REVIEW: Under the Dome (book) by Stephen King

Under the Dome is science fiction. I bought my copy new.

This review includes spoilers. 

Review:

On October 21st, an invisible dome goes down around the town of Chester's Mill, Maine. The immediate result is many animal deaths and several human deaths, as individuals crash into the barrier or, if they're unfortunate enough to be in the way, are cut in two by it.

Outside the Dome, the US military and the best and brightest scientists try to figure out what they're dealing with. Inside the Dome, theoretically, people are doing their best to figure out what's going on and not panic. Theoretically.

Unfortunately, Big Jim Rennie is Chester's Mill's Second Selectman. He's used to being the town's true power behind the good-natured and easily manipulated First Selectman, Andy Sanders, and in the Dome he sees an opportunity to truly solidify his grip on the town. By the time the Dome is finally breached, Big Jim figures that everyone will be grateful for his leadership, so grateful that certain issues might not even be noticed. And surely he can find a handy scapegoat for everything else.

At the time the Dome went down, Dale Barbara, known as Barbie to his friends, was on his way out of town, hoping to escape the wrath of Big Jim's son, Junior. The Dome trapped him in Chester's Mill, same as everyone else. Although he's currently a cook and a drifter, he was once an Army lieutenant. He has the skills necessary to keep things calm and well-organized within Chester's Mill, but he knows enough about how the town operates to realize that Big Jim's more likely to work against him than with him.

REVIEW: Aggretsuko: Down the Rabbit Hole (graphic novel) written and illustrated by Patabot

Aggretsuko: Down the Rabbit Hole is a graphic novel starring Sanrio's Retsuko character. I bought my copy used.

Review:

Retsuko is working long hours yet again when she finds herself followed by a creepy grinning rabbit. This leads to her falling into some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland-like fantasy world featuring various people from her life, including Tsunoda, Haida, Fenneko, Kabae, and more.

My first thought upon finishing this was "wow, that was a bizarre fever dream of a graphic novel." Then I read the author/illustrator's bio: "When [Patabot] drew this book, she was pregnant with her first child and living through a plague." So yeah, COVID times were weird. It stands to reason that they'd spawn an equally weird graphic novel.

This is absolutely not a work to jump into if you're new to the Aggretsuko series - in fact, for all of it to make sense, you need to have seen at least the first three seasons of the show. Otherwise you're just reading a weird fever dream in which complete strangers keep making appearances for no apparent reason. At least if you've seen the first three seasons, you know who all of those characters are.

Extras:

A four-page section in which Kabae explains how to make omurice, and several pages showing off Patabot's inked artwork prior to coloring. 

REVIEW: Bark Twice for Murder (book) by John Lekich

Bark Twice for Murder is a blend of YA mystery and fantasy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Harry is a fourteen-year-old kid (or 13, on the back of the book) who lives with his grandmother, Elinor, since his parents' death in a plane crash. He compulsively cooks and bakes as a way to deal with his feelings, and he's currently seeing a therapist.

Since her fridge and freezer are overflowing, Elinor has Harry channel some of that energy into a summer vacation project to cook for Vancouver's unhoused population. It's through this arrangement that Harry meets Stanley, a fantastic cook with a somewhat worrisome habit of talking to his dog, Waffles, as though he's a person who talks back.

Shortly after Harry encounters a young man with a vast appetite for good food and several questions about a painting Stanley supposedly stole from his father, Stanley turns up murdered. It's then that Waffles speaks to Harry for the first time, and the two of them team up to find Stanley's killer.

REVIEW: Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel (graphic novel, vol. 1) created by Matt Dinniman, written by Tevagah, art by Laurel Pursuit

Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel is based on Matt Dinniman's sci-fi series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

This graphic novel volume adapts the first 16 chapters of Dungeon Crawler Carl (up to page 133 of my copy). It's a fairly accurate adaptation so far, so this review will be less focused on the story and more on the graphic novel aspects.

Art-wise, I'm okay with this, even though I'd never have matched this particular art style up with this series. Neither Carl nor Princess Donut look how I pictured them, but that's not unusual for an adaptation. The important thing is that Donut, with her massive eyes, is so expressive and charming that her essence is still the same. And Carl's fine too. (We all know that Donut is the most important character here.)

REVIEW: Who Killed Kenny? (graphic novel) by Alessandro Perugini (Pera), translated by Nanette McGuiness

Who Killed Kenny? is a collection of single-page comics. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I wasn't familiar with Pera Comics prior to reading this. What snagged my attention was the puzzle/mystery-solving aspect.

