Life on Toast #118

New Year's post of last year's books

Books, long articles/essays and comics I read during 2018. Here's to another good year of words!

1. Whiteout compendium - Greg Rucka & Steve Lieber. The first half had more appeal than the second.

2. No Time to Spare - Ursula K. LeGuin. A lovely little book of essays with some great one-liners.

3. We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Required reading for humans of all stripes.

4. Unexplained - Renee Regent. College kids researching unexplained phenomena. Meh.

5. Zoogeomorphology - David Butler. Studies on how animals change the shape of the earth. Woo-hoo!

6. From Here To Eternity - Caitlin Doughty. Not quite anthropological, not quite tourism. A cool look at death.

7. Other Minds - Peter Godfrey-Smith. A look at the evolutionary development of consciousness. Plus, cephalopods!

8 The Tick #2, 3 - Cullen Bunn & Jimmy Z. more oddly translated french.

9. God Complex Dogma #3 - Paul Jenkins & Henry Prasetya. Pretty sure now I don’t like the protagonist.

10. Sherlock Frankenstein and the Legion of Evil #3, 4 - Jeff Lemire & David Rubin.

2017 Book list

I read. A lot. This year I hit a personal goal of an average of four books a week. I had wanted to draw way more book reviews. However, the one above is the only one I finished. Ah well, tomorrow is another year.

1. Forest of Memory - Mary Robinette Kowal. A great novella from one of my penpals.
2. Once Broken Faith - Seannan McGuire. 10th in a great series.
3. The Spaceship Next Door - Gene Doucette.
4. True Story #3 Muzzled - Gabriela Denise Frank. Chilling.
5. The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood. Creepy dystopia goes wrong.
6. Tides, Surges and Mean Sea-Level - David Pugh. Yay, tidal research!
7. The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida. Excellent book written by an autistic individual explaining life from inside their head. Highly recommend.

Annual book post

I like to read. A lot. This year's list is different in a couple of ways. First, inspired by my good friend, Elaine, this year there is a short description of each one to help you decide if you want to read it as well. This means that the list is longer than usual - or maybe it just seems so. Secondly, I have introduced illustrated book reviews. There are less of these than I had hoped, but only because I seriously injured my drawing arm and lost 3-4 months of potential productivity. Anywho, the whole series of illustrated book reviews can be found here. I hope to have more in 2017. Enjoy!

1. Bats of the Republic - Zachary Thomas Dodson. An illuminated novel, the drawings being one of the main reasons I bought the book. Odd, surreal. Honesty, I thought there would be more about bats in it.
2. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B - Teresa Toten. Good at capturing confusing emotions and working some of them out. Two pages were ripped from the volume I read. The book made sense anyway.
3. The Golden Age of Death - Amber Benson. #5 in a series
4. The Edge of Lost - Kristina McMorris. Through loss of family, immigrating, assimilating and adventure, an Irish boy is constantly reinventing himself. The tie-in to SF Bay is what made me pick it up.

The books of 2015

As part of my traditional new year, I post all of the books, comics and magazines I read last year. I would definitely recommend #13, & #60. My daughter introduced me to #124, which was better than I expected. 

What did you read?

1. Creative Nonfiction #54; 55; 56; 57
2. Poets & Writers vol. 43 no.1; no.2, no. 3
3. Drawn By Instinct - Tiffany Bozic
4. Shimmer #23; 24
5. Egg & Spoon - Gregory Maguire
6. Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime - Ellen Prager
7. The Woman Who Died a Lot - Jasper Fforde

The 2014 book list

For those of you interested, here is a list of all the books, magazines and comics I spent time with in 2014.  I highly recommend #8, 19 (especially if you've read the first two), 48, and 95. Feel free to ask me about any of the others. Keep reading!

1. The Maltese Falcon - Dashiel Hammet
2. The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling
3. The Testament of Jessie Lamb - Jane Rogers
4. The Inventor and the Tycoon - Edward Ball