The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

1/2021

What a slog this was. I bought this book on the recommendation of Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, who touted it as a great read on one of his YouTube videos. It was much more textbooky than i expected (thought it would be more geared to popular reading) and was at times a bit repetitive. There were certainly some interesting concepts presented in it and i can see how it's an important work, but i could have been happier with a condensed version of it.

The Ickabog

J.K. Rowling

2/2021

Ms. Rowling sure knows how to craft a fairy tale. Full of smart resiliant kids, nasty adults, and an unknown monster. It was a joy to read and not exactly know what path the narrative was going. It was also refreshing that some people in the story were killed, which gave the heroes some emotional heft. Plus it was an allegory on modern governments and the problems of letting bad people guide the public narrative.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

4/2021

I'd never read this in school, where most people read it. Ms. Stowe could've used a better editor. I give her some slack since it was published 170 years ago, but still, a lot of this book could have been trimmed and tightened up. By the time i waded through the unending words to the end, the coincidences became comically unbelievable. Also, there's a LOT of heavy Christianity in the book, which was a big turn-off. I can see how this was an "important" book, but i can't say that it's a very good book.

Gina, The Girl Who Broke The World

Hilo Book 7

Judd Winick

4/2021

These books are so good! Hilo steps aside for Gina to be the reluctant hero of this tale. Hilo's enthusiasm for everything is wonderful and Gina's fear and questioning of her new role is heartfelt. The sense of both fun and seriousness in these books can't be beat.

The Arrival

Shaun Tan

4/2021

Wow, what a stunning and powerful graphic novel. In a wordless story where each page is filled with sometimes one, sometimes a dozen intricate tinted pencil drawings, Shaun Tan explores a beautiful, hearbreaking, heartwarming story of immigrants fleeing their oppressed home countries to opportunity in a new one. The visuals are an imaginitive amalgam of historic and fantastically modern—not quite steam-punk, but in that vibe, with towering buildings, odd animals and vegetables, flying boats.... All of these things hit home the feeling of unfamiliarity in a strange country. Beautiful.

Pirate hunters

Robert Kurson

5/2021

Another fantastic book by Robert Kurson. I actually didn't get this one when it first came out, but after reading Rocket Men last year, i bought Pirate Hunters and enjoyed every page of it. It's about one of the men who was featured in Kurson's first book Shadow Divers and his partner and their frustrating quest to find the rarest of all shipwrecks—a pirate ship.

The Magic Garden

Gene Stratton-Porter

5/2021

I picked this old book up at our summer house thinking that it was the classic 1911 book The Secret Garden, but no, this 1927 book is a supremely creepy story about a 5-year-old girl who falls in love with a pre-teen boy and then keeps herself pure for him for 15 years until he returns from overseas. He, meanwhile, has been true to her and they meet at the end in the garden where they romanced each other as kids. The garden is hardly in the story and it's not magic. There's a lot of lecherous overtones in this and i was surprised to find out that Gene Stratton-Porter was a well regarded women with many successful books and movies under her belt.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Gabriel García Márquez

5/2021

I don't remember clearly if i'd ever read this before, but i came across it while sorting books at our summer house and decided to read it—it being a classic and all. There's a lot of characters in it, added into the narrative as the full picture of one morning in a small town is rehashed from many perspectives, all describing how two brothers kill a man because of a percieved slight to the honor of their sister. The book is full of simple descriptions that paint a vivid picture of the place and people in it and there's even a subtle wry sense of humor woven into it. One can see why it is regarded as a classic, even for being a relatively short book.

All Together Now

Hope Larson

6/2021

This is the sequel to All Summer Long and picks up with Bina in the fall of her eighth-grade year trying to start a band and (as eighth-graders do) dealing with boys. The drawings are crisp and colored in a duotone (a dusky purple and black this time), which gives the book a nice feel. The characters are real, with clashes and hurt feelings and make-ups and awkwardness. I like the fact the the main thing that matters to Bina is music, which is cool.

Wicked Things

John Allison, Max Sarin, Whitney Cogar

6/2021

This was so fun. This graphic novel (from a series of comics) lives in the same world as John Allison's other great work Giant Days. The plot is sort of silly but the characterizations are lively and imaginitive and they work so well with the great expressions on the characters' faces. Plus it's a semi-throwback to mysteries like Sherlock Holmes, only with an 18-year-old girl doing the solving (while under suspicion of murder!).

Naturalist

Edward O. Wilson

Adapted for graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani and C.M. Butler

7/2021

I'd read a couple graphic novels by Jim Ottaviani before—very science-based—and i picked this one up on a whim. It's basically the autobiography of Edward O. Wilson, set to comics. A bit dry at times, but interesting enough. Mr. Wilson made his career by studying the most populous species on the planet—ants.

