REVIEW: Extinct & Endangered: Insects in Peril (nonfiction book) photographs by Levon Biss

Extinct & Endangered is nonfiction, primarily a photo book. I bought my copy used.

Review:

This collection features photographs of 40 extinct or endangered insect species, using specimens from the American Museum of Natural History. Some only include one full-body photograph, while others include extreme close-ups of particular features.

Each insect includes a couple paragraphs of text to provide some context - whether the insects are extinct or endangered, where they can be found, what we know about why they're extinct or endangered, etc.

I got this for the photographs, and the photographs delivered. Literally the only complaint I could think of was that it would have been nice for the specimens to have included scale rulers. It would have interrupted the lovely black backgrounds, though, so I would also have accepted an approximate size mentioned in the accompanying text. Some specimens included this, but many didn't.

I need to check out Levon Biss's other photograph collections at some point. 

REVIEW: Komi Can't Communicate: Making Friends and Not Scaring People (nonfiction book) by Natalie Schriefer, original manga by Tomohito Oda

Making Friends and Not Scaring People is nonfiction that illustrates concepts using pages and panels from the manga Komi Can't Communicate. I bought my copy new.

Review:

If you enjoy the manga Komi Can't Communicate and, like Komi, would like to make friends but aren't really sure how to go about it, then this book is for you.

I've seen the anime and read, I think, the first couple volumes of the manga. This book uses pages and panels from the manga to illustrate concepts and what to do (or not do) in particular situations. Sometimes there was enough context for the references to make sense, even though I didn't get far into the manga, and sometimes I just accepted that certain references were weird little mysteries. (When the weird little mysteries involved Yamai, I decided I was probably happier not knowing more.)

The tone of the text was very reassuring, and the advice was solid, if not particularly groundbreaking. Sometimes when you're anxious about doing something, it's helpful to have the steps you can take laid out in an easy to follow way. This book definitely did that. 

REVIEW: Everything You Need to Ace Biology in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete High School Study Guide (nonfiction book) by Matthew Brown

Everything You Need to Ace Biology in One Big Fat Notebook is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I'll start by saying that I am definitely not a high school student. I picked this up because I was curious about the format - if I enjoyed it, I figured I might try tackling one of the volumes on a subject I was shakier on. 

This is divided into 12 units ("Basics of Biology," "The Chemistry of Life," "Cell Theory," "Bacteria, Viruses, Prions, and Viroids," "Protists," "Fungi," "Plants," "Animals," "The Human Body," "Genetics," "Life on Earth," and "Ecosystems and Habitats"). The text is set up to look like notes someone took on lined paper, with occasional highlighted bits, drawings in the margins, underlined portions, etc. Each chapter ends with review questions and answers.

My overall opinion of this is: meh. My eyes glazed over at about the same points where I generally had trouble in school (I'm looking at you, Unit 2). My favorite chapters were probably the ones on algae, molds, and fungi, because they covered info I don't recall learning before. That said, there are probably better, more memorable books out there on those topics for someone like myself, who is reading for enjoyment rather than to study for a test.

Speaking of the study guide aspects: I doubt just reading this book would ever have helped me much when I was a student, even if I forced myself to do the review questions. I did best with notes I actually took myself. This book also missed a bunch of opportunities to explicitly connect concepts mentioned across multiple chapters (not even a brief "remember, [Topic] was discussed in more detail back in Chapter X" - yes, there's an index, but in-text recognition of the relatedness of subjects would have been nice). 

Assuming the other volumes are similar to this one, I don't think I'll be seeking out the rest. 

REVIEW: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Comic Book (graphic novel) stories and art by various

Dream Daddy is a graphic novel collection of stories featuring the characters from the Dream Daddy dating simulator game. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

I'll start by saying that, although I tried Dream Daddy, I never got very far into it. The idea of it was fun, but I loathed the character creation process at the start, wasn't a fan of the mini games, and eventually just sort of lost interest in the whole thing. According to my notes, I started off by trying to romance Mat, the coffee shop owner, but my memories are so fuzzy that I suspect I never even finished that one route.

All of which is to say, you don't need to have played the game much in order to enjoy this. I generally had fun while reading this. It read like the aspects of the game I enjoyed, minus the stuff I didn't.

Anyway, on to the individual stories.

