#tbr 2019

[makrostil]

otze 2019

[capinejghafa]

So, the Right Swipe definitely could have a great read. There's something about it that feels very "not for me definitely for someone" vibes. And had the author built up Rhi and Gabe's sibling relationship, had she built ANY relationship outside of her employees (she's the CEO)... I think Rhi would have been a stronger character.

And when I tell you nothing prepared me for the term "Alpha" to be used unironically and in a positive way AND directed to Rhi... my eyes. Also, I hate football like what am I supposed to do with any of this fake, maybe real science? Nothing.

2.5 out 5 because this book almost had me until the word was used. It was funny at times so it's a shame I didn't like it more.

[limecello]

TBR Challenge Review: Greetings Ninth Uncle (九叔万福) by September Flowing Fire (Jiu Yue Liu Huo, 九月流火)

Greetings Ninth Uncle (九叔万福) by September Flowing Fire (Jiu Yue Liu Huo, 九月流火) Historical romance published in 2019 Cheng Yujin was the elder twin sister, who was supposed to be engaged to an excellent man. However she later learned that her fiancé, Marquis Jingyong, had proposed to her because he mistakenly recognized her as her younger twin sister. Marquis Jingyong and her younger sister had a…

[heavenlyyshecomes]

recs directory

all my book / articles / film recs !! please check before sending an ask for recs <3 (this are mostly from 2020-22 so don't hesitate to ask for newer recs)

last updated: 13.04.2024

books

essay collections

short books for a reading slump

old wlw books

on generational trauma

social media accs for book recs women in translation MET art books on loneliness / pt. 2 lithub syllabi arthurian + atmospheric on internet culture gentle books underrated favs 2022 reads fav prose quarterly book recs summer reading list: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 monsoon reading list: 2022 yearly tbr: 2022, 2023 random fiction, pt. 2, pt. 3*, pt. 4*, pt. 5*, nonfiction yearly fav reads: 2019*, 2021 on colour theory* drive link to books*

sff recs related tags: ref: mine, ref, book recs, book log

articles

misc readings tag random recs

places to read articles related tags: readings, articles

films

short films horror films random recs fav first watches: 2022 related tags: movie log

[haveyoureadthispoll]

[theinquisitxor]

August 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I can't believe we're at the end of August already, it feels like I was just writing the July wrap up. Despite that, August was a very good reading month, and was a good recovery for me from how difficult July was. I read six books, and I was able to read some books that have been on my tbr for 4+ years. Overall, I didn't read a large quantity of books, but I read some very good quality books!

1 & 2. Chrestomanci Chronicles volume 1 by Diana Wynne Jones: Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant. 4/5 stars. In my quest to read more DWJ, I finally picked up this series since having it on my tbr since at least 2019. I read both of books on audio, and I plan to continue the series this way. I thought these were both fun children's fantasy stories, and they felt like DWJ books :)

3.Daughter of the Forest (Sevenwaters 1) by Juliet Marillier, 5/5 stars. This is another series that has been on my tbr since 2019 I believe. I've been so overdue to read this, and I really loved this. The writing was superb, and I loved the setting of Sevenwaters, and all the characters. This felt like such a well crafted and excellent book.

4.Paladin's Grace (Saint of Steel series) by T Kingfisher, 5/5 stars. I devoured this book in about 24 hours, and I loved this fantasy romance murder mystery. T Kingfisher is a favorite author, and this was all parts romance, mystery, politics, angst, as you can get. I feel like I'm addicted to these books and I can't wait to read the next ones!

6.A Memory Called Empire (Texicalaan 1) by Arkady Martine, 5/5 stars. This is a space opera that has been on my tbr since 2020, and I've been daunted by this book for years. It was a little daunting at first, but once I had a grasp of the world and culture, I really enjoyed this book. The second half was phenomenal and this checked a lot of boxes of things I like.

6. Living Resistance : An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness in Every Day by Kaitlin B Curtice. This was my nonfication for the month, and while I've been looking for something to fill the void that Braiding Sweetgrass left me in, this was enjoyable, but not quite the same. It has a good message and was a good read for this this month.

