A devops engineer told me to read this “phenomenal” story at the Caesar’s Palace Lobby Bar in Vegas seven years ago over drinks and bullshit after a tiring day at a conference1. My wife’s an O’Connor stan and called it “one of the greats” when I told her I was going to read it. I also told her I l…
Spoilers! A most odd thing. Can’t find who recommended it to me. It’s only around 70 pages and is a magical realist retelling of Stalin’s ascent to power and his horrible and bloody legacy due to his involvement with a very licentious1 and decently interesting vampire coven2. There’s this Dorian G…
This is one of many adaptations of the classic tragedy by Euripedes. I highly recommend this treatment1 to anyone as a first appreciation. And it’s quite the story: love, lust, betrayal, spirituality, filicide, redemption, wisdom, general chicanery, geopolitics, racism. The artwork is fantastic an…
Like many others, I saw the movie first. Good stuff, Natalie Portman is great and Hugo Weaving is fantastic even behind a mask. This novel is not like the movie. Length and character depth aside, it’s very British in its setting, sensibilities, and its response to its time (in the movie, I do remem…
I forget who told me that Bill Watterson was coming out of retirement to write an actual book. I was giddy enough to pre-order. I finished it in about two minutes and then really read it in about five-to-ten. The physical book itself, a hardcover, is very nicely done. Sturdy: excellent binding and…
A lovely little book on ghastly parenting by animals that are not us. Gifted this to a family member who just had her first baby and is your normal, apprehensive, anxious, stressed-out, impossibly-in-love first-time parent1. I loved Priscilla Witte’s witty2 illustrations and what I think is the ove…
About five minutes in, I felt like I was reading a masterpiece even though I know very little about the graphic novel format. This is some mesmerizing inking (Burns won a lot of “Best Inker” awards for this work). The panels almost look like woodcuts. It’s about teenagers and adolescence and how we…
Came recommended by HU. I had to borrow them from PG1. A limited, 7-part comic book series based on one of my favorite movies. Told from the perspective of John Doe and provides his backstory which is about as sad and disturbing as you can imagine it would be. About as gory as the movie itself. Mos…
I was lucky. I went to good schools, I had excellent teachers. I was in the right place at the right time. Paul Dirac Opportunity and luck bestow their benisons upon a once-in-a-generation genius, mathematical mystic, and one of the greatest theoretical physicists to have walked the planet.…
A friend used to loan me this lovely book when I was 12 or 13. I loved reading and re-reading it to the point where I remember asking him if he could just gift it to me for my birthday (he declined). And then Life happened and I grew up and I forgot all about it until around 3 years ago, when I sud…
“Fear can be a funny thing; it doesn’t always shine a flattering light. It can make us forget that others are scared too.” The author tells a short and lovely story about the pandemic, isolation, hope, the value of community, nature, and so many other things for such a short book. It is told throu…
Birthday gift from TK. Sharp, vibrant, funny, and dark. The characters’ philosophical ruminations are self-indulgent and sophomoric and tedious. Don’t know if that was the point.…
I remember complaining about having too many books to read at The Mill (RIP) in Iowa City, and getting a weary “We know” to my “Did you know the Japanese have a word for this?” I remember telling them I’d resolved to have no more than, say, a hundred books on my shelves at any given time, and them…