Pre-war to post-war stream of consciousness narrative set in what is now Czechia. Compare to The Tin Drum, The Notebook (Kristof), & Stones From the River. All of these books are set in central Europe, have protagonists who are short, who are looked down upon, who are odd & have odd goals, & who the book follows from the time before the war into the postwar era. I'd say I Served the King of England is most like the Tin Drum in tone. This is a book that is much about the restaurant & hotel business. The main character spends most of the novel serving the highest stratum of society wherever he happens to find himself. In one place they are small town bourgeoisie, in another place they are captains of industry & statesmen, in another they are Nazi soldiers, & eventually he's serving some animals. A lot is packed into this relatively short book. I mostly heard of this book because of the 2006 adaptation, that did manage to capture a lot of the weirdness of the novel. Well worth the read. 

Summary of the first 6 months or so of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the historical context going back to the Soviet era & before. No mention of Nestor Makhno, however. This is a decent overview for someone who hasn't followed the news that closely, or who don't know the history that well, but certainly not the final word on anything. I suppose that book will have to wait until the shooting stops & archives become available (& enough scribes & copyists can be assembled from the scattered survivors of humanity). Harding talks to Ukrainian officials, ordinary citizens, soldiers, and refugees as well as to exiled Russian journalists & dissidents. I was hoping for more personal stories from ordinary people like those he talked to, but there's only so much one can get in such a small book. 

Some early comics by Lisa Hanawalt. Includes surreal humor, scatological humor, sexual humor, intricate portraits of fantastical animal-people, & surreal sexual scatological humor. Features recurring characters She-Moose, He-Horse, & Lisa Hanawalt (human). 

Collection of short story comics each with some element involving (or revolving around) Black women's hair. In between all the stories there are comic recreations of labels & advertisements for hair products & treatments. Hard to choose a favorite among these stories. While most of these stories have a lot of sadness, they all have humor as well, to varying degrees. Sisters & Daughters had the saddest vibe for me, even though it didn't even involve a funeral or white people piling on microaggressions. Maybe it's because the mom seemed to be resenting her daughter getting the childhood she never got to have. The two set in Luanda Angola were mostly humorous & lighthearted, & make Luanda sound pretty cool, apart from the traffic. 

 This was everything I was hoping for, & more than I expected. Scratches a certain trashy itch, especially at 2am. I liked the Mecha-Dilton. Doesn't make me wish for more Archie comics, but I'd totally read a Sabrina meets Elric comic. 

 Surrealist graphic metamemoir which touches on loneliness, difference, artifice, creativity, & creation, among other themes. The art style & the narrative style reminds me of Joe Frank Ascent. The mixture of biblical & personal themes combined with odd digressions also remind me of many Joe Frank episodes. The way much of the book is about her parents before she was born, the Garden of Eden, & the process of starting & starting over the memoir reminds me of Tristram Shandy (which I really want to re-read sometime). I picked up this book at random on a random visit to Central Library. 

 History of the Great Migration told via the stories of three great migrants. Wilkerson's background as a journalist shows in the way she makes the book very readable while weaving historical context into the very personal stories she got from her interviewees. This book also has all kinds of other historical asides, including on page 354 one of the more detailed tellings I've seen of Henry “Box” Brown's escape by packing crate, including all the times his crate was pushed here and there by unsuspecting workers, turned upside down, and righted again before arriving in Washington DC, where his friends wondered aloud if he was alive inside the box before opening it up. The description on page 190 of how the Chicago Defender circulated in the Jim Crow South via Pullman workers throwing the bundled papers off of moving trains at secret spots along the tracks for distributors to pick up is also really interesting. Dr. Bob Pershing Foster's tales of being a successful surgeon, one time touring physician to Ray Charles, and ridiculously high roller in Southern California are also very amusing. George's career as a Pullman Porter highlights how much public transit was such a battlefield in the fight to end segregation. Makes me wonder how much the disinvestment in intercity train travel followed a similar pattern to other public services that were cut or discontinued as soon as they were integrated. Ida Mae's experience in Chicago during the 1980s-90s could be a prologue to Becoming Abolitionists or The New Jim Crow. My only issue is that I wish the endnotes were marked in the text. A great read! Very appropriate for July 4th. 

 Humorous book of the history of over 70 schemes to form new states of the United States (as of 2010), ranging from the far-fetched to the very far-fetched. Includes current U.S. Territories, parts of current states that have proposed to split off, & other countries whole or in part that the U.S. didn't (or hasn't yet) conquered. Also includes unrealized British colonial schemes from before independence & alternative state shapes from after independence. The humor is a little dated, but inoffensively so. The maps are great! 

 Stories of four different immigrants we meet on a zodiac boat going from Morocco to Spain. Even though this book is short, it reads even faster than I expected. Makes me want to check out other writings by Lalami. I can guess what she was trying to get across by giving the two people who failed to immigrate to Spain happier endings than the two who did make it, but I wonder how those ideas have evolved, & also what she has to say about how the world has evolved (or de-evolved) over the past 20 years. This book reminds me of The Warmth of Other Suns, not only because of the descriptions of journeys, but also because of the descriptions of working & unemployment (& underemployment). It also reminds me of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Refugees, & also the anthology he edited, The Displaced. Can't wait to discuss this in book club! 

Compendium of Ursula K. Le Guin's first three novels (novellas?): Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, & City of Illusions. The twist at the end of City of Illusions is kind of a Deus ex Machina, but I still like it. Reading these three books together really highlighted to me as never before that all of the Hainish/Ekumen stories are interrelated & can be easily positioned in a chronology in relation to one another. All three are way better than I was expecting, & I was expecting pretty good. I think the strongest books in this book are the ones that are most about a journey – Rocannon's World & City of Illusions. One of my favorite le Guin themes has to do with journeys, leavings behind, journeys not taken, often combined with the concept of relativistic time dilation. Planet of Exile has a lot of elements I like, but it didn't have much of a journey, so I like it a little less (on the other hand, Left Hand of Darkness has a very epic journey, but I don't like it as much) . All three novels are short, but they have a lot packed into them i.e. lore, adventure, loneliness, heartbreak. Overall, I rate these 3 novels a little better than Left Hand of Darkness, but not quite as good as my faves Dispossessed & Beginning Place. I have to add I was irrationally annoyed at Amal El-Mohtar's introduction, in which she admitted to not really being that familiar with le Guin's works. I kept thinking “she probably doesn't even have an opinion on the Beginning Place!!”