Overall, I'm happy with this month, and I read some new favorites!

September tbr (in no particular order):

Son of Shadows (Sevenwaters 2) by Juliet Marillier

Paladin's Strength (and maybe Paladin's Hope) by T Kingfisher

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie (I want to at least give this a try)

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs

[qqueenofhades]

Ok, unsolicited rant, I’m sorry in advance. I used to love reading when I was a kid, and read frequently and often. I read a lot and I read books that I wouldn’t be able to understand now, like Anna Karenina when I was 12 (I am a native Russian speaker so it’s not that impressive but still) and a lot of Thomas Mann when I was 17-18.

It’s all gone now. I became extremely picky, but also it seems to be harder for me to understand books now? Like I’ve been trying to read “demons”, “Oliver twist”, “Ulysses” - too hard, and I can’t concentrate and in case of demons there are so many ideas and historical tidbits that I have to sit with Wikipedia and a notebook. And yes, as a kid I would have checked certain things and be able to hold a connection in my memory without a notebook (although I’m not sure if I would have done that with demons in particular, I’m bad at Dostoevsky and hated “crime and punishment”). And it doesn’t matter whether I’m reading in Russian or in English. I almost got it with Arundhati Roy’s “the god of small things”, then there was a very upsetting and triggering scene and I had to put it down.

And if I try to get into something nicer and easier my picky side comes out and I just drop books one after the other. Murderbot diaries and the Locked tomb were the only two books series that captivated me in two years.

Anyway I miss that soothing state of being engrossed with a book. And I so rarely get it now! So I wanted to ask, do you maybe have some advice? I saw your book stack and felt both envy and fear, like I both wanted to read and didn’t. Yikes.

And also, I can still read fic and your fics got me through terrible time and soothed me! So thank you!!!

Aha well. I will say that my current monumental book stack is not technically the norm for me, though I do usually have 3-4 books on the hard-working bedside table and read for several hours every night. Said giant book stack was a confluence of factors (picking up a bunch of holds from the library after asking the people for book recommendations and then going to the bookstore yesterday and hilariously telling myself that I would only get one book max). So it's not like I have ginormous amounts of TBR at all times, and in that giant stack, there are likely to be several books that don't grab me, are not particularly interesting, or technically good and well-written but just not engaging with the Brain Gremlins at this particular point in time. So I will put them down and move onto the next one, and this will keep me from being bogged down, because why read if you're not enjoying it/yourself/the book? It's not a punishment or a character-building ordeal. It's supposed to be fun, and if you're reading things that, as noted in your ask, just aren't grabbing you and feel like a chore, then stop! Find something else that makes the Brain Gremlins go ooooh shiny, regardless of what it is. It doesn't have to be Fine Literature.

I also had to get back into the habit of reading for pleasure, and it took me time and effort to do it due to various external circumstances. From about 2015-19, while I was doing my PhD, I had less than no money and absolutely no spare brainpower, so while I did have a few books that I collected along the way, I barely did any reading for pleasure at all (though I did do a frankly alarming amount of writing, including fic writing). Looking back, that seems insane to me, but it was something that had to change step by step, and it wasn't as if I just finished the PhD and went straight back into pleasure reading. I moved back to the US in 2019 and had a part-time job at a bookstore, which was very dangerous for my minimum-wage paycheck, but it did get me back into the habit of looking at books and reading books and being able to take home advanced-reader copies for free and otherwise start exercising that muscle again. I didn't have a library as an option for quite a while because I was living in a tiny town, then COVID hit, then I moved to another tiny town, where there was at least finally a modest public library at my disposal. But it took time.

