This is an excellent, thorough book on the purity system of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the excommunications of the “September Six” and many others for their violations of that purity system. I bought the book out of personal interest, but I think it will be professionally valuable as well. I knew much of what was in the book, but what I didn’t know was important, and I am grateful for the volume and hope that many will read it to learn about this important period in Mormon history. As Patterson notes, though, it’s not just history; her conclusion reflecting on how these episodes have their echoes in the present is especially good.

I keep going back and forth on whether I’m going to rag on these comics for having silly comicbook logic, and now’s the time I’m really going to do it. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really cared about Venom, but this reinvention of the character feels especially silly. There’s a great conversation between Peter and Nick Fury that feels like it really gets at teasing apart superhero stories in fascinating ways, but as a whole, this was just not my favorite story in the run. My hoopla borrows for the month are gone, so time to log in with a family member’s account to try more Ultimate Spider-Man.

J’aime bien la plupart des personnages dans cette série, et c’est cool de voir un plan se dérouler. Pourtant, la logique narrative ne tenait pas hyper bien, et on avait parfois l’impression que les personnages faisaient des choses juste pour avancer une certaine histoire (et, d’ailleurs, qu’on inventait de nouveaux personnages pour la même raison).

Superhero stories continue to be kind of silly, but this one continues to be fun, so I’m going to keep reading. I’m starting to realize just how little of this series I’ve read, and it’s fun to catch up with things I’d heard about but never actually seen myself.

This volume emphasized some of the parts of the series that don’t hold up, like casual schoolyard homophobia and damseling Mary Jane. Without dismissing those problems, though, there’s still a lot to like here. I have no recollection of this volume, and it’s interesting to get into new territory for the series.

I’ve decided I don’t need to critically analyze these books anymore. They’re fun, I like Bagley’s art, and I think I’m starting to get into issues I haven’t read before. Hooray for hoopla and easy access to this whole run.

There are a lot of reminders in this volume of how dumb superhero comics can be (how is a 15-year old going toe to toe with a crime boss?), but it’s also fun in a lot of ways, and I know I loved reading this when I was a teenager myself. It continues to be a fun series.

I don’t know how many times I’ve already read this volume, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Ultimate Spider-Man. I know the earlier stuff better than the later stuff, though, so I’m hoping to make it through the whole series this time.

I stayed up too late reading this, but it was fun. It’s a bit dumb in parts, but I love the effort to weld together all the major Spider-Man stories into a single lifetime of an aging Peter Parker. I love this kind of comic, the kind that reimagines established canon in interesting ways. Fun read.

I did not read this book as one is supposed to. It’s a collection of daily Advent and Christmas reflections, but I listened to the audiobook well before Advent started and with no pauses in between individual reflections. I’m sure that takes away from the experience, but I enjoyed what I heard and plan to read more Bonhoeffer.

I’ve been meaning to reread this since I first listened to the audiobook, which I started as soon as it was released. It’s not my favorite Doctorow, but it’s still him at his best: The book is opinionated, exciting, and full of specific, compelling details. I like it a lot.

I don’t know what this book is supposed to be. It feels like too much worldbuilding and too little plot; I would like to see more of the Kentucky I know, but it also feels vaguely exploitative of Eastern Kentucky; it feels like an excuse for violent storytelling and wants to be something deeper without quite getting there. I wasn’t a fan.

This series continues to have a really interesting premise, and I’m giving it some grace for how much it runs with that premise and treats it seriously. It took me a long time to get through this volume, though, because it’s getting a bit weird and the authors tend to fetishize the American frontier uncritically. I may come back to the series in the future, but not any time soon.

The show started off strong, and there are lots of individual details that I liked (including a compelling dark Jedi who made lightsaber duels interesting again). However, by the end, it felt like a mishmash of fanservice, addressing plot threads from a show I haven’t seen, but then setting them up for a future movie instead of actually resolving them. So many decisions seemed to happen for the sake of plot or convenience, and it was kind of a slog to finish the dang thing.

This was an interesting read, and there are portions of it that I expect to come back to later. However, I was surprised by how often I felt like I already knew what was being covered. Given my familiarity with both faiths, I expect that I’m not the target audience (anymore) for this volume.

Comme d’habitude, je suis impressionné par le nombre de bd francophones disponible en traduction chez ma bibliothèque municipale, mais j’aurais préféré lire cet album en français. En tout cas, je connaissais le nom Josephine Baker, mais je ne connaissais pas vraiment le personnage. J’aurai appris beaucoup plus en lisant une vraie biographie, mais une bd, c’est quand-même sympa !

This was a Jason Snell recommendation on a recent episode of The Incomparable that I nearly skipped; I’m glad I didn’t, though, because this was a fascinating book. The premise—that humanity suddenly learns about and how to access parallel worlds to either “side” of Earth—is a fascinating one. In fact, this is the kind of great science fiction that starts with a wild concept and plays with it as long as it can. The plot (and even characters) aren’t as important, and sometimes the book suffers for it, but the concept is so compelling that I couldn’t help but love this. The authors don’t always get Americans, and the audiobook narrator certainly doesn’t, but again: the concept is key, and they do a great job with it.

J’aime bien l’uchronie, et cet exemple offre beaucoup d’idées intéressantes, mais j’avoue que je ne vois pas en quoi il mérite un grand prix du roman de l’Académie française. Si je connaissais mieux l’histoire européenne, peut-être que je serais plus impressionné. En tout cas, c’était assez intéressant même si je n’ai pas tout suivi.

I am only passingly familiar with Archie, but the concept behind the miniseries was compelling, and I love a reimagining of familiar characters to make a point. Even more compelling was the treatment of World War II in a way that emphasized how awful war is instead of cheerleading the U.S. entry into the conflict. Really enjoyed this.

Reading a second volume hasn’t changed my impression of this series: It’s an interesting premise, but there’s not really enough substance to it to be worth my attention. There’s more out there, but I don’t feel any completionist tendencies about it.

I love a movie that leans into being bizarre because it knows exactly what it is and commits to it. I love a movie that uses metaphor to make important points. I love a movie that is self-aware and even self-critical. This was as good as I expected it to be.

As promised, I’m reading this in honor of Bill Willingham’s badass public domain antics earlier this week. I think the concept of his series is fun, but I’m not sure if I think it’s as great as its reputation. The idea of fairy tale characters living in the real world is full of potential, but the story seems pretty superficial. Will probably keep reading, though.

It’s weird to rate this so highly given how much anxiety it gives me to read it. Reading it four years ago is what forced me to confront how much baggage I had from my own Mormon missionary experience, but I know the author has her own complicated feelings about the book, and that helps some. At any rate, the book is so well done that I can’t help but rate it highly.

Je dis pas que c’est un chef d’oeuvre, mais ça faisait plusieurs années depuis la dernière fois que j’ai regardé ce film, et on s’est bien amusé, ma fille et moi. Ça donne envie de lire les livres.

I didn’t love this when I first read it after its publication, but it has grown on me since! It’s fanservice, franchise-oriented writing at its best, and even if some of its details strain plausibility (just how old is Smiley?), it’s fun to see behind the scenes of Leamas’s narrative in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and to weld that narrative to characters we know from the Karla trilogy. Le Carré also doesn’t let up in his questions about means and ends as they relate to espionage.