The Final Revival of Opal & New – Dawnie Walton
A Stitch in Time – Kelley Armstrong
The Turning Pointe – Vanessa L. Torres
Dept H Omnibus vol 1Â – Matt Kindt
Dept H omnibus 2 – Matt Kindt
Grass – Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
The Waiting – Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
The Orphanage – Serhiy Zhadan
The Old Woman with the Knife – Gu Byeong-mo
The Inheritance Games – Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Donut Fall in Love – Jackie Lau
Ocean Light – Nalini Singh
Are You Listening? – Tillie Walden
Himawari House – Harmony Becker
Infinite Country – Patricia Engel
XOXO – Axie Oh
The Storyteller – Dave Grohl
The Backups – Alex De Campi
The Emissary – Yoko Tawada
The Woman in the Purple Skirt – Natsuko Imamura
Best Wishes – Mike Richardson
Pros and (Comic) Cons – Hope Nicholson (ed)
Suburban Glamour Vol 1 – Jamie McKelvie
If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin
Maid – Stephanie Land
Huda F Are You? – Huda Fahmy
Heart and Seoul – Jen Frederick
84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
Afterparties – Anthony Veasna So
Silk Vol 1: Threats and Menaces – Maurene Goo
Sea of Stars vol 1 – Jason Aaron, Dennis Hopeless
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan – Georges Simenon
This Must Be The Place – Maggie O’Farrell
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Sea of Stars vol 2 – Jason Aaron, Dennis Hopeless
If Cats Disappeared From the World – Genki Kawamura
Fireheart Tiger – Aliette de Bodard
Thud! – Terry Pratchett
In June, I traveled far and wide via my reading!
Some places I explored in books were Tahiti, Alaska, Korea, Germany, India, and some were set right here in California.
Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword – Henry Lien
Moon Rush – Leonard David
The Professor – Charlotte Bronte
Save Me the Plums – Ruth Reichl
Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal
My So-Called Bollywood Life – Nisha Sharma
The totally awesome Hulk. Vol. 1, Cho time  – Greg Pak
Kid Gloves: Nine months of careful chaos – Lucy Knisley
Tiare in bloom – Celestine Vaite
The Siren Depths – Martha Wells
If You Leave Me – Crystal Hana Kim
The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
The Aftermath- Â Rhidian Brook
The Proposal – Jasmine Guillory
Sadie – Courtney Summers
A Fire Story – Brian Fies
(Insert comment about how is it May already? here)
I’m so behind. I haven’t written a proper non-comic review of a book since, oh I don’t know, ages ago. I’m putting this post up just to remind myself of the many books I’ve read and not talked about! Because there were so many good ones, both comics and non-comics!
Hmm that is very telling of what my reading is like these days, that everything is ‘comics’ or ‘non-comics’. Is that good or bad? I can’t tell!
March
Pleasantville – Attica Locke
Four Souls – Louise Erdrich
Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The sculptor – Scott McCloud
April
The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell
The Life of a Banana – P P Wong
No humans involved (Women of the Otherworld #7) – Kelley Armstrong
Lumberjanes #1 to #10 – Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis and Brooke Ellen
For today I am a boy – Kim Fu
The Rice Mother – Rani Manicka
Understanding Comics: the invisible art – Scott McCloud
Moominvalley in November – Tove Jansson
Honeydew: Stories – Edith Pearlman
H is for Hawk – Helen Macdonald
All you need is kill 1 – Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata
All you need is kill 2 – Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata
Conversation #1 – James Kochalka and Craig Thompson
Ms Marvel Vol 1: Best of the best – Brian Reed and Roberto de la Torre
Ms Marvel Vol 2: Civil War – Brian Reed and Roberto de la Torre
Ms Marvel Vol 3: Operation Lightning Storm – Brian Reed and Roberto de la Torre
Ms Marvel Vol 4: Monster Smash – Brian Reed and Aaron Lopresti (Artist)
Ms Marvel Vol 5: Secret Invasion – Brian Reed and Adriana Melo
Ms Marvel Vol 6: Ascension – Brian Reed, Marcos Marz (Contributor), Paulo Siqueira (Artist)
The complete Essex County – Jeff Lemire
Ms Marvel Vol 7: Dark Reign – Brian Reed, Pat Olliffe, Patrick Olliffe (Illustrations)
In the kitchen with Alain Passard: Inside the world (and mind) of a master chef – Christophe Blain and Alain Passard
Love and Capes Vol 1: Do You Want To Know A Secret? Â – Thomas F. Zahler
Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3) – Marissa Meyer
Meanwhile in San Francisco: The city in its own words – Wendy MacNaughton
Someday, Someday, Maybe – Lauren Graham
Sweet moments: two heart warming love stories – David Darck and Lidia Chan
Van Helsing’s Night off – Nicholas Mahler
Girl in Dior – Annie Goetzinger
Love and Capes Vol 2: Going to the Chapel – Thomas F. Zahler
Thanks to Nonfiction November, I read a good number of nonfiction books last month – and perhaps more importantly, wrote about them! The challenge also added to my now-burgeoning nonfiction TBR list! Such good books all around!