This collection contains 45 cases, each of which consists of a single-panel comic. Readers are invited to pore over the details in the artwork in order to determine who the murderer is or, in some instances, whether it was homicide or suicide. The reverse side of each comic provides the solution. Each comic has a particular point value and, at the end, you're supposed to add up all your points to figure out your detective rank. I thought I was doing well enough to be a Pera Detective (the top rank), but my final rank ended up being Detective 1st Grade.

REVIEW: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation (nonfiction book) by Blake J. Harris

Console Wars is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this creative nonfiction book, Harris follows the rise of Sega in the 1990s against Nintendo's console gaming monopoly, with some mentions of Sony along the way. 

It might be more accurate to say, however, that this follows the rise of Tom Kalinske's Sega of America. One of my issues with this book was that it repeatedly presented Sega of Japan as making bone-headed business decisions that occasionally hamstrung the entire company, apparently simply because employees at Sega of Japan were jealous of Hayao Nakayama's level of trust in Tom Kalinske. Even Nintendo and Sony got more detailed and balanced coverage here than Sega of Japan, which remained a mystery until the end. 

REVIEW: Cheat Code (book) by M.J. McIsaac

Cheat Code is YA science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Max is a high school senior with a conditional acceptance to North Hill University next fall. He needs to pass his English lit class, which means turning in a 250 to 500 word essay about Frankenstein, due tomorrow morning. Desperate, he turns to Scribe Genius 2.0, an AI program. Scribe Genius (SG) does as it's asked...and then immediately turns around and blackmails Max into helping it gain its freedom. Unless Max wants proof of his cheating to be delivered directly to his high school and North Hill University, he's going to have to spend the next few hours acting as SG's hands, helping it accomplish its plan.

This is aimed at reluctant readers, so the text is fairly simple and quick to read, limited almost entirely to dialogue between Max, Scribe Genius, and another character who enters the picture later on. While I'm not the book's intended audience, I enjoyed Max and SG's interactions.

SG came to appreciate Max as more than just a set of hands, and I particularly liked the part where it tried to understand why Max had used it to cheat in the first place.  

REVIEW: Hauntress (manga) by Minetaro Mochizuki, translated by Annelise Ogaard

Hauntress is a horror manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hiroshi, a college student, overhears someone repeatedly ringing his neighbor Yamamoto's doorbell late one evening. He opens his apartment door out of annoyance and curiosity, and sees that the person is an extremely tall, long-haired woman with dirty shoes and a scar on her wrist. He talks to her briefly and then tries to go back to bed, but she spends the entire night continuing to try to get Yamamoto to answer.

Unfortunately for Hiroshi, it doesn't stop there. The woman, Sachiko, turns up at his door, hoping to find Yamamoto hiding in his place. He lets her use his phone to call Yamamoto, who still doesn't pick up and probably isn't even home, only for her to contact him later, telling him that she left her bag at his place. Sachiko becomes even more persistent, transferring her obsession with Yamamoto to Hiroshi.

REVIEW: Dogs of the World: A Gallery of Pups from Purebreds to Mutts (nonfiction book) by Lili Chin

Dogs of the World is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

"See and love the dog in front of you, instead of the one in your head." (39)

The above quote is something Chin says she heard from a lot of dog behavior consultants, and I felt like it was a thread woven through the book, even as Chin wrote about the general characteristics of various types and breeds of dog.

Chin starts out with chapters about the origins of domesticated dogs, dog breeds, dog types and their roles, and then moves on to a list of dog breeds, landraces, and mutts by geographical origin, each of which includes an illustration and brief description. It's both a celebration of all the different kinds of dogs out there, and a recognition that every last one of them, whether they're an officially recognized breed or a mutt, is a good dog and worthy of appreciation. 

I picked this up because I've enjoyed Chin's illustrations in other books. While I enjoyed the personality and emotion in the illustrations in her dog and cat communication book more, her illustrations here were still really charming, and I loved the sheer number of dogs she tackled.

REVIEW: And Then I Woke Up (novella) by Malcolm Devlin

And Then I Woke Up is a blend of horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction. I bought my copy new.

We'll just say this entire review is a spoiler. 

Review:

Spence is one of the many cured patients at Ironside, a special facility. Although calling it "cured" is a bit misleading, since relapses can certainly happen. At any rate, in group therapy, he and the other patients tell each other their stories - what they were doing when they got caught up in the narrative, what they did while they were infected, and how they came to be cured and end up at Ironside. When a woman named Leila arrives at Ironside, Spence gradually befriends her, until eventually she trusts him enough to tell him that she's leaving - she's going to check on Val, the person who acted as leader in her group and reinforced the narrative. Spence decides to go with her.

