N D Stevenson is a writer I've enjoyed for a few years. I followed them on Twitter for a year before I read and loved Nimona. This illustrated memoir is a raw and beautiful depiction of what it's like to live with the fear of disappointing the people around you always at the forefront of your mind. The pressure of their life and work putting them in the public eye at such a young age, and the pressure of trying to live up to the standards they'd set for themself is conveyed in a way that's relatable. The art is beautiful and the writing is clear and conversational.

Passport was a unique read. Sophia's feeling of disconnection from her peers is an almost universal experience for teens, but far exacerbated by her nomadic childhood and the secrets she lived with. This is the first book I've read where a kid guessing that their secretive parents work in espionage have been right. Overall, I enjoyed that the author didn't tie up every loose end or make a happy ending. She left it as it was, with hope for what was to come.

The Time Machine by H G Wells is not a great choice for anyone with existential dread and fears for the future. That being said, I enjoyed the way the Eloi and Morlock diverged so far from one another to become creatures far removed from modern humans. The Eloi society is an interesting twist on the hopes we have for what our future will become. They're happy, but they're also ignorant. The narrator is hard to like, and often refers to his love interest as childlike, which is unnerving at best. Overall an interesting book, but not one of my favorites.

In 2022, I've become somewhat pessimistic about our ability to make change within the current political structures, but this book has given me some hope. Andy's death is a loss for Sarah and the world. The good both of them have enacted in their careers is incredible. Sarah voicing her own audiobook made it feel like she was telling a story to a friend.

There is no better way to describe Ain't Burned All the Bright than that it is breathtaking. The art and writing line up with one another, mingle, and then diverge across the pages pages, allowing the story to be told in two ways that don't always agree, and which make the story more enrapturing and human. While reading I stopped and took a picture of the page with the lines "And still he does this from the other room / screaming his love through the door", about the narrator's sick father. Out of the whole book, that line stuck out to me the most. We all have loved and lost or nearly lost someone during 2020, and the image of someone screaming their love to their family from isolation, just in case, was so heart wrenching. An interesting theme shared throughout the writing and illustration is that the instant the news switches to commercial, the narrator feels more optimistic. A larger portions of the illustration spreads are done in color and the illustrations have more variety of color. When the news switches back on and the pages jar back to gray scale, it makes the reader feel like the bottom has dropped out of their stomach. The ways each of the narrator's family members deal with the pandemic, police brutality and racism, and quarantining show different coping mechanisms. The narrator looks into themself, worrying and searching for ways to help. The narrator's brother gets absorbed by a video game, seeking an escape from their reality. The narrator's sister sees injustice and hardship and seeks to make tangible change to the world they live in. The narrator's parents are more complex. Their father is trying to get better and their mother is trying to hold herself together, and they each use facets of their children's coping mechanisms to do so. I really enjoyed the motif of the father stitching together the colorful squares as he starts to get well. The colors seem to be tied to the narrator's mental state, and to have their father well again seems to be doing them wonders. Ain't Burned All the Bright is one of the most unique books I've ever read

1984 is a deeply upsetting book. It does not give me hope for the future. By the end of this book, the reader is left with the feeling of having finally reached a handhold at the top of an almost insurmountable summit only to have the bones in your hands systematically crushed by someone you had assumed loved you.
1984 almost makes the unwavering patriotism/belief in a singular person/undefined political ideology, that some of my older family members feel understandable. To see the hero worship for an untouchable ideal that contradicts itself and causes harm without room for critique or progress is painfully relatable for me as an American reader in 2022. I think that crushing dread that there may never be a better world than the one you currently live in with all of its flaws and hardships has been one of the few, traumatic, incorporeal heirlooms that's been passed down for generations.

