I'm hard-pressed to think of a fictional character whose backstory I want LESS than Malcolm Merlyn's, but here we are.

Even if I DID want more of Merlyn's backstory, this barely ties back into Arrow continuity? And it's cliche and culturally appropriative?

But also, to be clear, I DO NOT want more of Merlyn's backstory.

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-79-dark-archer/

This book was, tbh, a lot more fun and less gross than I was expecting it to be.

This book was a lot of fun, and I think it will especially appeal to teens who are deep into YouTube, as well as teens (and adults) hungry for asexual, bisexual, and other LGBTQ characters.

Loved this, read it all in one sitting. I love how intersectional this is--like, yes, obviously we all know people who are LGBTQ AND POC, or POC AND disabled, let's include those characters in our books for gosh's sake.

Anyway, in addition to the great variety of rep here, I loved Little/Suzette as a narrator--her voice was so strong and I just couldn't put this down, and the way the tension builds throughout this was so compelling.

This was really cute! I had heard about this before but hadn't realized that it's also fantasy? I kind of thought they were just literally backstage crew. (Which they are but also the backstage is a magical land?) So that was fun. This volume had some heavy lifting to do, to introduce all the characters and the start of the magical backstage mystery zone. I'll definitely keep reading the series as it goes on. It's a great pick for tweens.

This was a pretty fun read! I think a lot of what I enjoyed about Poe--Oscar Isaac's charm, cool flying scenes--are a little hard to translate into comics format though? But it was fine. I guess it maybe ties in to some of the novels that I haven't read? I feel like I understood it fine, as a reader willing to accept a bunch of new rando pilot characters, but I guess some of those randos have their own stuff going on elsewhere? My level of Star Wars geek is only "moderate" so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was a lot of fun! I hadn't realized the Doctor Aphra character was a spinoff from the Darth Vader comics, which I haven't read, but personally I think I followed it fine. I just had a tiny bit of "ooh is this supposed to be an ~intentionally mysterious backstory~ thing or did this just happen in a comic I haven't read?" problem, but it didn't cramp my enjoyment. She's a really fun character and I like this kind of Star Wars-adjacent heist-y adventure. Plus, bonus, nice to have canonically queer characters in the Star Wars universe!

I enjoyed the hell out of this book.

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-80-dead-until-dark/

There's a lot going on in this book, and it's fantastic at unpacking the construction of race for a YA audience. I loved Jane as a narrator, and especially her evolving understanding of Kate as a character--it starts off like very "I'm not like other girls, and I don't like this pretty girl who is like all the other girls!" but then it goes past that in a way that's really great.

Spoiler

I guess I was a little thrown by the kind of steampunk walled city situation? I thought this was going to be more like... straightforward zombie fighting, I guess? But it was interesting for sure.

Also this seems to be setting up for a series? The ending definitely leaves some things hanging.

Also it's great to have bi and ace characters in a historical YA fiction, even if they don't use those exact labels!

In the preface, he says he doesn't expect anyone to read this straight through, but just flip through it more like a coffee table book. I read it straight through, though, and...well, I maybe would recommend his suggestion of treating it more like a coffee table book? I do love David Sedaris, and I've been to some of his readings and always love his diary excerpts. And it was cool to see some diary entries that I recognized had been later turned into full fledged essays or stories--especially all the stuff about his French teacher.

There is a fair amount of stuff in here, especially in the earlier years, that's a little jarring to read now--there are many entries where he just copies down verbatim very offensive conversations he's overheard without much comment, and I understand that he's presenting them like, "Wow I can't believe these people said this out loud!!" and it's the kind of thing that he can maybe pull off in a story or essay, but here it's kind of like "wow I just read the n-word a bunch of times."

IDK, I think I'd have enjoyed it more if it were annotated in some way? But it is what it is, and there are some definite gems in here, but I'd probably only recommend it to die-hard Sedaris fans.