The Watchman parody in this volume is as good as the Superman one in the last. The self-references are also good, and I’m interested in the “maybe I don’t need to do this” theme (even if I didn’t put the book down myself when challenged to).

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.

This is good! It’s another book that I took too long to read, so it’s hard to review when I took breaks for other books between sections.

It’s a very Doctorow book. I mean this in three ways: First, it makes an impassioned plea for a niche-but-important tech cause. Second, it overlaps with his fiction writing in really obvious ways. Third, it reads like an extended blog post (which I mostly mean as a compliment).

This volume wasn’t as hopeful as the last collection I read, and I have mixed feelings on the level of creepiness in these stories. The palindrome comic and the one happy story kept me going, but I’m not as keen on this series as I was a few days ago. Let’s see how things go in the next TPB.

Kiddo was off school yesterday, so we took a trip to the library, where I saw the first 7-8 TPBs of this series on the shelf. I nearly checked out the first four, but on second thought, I put them back. This series shouldn’t work for me. It’s not my preferred style of art, it’s full of body and existential horror, and one of the reasons I put those TPBs back is because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I tried reading them.

I dragged this season out over too long to fully appreciate it, but it was a fun sendoff for the series. It’s the only Star Trek series I’ve watched in its entirety, and I think it might be my favorite!

I remembered this book being overly complicated and the TV adaptation being far superior. Revisiting it, though, is shifting my opinion. I think the TV adaptation does a good job of streamlining the story and connecting it to the broader franchise, but even if the original plot is convoluted, I think it’s better than I first gave it credit for. I also continue to appreciate Herron’s writing tics and what they add to the story that you couldn’t so in television.

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.

This wasn’t bad, but I just didn’t find it as interesting as the first. I know the whole series is beloved by many, but I’m wondering if I just like the first novella? I ought to keep going to see if persistence pays off, but I had trouble sticking to this listen, so I think it’s time for a break.

I definitely read this one too fast, but if I hadn’t, I probably would have gotten hung up more on the continued blood and gore, which I continue not to like.

As with the rest of the series, though, there’s plenty that kept me coming back, and even the stuff I don’t like is consistent(ish) with the universe that these creators have established. The happy ending is satisfying, the big swings are still interesting, and Eve gets treated better in the final arcs than in earlier stories (though I think they could have done even better by her). It’s a good series, despite my reservations, and I hope it never gets rebooted.

I didn’t realize how quickly I made it through this! I wrote something in my review of the first compendium about the interesting things that Kirkman can do without being bogged down by a broader continuity, and that certainly applies here. I appreciate the big swings he takes and his willingness to shake up the story and leave it shaken up rather than a creep back to the status quo.

I really like the first novella, and this one isn’t bad, it’s just hard to live up to the strong first start. I’d like to continue working on the series, since I know it’s all well regarded, but I don’t remember many of the details from the first time I tried this, so let’s hope it sticks more this time.

I have some mixed feelings about Invincible, though they obviously are positive enough for me to start a full series reread. In college, I used to own a hardcover collection regrouping the first several TPBs, but I gave it away when moving to grad school. I was bothered by the violence and gore then, and now I can add to that the casual homophobia and ableism of the early 2000s and the low-level objectification and misogyny that are in most superhero comics. There’s some not to like in this series.

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 love this story, and the radio production is excellent. I like the supporting cast of oddball characters (especially Connie and Toby), and the idea of George’s struggle with his age and his morals is compelling. Maybe it’s still being torn about Honourable Schoolboy, but it just didn’t land as well this time as it has in the past.

There’s an interesting story in here, and I’m usually a fan of Le Carré’s “naïve characters make bad decisions and things go poorly” plots. I just cannot get over what feels like exaggerated East Asian accents in the performance, though. What could be a really interesting exploration of colonization, American intervention, etc. feels more like orientalism, especially when I’m not sure all the actors doing the accents are of East Asian heritage themselves.

Look, I know I haven’t read enough of the Murderbot source material to get snippy about unfaithfulness of adaptations. What’s more, this is a pretty good show! Great design, great casting, and lots of fun.

I just didn’t like it as much as I remember liking the novella. I got annoyed by what felt like unnecessary expansions, and there are parts of the worldbuilding that just can’t be captured on TV. Skarsgård does a great job but doesn’t capture how I perceived the main character. I just feel grumpy about it even though I recognize that it’s good.

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.

I mostly skimmed this book, and I would have some quibbles with it if I got more into the details, but I found it really good. Musical theater is far, faaaar outside of my research interests, but this book articulates a fascinating “theology of voice” within Mormonism that will be helpful as I look to write something on Ellul and Mormon Studies.

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!

This book isn’t the best of the anarchist fiction I’ve read—it feels a bit stilted or maybe even too didactic at points—but it grew on me, and I enjoyed the story a lot. (It’s also not the worst anarchist fiction I’ve read—looking at you, V for Vendetta). Cory Doctorow mentioned Killjoy’s most recent book on his blog, so I’m giving some of her older stuff a try, and so far, I think it’s pretty good.

Dumb but fun is how I would describe this. It’s got good art and an interesting premise, but the longer it went on, the more tired I got of twists and the harder time I had following the story. It wasn’t bad—but nothing special either.