Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth was dazzling. The story takes place on St George's Day and is set entirely in and around a trailer illegally and permanently parked in an English wood outside of a small rural town. The town council wants to evict Johnny “Rooster” Byron but can you evict a local legend? Rooster hosts parties that last for days, spinning tales and dulling out drugs to the local teenagers who haunt his half-enchanted forest. He claims that the blood of giants runs through his veins and that he can call a curse down on the town. His encampment provides a place for the local youth to experience mystery and magic for the first time. He may also have kidnapped a runaway local girl and is constantly providing illegal substances to minors. I can't even imagine what it must be like to watch this play live- just reading it had me both laughing and shivering. The ultimate verdict on the Rooster is left entirely to the audience.

The Bastard of Istanbul is full of contradictory women. In the opening scene a brave, unconventional girl named Zeliah runs through the rain in a short skirt and high heels and stops to browse in the market even though she is already late for an appointment. The appointment, it turns out, is for an abortion which she never gets. At the same time in Arizona a woman named Rose, a new mother and newly divorced, begins flirting with a Turkish man to annoy her Armenian ex-husband. Twenty years later, Rose and Zeliah's daughters both search for the unnameable essence that seems to be missing in their lives- one exploring the past, the other denying it. This book defied pretty much every expectation I had about it. I loved seeing the melting pot of Istanbul through the eyes of four generations of women, and was delighted with the surprise threads of fantasy, history and family drama which wove the story together.

A short collection of internet comics which circle around the theme of adulthood with emphasis on procrastination and social awkwardness. I especially enjoyed the stripes about an introvert's love of making and never leaving cozy reading nest.

I heard this book described as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics but about film and decided instantly that I wanted to read it. Ross takes his readers through a series of essays on aspects of film throughout history- technical developments, the male gaze, the depiction of human bodies, voices and fears. He discusses the use of film as propaganda and as a support of the dominant paradigm of mainly straight-white-male-creator's versions of normative society. Ross obviously loves film, but he is a very clear-eyed fan.

This is at least the third book I've read about a mystery set in London with magical/supernatural elements thrown into the mix, but it still brought something new to the much loved genre. The main character, Peter Grant, is a newly minted PC guarding a murder scene during an routine night shift when he sees his first ghost. Like any good copper, he attempts to take the ghost's witness statement. Later he is tapped by Chief Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard of Scotland Yard, for a very unusual training placement as magician's apprentice. This murder is just the beginning. Random rage-fueled attacks begin to take place all over the city. Worse yet, the very rivers are gearing up for war if Grant can't find them a diplomatic solution.