The Once and Future Witches

Alix E. Harrow

1/2022

Having been turned on to Ms. Harrow's previous book, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, i bought this one and boy oh boy, what a great read. It's full of strong, powerful, determined women who push back against the patriarchy in the late 1800s, fighting for workers' rights, voting rights, and witching rights. It's set in an almost-America, where things are not quite as they were, as there is an undercurrent of magic that swims around the main characters and pretty much anyone in the story who is in need. Beautifully told, full of good and evil, triumphs and setbacks, and a trio of witches who find themselves in the process of helping others rediscover witching. Spend some time with the witches Eastwood.

Lily the Thief

Janne Kukkonen

2/2022

Nice story, great drawings. A very good read, except for the fact that many of the non-main characters all looked the same, making it a little confusing. But worth it.

All My Friends

Hope Larson

2/2022

This is the third entry in Hope Larson's tale about a 13-year-old girl named Bina who wants to start a band and make music (as well as have some teen crushes and romances). It's as good as the last two (All Summer Long and All Together Now) but a little bit unrealistic in that Bina's band gets their song on a national TV show and gets an record contract offer. That doesn't detract from the storyline though.

Salt Magic

Hope Larson & Rebecca Mock

2/2022

Engaging tale of a 12-year-old girl that starts off as ordinary hard life in the early 1900s on a farm in the midwest and evolves into a tale of deep magic as the heroine strives to save her farm from a curse that has turned their well water salty. Beautiful illustrations and a compelling story.

Gina and the Big Secret

Hilo Book 8

Judd Winick

2/2022

Such a good series. Frustrating that they come out only one per year. Gina and Hilo are on their way to saving the Earth that Gina unwittingly changed in Book 7.

Nebula Awards Showcase 54

Various Authors

3/2022

This collection was definitely better than the last, with a couple of very compelling stories, including one by Alix E. Harrow about librarian witches. I was rather appalled by the high volume of typos throughout the book, though.

Tuki

Fight For Fire

Jeff Smith

4/2022

Jeff Smith's work is, as always, fantastic. I was a little disappointed in this one, though, because it simply wasn't very long. I guess i was expecting more. This is only book one though, so let's hope for more in book two. The version that i got had the second, darker cover as it was a special variant for those who supported the project on Kickstarter.

American Cheese

An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World

Joe Berkowitz

5/2022

Joe writes with wit and clarity, and one learns a whole lot about cheese from reading this book, although there’s probably vats of knowledge untouched still. It was interesting to see the cheese world much the same way as the wine world—lots of people who indulge and a fanatic few who spend hours coming up with the perfect adjectives to describe a bit of fermented curd. It did rouse an interest in me to branch out from domestic Swiss and aged Cheddar, but all that fancy cheese is so expensive!

Roald Dahl

James and the Giant Peach

The Magic Finger

Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Twits

George’s Marvellous Medicine

6/2022

I bought a box set of many of Roald Dahl’s books and started into them. I’d only ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and although the re-reads on them fell a little flat, i still felt that i should explore more of Dahl’s works.

Overall, the books are all simple straight-forward stories (i guess i was expecting a little more) and one thing that ties many of them together is that the hero of each book may not be the greatest on an ethical or moral standing, but whatever he does (and so far, they’ve all been male) is acceptable because the villains are so enormously evil and awful. Cartoonish, of course, but they are kids’ books after all. I’d heard of James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. Fox, but not of the other three, which were all pretty short. Overall, there’s a sameness to these stories but the imaginitive seed of each book shines through.

Tuki

Fight For Family

Jeff Smith

7/2022

Once again, this is a great story told in images and words, but it was too short. The two volumes together make for a nice book, though.

The Woman in the Woods

And Other North American Stories

Various Authors

7/2022

Meh. I got this as part of a Kickstarter campaign. Most of the stories were poorly plotted or poorly drawn or both, and a lot of them followed the same basic story of finding a semi-diety off in the woods.

The BFG

Roald Dahl

7/2022

As is the case with many of his books, the story is a simple line from beginning to end and starts right away, with little setup. It was nice to have a female protagonist finally, although one could argue that really the Big Friendly Giant (BFG) was the main star and Sophie was there mainly to react to him. But she had her ideas as well and it was a funnish story with a lot of crazy mixed-up words spoken by the BFG.

A Spindle Splintered

A Mirror Mended

Alix E. Harrow

7/2022

Have i told you lately that Alix E. Harrow is my new favorite author? Let me say it again in digital type. These two short novels weave a story of life and fairy tales, alternate universes and love. They begin well, they middle well, they end well. They’re the kind of books that suck you in, chapter after chapter, and leave you smiling at the end.