REVIEW: Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees (nonfiction book) by Thor Hanson

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review: 

Hanson starts this book off with an author's note that basically says "while honeybees are mentioned here, they were not my focus." Since honeybees are so often the first kind of bee people think about when they think about bees, I appreciated Hanson's broader look.

Hanson starts by looking at what we know about how bees evolved and what the earliest bees were like. Then he looks at bees and their relationship with flowers, bees and their relationship with us, and bee conservation efforts. Throughout all that, there are mentions of Hanson and his son watching and trying to attract local bees near their home, Hanson taking a course on catching, pinning, and identifying various bee species, and more.

As with Hanson's book on feathers, I occasionally found myself wishing this book included color photos. The lack of color photos wasn't a deal-breaker though - this was still an excellent read. I particularly enjoyed learning more about the ways in which bees are used in agriculture, and about efforts to encourage the return of native bees and hopefully reduce agriculture's reliance on having to bring in rented hives (which then have to deal with the stress of being transported and the nutritional issues brought about by having access to limited types of plants). 

REVIEW: Birds of the Photo Ark (nonfiction book) text by Noah Strycker, photographs by Joel Sartore

Birds of the Photo Ark is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Text-wise, there's not much here. This is primarily a photo book, so it's a quick read.

The photographs were gorgeous. Many of them were of the entire bird, but several were portraits or close-ups of particular features, such as feet or particularly striking feathers. Photographs included captions that identified the species depicted, their IUCN status, and, since these were all captive birds, pages at the end mentioned where the particular birds were located. 

One thing I wished the captions had included was information, when possible, about the sex of the birds in the photographs. The only captions that included this information were the ones in the "Gender" section at the beginning of the "Next Generation" chapter.

There's a short section at the end in which Joel Sartore, the photographer, explained the process of photographing the birds. I'm always a fan of "process" sections in books like these, even if they're brief.

REVIEW: Bible Adventures (nonfiction book) by Gabe Durham

Bible Adventures is Boss Fight Books' seventh book, each of which focuses on a particular video game. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book wasn't initially on my personal list of Boss Fight Books to read - I was more focused on games I'd played or games that interested me but that I knew I wasn't going to play. However, at some point while reading reviews, I came across some positive mentions of this book and decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did.

Durham looks at Color Dreams (a game development company), Wisdom Tree (Color Dreams' Christian games offshoot), the various people involved, and the games they made. I'd never heard of any of these companies or games, but it was interesting to read about how aspects of early Nintendo history I'd read about in other books resulted in the creation of Color Dreams, which developed and published unlicensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although most of the people involved in Color Dreams were either atheists or agnostics, Wisdom Tree was born from business savvy - Christian games were an untapped market with zero competition, and Christian stores turned out to be the perfect place to sell unlicensed Nintendo games. Although the developers themselves mostly weren't Christians, the company hired salespeople who were.

REVIEW: We Love to Entertain (book) by Sarah Strohmeyer

We Love to Entertain may look like a domestic thriller, but it'd probably be more accurate to call it suspense fiction. At times, it also almost feels like a cozy mystery. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is told from a couple different POVs, with some blog posts sprinkled throughout. The blog posts are by the couple at the center of this book, while the POVs are Erika and her mother, Kim. 

Holly and Robert are contestants on a reality show competition about house flipping. While working on their competition entry, an eco-conscious home makeover in a small Vermont town, they fell in love and are planning on getting married close to the end of the competition. It's the kind of stuff publicity dreams are made of. Erika is their assistant, a local pariah who desperately wants to make up for it by doing well in this job. Erika's intense loyalty to Holly and Robert is helped along by her unrequited (?) crush on Robert. It gives her a little thrill, knowing that Robert asks her help for things he doesn't always tell Holly about.

Something's had Robert on edge for a while, but the wedding goes without a hitch. That evening, though, Robert shows up at Erika's place out of the blue, asking to temporarily trade his Tesla for her much cheaper car, so that he and Holly can take a sudden honeymoon trip. Erika isn't great at saying no to Robert, something she soon has reason to regret, as Robert and Holly become suddenly unreachable during the important last days of the competition.

Meanwhile, Kim, Erika's mother and the town clerk, is experiencing some guilt over the way Holly and Robert got the house in the first place, and she's determined to set things right, even it means she's forced to resign. 

REVIEW: Banned Book (picture book) by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Gary Kelley

Banned Book could technically be considered a dystopian fiction picture book, since the censorship group is fictional and the situation doesn't take place anywhere in particular. I bought it new.

