"There's no graduating from this kind of education, couples just keep growing and changing until they either break up or die."

My god, what a beautiful and heartbreaking thing Saga is.

I think what made this volume especially heartwrenching--aside from the big death stuff that happens with certain characters--is the fact that at this point, the characters are established, the reader has emotions about them, and Brian K. Vaughan is free to spend more time destroying those emotions. It's not even that the situations are necessarily that much worse, because from the first page of the first volume, it's been nonstop obstacles for Alana, Marko, and their little family. But in Volume 5, you feel it so much more because you've been along for the ride longer, you're more invested, and things hit you way harder.

One of my favorite things about Saga is how impossible it is to describe it to someone without it sounding so, so stupid. In reality, of course, it's well-written and has interesting characters and is super stylishly drawn and is just all good things. But when I try to talk about it to someone who hasn't read it--in the hopes of brainwashing them into picking it up and sharing my obsession--I tend to get blank stares around the time I say "civil war between a planet where people have wings and its moon, where people have horns."

Which is all to say that the weirdness, the inexplicable stuff that gives Saga its characteristic Saga-ness, is well on display in this volume. I mean, there's a quest to gather dragon semen. But that quest to gather dragon semen, like all the other weirdness, is tied up in Serious Emotional Stuff. So it's not just a quest for dragon semen. It's a quest for dragon semen with a cause.

Really wish that I could convey that to the people I'm trying to convince to read this series.

I got a trial of Comics Plus through the library where I work, so I read this to test out the interface. Cute, with tone and pacing similar to the show, though I didn't find it as funny. It's a series of little mini-stories rather than a sustained narrative, so there isn't the drive to find out what happens next that powers most of my comics reading experience. So I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel like I have to continue reading the series.

I eagerly looked forward to reading Dirty, and at first it satisfied all my hopes. Humor, characters with fun chemistry, drama, and great sex scenes. But I knocked stars off because the entire book takes place over the course of twelve days. That short time frame seriously impairs my ability to get invested in the supposed heartache and to believe in the happily ever after. Still fun, but not all it could have been. Not all the crazy worked for me.

Diverting and slightly disturbing, this novel captures the egotism, casual cruelty, and selfishness of adolescence. I'm glad that it's short, because spending any more time with Cecile would have become exhausting. Recommended to me by my friend Caleb.

I expected to topple head-over-heels for this book, but I never quite got my footing. I feel like there is so much going on that I half-grasped. I want to read more, both to discover just what in the world(s) is going on, and because I suspect that I will like this series more with time. Recommended to me by my friend Jessica!

Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki was one of those books that I just had to grab. I judge by cover, and I judge hard, and this one caught my eye immediately with the ways it flouts YA conventions. Model wearing a pretty dress? Giant typography over a photo, revealing nothing of the plot? Nah, this one is all bold watercolor and a girl wearing overalls, arms flung to the sky like she’s commanding an army or something. I wanted to know who that girl was and what she was about.

Full review at Belle Biblio.

The first of what will be many books on the American Revolution that I read because of Hamilton rekindling my middle school obsession with this period in history. Breen examines the role that "middling sorts" played leading up to and during the Revolution. Primarily, they got really angry, really religious, and really motivated, and they spent a lot of time terrorizing Tory sympathizers. Fun! Things I found especially interesting: lots of colonial publishers were women; public opinion was often ahead of the Founding Fathers; people thought the British had destroyed Boston and lost their collective shit; a guy who was not Benjamin Franklin (Goddard) had the idea for a colonial postal service independent of the British-run one that already existed, but it didn't work out and Franklin was given administration of the postal service after.

I don't plan to review this because it's much more appropriate and productive to use it as a shut-up-and-listen experience. I'm glad I finally got around to this one; I should have sooner.