Wow, wow, wow. I was intrigued by what I knew about this book when I first bought it but am only now getting to it, five years later. It’s a beautiful book and quietly radical, using the story of Mormon to develop a theology of the world ending around us. Miller explicitly invokes the climate crisis at the end of the book and calls for disciples to be willing to sacrifice all things instead of simply waiting to lose all things. Even outside of that context, Miller’s quasi-mystical reading of Mormon has so much to offer—and is pleasantly aligned with some of the theologies I’ve heard in Community of Christ. This is a good one.

This remains one of the best pieces of short fiction I’ve ever encountered, and I have trouble imagining ever finding anything that replaces it in my mind. It is existentially terrifying and yet beautiful, it’s clever in even the smallest details, and I will never stop thinking about it.

I have tried to rewatch this a few times since discovering it in 2023, and I’ve always stalled out by the final episode of Series 1, which is so cruel and cynical that it’s difficult to watch. Yet, it fits nicely with the themes of the show (and especially the first series), so I’m glad I made it through this time. I’m still critical of the misogyny and brownface that led me to dock points from my last review, but seeing how carefully the show sets up that final episode of the series (especially during an era where season arcs weren’t nearly as important as they later became) has won my respect.

Honestly, I was getting bored of this series, but this story got me back on track! It helps that it features a Project 2025/DOGE-type villain, anticipating our current nonsense. The characters are also as (or more) compelling as usual, and things felt less outlandish than in some of the preceding books.

Wow! Sure, coming from outside the LDS tradition, I have some theological quibbles with parts of this book, but what an amazing example it is of what I love about this series. It uses a close reading of the Book of Mormon—and some of the most obscure and overlooked parts of the Book of Mormon—to draw lessons that I can really get behind. It makes me want to already revisit the book and to the passages that it’s working with.

I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve actually read, but I remember this one being my favorite of those I have read, and wow does it deliver on that memory. It’s a powerful example of what responsible, justice-oriented Book of Mormon theology can look like. It takes more effort to engage with than some of the previous volumes (especially considering how sleepy I was as I finished it this afternoon), so I think I need to revisit some of these arguments in more detail, but even though I was predisposed to enjoy this reread, I was still surprised at how many parts of the Book of Mormon it warmed me up to.

This book impressed me in an unexpected way. When I first read it, I didn’t think much of it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the TV adaptation was. I see why they moved around scenes they did, gave certain characters more to do, etc.

Coming back to the book, though, I think the TV adaptation opened me up to how good the underlying story could be. I appreciated the cruel wordplay and foreshadowing Herron uses in the beginning of the book, which is horrible and delightful when you already know the end. I like the original takes on some scenes even when I also agree with the changes made in the adaptation.

Joli, ce livre ! On l’a depuis quelques mois, mais on n’a jamais convaincu notre fille de le lire avec nous. En relisant la série Brume, on a découvert qu’un quatrième tome va bientôt sortir, et ma fille a insisté qu’on attende pour lire la troisième, comme ça on ne devrait pas trop attendre pour le quatriême.

Grâce aux taxes douanières que notre cher président impose à tout le monde, il est douteux qu’on puisse faire livrer le nouveau tome de cette série-là, mais en attendant, on a enfin réussi a commencer cette série-ci.

Okay, I still find myself repeatedly wondering if I really want to be reading this, but this volume was good. Three of the four issues had lines that I could write sermons around. For such a weird, creepy series, when it gets meaningful, it really lands.

Ça continue à être tout mignon et à faire marrer, cette série ! Je suis bien content de la relire avec ma famille.

This was a delight to read. While the Apple TV adaptation is excellent (I can’t help but imagine the book’s characters as the show’s actors), revisiting this reminded me just how good the source material is, too. Herron likes to play with the audience in a way that a TV show can’t capture, and some of the best lines from the adaptation are taken straight from his writing. What a gem.

Elle est jolie, cette série ! On l’a lue en famille au début de l’année, mais j’ai convaincu ma fille de commencer une relecture. On aime beaucoup les dessins, j’adore le langage (que je n’arrive pas à traduire parfaitement), et j’attends avec impatience le deuxième tôme.

Rereading this after watching the show is really interesting. In some ways, it raises my opinion of the show, after seeing specific lines and scenes that they clearly drew from. However, as I wrote last night, I also just like the book so much more, and I’m not sure that the things I miss could have been adapted at all.

I tend to overthink media, and one thing I’ve been overthinking recently is whether books and radio are more ethical media than television and film, because I understand the former (perhaps naïvely) as involving less waste of resources for the sake of entertainment.