I really enjoyed the character of Mr. Charrington. I loved the idea of someone lovingly curating ephemeral garbage from generations passed to create a museum of unsellable antiques, and I loved that that persona was an artfully constructed façade for a nefarious character. Orwell drew a brilliant parallel between the telescreen being concealed behind one of the few truly valuable antiques and the thought police officer being behind the studious looking façade that made him look almost like a relic from the past. Behind one of the last few images of the long dead world Winston longed for, which gave him hope for the future, was the symbol and force of the omnipotent presence they thought they were momentarily free from. 
I was genuinely convinced that Winston's fear of rats was going to have stemmed from his baby sister being eaten by them. The repeated mentions of proll women not leaving babies unattended for fear they be eaten by rats combined with the thing Winston had been blocking out, the poverty his family lived in in his early childhood, and his mother and sister's disappearance made that thought a tangible possibility.
Winston's character development before his time in prison was quite interesting. Initially, he was internally quite violent and held a deep hatred for the people around him, especially the women. His dreams of bashing in Julia's skull and his distaste for his neighbor's wife mixed with his misogynist internal monologue made Winston an intensely unlikable character for the first part of the book. Julia's complacency with party rules and regulations so long as they didn't interfere with her sex life, her zealously performed orthodoxy that she performed fluidly and without thought made her similarly unlikable at the beginning. Their pre-prison development made them into almost beautiful people, in terms of personality. They were both developing forms of self expression and learning to appreciate the small joys afforded to the prolls that their stations did not allow. Winston's longing for familial past he could barely remember and Julia's desire to break the rules slowly morphed into a tentatively explored new way of life and love that pulled from both the pre-party way of life and engsoc orthodoxy. The total destruction of their sense of selves during and after their time in prison was upsetting to read, but gave the book a satisfying ending. Winston's breaking point being something so benign and mortal as rats humanized him in such a way that it felt like the culmination of his characterization throughout the book. To have the thing that shatters his psyche be something so ingrained into him that all the mind tricks and double think in the world couldn't erase was weirdly oxymoronic. O'Brien's promise was that they would want to  confess and die for the party and the love of big brother before they would be killed, and Winston's descent into truly believing party orthodoxy happened in a way that is recognizable in the real world in the reactions of people with zealous, deeply held belief systems.

I'm glad I didn't read this book in high school. I had too much optimism for the fate of the world then. It would have gone right over my head.

A Study in Scarlet was an enjoyable read. Sherlock Holmes, for all his quirks, is history's best detective, and this was a fun introduction into his adventures. The plight of Jefferson Hope and his love for Lucy was charming, and then heart breaking. I got to the second section of the novel I did a double take of sorts and googled it to make sure that my digital copy of the book hadn't accidentally been merged with another book. The difference in the plot in the flashback section was jarring, but the writing style stayed consistent between the actual investigation and the explanation behind it. The character of Watson was far different from his modern iterations. I kind of enjoyed him being characterized as being choosey about what's worthy of him leaving the house, in order to conserve his limited energy after being injured while serving in the military. There was racism and classist sentiment sprinkled throughout the book that was considered acceptable at the time it was written.

I've been trying to read more public domain/free to read books and Double Z was the first audiobook in a long line of free audiobook I'm trying. I've read a good amount of modern detective stories, so I decided to try my hand at noir. For the most part, I enjoyed Double Z. Walter Gibson used the idea of killing your darlings to the fullest extent. Opening the book with an endearing intrepid reporter seeking to find the truth by tracking down leads on his own, only for him to be murdered, and that murder to be used as the catalyst for the events that take place in the novel was ingenious and set the pace for the rest of the novel. Though it was written in 1975, the style was meant to mimic the older radio drama it was based on, and it contained a lot of racism because of that. The idea of the Shadow as a crime fighting figure outside the law, willing to work in the grey areas to get the job done felt like a grittier batman story. I enjoyed the twists and turns, but I think I'll stick mostly to newer books inspired by noir tropes in the future in order to avoid the aforementioned racism and other bigotry that was previously considered socially acceptable.

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids are usually a fun read. I wanted to try a bit of nostalgia this week, and I picked up a few of these books from the library. Mr. Spark is a fun addition to the cast of characters, especially in a book outside of the normal collection. There's no resolution to his story. I thought the space ship shaped thing would be a piñata, but the plot didn't meet my expectations and he just disappeared during the party. I think this particular book out of the series was a bad choice. There wasn't much to the story telling. That being said, I'm definitely not the intended audience for these books, and I don't think I'm going to continue reading them, because they're not quite filling the nostalgic void I was hoping they would.
These books still stand the test of time and at the rate I still see them checked out of the library by kids, kids today like them just as much as I did growing up.

Witches of Brooklyn is a perfectly lovable, fast paced read about two sweet older ladies, Selimene and Carlota who take in their niece, Effie. Their magic is marketed as acupuncture and herbalism to nonmagical folk. Their way of life is a perfect mix of old-time witchy-ness and modern creative problem solving. There's not strictly defined boundaries to their magic, excluding the fact that plastic is like kryptonite to witches. The struggles the characters face and the vocabulary used by the characters are relatable and easily consumable for the intended audience, but it's still accessible for adults. Witches of Brooklyn builds an image of childhood that makes me both nostalgic for my own childhood and hopeful for my future where I can bring that sort of joy and wonder to the children in my life. Selimene and Carlotta read as a couple, but there's no direct acknowledgement of that. While part of me wishes there was, I understand that with the current political climate it could have damaged Sophie Escabasse's chances as a debuting graphic novelist. I hope there will be something written to define their relationship in the future books in the series, now that there's an established fan base for the books.