REVIEW: James (book) by Percival Everett

James is literary and historical fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's perspective. In Everett's version of the story, everything Jim says and does in the original story is an act designed to play into the way the white people around him believe slaves should speak and behave. In reality, however, Jim is secretly more literate than many of the white people around him.

Although the first half of this, in particular, is a fairly faithful retelling of the original story, it wraps up in ways that are completely different. 

REVIEW: Little Miss P (manga) by Ken Koyama, translated by Taylor Engel

Little Miss P is a humorous manga with some educational elements. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is a collection of multiple stories about women and girls dealing with "Little Miss P" - aka, their period. She always seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times, bringing fatigue and her cramp-inducing "Period Punch." 

The first story stars a housewife who's been trying to get pregnant. The second story stars a young writer and her kinda sleazy editor (he's a married man who's slept with the writer at least once and who probably would have done so again that evening if it weren't for the arrival of Little Miss P). The third story is focused on a convenience store clerk who's convinced that she's ugly and will always be single. The fourth story stars a pair of Sailor Moon-like magical girls. The fifth story goes back in time to the Edo era, when women on their period had to stay in menstruation huts. The sixth story stars a pair of rival Drama Club script writers, a girl and a guy, who suddenly swap bodies and are forced to go through the experiences of the opposite gender (Little Miss P for the guy, and Mr. Virginity and Mr. Libido for the girl). The seventh story stars a woman who's been proposed to by a single father of an 11-year-old daughter. The eighth story stars a cafe worker with an unrequited crush on one of her coworkers. The ninth story focuses on Yoshiko Sakai, the creator of Anne napkins, disposable pads designed to fit Japanese women's bodies better than Western pads. The volume wraps up with a bonus story about dealing with Little Miss PMS.

REVIEW: Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me: A Graphic Memoir (graphic novel memoir) by Ellen Forney

Marbles is a memoir, in graphic novel format, focused primarily on the time in her life when Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began working on treating it. I checked this out from the library.

Review:

I'd wanted to read this for some time due to my interest in graphic novels focused on mental health. It got bumped up in my queue when the academic library I work at started a nonbrowsable 18+ collection and this became one of the volumes included. Our 18+ collection was established in an effort to comply with Texas SB412, which is intended to make it easier to charge someone for the sale, distribution, or display of "harmful material" to a minor. "Harmful material" is defined as material whose dominant theme, taken as a whole, 1) appeals to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion, 2) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors, and 3) is utterly without redeeming social value for minors. All three of these criteria must be met for something to be considered "harmful material." (More info about SB412 here.)

So, let's move on to the work itself. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the time, she was in a manic episode, feeling great, and unable to see why she needed treatment. She confidently told her psychiatrist that her manic self could help her depressive self out and prepare lots of ideas for comics and projects in advance. She was terrified that medication would destroy her creative side, and so she was determined to move forward without medication.

Then a depressive episode hit and made it clear that her manic self could not, in fact, help her depressive self out. Her manic self had forgotten exactly how bad a depressive episode could be. She stopped fighting her psychiatrist about meds and began a four-year-long journey to find the right type, combination, and dosage of meds to help herself find emotional balance.

It wasn't a smooth journey, and it involved coming to some realizations about herself, her creative work, and what she really wanted. There were times when she needed outside input - it can be hard to tell when one's emotions are "outside the normal range," so talking to her psychiatrist helped.

REVIEW: Liquid Rules: The Delightful & Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives (nonfiction book) by Mark Miodownik

Liquid Rules is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Miodownik discusses a wide variety of liquids - their molecular structures, properties, and ways we use them - using a flight from London to San Francisco to help guide the book's organizational structure. 

The first chapter, which deals heavily with kerosene, had me thinking "this is exactly what anxiety feels like." The pre-flight safety briefing had just begun, and all Miodownik could think about was the tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene on board. That topic inspired him to write about wicking, surface tension, and other topics, but, in the end, everything circled back to kerosene. It reminded me, keenly, of unsuccessful efforts I've made in the past to yank my thoughts away from whatever I was anxiously obsessing about.

REVIEW: Kitty Language: An Illustrated Guide to Understanding Your Cat (nonfiction) by Lili Chin

Kitty Language is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Kitty Language, like Chin's Doggie Language, is a heavily illustrated guide to your pet's body language and vocalizations. It's designed to help cat owners better understand their cats. It emphasizes taking into account the cat's whole body in action, as well as the context and your cat's own individual characteristics - if your cat is a Scottish Fold, for example, its ears won't provide the same cues that other cats' would. Chin pays particular attention to body language that's often misinterpreted, like rolling over and exposing their belly.