I bring this up not because I’m convinced by the argument (which I haven’t really thought through) but because the second season of Andor had me back on the side of television, because how else could you tell such a great story as that? Here’s the thing, though: This (audio)book had me mulling over the question again, because I might like it more than Andor.

A relatively short comic with good art and a compelling story. In some ways, I would have liked a written memoir more, but this was a good read.

This took a while to get through for a book I enjoyed so much. It has Andor-level grittiness and complex characters and narratives that make it better than a lot of Star Wars stuff. The audiobook’s use of Star Wars music and sound effects is also a big plus. I’ve already checked out the final book in the trilogy so that it’s not another two years before I wrap it up!

I didn’t want to like this. The IDW comics bundle I’ve been working through has been kind of a mixed bag, and this was weird from the get-go. A fast-food employee robs an entire strip mall, which gets him entangled in an effort to summon the devil on earth. It doesn’t sound like my thing at all.

It’s so unashamed of its weirdness, though, that it comes all the way around to amazing. Its characters are interesting, it focuses on a story and doesn’t care about wrapping things up beyond that, and it’s evocative in a way I never would have expected. I like stories that commit to the weird, and this does it—with some good art, to boot.

En fait, j’ai lu Stay, la traduction anglaise que j’ai trouvée à la bibliothèque chez moi. Je n’aime pas lire les BD en traduction—traduire « kebab » comme « gyro », ça se comprend, mais c’est quand-même insupportable—mais je ne voulais pas rater la possibilité de lire une vraie BD non plus,

L’art est magnifique, et si l’histoire est un peu bizarre, elle est touchante aussi. C’est impressionnant combien cette équipe a pu raconter une histoire tellement émouvante avec si peu de paroles.

This is a very Ryan Northy comic, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s a great adaptation of the Lower Decks vibe (and Fenoglio’s art is a fantastic recreation), but it also has a lot of North’s signature moves. I love his physical comic adaptation of webcomics’ alt text jokes, his voice in those jokes, and his fun with science and public domain characters. I don’t know how much more there is in this series, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for additional volumes.

This is a good book, with a powerful thesis and a great epilogue that ties things together. It isn’t perfect, but I think most of my quibbles are related to the subject matter and the genre. It’s hard to write a book about a contemporary subject of such importance, and I think it’s tricky to write a book that combines history with more of a critical take on the AI ecosystem.

Had to watch this after finishing Andor, and I spent the first half of it being disappointed??? I thought I remembered this being one of my favorite Star Wars movies, but after the depth and maturity of its tv prequel, it feels kind of superficial.

The last few sequences won me back, though. Andor is the superior story, but this is a fine action movie and a marvelous piece of fanservice. I don’t think I’ll ever like it as much as I used to, but for the Battle of Scarif and Vader’s terrifying hallway scene, I will still give it full marks.

This was Star Wars at its best, and there is (unfortunately) no better time than now for it to come out.

I’ve wrestled a lot recently with the tension between my love for Star Wars and my aspiration toward non-violence. I don’t know that I agree with this series’s implicit argument that sometimes ugly things are necessary to make a better world, but I appreciate that it deals with that ugliness rather than just letting Luke blow up the Death Star without counting how many people that act of self-defense killed.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to read this—not that I wasn’t interested, but so many books, so little time, etc. However, a friend introduced me to NetGalley, where she was reading it prior to publication, and that pushed me into following her example.

I did wait until the end of my time limit with the book to really make progress, and between that rush and my familiarity with Smith’s life, I still wasn’t sure how much I’d get out of it. In the end, though, it was a fascinating read. Like his take on Brigham Young, Turner is unsparing in his description but without being unsympathetic.

This was a hard book to read, but I’m glad I did. Munther is a Palestinian Christian pastor, and his holy anger and hurt in this book really spoke to me. However, I have a lot of internalized resistance to what he has to say, and things feel so big, and I spent a lot of the book tensing up and feeling overwhelmed. I feel called to repentance by this book, and I’m glad I read it before next week’s Community of Christ World Conference, where a resolution standing against Christian Zionism will be debated.

This is the third (or fourth, if you count a quote-pulling skim) time I’ve read this book in the past 2ish years, and I do think that I need to give myself more of a break before trying to come back to it again. I really like the audiobook, though, and I’m glad I now own it in mp3 and epub. I also needed the read, since it’s a hopeful one, and I started it when I was in desperate need of something hopeful. I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as I did the first few times I read it, but I think that’s from story fatigue—it remains one of my favorite books of all time and one that I will reference over and over again throughout my life, I’m sure.