Now I live in a city with a great public library where I can get almost anything I want, and I went accordingly hog-wild, but if you don't have readily available reading resources, obviously it's hard to get your hands on stuff that you like and will make the brain gremlins go brrrr. There are some public libraries that offer cards/user privileges even to people who don't live in the geographical area, especially if you are a young adult. Check out Books Unbanned by the Brooklyn, Boston, Seattle, and San Diego (US) libraries, which aims to provide access to ebooks and other digital collection items for young adults facing challenges to access, regardless of where they live. You can get a card up to age 18 from San Diego, age 21 in Brooklyn, and up to 26 for Boston/Seattle.

I also now have a little more disposable income, so I can buy books if I want to, though it's true that I also bought books when I couldn't really afford them (shh). But it's still the fact of my access to a good public library that enables me to have stacks on stacks rotating through the bedside table, and I use it constantly, so there's that. I'm of course very glad to hear that you can still read fic and that you have enjoyed my stuff, but I do also feel that you have to read fic AND books/published writing/stuff that's not fic. So the best way to get back into the habit is by practicing, not forcing yourself into stuff that isn't fun or feels like a slog, and finding a place where you can consistently obtain other stuff that's good for sparking joy. That is not the case for everyone, it will impact what you are able to do, and you should not feel like you have to do some kind of "good" reading model, especially since a lot of people seem to think that what you read is directly representative of your intelligence, moral character, or some other important part of you, and it's not. Humans like stories, the end. We like being given stories, fiction or nonfiction, in a format that we can digest and understand, and we always have. It's that simple.

Basically, I feel like reading for pleasure should indeed be fun, I love reading for pleasure and encourage everyone to do more of it, I now am fortunate to be able to do it extensively, and it has taken work of various kinds to get to that point where I can in fact just set myself up with a ginormous stack and dive in. As noted, however, if any of the books currently on hand are boring or just not doing it for me, I will move onto the next one, because the fun thing is that there are always more. So yes. Go forth and read. Good luck.

[neurasthnia]

twenty books in spanish, tbr

for when i'm fluent!! most with translations in english.

Sistema Nervoso, Lina Meruane (2021) - Latin American literature professor from Chile, contemporary litfic

Ansibles, perfiladores y otras máquinas de ingenio, Andrea Chapela (2020) - short story collection from a Mexican scifi author, likened to Black Mirror

Nuestra parte de noche, Mariana Enríquez (2019) - very long literary horror novel by incredibly famous Argentine journalist 

Canto yo y la montaña baila, Irene Solà (2019) - translated into Spanish from Castilian by Concha Cardeñoso, contemporary litfic

Las malas, Camila Sosa Villada (2019) - very well rated memoir/autofiction from a trans Argentine author

Humo, Gabriela Alemán (2017) - short litfic set in Paraguay, by Ecuadoran author

La dimensión desconocida, Nona Fernández (2016) - really anything by this Chilean actress/writer; this one is a Pinochet-era historical fiction & v short

Distancia de rescate, Samanta Schweblin (2014) - super short litfic by an Argentinian author based in Germany, loved Fever Dream in English

La ridícula idea de no volver a verte, Rosa Montero (2013) - nonfiction; Spanish author discusses scientist Maria Skłodowska-Curie and through Curie, her own life

Lágrimas en la lluvia, Rosa Montero (2011) - sff trilogy by a Spanish journalist

Los peligros de fumar en la cama, Mariana Enríquez (2009) - short story collection, author noted above

Delirio, Laura Restrepo (2004) - most popular book (maybe) by an award-winning Colombian author; literary fiction

Todos los amores, Carmen Boullosa (1998) - poetry! very popular Mexican author, really open to anything on the backlist this is just inexpensive used online

Olvidado rey Gudú, Ana María Matute (1997) - cult classic, medieval fantasy-ish, award-winning Spanish author

Como agua para chocolate, Laura Esquivel (1989) - v famous novel by v famous Mexican author

Ekomo, María Nsué Angüe (1985) - super short litfic about woman's family, post-colonial Equatoguinean novel; out of print

La casa de los espíritus, Isabelle Allende (1982) - or really anything by her, Chilean author known for magical realism; read in English & didn't particularly love but would be willing to give it another try

Nada, Carmen Laforet (1945) - Spanish author who wrote after the Spanish civil war, v famous novel

