Matt

Absolute money corrupts and destroys musically brilliant baby-men and their thug entourage absolutely. Just reading about the never-ending insanity nearly wore me out. How many fucking pieces of furniture can you throw out of a hotel window before it gets exhausting? Outside of that an entertaining and informative book. Spitz tells enough about certain crimes that I can only assume there were statutes of limitations involved.

This book may have changed my life. I'll have to get back to you on that. In the meantime, read the Big Nap (third story?). It's brilliant.

Old-fashioned hard science fiction. Not a book for those who want character development. The solution to the central mystery was even more insane than I had guessed.

I re-read this after thirty or so years. Glancing through it, I was afraid it was going to disappoint. But I think I liked it even more this time. Miller was seriously on top of his game.

I picked this up because I love E. Lily Yu's work, but I couldn't imagine being interested in what had to be depressing subject matter. Once I started, however, I barreled on. It proves a great writer can make any situation compelling.

Struggle is what good fiction is made of. This family not only struggles with their flight from Afghanistan, but with the trauma of the trip itself. And each family member for much of the story has only other traumatized family members to bounce up against while they're trying to deal with their feelings. It's claustrophobic and sad and real.

I'm still trying to fully understand one of the themes of the book which centers around the idea that nightmares lose their power if they're broken down into their constituent stories. And there are little stories all over this book, as each family member casts versions of themself or the others in off-the-cuff fairy tales, breaking down breaking down.

What I'm wondering is, how true is that? I'm sure telling stories helps when dealing with trauma. I've seen it. But can stories completely dismantle trauma? Can anything?

A powerful story set in a very quick read. Kyle Baker is one of my favorite comic artists and he has employed a wide range of styles in his career. His work here is heart-breaking, brutal, uplifting, and disturbing. Brilliant.

A great look into a lot of different aspects of Native American comedy and a lot of Native American issues and history outside of comedy.

A book so good it's making me reevaluate my other five star reviews. Give me a subject I love explored by an entertaining writer and I'm yours. Every fan of early animation should read this.

Amazing. Gorgeous and fanciful art. I read my library's copy, but I want one for myself.

I love Lovejoy, but man, is he shitty to the women that love him.

Is been wanting to read this for about thirty-five years, ever since I read of Uncle Rogi describing it in Julian May's Surveillance. Generally well-written and full of cool ideas. We all could have done without the racist stuff. The least interesting parts are when John shares his opinions on psychology, religion, philosophy, and the like. All he speaks is vague garbage, and there's a solid chapter of it as well as a few passages sprinkled around.

Highly entertaining, but take it with a whole shaker of salt.

It's a quick read, but I definitely didn't put together everything that's going on here. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in the dark with nothing but a single shaft of dim light coming from the next room to guide you. It's weird and atmospheric and I'm sure our will reward multiple readings. Thanks for the rec, Reyna!

There's not a lot to Miller's story set in a bleak nightmare of a world. Ten tons of insane action don't support the thin central idea very well. But Geof Darrow's astonishing artwork overcomes all of that.

Very short and sharp. Worth your time.

Read this when I was around 15 and loved it. It became one of my all-time favorites. Just read it again, some 36 years later. I was worried it might not have aged well, but damn it, it's still a great book!

A great story about a pile of dicks.

My teacher read this to my class in sixth grade, but I'd forgotten 99 percent of it. That one percent stuck with me for decades and I decided to give it another look last week.

I'm not a big fantasy fan and kids' books usually leave me cold, but I thought this was a great book. Alexander's writing is simple but has enough details to give the world some flavor. He never lets the story get bogged down, and a really decent philosophy comes through:

Be kind to everyone and everything that isn't actively trying to kill you. Help where you can. Don't refuse help from others. And from a bonus story in the back of the 50th Anniversary edition: “It is better to be raising things up than smiting things down.”

Joyous.

Gibson always delivers.

Goddamn, this is dark. The author suggests we try and find a moral in the last section on Jiminy. I'd say the world is wrecked by our negligence and avoidance of responsibility. Then we're surprised when the consequences show up.

I quite enjoyed this and don't think I've read anything else like it. Chapter after chapter, there doesn't seem to be conflict. Everything goes well for Kropotkin, but it's incredibly readable all the same. Maybe because there's this sense of dread hanging over the whole thing. The ultimate villain isn't a character, although one is placed in that role. The villain is the system, the status quo, capitalism, the state, and all of us who make it happen. And you might suspect that villain will win, because it usually does in real life.
At the same time there's hope everywhere in this story. Each time a character pulls their head out of the morass to speak to the person next to them they prove the problem isn't all-encompassing. And if the hero is too good to be true, I'm okay with that once in a while. The rest of us need an ideal by which to gauge reality and we're not going to find one of those unless we invent it.

Wow! Great story. A detective investigates a suspicious suicide in a deteriorating world. An asteroid is hitting earth in a few months and nearly everyone has recalibrated their behavior accordingly. Bucket lists, suicides, criminal behavior, a lot of people aren't holding down the jobs that made society run anymore. But if you're a criminal who gets caught, even six months is a life sentence. A great police procedural in a world with a new set of rules.

Holy crap! This book was written for me! Ridiculous humor and absurd situations. Loved it!

Wonderful is what I've come to expect from Helen Marshall's work. Here, a book that begins with a new facet of a well-worn trope shifts gears to become something very different while maintaining the same dreary-dark mood. In its final moments, it shifts once again and achieves flight when the poetic prose Marshall holds close to her chest is released like???well, it's too on the nose, but I'll say anyway???a flock of birds.

Helen Marshall always surprises, always dazzles, but always keeps us wrapped in the warmth of humanity, of love, of that wonder of discovering we can take one small step into the place we've never before thought to wander, and become something more than we realized we could ever be.