Book Reviews

Summary: A semi-autobiographical tale of a white and black family that decide to intentionally become friends in the context of 1967 Houston protests.

I picked The Silence of our Friends up because it was Nate Powell’s art. Nate Powell is the artist on the March trilogy. Silence of Our Friends was published two years before the first book of the March Trilogy.

This is a smaller and more intimate graphic novel in many ways. Instead of intentionally being a biography of the Civil Rights movement as a whole, Silence of Our Friends attempts to tells the story of two men, and their families, during a relatively small period in one city.

It is in many ways hard to describe any significant incident in the Civil Rights era as small. Lives were changed, people were killed. But unless you are a pretty close student of the Civil Rights era, this protest, the police response, the deaths associated with it were not a “first” or “greatest” or particular incident in most respects. In some ways, I think that makes the story more important because it was more mundane. It is also an interesting story because like the end of the third book of the March trilogy, it recounts the shift of the Civil Rights era into the Black Power movement.

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Summary: Vision creates a family, moves to the suburbs and eventually faces reality.

Comics, and the broader Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, are often best when they present a story that is more than just the surface action. The top level story can be enjoyed but there is a satire element that is underneath for those that are able to understand. The X-Men have frequently have underlying themes of race and social exclusion. It is almost cliché at this point for superhero stories to really be about what it means to want to fit in.

Vision is not a character I am familiar with. I never got around to seeing Age of Ultron, so I did not see his movie introduction. And I have not previous read any of his comics. But I poked around a little bit for enough background to understand. Vision (as I understand it) was created by Ultron to be a synthetic human. Vision turned on his creator and jointed the Avengers. But like many synthetic creatures in sci fi history, we as human assume that the perfect physical being really wants to be like us, a limited human.

In Little Worse Than a Man, Vision has created a family. Vision, and the members of his family are synthetic humans, but required the brainwaves of a particular human to give them personality and emotion. Vision’s brainwaves were taken by Ultron from a human (and that human’s brother became The Grim Reaper in order to kill off Vision to avenge his brother.) Where the brainwaves for Virginia (wife), Viv (daughter) and Vin (son) came from is not revealed in this book.

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Summary: First in a trilogy of autobiographical graphic novels on Civil Rights leader John Lewis.

I have mentioned before that I subscribe to Christ and Pop Culture Magazine. The primary illustrator there (he also works with Christianity Today and other organizations) has an comic book review site. Because of his advocacy for comics and graphics novels I have picked up several well reviewed graphic novels. This week will be graphic novel week at Bookwi.se.

March has been on my radar for a while, but I picked it up on Friday because it was (and is as of posting) for $4 on Kindle. I read it in a sitting and immediately purchased the whole trilogy on paper to give to a friend.

John Lewis was a Civil Rights leader, chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Council, one of the original Freedom Riders, one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington and more. In 1986 he was elected to Congress and continues to serve as Georgia 5th Congressional District Representative.

March book one tells the early history of John Lewis growing up, going to college, meeting Martin Luther King Jr and the Nashville Lunch counter sit in. I am a fan of Nate Powell‘s art (most of the graphic novels I read this week were by Nate Powell). But some of the lettering gets a little bit small in the paperback version (or it needs to be enlarged to read on kindle.) With that one minor complaint, this is an excellent book and I will soon finish reading the next two books in the trilogy.

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I am reposting this 2009 review because The Good Book is on sale for $.99 for the Kindle Edition and audiobook is $3.99 with purchase of the Kindle Edition.

Summary: A non-practicing Jew reads the Old Testament and blogs his way through it.

The Good Book was interesting, maybe the last chapter the most interesting of all. The author is Jewish, although not really practicing. So when he starts reading the Hebrew Bible (or the Christian Old Testament) it is not in the same way that many others would read it.

Plotz is a friend of the text, he doesn’t deconstruct it or tear it apart. Instead he reads it, mostly as a person with very little history with the text. He is amazed, delighted and horrified by it.

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Summary: Thor has lost his hammer again and Magnus Chase and his friends have to find it before the giants know it is gone and decide to invade.

Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson books exploded onto the middle grade book scene in 2005. And he has been churning out books since then. By my count, The Hammer of Thor is his 22nd novel since 2005 (he had 7 novels before that). As I said last year in my review of the first book in this series, I loved the initial Percy Jackson series. The follow up heroes of Olympus series declined as it went on. I did not like the first of the Kane Chronicle and did not read further. But with Magnus Chase was back to good again.

The Hammer of Thor follows soon after the end of the first book. Magnus Chase died early in the first book. He is now in Valhalla, a Norse afterlife for heroes that die saving others. He can come and go from there as he wants to. Being the son of Frey, a Norse god of healing, Magnus has some healing powers (similar to the way that Percy Jackson as a son of Neptune has powers over water).

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Summary: Ms Marvel is actually starting to grow into her role as a super hero. But fame doesn’t give her more time or energy to devote to what is important in life.

I am having problems finding time to write reviews, let alone actually read the books. I picked up the latest Ms Marvel collection, Super Famous, because the whole series is on sale for $3.99 each right now. Saturday night while I waiting to make sure my son was going to fall asleep before rejoining the rest of my family at my mother in law’s cabin I quickly read through the 100 pages of comics that are in the collection.

I like comics, but as much as I find the art interesting and love seeing the way that the comic method allows for a different type of story telling than just straight text, I still mostly read comics for the story.

In Super Famous, Ms Marvel is now a part of the Avengers (her work with them is mostly off screen). She is still in high school. She still has over protective parents (she is a second generation Pakistani Muslim immigrant, which is such an important thread to what makes this series so good.) She still is trying to figure out how to deal with the ramifications of her power and the weight of responsibility that comes with them.

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Summary: Stepping out of retirement, former Chief Inspector Gamache, has agreed to take over Surete (Quebec police) academy. 

A Great Reckoning is not a novel that you want to pickup if you are new to the series.  You could read it and I think enjoy it. But there is a lot of assumed back story. Gamache and his wife are retired in the small village of Three Pines. But Gamache still feels to pull to continue to root out the corruption inside the police force from the previous several books.

I really like this series and this is one of the best books in the series. It is not without its faults. The corruption angle I think has been problematic from the start. It is too big and too small at the same time. There is a timeline issue with one of the big reveals that just doesn’t make sense to me (the age of one of the characters and the secret relationship to Gamache’s history doesn’t really work.) But if you set aside the questionable reality of the police corruption and personal vendetta angles and just read them as a story, it rolls out nicely.

Gamache feels like the only way to solve the problem of the academy is to fire most of the bad teachers, but keep the one he thinks is the ringleader and then bring back the privately disgraced, but not incarcerated, former head of the Surete as one of the staff. He hopes he can use them to root one another’s corruption while keeping them under control.

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Summary: A groups of alcoholics is the subject of a reality TV show.

Eve Tushnet is a writer that I have been wanting to read more from. I have read a number of blog posts and articles by her. In addition to this novel, she has a memoir that I have been wanting to read for a while. Several authors that I ‘know’ have recommended the novel. And because it was recommended as funny, and only $3.99, I picked it up.

I am not sure that funny is how I would describe it. Alcoholism and recovery are not inherently funny subjects, at least to me. I did a college internship with a drug and alcohol rehab program (primarily focused on recently homeless.) While I only worked as a counselor for a few months with the internship, I volunteered there for years and lived on site in exchange for working as night security for a couple years before I was married in grad school.

Amends presents a fairly realistic view of addiction and recovery. The reality TV program is being put together by an addict herself. The ‘talent’ is chosen for diversity and interest. So there is a gay man, a teen hockey star, a homeless Christian African immigrant, well known playwright, a woman who identifies as a wolf, etc.

These are all brilliant characters. Their conversations are occasionally over the head of the TV audience. The reality TV angle, similar to Christopher Beha’s Arts and Entertainment and Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, both irritated me and provided some needed context to the novel. I really do not like most reality tv. The exploitive nature of it, especially with something like addiction, is acknowledged by the book but also still wrapped up in the novel.

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