More comics! Unlike my last post with comics recommendations, which focused on first volumes of four series I was interested in reading, this one will be on graphic novels (stand alone stories in comic form) and series that are short/completed. Basically, you can read these entire stories right now, if you so choose (except Lumberjanes… breaking my own rules already!).

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Lots of other bloggers have been gushing about Nimona, for good reason – this comic is totally delightful. This comic started out as a webcomic when the author, Noelle Stevenson, was a college student. It was published as a hardcover in May. It’s set in a weird fantasy/sci-fi universe where Nimona, a shapeshifter with a curious past, forms a partnership with a notorious villain, Lord Ballister Blackheart, battling his former friend (Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin) and the nefarious Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics. This is goofy and warmhearted and so totally fun for readers of all ages.

This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

This One Summer is another comic that I’ve heard lots of great things about. The book is the story of Rosie and Windy, two friends who meet up every summer when their families head to the lake house. This year is different though – Rosie’s parents are having problems and when she and Windy look for attention elsewhere, they get drawn into teenage drama they can’t quite understand. This book deftly captures that feeling of being caught between ages, too young to understand complex problems, but too old to move through the world obliviously to the challenges around you. I thought the sketch-like illustrations were lovely and, overall, enjoyed this one a lot.

She-Hulk by Charles Soule, Javier Pulido and Ron Wemberly

This most recent run of She-Hulk stories (in trades as Law and Disorder and Disorderly Conduct) aren’t origin stories. Jennifer Walters is a confident lawyer who also happens to be a former member of the Avengers. But she’s past that, focusing on her law career and getting her own small firm off the ground. In these two trades, her practice brings her in contact with a host of familiar faces – Ant-Man, Daredevil, Hellcat and Captain America, to name a few – but always focuses on her practice as an attorney. I liked a lot of this series, but also thought the art was a bit confusing. I had pages where I couldn’t follow which panel to read. And there’s one issue in the middle done by a different artist that was not great. Despite that, I’m sorry this run closed up after 12 issues – I would have read more.

Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis and Brooke Allen

Technically, Lumberjanes isn’t a complete story at the moment. But you can read the first eight issues in a variety of ways, which brings the first major story to a close. And it’s too awesome for me not to mention in this post. This series is written by Noelle Stevenson (yep, same lady) and Grace Ellis with beautiful illustrations by Brooke Allen. It’s about five best friends ready to have an awesome time at summer camp. Mysterious hijinks ensue. It’s a delightful series about friendship and girl power that is feminist and fun and funny. I own the first trade paperback (the first four issues) and read what I expect will be the second trade in single issues on Scribd (available in paperback in October). I’m on pause with the series, but plan to jump back in soon.

What other single story, or completed story arc, comics would you recommend?

Time and Place | About 7:45 a.m. on, you guessed it, my couch.

Eating and Drinking | The boyfriend ordered some Pom-berry Black Tea that I’m trying out for the first time. It supposed to be a high caffeine blend, which I will need today since I haven’t managed to sleep in at all this weekend.

Reading | I spent most of this week with Anna Freeman’s The Fair Fight, a historical fiction novel about Victorian lady boxers. I’ll have more thoughts in an upcoming fiction reviewlett post, so for now I’ll say it was excellent (just a bit too long through the middle). The other book I tore through this week was an egalley of Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon (Sept. 4 from Delacorte Books). It’s about an 18-year-old girl with SCID, a disease that makes her allergic to everything, and what happens when she falls for the boy across the street. It was absolutely stellar, so funny and warm and romantic. I had the same kind of reaction to it as I did to Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I can’t wait for more people to read it, and thanks to Kelly for the mention that made me pick it up.

Watching | The epic Friends marathon continues. I’m midway through season seven and remain convinced that snarky Ross/Rachel is infinitely better than romantic Ross/Rachel.

Listening | After finishing Missoula, I needed something a little less fraught for an audio book. I picked The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande and, so far, it’s been oddly interesting.

Blogging | This week I looked back at my May 2015 reads and shared five great nonfiction books I’ve read in the last couple of months.

Brainstorming | I’m working on a post for Book Riot of nonfiction by and about lady adventurers. It’s been so fun — my TBR list is growing rapidly — but I’m running into a challenge finding books that feature women who aren’t white. There are ladies of color doing awesome things — Bessie Coleman, Mae Jamison, Sacagawea to name a few — but all of the books about them I’ve found so far are kids books. It’s kind of infuriating. So, I’m hoping to do a little crowdsourcing from you all for suggestions on books or women to feature.

Hating | The company I work for has a very generous PTO policy, and I’m not very good at taking vacation. Consequently, I reached a point this week where I maxed out the vacation days I can accrue. Argh! On the plus side, I anticipate a few half days of work in the next couple of months until I use up a good chunk of my hours going to Europe!

Loving | My favorite Instagram account right now is @hey_jules_studio. She’s doing 100 days of photos of rainbows that are beautiful and precisely organized. They make me smile every time I see one.

Loving II | The library has been good to me lately. I picked up a couple of great books this week, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and In the Woods by Tana French.

Anticipating | At this time next week I will be at the lake! I’m more excited than I can tell you for this long weekend at our cabin family with friends. I’ve already started packing the essentials — books, games and booze. Yay!

Happy Sunday, everyone. What are you reading today?

One of my disappointments about struggling to write reviews is that I haven’t gotten to tell you about some of the great nonfiction I’ve read over the last couple of months. It’s been so great! Instead of waiting until my review mojo comes back, I’m just going to share briefly about each of these in the hopes of enticing you to pick one or more of them up.

Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean

I got on a bit of a kick with space books after finishing Commander Chris Hadfield’s memoir An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, and Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean was an absolutely perfect follow up. Dean isn’t an astronaut or expert, she’s just a curious space enthusiast. In the book, Dean offers a history of American spaceflight while also chronicling the last three shuttle flights before the program was shut down. She looks to previous writers on space – Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Oriana Fallaci most deeply – and writes about the experiences of other NASA employees and space fans. It’s really a wonderful, slightly meandering but also very engaging book. Dean asks good questions, looks to many sources for answers, and isn’t afraid to deeply engage with her subject. I loved this one. Good job again, Graywolf Press.

Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel

I read this book over Memorial Day weekend, at a time when I was already thinking about sacrifice and the impact that war can have on people and families. In the book, journalist David Finkel follows several soldiers returning home from a tour of duty on the frontlines in Baghdad. Many of them are suffering from PTSD or other physical and mental injuries, and their struggle to adjust and reintegrate affects their families and the other professionals trying to help them. It’s a really compelling portrait about the sacrifices we ask from soldiers, and the less obvious sacrifices that a deployment can ask from others. I was just blown away at the honesty and depth of this book. While there were moments when Finkel relies on some linguistic flourishes that I didn’t think were necessary, overall this was a compelling, sobering, important book I’d definitely recommend.

The Skies Belong to Us by Brendan Koerner

I picked this book up on a whim because I was feeling grumpy and I wanted some nonfiction that was just going to be fun. And boy, was this book perfect for that. The Skies Belong to Us chronicles the peak of skyjacking (hijacked planes) in the United States, from about 1968 until the mid-1970s. At the time, airline security was nonexistent and airlines implemented policies of compliance for hijackers. The whole crazy facade came tumbling down after “a shattered Army veteran” and “a mischievous party girl” managed to pull off the longest-distance hijacking in history. There are so many bonkers anecdotes in this book, it’s really just fun to read. I thought the end lagged just a bit, but overall it was a perfect book to pull me out of a grumpy reading slump.

Missoula by Jon Krakauer

There are two things that struck me as really important about this book. First, Jon Krakauer goes into every story about a rape victim assuming that she (all of the victims in this book are women) is telling the truth. That shouldn’t be remarkable… but it is. Second, Krakauer doesn’t fall prey to the temptation that you need a “sensational” rape to tell a compelling story about the way the criminal justice system can potentially mishandle a sexual assault (see: Rolling Stone magazine). I listened to this one on audio book and while it was good, I wish I’d had the print copy on hand to get a better sense of sourcing for different conversations and allegations. The reporting in this book matters immensely, and I don’t feel confident I understand how the book was made as well as I want to in order to be able to discuss it intelligently.

BiblioTECH by John Palfrey

I’m on the board for my local public library, and we’re currently in the middle of a process to think about what our library of the future could look like. I picked up this book because I thought it could provide some useful information about the role of libraries in the Internet age. John Palfrey, an editor and technology expert, offers some sound advice on how libraries can adapt their core model – providing access to information – to a time when information is plentiful but understanding and skills for access are lacking. I wouldn’t recommend this to every reader, but it’s certainly an interesting book if you’re curious about the future of libraries in a digital world.

April was a stressful month, and May turned into kind of a mess of a month too. While I can think of a couple specific events that threw me off my game or caused some consternation, I can’t quite account for how grumpy the month made me and how happy I am to put it in the past. Two slumpy months in a row? Boo.

Despite general malaise, I did get a fair amount of reading done. And it was a strangely even mix of books: four fiction, four nonfiction, and four comics. Here’s the list:

1. Johansen, Erika: The Invasion of the Tearling (fiction)
2. Tamaki, Jillian and Mariko: This One Summer (comic)
3. Gee, Allen: My Chinese-America (essays)
4. Koerner, Brendan: The Skies Belong to Us (nonfiction)
5. Riordan, Rick: The Red Pyramid (young adult)
6. Stevenson, Noelle: Nimona (comic)
7. Soule, Charles: She-Hulk, Vol. 1: Law and Disorder (comic)
8. Soule, Charles: She-Hulk, Vol. 2: Disorderly Conduct (comic)
9. Atkinson, Kate: A God in Ruins (fiction)
10. Finkel, David: Thank You for Your Service (nonfiction)
11. McDermid, Val: Northanger Abbey (fiction)
12. Krakauer, Jon: Missoula (nonfiction)

If I had to pick a favorite in each genre, I’d go with A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel and Nimona by Noelle Stevenson. The Skies Belong to Us was a close second for nonfiction – a total page-turner, but it lost a little momentum at the end. And both volumes of She-Hulk were delightful in premise, but had some hiccups in execution (confusing panels and at least one issue of really ugly drawings).

Thanks for those who offered up suggestions on how to work through a review-writing slump. I’m going to take a suggestion from Bryan (Still Unfinished) to do a few posts on my reading highlights for the last couple of months, probably split into comics, fiction and nonfiction, then see where my blogging mojo takes me next. The nice thing about this space is that I can keep it focused on what I like to do which, for the moment, is reading and writing about books without formal reviews.

A Look to June

Hooray, summer. I am so excited. We’re heading to the cabin for a long weekend with friends mid-month, so I’m sure I will spend time agonizing about which beach reads to bring… then ignore them entirely in favor of day drinking and swimming. I’m hoping to make some progress with my summer reading list, as well as a book that just came from the library this week, In the Woods by Tana French.

I also just came across this summer reading guide from the Los Angeles Times that is very impressive. I haven’t dug into it very far yet, but the nonfiction list is great – so many titles I didn’t recognize! I’m on a book buying hiatus in June (sob!), but will be saving many of these titles for July and August.

I guess what I most want for this month is to bring the joy and the fun back into my life and, by extension, my reading life. I’m don’t quite know what that means, but I’m excited to see where a spirit of openness takes me in June…. I’ve turned into such a hippie!