The Complete Fire Ant Saga

Fire Ant
Crystals
Ace
Fortitude
Indomitable

Jonathan P. Brazee

8/2022

This is a one-volume compilation of a series of five novellas. The first chapter of the first book, Fire Ant was excerpted in one of the Nebula Awards books that i read and i was hooked and wanted to find out what happened next. Unfortunately, while it was a decent light read that kept me interested, it fell into a category that i’ve noticed in science fiction—it’s really just war fiction, but set in space or on another planet.

These books flow right into each other—there’s really no climactic scene at the end of each one, so it’s fine as a single long story, but on reflection, it has a lot of traits that i find distasteful. The aliens are nameless, shapeless “others” that match or exceed humans battle skills and are ruthless and evil, wiping out human-populated planets on a whim. On first contact, they attack. The only outcome is war, and every human wants nothing better than to kill as many as possible. There are plotlines that set up “revenge” as a motivation, but it’s really treated as black and white, good and evil, we kill them or they kill us. One of the books has an entire plot about capturing a baby alien and then that goes absolutely nowhere. Only at the very end does anyone try to communicate with the aliens, and only when they surrender to humankind’s superior military. And, to top it off, the aliens have all of this high-tech space-faring ability (which is never explained) but then communicate on a horribly simplistic level. All of this just amplifies the “othering” that armies use to justify killing.

Final criticisms: The author loads up the text with acronyms and buzzwords, most of which are defined but it’s really easy to forget what they all mean. Also there are many dozens of typos throughout the books.

Danny the Champion of the World

Roald Dahl

8/2022

Again, a simple story of a boy and his father trying to poach a bunch of pheasants from a nasty landowner. Ignoring the quasi-legality of the caper, it was still kind of a dud. I can see why this is one of Roald Dahl’s lesser-known works—i’d never heard of it before i bought this box set. But the biggest issue i had with this book was that, out of about seven characters that say something in the book, there was one woman, and she only shows up in the last two chapters. Also, the father is a bit creepy and spends too much time being amazed at Danny’s plan to poach pheasants.

The Witches

Roald Dahl

9/2022

Once more, the entire plot is basically one event, the main character is a boy, and people get overly excited about ordinary ideas. There’s a whole lot of underlying misogyny in that the witches (all women, of course) are pure evil and grotesquely ugly, but one thing that sets this book apart from other Dahl stories is that the main character undergoes a change (courtesy of the witches) and does not change back at the end. The ending is also a bit vague as well, leaving a lot of unknowns ahead for the boy and his grandmother.

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

Esio Trot

Roald Dahl

9/2022

Two short stories, both pretty meh. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me seems like it could have been a longer, better story but was slapped off in a form where everything happens immediately and the characters have what the other characters want with no struggle at all. Esio Trot (which is “Tortoise” backwards) is a fairly creepy story of a man who sneakily swaps out a woman’s pet tortoise for bigger ones in order to woo her. Both of these are quite missable.

The Girl and the Glim

India Swift with Michael Doig

9/2022

This graphic novel has a lot of GN tropes—new school, shy protagonist, supernatural beings, bullies—but it’s put together in such a beautiful way with expressive characters and relatable feelings. I particularly liked the use of varying text sizes to show mumbling and far-off conversations. The ending is somewhat open-ended so one can only hope that a sequel might happen, but it’s still a wonderful little story of perseverance and magic.

The Aquanaut

Dan Santat

9/2022

From the cover and first few pages, i thought that this graphic novel would be a bit more serious than it turned out to be. It still has a lot of heart but the premise is that a collection of sea creatures pilot an old diving suit to become “aquanauts,” exploring “space,” i.e. the surface world. They help a girl and her uncle realize that what’s important is family. Different story than many graphic novels i’ve read, and absolutely beautifully illustrated.

Matilda

Roald Dahl

9/2022

The last of Roald Dahl’s books that i intend to read (there are a few more, but i think i’ve had enough) and probably one of the best. But even for the facts that the characters are slightly more developed and there’s a bit more plot, it still, like many of Roald Dahl’s books, just ends rather suddenly without much of a wrap-up. As usual, the baddies are cartoonishly bad but at least in this one the heroes are good and pure. And this is pretty much the only one of Dahl’s books that actually centers on a female lead character.

Alice Payne Arrives
Alice Payne Rides

Kate Heartfield

10/2022

This was another set of books that was excerpted in the Nebula Awards books that i’d read. These two held up to the promise, though. Trippy time-travel plot lines that are centered around strong women in 1788 as well as another woman who flits around the timeline from then until 2145. Timelines change, things are remembered and forgotten, and the heroes take on the leader of the “history war” in ingenius ways. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Concord Academy at 100

Voices from the First Century

Lucille Stott

11/2022

I bought this with a casual interest in the history of my highschool and wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as i did. Obviously the chapter on the 80s was the most interesting, as i’d lived through it, but i found all of the other decades fascinating as well. Each era had its own ethos and it was cool to see the way the school changed along with (and sometimes ahead of) the times. I recognized names along the way and even saw quotes from some of my friends. Overall, it gave me a newfound appreciation of the school that i attended.