Some of my favourite reads this month were The hand that first held mine by Maggie O’Farrell and Gossamer by Lois Lowry (see below for my thoughts).
November was also the month in which I finally finished Drood, a monster of a book at 775 pages, that went on for far too long although it did make me want to read Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, who are the two main characters.
And I finally read my first John Scalzi book, Old Man’s War, a fascinating book set in the future, where, on his 75th birthday, John Perry joins the army. And not just any army, but an interstellar one, fighting aliens for planetary space. How does it all work? Well nobody on Earth really knows. It was a fun ride, but I am pleased to note that the second book, Ghost Brigades, was even better! Yes, I was so into the first book that I immediately borrowed the second one after I was done.
Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Seconds was a fun graphic novel read set in a restaurant and has magic mushrooms. But not those kind of magic mushrooms, these mushrooms will fix mistakes and change the past. Great graphics, loved the colours, it was a fun and sometimes funny (other times dark) read.
Nonfiction
French Kids Eat Everything – Karen Le Billon
Men we reaped: a memoir – Jesmyn Ward
A crack in the edge of the world: America and the great California earthquake of 1906 – Simon Winchester
L.A. Son: My life, my city, my food – Roy Choi
Can’t We Talk about something more pleasant? – Roz Chast
Worn stories – Emily Spivak
A visit to Don Otavio Sybille Bedford
Cleopatra: A life – Stacy Schiff
Fiction
The hand that first held mine – Maggie O’Farrell
Gossamer – Lois Lowry
Drood – Dan Simmons
The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) – Maggie Stiefvater
Anatomy of a misfit – Andrea Portes
I married you for happiness – Lily Tuck
Old man’s war – John Scalzi
The Ghost Brigades – John Scalzi
War Horse – Michael Morpurgo
Life after life – Jill McCorkle
Graphic novels
The guild – Felicia Day; Jim Rugg
In Real Life – Cory Doctorow, Jen Wang
Seconds – Bryan Lee O’Malley
So pretty much every month I do the “what? This month is over already?” thing, and it’s getting old I know! But seriously, NOVEMBER??? How is it possible that in just a couple of months we will say goodbye to 2014 and hello to a brand new year? And not to mention having to get through Christmas and all that!
But yes, I am getting way ahead of myself. I have to get through November first!
And October? Well, October was a hard month to beat! Both in terms of reading and everyday things.
Because October is when Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-thon happens! And I managed to get through one graphic novel (Strangers in Paradise), one YA (Anna and the French Kiss), one SF novelette (The Lady Astronaut of Mars) and about a 10% chunk of an exciting new novel (The Paying Guests).
In October I ventured through the US and Japan with Ruth Ozeki, toured China with Xinran, headed to Paris and England, and even stopped over in Singapore for a while. Books even took me to outer space, to Mars. And to wonderfully made up worlds in Octavia Butler’s short stories and Patrick Rothfuss’ underground world. Then Strangers in Paradise made me laugh and cry (and cry). It surprised me with its relationships and its characters and its humanity. And while some parts did go on and on a bit, it was a sweet, heartfelt, wild read.
But November! It brings with it a month of nonfiction! And I really ought to read more nonfiction.
Here’s what I read:
Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials – Ovidia Yu
Bloodchild and other stories – Octavia Butler
My year of meats – Ruth Ozeki
China Witness – Xinran
Stealing Buddha’s Dinner – Bich Minh Nguyen
Evil under the Sun (Hercule Poirot #23) – Agatha Christie
Broken (Women of the otherworld #6) – Kelley Armstrong
Anna and the French Kiss – Stephanie Perkins
The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters
The Lady Astronaut of Mars – Mary Robinette Kowal
The Iron Ring – Lloyd Alexander
Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
The Dead in their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce #6) – Alan Bradley
The slow regard of silent things – Patrick Rothfuss
Strangers in Paradise #1 to #6 – Terry Moore
Real Life Reading 