Books

Book 595: Tableau Numéro 20 – Est Em

I came across this on Grace’s blog, Books Without Any Pictures, and her description of it being out of the normal for manga pulled me in. It didn’t hurt that it was short stories, which I’ll talk more about later. I requested this one because of the Spanish title and story names. The other I requested from the library was Don’t Be Cruel (#1 & #2), just because…

I was surprised the library had it, but then I remembered that it was yaoi and not bara (like Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, which is SO much 100% more sexually explicit. This was the first yaoi I’ve ever read and it was interesting and honestly the part that caught me most off guard was the authors mention of her blood type in the afterward – I was like wait WTF?

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ARC, Books

Book 594: River Queens – Alexander Watson

Watson reached out to me about this way back in July of 2017, well ahead of publication. Unfortunately, due to an impossible work-life balance and other random crap I only just now got around to reading it.*

This memoir tells the tale of Watson and his partner, Dale, as they purchase, restore and then travel the rivers from Texas to Ohio by boat. It touches on family, friendship, urbanization, and a bit of politics.

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Books

Book 591: Fence Vol. 1 (Fence #1) – C.S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad, and Joana LaFuente

This one has been on my radar for a while, but it jumped up after someone posted the NPR article/review of the Fence series, but specifically Fence Vol. 2 on Facebook. I only read the first portion because I didn’t want to ruin anything in this volume or the next, so be warned!

Fence, Vol. 1 is the first four chapters of Pacat’s comic and it’s hard to say how much I liked it. I really enjoyed the illustration style of this and the story kept me engaged, but I’m realizing that I may be more of a graphic novel fan than a comic fan. That this was four issues and felt like it didn’t really get anywhere (even though it totally did) was problematic for my reading.

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Updates

January Recap 2019

This was actually a nice normal month. It didn’t feel like it flew by and it didn’t feel like it dragged either. Maybe this means I’ve started to find equilibrium in life?

We started off the month with a Macaroon class at our local Sur La Table and I was very impressed with our product. I can’t wait to try at home now I know basically everything we could do wrong we did last time we tried.

Books and Bookish Things
I finally finished the tome that is Adam Tooze’s Crashed. I started it back in November and slowly worked my way through the last decade of world politics, financial news, and their interconnectedness. After that I basically moved into the library with the next five books on my list all coming in from being on hold or my grabbing them when I went to pick up the others 😀

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Books

Book 590: #Hockey (Check, Please! #1) – Ngozi Ukazu

(Check out my updated 2020 response.)

My heart is glowing after reading this. Seriously—I will probably read it at least 2-3 more times before I surrender it to the library. There’s just something so sweet and innocent about this and I cannot wait to read volume two: Sticks and Scones.

I found this after Sarah over at Sarah Reads to Much released the list of the Morris Award finalists (which she helped select). The blurb and the cover pulled me in so I added it to my list to check out at some point and then it appeared on someone else’s blog and I was like alright I’m in.

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