Review:

A book about book banning, filled with censorship bars. The number of censorship bars increases until, gradually, even the reasons for censorship are censored.

As a children's book, I'm not sure how well this would work, and I expect it would be difficult to figure out how to read it aloud. Plus, there'd be the issue of explaining it if there wasn't some sort of active censorship case going on at the child's school.

However, as an art piece about censorship, I thought this was effective. I bought it new, and it arrived wrapped in plastic, with a black paper strip over the title. Combine that with the actual content of the book, and the whole thing was pretty on point.

REVIEW: Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously (graphic novel) by Adam Ellis

Super Chill is a collection of humorous comics. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This reminded me of Sarah Andersen's Adulthood is a Myth stuff - a lot of the same worries/anxieties. 

The laugh that took me most by surprise was the "Am I happy now?" comic in which Ellis burst into flames in the sun. 

There was one comic that was designed to be more autobiographical than funny, a bit about Ellis leaving his job at Buzzfeed.

Overall, this was enjoyable. 

REVIEW: Oops! Rabbit (picture book) by Jo Ham

Oops! Rabbit is a humorous children's picture book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Most of this book is composed of a set of "Rabbit on" pages, followed by "Oops!" pages in which the scenario goes wrong, and then a set of "Rabbit off" pages (the disaster's aftermath).

This was a very simple read, with only one surprise moment at the end. I did really like the design aspect, with the clean, sharp silhouette artwork and occasional use of pink - the art was a large part of what drew me to this.

REVIEW: Creepy Crayon! (picture book) words by Aaron Reynolds, pictures by Peter Brown

Creepy Crayon! is a children's horror comedy picture book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Jasper is bad at math and spelling, and only good at art. Then he finds a perfect and pointy purple crayon, and suddenly he's getting straight A's in everything! It's great. Until the crayon even tries to interfere with his artwork.

I loved the over-the-top ominousness of the grayscale artwork, in which the only color was the purple used for the crayon-created lines. 

This was set up a lot like a horror movie, complete with the main character having a nightmare, waking up, and discovering that the crayon has made it real somehow.

Even as an adult, I thought this was fun and amusingly dramatic. 

REVIEW: Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug (picture book) by Jonathan Stutzman, illustrated by Jay Fleck

Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug is a children's picture book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Tiny's friend Pointy feels sad, so Tiny wants to figure out how to hug his friend despite having such tiny arms. He goes to several family members for advice and even has a training montage.

I was drawn to this one by Tiny's incredibly cute design. Pointy (a stegosaurus) was also pretty cute.

I loved the dry humor in this. At one point, Tiny's mother tells him some uplifting stuff, and his response is hilariously practical: "I cannot hug with my heart."

If there was one thing that vaguely bugged me about this, it was that Tiny never once asked Pointy what was wrong. Still, the story was amusing, and Tiny's efforts were at least appreciated by his friend. 

REVIEW: Let Me In Your Window: Horror Stories (graphic novel) by Adam Ellis

Let Me In Your Window is a collection of short horror comics. I bought my volume new.

Review:

This is a collection of ten short horror comics. As I usually do with anthologies, I'll tackle each story separately.

"Little Kingdom"

There's a little island some people moved to in order to start a sort of commune, except that when they had children, something was wrong with them. The kids are gray and strange and never develop speech. The POV character makes a documentary about it, and it's an instant hit. Unable to make anything that popular again, the documentary filmmaker decides to do a sequel. Unfortunately, the situation has changed since the first documentary was made, and things rapidly go wrong.

REVIEW: Dewdrop (graphic novel) by K. O'Neill

Dewdrop is either a fantasy graphic novel or a fantasy children's picture book (or both?). I bought my copy new.

Review:

Everyone is preparing for the upcoming Sports Fair...and starting to feel a little discouraged. Dewdrop the axolotl uses his cheerleading skills to boost everyone's mood and get them to focus on relaxing and just doing the best they personally can.

Man, I'm such a cynical adult. This was maybe a bit too chirpy and simple for me. That said, I'm not the target audience. I suspect that children would probably enjoy Dewdrop's energy and positive approach to life. Cynical old me did think that the character designs were super cute. 

The volume ends with a nice environmental message and some facts about the four different animals (axolotl, yellow-bellied slider, newt, and minnow) featured throughout the story.