A lot of comics and then not Twain

.

You never know when you'll just be living your life, minding your own business, when suddenly a bunch of comics leap in front of you like suicidal time-travelers.

Anyway, I also read the most important American novel of the 2020s if you're snobbish about comics. But you shouldn't be. These were all pretty good. Except for the one. But other people liked it so. 

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058) Gilt Frame by Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt, finished August 2

An email sent me looking for this and I read it on Hoopla. It's about an older lady and the great-nephew they raised. They live in a mystery-a-week world—everywhere they go someone dies and they figure it out. This time they're in Paris with some fancy chairs and someone ends up dead.

 
But, ends up, that's not the kind of mystery this is at all. It's another kind entirely.

And in the final moments, the great detective figures it out.

Will there be a sequel? 

one afternoon 

 

059) Monkey Meat: The First Batch by Juni Ba, finished August 3

I was not as enamored of this grotesque satire of consumerism and (especially) corporate malfeasance as most reviewers seem to be. The art was cool but at times so cool as to be illegible. The targets tended toward the deserving but the arrows were at times so warped as to miss the target.

Still. The powerful deserve all the knocks they can get. 

two sittings

 

060) Abbott by Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä and Jason Wordie, finished August 4

I'm kinda done with comics does in the dark supernatural, but somehow I picked up Abbott anyway and I'm glad I did because it's terrific. Not because of its dark and supernatural elements but because our title character and her community.

Abbott is a news reporter in 1972 Detroit. She's hardboiled, sure, but she's got friends in the town and the respect of her colleagues. There's plenty of scumbag racism around, sure, but her eyes are open and her soul is pure. She is a soldier of the truth. Like any good journalist.

Ends up however she's also a Chosen One of some kind which is lucky because a dark supernatural evil is raising its head in Detroit. Blah blah blah.

She saves the day and there are sequels set in 1973 and 1979 wherein, I assume, she works to save her dead boyfriend from the powers of evil whilst keeping her city safe and writing good copy.

Anyway, it's all worth it because Abbott is good company. You'll like hanging out with her. 

one sit 

061) Mendel the Mess-Up by Terry LaBan, finished August 9

This charmer's about a kid in the shtetl who was cursed in utero to always be a mess up. And so he is.

But when the Cossacks come to town, maybe he can use his powers for good?

This is a genuinely funny and actually moving comic. I hope it finds its way through the crowded marketplace to find a readership among today's kids.

 one day 

 

062) Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath, finished August 9

This is neck-and-neck with my favorite serial-killer fiction of the year and for similar reasons: take the horror and play it at full volume but defamiliarize it with things that are pleasant or charming or classical or cute.

 
Samantha has one rule—never kill in town. Keep town wonderfully halcyon. But when another killer shows up murdering townsfolk, how long until the cops discover the wrong killer? She's got to find the competition before they do.

one night 

063) James by Percival Everett, finished August 13

I have a copy of Good Lord Bird I haven't read, I checked out I Am Not Sidney Poitier from the library but didn't read it, and I've felt anxious to watch American Fiction since it came out but haven't managed to pull it off. But now I've read James! (So I suppose I should read the Alta interview I have lying around too.)

I haven't read Huck Finn since 2000 so I can't say for certain how closely James is following it. Certainly some of the set pieces overlap and, of course, in both books then Jim and Huck get separated and we don't really know what happens to Jim in those times.

What I'm most glad about—and assume spoilers from here out—is that Everett abandoned the (what I remember being) hoaky New Orleans conclusion and instead gave James a heroic ending of his own creation. And it's a killer ending. 

(Incidentally, how is it exactly zero people have told me that one of the most zeitgeisty novels of the last five years engages a parallel rhetorical trick of my own novel of the last five years?)

In the opening paragraphs of James I could immediately tell I was in the hands of someone who really knows how to write. There was just something about the way word moved to word, sentence to sentence, that was correct in a way books usually are not. Of course that doesn't mean that the novel on the macro level would be perfect and the, mm, second fifth of the book dragged a bit as Everett was more concerned with scoring point via his alternate America, but perhaps that was necessary work because once the world is established, it sings.

In short, I get why people loved the book and I get why they admired it. I'm curious to see if (slash how) we're talking about it thirty years for now. I rather hope he are. 

twelve days, but not most of them 

 

earlier this year..........

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off 

034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27
035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3
036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5
037) Equus by Peter Shaffer
038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8
039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10
040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16

Criticism & Comics

041) Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, finished May 18
042) The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, finished May 19
043) Odessa by Jonathan Hill, finished May 22
044) Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder by Tula Lotay and Scott Snyder, finished May 22
045) Bingo Baby, finished May 26 

Books on the Fourth of July

046) Final Cut by Charles Burns, finished May 28
047) Fever Beach by Carol Hiassen, finished June 12
048) How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico, finished June 17
049) Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone, June 24
050) Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, finished June 25
051) The Serial Killer's Son Takes a Wife by Michael Libling, finished July 3

An old friend makes some introductions (and more)

052) The 5th Generation by Dale Jay Dennis, finished July 7
053) To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, finished July 10
054) Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, finished July 25
055) Meet Monster: The First Big Monster Book by Ellen Blanca and Ann Cook, illustrated by Quentin Blake, finished July 26
056) Last Pick by Jason Walz, finished July 29
057) Death Comes to Eastrepps by Francis Beeding, finished August 2

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

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