pickTo absolutely no one's surprise, I loved it! As always this series earns my admiration with the balance of fantastical and down-to-earth, drama and healthy communication, ancient Greek myth and modern urban fantasy, the complex adaptation of mythical figures into people with flaws and traumas, the spectacular art and the healthy dose of humour and warm fuzzies.
1/2
EeeeeeeeEeeeeeeeeeeeEeeeeeeee!!!!🥰
Ahem, pardon the squee. ☺️
pickAlways reassuring when a long running series has a particularly good entry in a later volume. As has happened in the past, this one shone not because it was particularly zany (though the comic quality of this series is to be treasured) but because it managed a multi-episode narrative that was semi-serious in tone, and, as has regularly appeared in the series, commentary on how war affects people as individuals.
1/?
pickWell that was intense! Possibly the most fantasy-horror leaning of the series. I get why in the acknowledgements, the agent suggested not releasing this one in 2020. If I can extrapolate from there, I also get why a particularly dark story would get written in 2020.
Did not see the first reveal coming, or the second for that matter, but the first one gave me a chill and an aha moment, and the second one was just more darkness.
1/2
Reminder for my fellow weekend crafters and makers : “...the creative process does not require a product, and sometimes that process produces a failure.“ It's all part of the process! ❤️
Regular academia is stressful enough, but having demons as your field of study?! 🫣😅
pickEmphasis on the Bedlam. There is much in this book's intent and its writing to recommend it, but that doesn't stop it from feeling messy overall, in a way that I'm fairly certain the publishers wanted to present as charming, but mostly felt distressing. Gow excels at describing larger than life characters he's encountered as well as wildlife and their natural settings. His rueful reports of various wildlife encounters are hilarious, provided 1/?
LOVE his descriptions and similes.
“...a cattle trailer with hiccups.“ 🫣😆
pickThe ART. The WHIMSY! 😍 An exceptional project making an incredibly important statement. A staggering amount of work for a 48 page 'picture' book, but so worth it. Love, love, love. Sincerely hope this becomes a classic for the next generation.
That's right, not drawn, not digitally fashioned, actual artworks made for the book and photographed. 🤯
So grateful for such an important message rendered in such an accessible fashion.
“If people before us could do it, why not me? Why not you?“
so-soMeh. Various teamups, a few quips, various villains I don't know very well or am not very interested in.
Jimmy Olsen as Elastic Man and Batgirl, as well as Green Arrow and Green Lantern were team ups with fun potential, but neither story was long enough.
Here's hoping next installment in this series is as good as previous ones!
Oh, Jimmy, temporary super powers do not make you suave. 🤦🏼♂️😏
Oh my- We do NOT call people impaled by Vlad the Impaler KEBABS!! 🫣🫢😆
Never contemplated whether some sheep could swim, does the wool weigh them down or make them buoyant? 🤔 🐑🏊♂️
Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence. 🎨
pickNot an easy read, but a worthwhile one. Full credit to Gustafson for consistently tackling tough subjects from human and animal welfare perspectives with compassion and vulnerability.
I knew going in that animals in distress, their illness, injury and death might be touched upon, but in the course of her work Gustafson also encounters people in distress, and reckons with how it can be harder to help her own species, 1/?
Coldest take: It's a BAD system.
Cheers to Bubbles! 😺🫧 ❤️ The little guy who got the author away from Robby, the bad guy. 😒
“I would be different.“
No, money can't be directly exchanged for happiness, but anybody who's experienced poverty, food or housing insecurity, can tell you: financial stability, leading to other kinds of stability, makes a world of difference, provides the kind of foundation that allows the freer pursuit of happiness.
This book is going to hurt me. 😿
Just a little trash-talking the green lanterns. 💚
pickThere's no way I'm going to do this book justice in attempting to explain why it should be read.
This isn't about the quality of the writing, though it's staggering to recognize a young woman wrote this and conveyed such a strong feeling of being present at the moments of growing up, those early years of childhood innocence and joy, considering everything that came after, the brief moments of pure storytelling relaying family foibles, 1/?
“Dreams are so important in one's life, yet when followed blindly they can lead to the disintegration of one's soul.“ 💔
“I used to believe there was no worse sin in this country than to be poor.“
pickA book about making things with the latest things I made. ☺️ Having Canadian Thanksgiving before Halloween makes it really easy to go into Xmas mode in November. 🤷🏼♂️Tricky to summarize for the purposes of assessment. The subtitle 'The Education of a Craftsman' helps in that regard, to pair up the strong threads of memoir with the more philosophical and didactic passages that might otherwise fit better on their own in a treatise or manual. 1/?
We love a good simile. 🌬️💨
Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence.
“...craft's materiality imposes cooperation on the sometimes discordant factions of the mind...Thus the holistic quality of craft lies not only in engaging the whole person, but also in harmonizing [their] understanding of [themselves] in the world.“
“... intellect, manual skill...when you add in the creative component of design, craft becomes a fully integrated application of one's capacities....pleasure and empowerment...like an engine firing smoothly on all pistons...“ 😌❤️
panHard to look at this one objectively, the premise holds such potential and I feel thwarted by this particular execution.
Choosing a selection of nine books or authors, coming back to these works over a period of decades, reflecting on what the books had to say to a person at different times in their lives, relating to the authors' lives as well as pivotal moments in your own, is in itself an essay collection with dash of memoir I could get on 1/?
pickThis collection gets all the love for the essays I truly enjoyed, but I will say there's a variance, in the quality of the writing, in how the author's chose to address, or seemingly not quite address the topic suggested by the title of the collection.
I don't know if it's a matter of understanding or not understanding the assignment, I think it's more accurate to say that there are essays 1/?
...a historical war... And I hope it stays there. 😮💨
From “Permission to Scream “ by Rachel Harrison.
so-soI do treasure a cheeky last line.
I'll admit to being a bit surprised that this one felt so much more like a court drama than a classic mystery, it was technically following the beats of looking for clues, discovering evidence, but Wimsey seems to play a smaller role in figuring things out, we get less fun or incisive character moments with him and Bunter, less cozy or outrageous about town moments, and there were large swathes 1/?
Spirit bar in the bathroom, with 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' vibes. The visual! 🤩
Wh- Hey! I want that story, too! 👀
The ultimate physical form of a detective? 🕵🏼♂️🤔
