the series I love--20th Century Boys, Unwritten, iZombie, Fables, etc). But I want you guys to know that Americus exists--it's an awesome story about a teen boy and a librarian teaming up to stop their favorite books from being banned! And some other stuff too. You can even read the whole thing online here (though the last few pages aren't up yet).

I also recommend the adorable new Sara Varon book, Bake Sale.

link roundup!

New Audubon Park song, omg!!! New album is out this month and the release show is the 28th at 506!

Kenyon grads on DFW's 2005 commencement speech there.

This is my favorite part of the pencil-necked/Neil Gaiman kerfuffle.

Similarly, I've been enjoying Jillian Tamaki's (she of the embroidered book covers) webcomic about a school of mutant-powered teens--this one is a highlight.

And also speaking of webcomics: First Second is serializing its upcoming graphic novel Americus--please go read it from the beginning--it's been one of my favorite things for a while now and I need to spread the love more.

Photo0140.jpg

Photo0140.jpg, a photo by wordnerdy on Flickr.

Admire my new desk toy! Or he'll cut you with the power of love.

links, etc

Here's a long piece on the major Haggadot in American culture (I grew up using the Maxwell House one, myself).

Check out this comic by two Americans who were in Cairo during the uprisings--the first seven pages are up so far.

I think I need this.

Sorry for the delay in book postings; the book I'm currently reading started off strong but I don't like it at all anymore. But I'm almost 3/4 of the way in and it seems like I should finish it. Also, I've been really busy playing Angry Birds and other games on my new iPod Touch, which eats into reading time but is totally worth it.