Books
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WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS! Otsuichi’s short story collection, Zoo, starts from the perspective of a killer and ends with the perspective of a survivor. Many of the English language Goodreads reviews of Zoo mention the effectiveness of Otsuichi’s bare-bones, minimalistic writing style and his knack of turning ordinary life matters like divorce and sibling rivalry into…
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Jughead is best when his story stops being THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY and attempts to be Degrassi High. I preferred Volume 2 of Chip Zdarsky’s Jughead over Volume 1. It felt a little deeper than the first. More thoughtful. Volume 1 felt unimaginative despite the Jughead’s fanciful daydreams. It was formulaic and overly…
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We Are Robin…, Volume 2: Jokers by Lee Bermejo WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! It’s the last story in WE ARE ROBIN VOLUME 2: JOKERS, “The Hero Business,” that I enjoyed the most. The inclusion of “Jokers” made the volume’s title provocative but the story itself was a let down — No new addition or twist to…
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Gotham Academy, Vol. 2: Calamity by Becky Cloonan WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! Waiting for the next volume of your favorite comic book series is like waiting for the next season of your favorite TV show to stream on Netflix. Sometimes it takes too long, so you forget certain details that help the story in the new…
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The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS! I think the problem is I read the prequel immediately after reading the first book, Who Fears Death? While it is an interesting book that could have potentially explored the ethics of scientific/medical research and discovery, it doesn’t. The question posed but never discussed. The…
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Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor This is the third Nnedi Okorafor book I’ve read. The second didn’t really count because it was a prequel to the first. I kept thinking that this is what War of the Worlds would look like if it happened in modern Nigeria instead of 1950’s SoCal. Nnedi constantly reminds you that…
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Aleksandar Hemon’s book of essays, The Book of My Lives reminded me that when I moved back home after failing to make it on my own after college, Yugoslavians were leaving their homes to escape what The Atlantic called “horrific acts of ethnic cleansing” in a “long, complex, and ugly” war. Hemon’s book documents his search for a new…
Vincent Young 