Los pazos de Ulloa, Emilia Pardo Bazán (1886) - book one in a family drama literary fiction duology by a famous Galician author, pretty dense compared to the above

La Respuesta, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1691) -  i actually have a bilingual poetry collection from our favorite 17th century feminist Mexican nun; this is an essay defending the right of women to be engaged in intellectual work (& it includes some poems)

bookmarked websites:

Separata Árabe, linked by Arablit

reading challenge Un viaje por la literatura en español

[01432853]

i was tagged by @letthefairyinyoufly ♡

last 3 films you watched:

4 films on your to-watch list:

my next ones probably will be: anna magdalena (1998), the billionaire (2011), saturday fiction (2019) or a haider (2014) rewatch

last 3 songs/artists you listened to:

deep down by lexie liu, nightmare by undream ft. neoni, F.O. by ?te

4 songs/artists on your to-listen list:

i feel like listening to 王頌 again. and more 王OK.

maybe some more fujii kaze and ?te.

last 3 books you read:

proabably some work related books about plants yep

4 books on your tbr:

you know i don't read cnovels and it would take a lot for me to open a book again but i saw one of the translators i follow is translating the story of pearl girl, so i might check it out cause i'm too much hyped for the drama releaseee <333

wanna tag @gege @bittergloss @jiaoliqiao @amarakaran

@numerodix @spellfuls if you want to ♡

[stabbyfoxandrew]

went to look at my goodreads (which i have not used in years) and cringed bc i am not interested in half that shit now lol. so i'm cleaning my tbr shelf rn

also, guess what

i added the foxhole court to my goodreads tbr list in 2019. why the FUCK did it take me three more years to actually read it????? wtf

[ninja-muse]

February was a pretty good month! I read some books I really loved (and a couple that were simply meh), I got in a father-daughter visit and had really good luck at Scrabble, the weather was mostly not awful, and even if inventory at work took longer than expected, I survived it without brain mush, which has happened before. I am still the fastest scanner! My title holds.

Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn that Eve by Cat Bohannon and Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse were my top reads of the month, or that What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher ranks third. My T. Kingfisher problem is at least a year old, after all. (Also I read a couple delightful picture books, so be sure to click through to find them!)

I'm personally more surprised by my lowest picks, because they both sounded so up my alley but fell flat for nearly completely different reasons. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store ended up feeling disjointed and like it was trying for a theme it couldn't quite grasp, and A Market of Dreams and Desires hit all kinds of tropes I love, right down to random Dickens references and weird steampunk machines, but tied everything together a little too neatly for me. Ah well.

And right in the middle of my list is my sole physical TBR read of the month: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. This managed to tick off "Canadian author" and "classic" at the same time, so I get triple points. (This might have had a hand in me picking it.) Duddy has aged surprisingly well, in that it's still pretty fast-paced and amusing and also in that Richler wrote it with the understanding that scam artistry, hypermaterialism, and misogyny were bad and y'know what? They still are. I would recommend if you're looking for a Canadian teen anti-hero, more than anything. Duddy is a trainwreck and you can't look away.

I managed to get through the month with only three books hauled. (We won't talk about ARCs but the book fairies were kind.) The Unfortunate Traveller and Under a Pendulum Sun were bought during the habitual father-daughter bookstore date, and both because I never thought I'd see them and figured I might never see them again. The Unfortunate Traveller is essays and travel writing by a guy who co-wrote with Shakespeare and I didn't know it even existed. Under the Pendulum Sun was recced to me somewhere (here? bookish website algorithms?) and since it's essentially a gothic novel with properly weird fairies, it's been on my list.

The third book was a total surprise. Apparently I helped crowdfund it in 2019 and they've only just managed to get it printed and also I said I wanted a physical copy? The things we learn. Anyway, it's essays on aromanticism, agender identity, and asexuality so that tracks.

