I just can’t get enough of Walden’s artwork. I didn’t know what even the premise of this one was, just that I felt like Walden right now, sick in bed, reading all day, and my library happened to have it. What a surrealistic wild ride. Basically, as I understand it, these two people from the same town with shared trauma end up navigating their interiority made exterior by some magical properties in West Texas. What is real, basically? But I don’t mind those kinds of stories. And it feels very studio Ghibli, in the soft worldbuilding and the look and feel of it. Any of her works would be amazing to see adapted in that way, really. While On A Sunbeam is probably more substantive, this allegory for processing trauma has a lot to be said for it, in just allowing a moving story to just unfurl. It’s wild and it’s surprisingly very tense.

This was interesting. A diabetic kid with a vivid imagination, who gets bullied at school and whose dad died, gets left for an evening alone, falls asleep, forgets to take insulin, and begins to vividly hallucinate a world of his own as an allegory for his straining to not sleep and go into a diabetic coma, I guess. As a result, the fantasy world is quite the pastiche, which makes sense, since it’s all of his toys put together in a fugue type state.

It does strain credulity, but it’s more inventive than most stories. I always like Murphy’s art too. It’s got a positive message. Overall I liked it; I probably would have liked it more as a teenager.

A good setup overall. Great artwork and interesting historical era that was fairly informative. I just didn’t get along with the humour very much, which is generally always my problem with manga.

A semi autobiographical historical fiction with comedic elements—only during the contemporary time period—is usually a bit of a hard sell for me, but the excellent flow and clear writing made this go by super fast.

William Ping is having a Very awkward dinner with his girlfriends Chinese-Canadian family, of which there are a few generations. Ping himself is third generation and is more white than Chinese. He’s confused about his identity and obviously hasn’t really dig into it until questions are posed to him directly, with his privilege with the wait staff and his ignorance of his grandfather and the impact he’s had on the community.

Then stuff gets pretty wild. He goes to the washroom and has a… mishap? The result of which a, I’m guessing Chinese folkloric/mythological creature that kind of acts like the ghost of Christmas past ends up hurtling him into his grandparents actual history. This begins the chronicling of the grandparent and the mystery of the letter, which is the bulk of the novel. And which pretty much ceases the millennial comedic beats as it’s subsumed by a new first person narrator.

It’s an interesting concept and I think the recounting of Real Canadian history from an immigrant is fascinating. It’s also very relevant to today, as the author mentions in their note at the end. Anti-Chinese, as well as other racism, is on the high end and only seems to get worse. I think this story does a good job of telling it how it was, grounded in lots of research the author did.

Only slightly does it falter. It is genre fiction, and I prefer a bit more weight to prose work, and the through line with the letter makes sense, but it seems to imply William need to do something with it beyond realizing it’s origins, and that never happens (unless I missed it?). Also, William has his lesson and there’s a bookend, but I was expecting the B plot that’s introduced with the girlfriend and parents and all that to have a different kind of bow tied onto it. In these ways it does feel like a debut novel, but it’s one I will certainly recommend and definitely enjoyed.

DC is surprising me! The Human Target and now this! Friends of a guy named Walter are talked into coming to a gorgeous vacation on a lake with a beautiful house and tons of amenities, and find out that world has been destroyed and their friend Walter is an entity that is partly responsible. They can’t leave, the grounds are weird, there are a number of rules to the place they have to figure out, and they have to grieve for everyone they’ve lost.

Gorgeous art, interesting premise, descent pacing, enticing foreshadowing with the characters introducing each issue in a further point in time where things seem to have changed a lot! It’s compelling, but also bread crumb storytelling, which isn’t my favourite. I’ll pick up the next volume if my library orders it though - I’m curious!

A great YA book about a girl-boy detective duo in a creepy town, only their relationship is fraught lately as they grow up/apart, and the mystery isn’t getting solved, really, it’s having its way with them. Really great first instalment and quite the cliffhanger ending.

This was an interesting graphic memoir where the author talks about having depression and reaches an anxiety level that starts to be really unhealthy and spiral. It’s how she realized she had a problem, what she did to combat it, and her thoughts on self-care and self-love. I thought that the constant switching between a seemingly linear story she was having and self contained thoughts, clearly after the work was done and other things, got in the way of the progression and started feeling a lot more self helpy and less this-is-my-story, which got progressively more annoying. Overall, though, it’s quick and was fine, for what it is. It’s nice to see someone else with anxiety on the other side and it’s nice to be reminded of positive thinking and what not. Self help territory just isn’t my jam, though, so I have mixed feelings about this.

I like Carry On, and have Fangirl around somewhere too, actually - but saw this on some top of the year lists and it piqued my interest. It’s pretty cute but I think this kind of story I would buy more through the original format. There’s something about how old they look that makes it seem… juvenile in a weird way, and the pacing feels like it’s really dragging out every plot beat. Great artwork though.

I’m glad there’s another book out there with some queer and trans rep in it, but to be Frank, I didn’t think much of this actually worked. The artwork wasn’t for me and feels very rushed and pretty boring to look at. The characters and situations are contrived, things that would be happening in school aren’t, there’s weird subplots that are, again, wildly contrived. There’s barely any interiority and when it does pop up, it’s at odd times. It’s just fundamentally uninteresting and started losing me around a quarter of the way in, when the main tension was around a complete douche and his gold chain, I was on the struggle bus to try to care town.

Another wild ride. Rushdie has an amazing command of prose, just as in Midnight’s Children. This is obviously far more theological and one of the best books I’ve seen using literalization to make the reader have to confront what it is they believe, in numerous respects. Who to believe with the recounting of numerous eyewitness accounts? What makes a person worth listening to? What happens when contradictory ideas are not allowed to coexist and be used to refine a persons’ belief system? Is it possible for a society with a hierarchy and power structure to even have unimpeachable beliefs?

There are many interesting questions explored through this seemingly very gonzo story about two men who fall to earth and transform in the doing. Ostensibly, each “ascending” to the angelic, the other to the demonic. And that’s just in the first few pages! The interrogation of each person, as they integrate into their old lives and are forced to change, one basically radicalized to revenge, with a parallel story about a prophet who may or may not be false, taking a town on an impossible pilgrimage to Mecca, she says, by parting the seas with their faith.

So much happens in this book it is difficult to talk about anything larger than the broad strokes. I can’t stress enough, though, how much can happen in just a few pages. The interactions between characters that may never be seen again reiterate themes and showcase an immense power of imagination. It takes a lot of focus and energy to keep up with the voice crafted here—but it’s completely worth it. And none of the ideas in here should be controversial. They are, like most good fiction, about the human experience, and therefor transcends a specific culture, applicable to anyone in any society, because these questions permeate human existence. They’ve never been more relevant and the themes communicated about those large subjects are, I think, handled exceedingly well (as mentioned previously but it must be said again!). It is truly a challenging book, but also very rewarding. More so than most.