No doubt there is far more one could say about this than "that's weird and cool." But that's all I've got. It was handed to me and it only takes a very short time to read, so I gobbled it up. Some of the scaled art was particularly intriguing.

Library copy

No surprises: two friends who know nothing about one another's fields spend a year learning and then appreciating their two fields, and the reader learns alongside. There's no drama,  just a slowly developing knowledge and discernment. Because it is a story about middle-aged white French men primarily, it can be hard to grasp the references. It was good, but I remained at a distance and never really felt any emotional attachment.

Library copy 

So apparently I'm on a sequential art jag: graphic novels and memoirs and history. There's no way a memoir about the time just after the inexplicable death of his very young daughter can not be heartbreaking, but that's certainly not the main emotion I felt on reading this. Of course I felt so sorry for the author and his wife, and a little terrified at the possibility of one of my own children dying, but also something else. Undefinable. It's such a vivid and concrete telling of a few short weeks of the worst kind of grief, and although my own experiences haven't resembled his at all, still, I empathized with every moment. Probably every parent thinks "how does one go on after losing a child?" Tom's particular path, although shared with his wife, is still only his. But it gives an example of how one gets through such a terrible grief.

So vivid, and so personal, but he doesn't dwell on the death itself, so I didn't cry until the very end, reading the long list of names of people who helped him through that awful time. I am always moved by the kindness of others.

Library copy

So not a Halloween Bingo book.  The vlogged and tweeted adventures of a Georgia boy on the hockey team of a New England college. There are hijinks, there is bonding, there is a truly astonishing number of pies. And almost entirely angst-free. I'll be enjoying Bittle's further adventures in real time: checkpleasecomic.com

Library copy 

I think I have already read this one, but I don't have a record of that, so leave it at maybe. Of course, this one didn't get logged last week when read, because they get knocked out in one quick sitting, then immediately on to the next thing. Volume 2 is out now, so a refresher was necessary. Like Paper Girls and Lumberjanes, strange things are afoot and it could be anything. It is so gratifying to read about girls having adventures just like they are real people. Kudos for Westerfeld who puts female and minority characters front and center, without making it the point. If I can get #2, I'm going to use it for my New Release.

Puvilland has different styles and palettes that set off the sheer strangeness of what Poughkeepsie has become. Approaching it from the woods in particular puts me in mind of footage from Chernobyl twenty years later.

Library copy