And I know I said I wasn't going to talk about ARCs but I got some good ones this last month and also in January, and there's a lot of them that are out or soon to be out and I'm having that problem where I want to be reading all of them at once. March is going to be interesting and probably a little panic-inducing.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Eve - Cat Bohannon

A history of human evolution, through the lens of the female body.

8.5/10

warning: touches on sexism, mental illness, suicide, miscarriage, and rape

reading copy

Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse

The fractures following the eclipse have deepened and no one can see a way back to peace that doesn’t involve bloodshed. Out in June

8/10

Indigenous cast, 🏳️‍🌈 POV characters (bisexual, third gender), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (third gender, sapphic), Black-Pueblo author

warning: war, torture, mentions of child abuse

reading copy

What Feasts At Night - T. Kingfisher

Alex Easton has returned to kar hunting lodge to relax. Unfortunately, the locals claim there's a monster on a property.

8/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (third gender), protagonist with PTSD

Library ebook

The Twilight Queen - Jeri Westerson

Will Somers, jester to Henry VIII, is caught up in another mystery, this time of a corpse in Queen Anne’s bedchamber.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (bi), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay)

digital reading copy

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordechai Richler

A delinquent teen grows into a hustler, against the backdrop of mid-century Jewish Montreal.

7/10

largely Jewish cast, Jewish author, 🇨🇦

warning: racial slurs, misogyny

Off my TBR shelves

The Woman With No Name - Audrey Blake

Lonely and craving war work, Yvonne signs up to be the first female spy for the Allies in occupied France. Out in March

7/10

half a 🇨🇦 author

reading copy

The Frame-Up - Gwenda Bond

Ten years ago, Dani turned her art thief mom in to the Feds. Now her mom’s mentor has given Dani an offer she can’t refuse: use her magic to pull an impossible heist, get her life back.

6.5/10

Black secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic)

reading copy

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride

The Black and Jewish residents of a Pennsylvania neighbourhood are (mostly) in it together, not least of when the government decides to take a local Deaf kid to an asylum.

7/10

Jewish and Black cast, major character with chronic illness and a limp, secondary Deaf character, Black author

warning: ableist characters and institutions, racist and anti-Semitic characters, sexual assault and molestation, (largely) reclaimed slurs

library book

The Market of Dreams and Destiny - Trip Galey

Deri may have a chance to buy out his indenture early when he meets a princess looking to sell her destiny. But in the goblin’s Untermarkt, nothing’s ever easy.

6.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (mlm), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (mlm, genderfluid), British Indian secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: child abuse, enslavement

borrowed from work

Picture Books

No Cats in the Library - Lauren Emmons

Cats aren’t allowed in the library but that’s where all the books are!

🏳️‍🌈 author

Read at work

Family is Family - Melissa Marr

Chick gets a note before kindergarten, telling him to have his mom or dad walk him to school. Except that Chick has two moms.

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters and themes

Read at work

Currently reading

Knife Skills for Beginners - Orlando Murrin

Paul Delamare is filling in at a cooking school when the resident celebrity chef has a, erm, "accident."

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), Black British secondary character

Reading copy

True North - Andrew J. Graff

The Brechts move to Wisconsin to restart a rafting business. They hope it’ll save their young family, but it might do the opposite.

library book

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character, occasional secondary Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 9 +2 Yearly total: 20 Queer books: 4 + 2 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 6 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1.5 Classics: 1 Off the TBR shelves: 1 Books hauled: 3 ARCs acquired: 6 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 0

January

[newtsoftheworldunite]

Reading tag game! Tagged by @hoeratius. Tagging @the-lincyclopedia @the-knights-who-say-book @oughtaagh @eponymiad @cartograffiti

Last book I read: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho. It’s a comedic wuxia adventure in a fantasy setting where religious orders have been caught in the crossfire between an authoritarian government and rebel bandits. A nun who loses her job as a waitress joins a group of black market vagabonds attempting to navigate this new reality and everybody gets more than they bargained for.

It’s a whole lot of fun and also gave me so much to think about. I wish I had a hundred more books like this one.

