While I like how the scenery in every frame is covered in garbage, and the depression depictions, I didn't really feel the humor or the characters.

Book of one-off comics. These remind me of the Far Side, SMBC-Comics, and Gemma Correll. Before reading these comics, I didn't realize Tom Gauld is from the UK.

I enjoyed Smilla's Sense of Snow: it was exciting, it was about something other than just a mystery (Greenland), and it was so Hygge that I fell asleep multiple times reading it. I can really see the influence this book had on the Stieg Larsson novels (tough misanthropic female hero, devious machinations of the powerful, etc.)

Full of funny Mingus anecdotes from Coleman and Al Young. Coleman's memoir is also an interesting window on the New York Jazz and performing (and performance) art world of the 60s-70s. Liked Young's section about his growing up as a music and Jazz fan during the 50s in Detroit.

Combines the the office politics aspects of Tinker Tailor with some of the action of James Bond, and maybe mixed with some hardboiled detective elements (especially the narrator's voice). I especially liked the humorous and somewhat suspect voice of the narrator.

This book is a good introduction to philosophy and philosophers for people familiar with the Song of Ice and Fire series. Since I've read the comics guide to philosophy, and have been a reader of existential comics for a while, most of the ideas and concepts were not really new to me. Most of the essays were pretty good reads, but I thought the one by Stacey Goguen about the problems at the core of the concept and code of chivalry was outstanding. I was also greatful that one of the essays by Henry Jacoby was able to answer my question of what the difference between a phenomenal zombie (or p-zombie) and a regular zombie is.

"Fun" companion book to the 2017 Twin Peaks season. It made some connections that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise, & made me want to watch it over again!

A thought provoking book that isn't particularly thoughtful. Essays discussing mainly military historical turning points, and how the world might look differently had history gone differently. While I found most of the conclusions about what the differing outcomes would have been pretty far-fetched (especially the ancient history ones), I have enjoyed thinking about how history would have been different had the Persians overcome the Greeks, or had Alexander not overcome the Persians, &c.

Hard sci-fi, about the pitfalls of generation ships, and what can go wrong with the premises behind interstellar colonization. A fable with the moral "engineering isn't everything". Most of the book is narrated by the ship's computer. One of the main characters tells the computer to tell the story, and when the computer asks for guidance, she says "I'm not a writer". I wonder what this says about how Kim Stanley Robinson feels about writing. Also, with so much hard sci-fi, the characters are kind of secondary to the technology, and ideas, and so the approach of having the computer tell us the story seems especially apt. As with Red Mars, a plot device was used to extend characters' lives to the end of the story, which I don't think was that necessary. I think the book would have worked even if the computer was the only survivor at the end.

I read this as a sort of introductory guide to the Chinese language, which sounds like it would be both fun and impossibly difficult for me to learn. Also includes some history of the Chinese language, and recent efforts to reform it, from the perspective of an author writing in 1984. It would have been nice to have had an updated epilogue that outlined subsequent developments in Chinese language reform. The introductory essay "The Singlish Affair" was also entertaining.