Below are posts associated with the “media” type.
📚 bookblog: Black Panther: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I don’t think I’ve ever read any Black Panther before, but I loved the movie from a few years ago, and Christopher Priest’s run was recommended in All of the Marvels, so I decided to give this a try.
I see why this run was recommended, and there was a lot in there to like, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure it worked for me. I enjoy comics a lot, but it felt really continuity-heavy, and maybe I prefer graphic novels and self-contained short runs to issues that try to sit in the middle of everything Marvel’s ever published.
📚 bookblog: Running for Local Office for Dummies (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I’ve been interested in the idea of running for office since I was in high school, and as I’ve become more politically aware and engaged over the past five years, I’ve thought a lot in particular about eventually running for local office.
I picked this book up with a stack of others a couple of months ago during a particular rush of civic inspiration and since I got a notice that I needed to return it, I blazed through it in a couple of days.
📚 bookblog: Out of the Dark (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)
This was… a bizarre book. I’ve read plenty of David Weber’s writing before and the premise of the book seemed pretty close to Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, so I thought I might enjoy it.
Te premise of the book is that Earth has been invaded by a species that is clearly superior in the grand scheme of things but comparable to human technology other than space travel, giving humanity somewhat of a fighting chance.
📚 bookblog: All of the Marvels (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Wolk read 27,000+ Marvel comics to write this book, an attempt to trace the most important part of the Marvel universe over the past ~60 years.
I love the book for a few reasons. First, it takes comics—and Marvel Comics in particular—seriously, examining their sense-making and stories. Second, there’s a deep love of comics that’s evident in the book. Not a stilted, defensive love, but a mature one that knows what’s wrong with them but champions what they get right.
📚 bookblog: My Friend Dahmer (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Having survived one Backderf book and knowing that this is his more famous work (it won an award at Angoulême in 2014), I decided to give it a try.
The story is of Backderf’s childhood association with Jeffrey Dahmer, who grew up to be a serial killer. Dahmer’s crimes are horrifying—I had to put the book out of my mind before going to sleep—but he was caught when I was 3, so I wasn’t really aware of the story.
📚 bookblog: Dear Ann (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I probably would not have read this book on my own but it was selected as the 2022 Kentucky Reads selection by Kentucky Humanities. I noticed that in a headline somewhere (probably the Herald-Leader) and decided it was worth giving it a shot.
I ended up enjoying the book a lot! It plays with themes of nostalgia and wondering if the past could have or should have been different. I’ve been thinking about both of those things a lot recently, including in the context of my faith transition. Mason’s Ann tries to imagine a past that would have been different but is unable to depart from the past that actually was, and for all my question about my own past, I know it’s the past I have, and I don’t mind it.
📚 bookblog: Kent State (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I picked this graphic novel from JCPL just over a week ago. I think that Backderf’s art is weird, and I have mixed experiences with non-fiction comics, but I don’t know much about the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard, and I decided it was worth knowing more about.
The story was compelling, and Backderf’s art didn’t bother me as much as I worried it would, so I’m glad I tried it. The story of the Kent State shootings stuck out to me as a difficult tale of the importance of non-violent protest and of curbing state power.