Book I recommend: Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf. @hoeratius recommended the Heaney, as is her right, and that’s the first Beowulf I read but I encountered MDH’s translation in 2021 and was absolutely blown away. I want to do things like this as a translator.

Book I couldn't put down: I first encountered Nate Stevenson’s graphic novel Nimona while it was being serialized online and probably about 80% complete, zoomed through everything that existed so far in a few hours, and then waited eagerly for each additional page. It was absolutely captivating. I’ve had other similar experiences but that one stands out right now in my memory.

Book I've read twice: I’ve been an inveterate rereader over the past four years. Through 2019 probably less than 10% of my reading was rereads and now it’s around 50%. The Queen’s Thief series, The Goblin Emperor and Cemeteries of Amalo books, the Murderbot Diaries, the Wayfarers novels, the Vorkosigan Saga and the Five Gods books, Discworld, and the Young Wizards series have all been ones I’ve revisited regularly. And in 2022 I did a LeGuin readthrough that included revisiting many of her works and experiencing others for the first time. There are so many others as well. Rereading is great!

A book on my TBR: Navdeep Singh Dhillon’s YA romcom Sunny G’s Series of Rash Decisions. I don’t see books with Punjabi protagonists very often so I’m very interested in this one.

A book I have put down: I started An Immense World last year, which is an examination of nonhuman sensory experiences, and I’d really like to get back to it but my brain has been having a harder time with nonfiction over the past couple of years so I haven’t found my way back around yet. I’ve also bounced off Translation State a couple of times now which is frustrating because I’ve enjoyed every other Ann Leckie book I’ve read.

A book on my wish list: I don’t actually have much of a wish list for books because I’m very library-centric. There are definitely books I end up buying and I have a fairly eclectic home collection. But mostly I get books through the public library and the Libby and Hoopla apps with the library’s digital holdings. I do like to buy interesting haggadot and siddurim and have my eye on a new translation of Tehillim, so that’s something.

A favourite book from childhood: There is a picture book with text by Lloyd Alexander and illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats called The King’s Fountain, which I haven’t encountered in decades but remember adoring as a child. It’s a fable about a monarch who plans to divert the city’s water to build a beautiful fountain for himself and a beggar who tries to find some way to convince him to change his mind.

A book I would give a friend: The Thief by @meganwhalenturner. I want everybody to read it.

A book of poetry or lyrics I own: I’m very invested in my local poetry scene which means that unfortunately most of the poetry I own would reveal more about my geographic location than I’m comfortable posting on tumblr. TFW most of the books of poetry you own are written by people you personally know. Highly recommend. I grew up on a lot of Billy Collins and e e cummings and Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou and Edna St Vincent Millay and so many others. But that was my mother’s collection and I unfortunately haven’t filled my shelves at home with poetic classics. As a teenager I also had an absolutely wonderful global anthology of poetry from all over the world and from ancient times until the nineteenth century that I’ve never been able to find again and I don’t remember the title. It was very thick and paperback and had a reddish purple cover and was organized by the language each poem had been translated from.

A non-fiction book I own: One of my favorites is The House Book by Phaidon which is a little reference book with a selection of 500 houses from ancient times to the present as an exploration of how people live and what architectural possibilities we’ve explored.

Currently reading: Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold, Omnitopia Dawn by @dianeduane for the @crossingscon book club, Little Thieves by @what-eats-owls, and Witch King by Martha Wells, not counting rereads.

Planning on reading next: Painted Devils and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. There are a few other titles that might intervene, because my choice of reading material is heavily dependent on mood now. Which is part of what makes rereading so appealing. It’s easier to know what mood something is right for if I’ve already read it!

[mediaevalmusereads]

Making Comics. By Lynda Barry. Drawn and Quarterly, 2019.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: self-help, art guide, pedagogy

Series: N/A

Summary: Hello students, meet Professor Skeletor. Be on time, don’t miss class, and turn off your phones. No time for introductions, we start drawing right away. The goal is more rock, less talk, and we communicate only through images.