Hilda and the Mountain King

Luke Pearson

7/2021

This book picks up where season two of the animated series left off so one would imaging that much of season three will surround the plot of this book. Luke's drawings are magical, the story is personal and packed with adventure, and Hilda is strong, fearless, and resourceful, as every young girl should be.

The Girl from the Sea

Molly Knox Ostertag

7/2021

Another wonderful graphic novel from Molly Ostertag. It is in some ways a book of self-discovery, but the main character is gay right from the start and the story is not only about her coming out to her friends and family but about a magical relationship with a girl from the sea who has a charming naivete but also a higher purpose.

It is a shame that Molly's books take such a short time to read, as i want to savor them for much longer.

Ultimate

The Greatest Sport Ever Invented by Man

Pasquale Anthony Leonardo

8/2021

I first saw this book a bunch of years ago when Tony (the author) was selling some copies at the Boston Invite tournament. I finally bought it (the second edition) and slowly made my way through it. It was definitely written in a tongue-in-cheek style but it doesn't come off as particularly funny and even though it's a bit over ten years old, it really feels dated. There's a fair bit of somewhat sexist overtones and it kind of has a kind of frat-boy attitude, focusing on the "party" aspects of ultimate. But it does cover a large swath of the tropes of ultimate and i guess it's a good thing to document the era.

Jukebox

Nidhi Chanani

8/2021

I was looking forward to this, as i'd enjoyed Nidhi's previous book, Pashmina. This is a love letter to classic music mixed with time travel mixed with a mystery that two girls have to solve. It's a nice story, but there were a few places in the book where the text and pictures didn't flow as well as they might have, and it made the narrative a bit disjointed, which kind of gave it a disappointing feel overall.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman

9/2021

The title of this book always intrigued me and i picked it up at a local bookstore. Mr. Gaiman tells a straightforward simple tale of a supernatural world wrapped around the three generations of women in the old farmhouse at the end of the lane, as seen through the experiences of the narrator as a seven-year-old boy. It's spooky and sweet and sucks you in to the real world butting up next to the fantasy one, with some ruminations on life and existence and the universe along the way. I can see why Neil's books are loved and revered, but while i enjoyed it, i wouldn't go so far as to say that it was fantastic.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Alix E. Harrow

10/2021

This book was one of the staff picks at Phoenix Books in Rutland. I had asked about Nebula Award-winning books and was pointed to this. It was a joy to read and even though it wallowed in the trope of secret doors (more accurately, "Doors" with a capital D) to other worlds, it used this notion so intensely well. It's about a young girl who is living under the care of a wealthy man while her father ventures the globe in the late 1800s/early 1900s. She slowly discovers who her father really is and in the process who she is as well. It flows with mystery and adventure and ultimate redemption and change, but in such a positive hopeful way. Also it has a faithful dog named Bad.

Norroway

Book 1: The Black Bull of Norroway

Kit & Cat Seaton

10/2021

Beautifully illustrated tale of mystery. A young peasant girl is told that she will marry a bull and grows up to find that the bull needs her in order to break the curse that is upon him which will transform him back to the man that he once was. There's a lot of intrigue and strong characters and it ends with nothing resolved, setting up book two.

Freedom

Sebastian Junger

10/2021

Odd little book. It's sort of about Seb's trek along railroad tracks toward western Pennsylvania, but it's intercut with ruminations on the methods and costs of freedom and what they mean. There’s a lot of history of colonization and uprisings and strikes and oppression and it all works together in a way to form a whole, but it's not a story, really, just a means of expounding on an idea.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2019

Various Authors

11/2021

I read and enjoyed a few of these books back in college and i was a little disappointed in the selections in this one. A couple good stories, a bunch of okay ones, and a couple that just made no sense.

Norroway

Book 2: The Queen on the High Mountain

Kit & Cat Seaton

11/2021

Not as interesting as book 1. Lots of dialog and it all takes place later but that's hard to figure out right off the bat. The story eventually gets going, but i thought that it would wrap up at the end of this book and it doesn't. I guess there'll be more?

The Christmas Pig

J.K. Rowling

12/2021

Not a terrible story, but not great either. It had magic and intrigue and was fun to read, but it got a bit hokey toward the end. I felt that it was really geared toward a much younger audience even though it was a long involved book.

To Know a Starry Night

Paul Bogard

12/2021

This is a corollary to Paul's book The End of Night, but with much more personal essays on his feelings and relationships to dark, starry skies. It was an enjoyable read—a chance to get to know Paul a little better—and many of the photos were spectacular. The book is about half words, half pictures.