For more than five years the cartoonist Lynda Barry has been an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison art department and at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, teaching students from all majors, both graduate and undergraduate, how to make comics, how to be creative, how to not think. There is no academic lecture in this classroom. Doodling is enthusiastically encouraged.

Making Comics is the follow-up to Barry's bestselling Syllabus , and this time she shares all her comics-making exercises. In a new hand-drawn syllabus detailing her creative curriculum, Barry has students drawing themselves as monsters and superheroes, convincing students who think they can’t draw that they can, and, most important, encouraging them to understand that a daily journal can be anything so long as it is hand drawn.

Barry teaches all students and believes everyone and anyone can be creative. At the core of Making Comics is her certainty that creativity is vital to processing the world around us.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: mildly disturbing imagery

This is another one of those books that has been on my TBR list for way too long. I love Lynda Barry's work, and back when I thought I had a shot at being a teacher, I figured this would be a good guide for the classroom.

Turns out this book is a good guide outside of it as well, and it motivated me to take up my pencil and start drawing again.

I love that Barry focuses not on developing artistic skill but in breaking down barriers when it comes to making Comics. Barry doesn't lay out how to draw action poses or how to do speech bubbles effectively; instead, this book is all about finding your own voice and learning to do away with inhibitions. Barry praises the artwork of children and demonstrates the relationship between stories and images, and as someone who struggles with not feeling good enough, I felt like I was invited to throw myself into the process of making comics, skill level be dawned.

I also really loved that this book felt like a composition notebook filled with doodles (which it probably was, at some point). It's not a clean, pristine how-to guide with step-by-step instructions, but it is clear while also not being afraid to be messy, silly, and spontaneous. Most of the images are taken from student drawings, and there's a charm to them that I love more than professional pieces.

And lastly, I love that this book uses basic, inexpensive materials for its exercises. Barry does not insist that students buy special paper or pens - composition notebooks and felt tips will do. This also helps lower the barrier to entry so that readers don't feel like they need fancy equipment in order to draw.

All that being said, I do think this book will be harder to use if you're on your own or don't necessarily have any interest in comics within a classroom setting. Barry's book is designed to outline what her comics courses look like, and though you can probably do most of the exercises at home, a lot of them will need partners or groups of people. So just be aware going in that this isn't necessarily a how to draw manual for the lone self-taught student.

TL;DR: Making Comics is a wonderful overview of how to teach comics in a classroom setting using hands-on drawing exercises. Barry is a master at lowering the barrier to entry and encouraging students to find joy and expression in art, regardless of skill level.

[limecello]

Team TBR Challenge Review/Rant: The Legend of Hao Lan

​(This is the synopsis from Wiki) Betrayed by her family and her first love, Li Haolan finds herself in desperate circumstances. Her father, State Censor Li He, arranges marriage between her and the far-older Yu Ping, who treats his other wives brutally. When she tries to circumvent this fate by begging her first love, Prince Jiao, to marry her, Li Haolan’s stepmother, Gao Min, orders her killed…

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante

goodreads

Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static Saints. Side A is a snapshot of her life from 1993, when Tracy arrives in a labyrinthine city as a fledgling artist and unexpectedly falls in with a clutch of trans women, including the iconoclastic visual artist Sadie Tang.

Side B finds Tracy, now a semi-famous musician, in the same strange city in 2019, healing from a traumatic event through songwriting, queer kinship, and sexual pleasure. While writing her memoir, Tracy perceives how the past reverberates into the present, how a body is a time machine, how there’s power in refusing to dust the past with powdered sugar, and how seedlings begin to slowly grow in empty spaces after things have been broken open.

Motifs recur like musical phrases, and traces of what used to be there peek through, like a palimpsest. Any Other City is a novel about friendship and other forms of love, travelling in a body across decades, and transmuting trauma through art making and queer sex—a love letter to trans femmes and to art itself.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this book yet, but it's on my tbr and I hope to get around to it soon. Update: I've read and loved this book! I love the art and I love the characters and I love trans temporalities! So good!

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.