2015 in Books: The Post That Everyone Does and I'm Going to Do Too, So There

So, it's that whole end-of-the-year thing, where people stand in ridiculous crowds in New York City to watch a spangly fire hazard go down a pole, or drink way too much champagne, or just plain not care that it's New Year's Anything.  In booklandia and libraryland, it also means that it is round up time.  This is as close as I'll ever get to being an actual cowgirl.

Without further ado, my top twelve books of 2015 in absolutely no order whatsoever, because that is, frankly, impossible:

I Crawl Though It by A.S. King.  So achingly brilliant that I wanted to cry.  It's easier to swallow the truth when it's wearing surrealist garments.  Or chocolate.  But a chocolate book would be a disaster.

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch by Daniel Kraus.  An epic masterpiece, and I don't say that very often.  Ever?

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson.  I'M A SHAAARK!  I need Nimona merch stat, please and thank you.

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy.  Not only a smart, funny, and exceedingly well-written book, but a book that we, as a society, desperately needed.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.  Mind=blown.  This is multimedia storytelling at its finest, and some of the best sci-fi I've ever read.  Yes, I'm saying straight up sci-fi, no "YA" qualifier in there at all.

MARTians by Blythe Woolston.  One jigger of post-apocalyptic decay, one jigger of satire at consumerism's expense, 3 dashes of despair, served neat in a scavenged red Solo cup.  Brilliant.

Believarexic by J.J. Johnson.  This one joins Wintergirls to make the two YA books I would recommend about eating disorders, because they are honest, real, and unflinchingly honest.

Rat Queens Vol 1 & 2 by Kurtis Wiebe.  All hail our heavy-drinking, smack-talking, sexytimes-having fantasy girl gang!

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow.  This should be the new standard in YA post-apocalyptic sci-fi.  Heck, the new standard for YA, period.

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby.  Magical realism in the middle of nowhere, Illinois.  If this doesn't win an award, I don't know what I'll do with myself.

All the Rage by Courtney Summers.  #tothegirls: you are worth our respect, our time, and our love.  #tothegirls: you weren't "asking for it."  #tothegirls: this is your book.

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn.  I don't know if I'd want to be in Ms. Kuehn's headspace, since it churns out consistently dark, twisted, and fearless YA, but it's also a national treasure.

That's it for 2015.  Thank goodness  Catch you on the flip side.

My Withered Heart

Wither is exactly the kind of book I would never imagine myself enjoying.  But Lauren DeStefano wove some sort of dark charm around my mind and my heart, and I swallowed this hook, line, and sinker.  This may also have something to do with her witty Tweets and adorable cats, but I doubt the cats had anything major to do with this book.

What I'm Reading Wednesday

Holy bagumba, you guys!  This is the last #WIRW for 2015!  Maybe next year I'll get around to making it a pretty banner or moving to Wordpress or all those tech things I tell myself I'll do and then go ehhhhhhh, I'd rather read this book instead.  Goals, people.

One goal for 2016 is to finish Les Misérables.  I finally made it through the Battle of Waterloo, which I swear is 10% of the whole stinking book.  It's excessively detailed, and expects you to know/care about all of the French generals AND all the Allied generals and care about where they were on the map at what time of day, etc.  There will be a further rant about this in my full review of the book, but it really takes away from Hugo's excellent writing about his characters.  I'm reading the French version, which slows me down a bit.

Other things I'm reading:

Cress by Marissa Meyer.  I've been sort-of reading this for a week, in that I read the first page and was like, "COOL" and then I had other things I needed to do for work, TSU, etc.  I read more during a weird insomnia attack last night and feel right back into that world I love.  I feel like I should re-read the first two, though.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.  I'm only four chapters in, but this is brilliant.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness.  This is definitely going to be a a love-it-or-hate-it book for most people.  Personally, I think it's hilarious and I can't wait to see where he takes it.

Animal Man Vol. 3: Rotworld--The Red Kingdom

I enjoyed the first two volumes of Animal Man.  Much as in Dial M, DC is trying to revive a character who, by his very nature, is patently ridiculous.  Lemire is good at writing broody, family tension, and Animal Man plays on that a lot--being married to a superhero isn't easy.  Especially when your husband is Buddy Baker, Animal Man, who can summon the power of different animals to fight crime.  As you do.

Oh my gosh, this is so tacky.  It's like the Wonder Twins but there's only one of him and no ring and he can't become a waterfall (which, while not much use in a fight, would be an interesting existential experience).

However, the New 52 tries to inject some darkness into this character by making him a player in this age-old match between good and evil, only here it's the Red and the Green parts of life (red being animal, green being vegetation) versus the Rot, which is pretty much what you think it is.  Death, decay, destruction, despair--all those fun d-words rolled into one disgusting deposit.  Lemire starts telling a Chosen One story, but it's not about Buddy: the Avatar of the Red (I honestly still have no idea what this means but it does sound pretty cool) is Buddy's four-year-old daughter, Maxine.  The family goes on the run when the agents of the Rot come after them, but thankfully, they have their talking totem cat, Socks, to guide them with cryptic wisdom.

Okay, I can't lie: this is ridiculous and I have no idea why I read the first two unless I was taking cold medicine at the time, or in some other equally decision-imparing situation.

But I loved the Essex County trilogy!  I really liked The Underwater Welder, even though it was bleak as Saskatchewan in winter!  I have this ridiculous soft spot for Canadians.  I was really hoping that Lemire could pull this off.

Alas, poor Buddy Baker, your story is a heaving, rotting mess of decayed tropes, trippy bad guys, and art that relies on cramming as much as possible into each panel so (tee-hee!) the reader doesn't realize how sloppy the art actually is.  That may work when you're baking cookies, for example (peanut butter toffee coffee chocolate chip sounds pretty delicious to me!), but a comic book is not a cookie.  I know the art is bad when I see a panel and think to myself, "Wow, that looks like something I drew!"  To wit, a panel close-up of Buddy's face is ... smooshed, to use a very technical term.

Plus, we have to deal with Buddy making horrible decisions, Swamp Thing making horrible decisions, and the Baker family making horrible decisions.  Everyone in this comic is an idiot.  See, what happens is that Buddy and Swamp Thing jump into this mystical pool (I am not making this up) and climb down a ladder of bones into the heart of the Rot.  But just before they can destroy it, the evil Avatar of the Rot shows up and cackles about how they fell into his trap.

As it turns out, when Buddy and Swampy entered the pool, they doomed the entire world to destruction by rot, so when they emerge from ... wherever they are ... it's a year later and everyone has turned into zombies.  Okay, technically no one ever says zombies, but they're zombies.  Only superheroes with connections to the Red and the Green, like Beast Boy and Black Orchid, or those with no flesh at all, like Steel, survive.  Oh, and John Constantine, but I guess the rules don't apply to him.  No one has any idea how to write his dialogue, which is 90% him saying "mate" or whingeing about cigarettes.

So anyway, Buddy reappears and everyone's all, "Ooh, Animal Man has come back!" but he just wants to find his family, which means another full-on charge into the lair of the enemy.  Along the way, they meet up with Frankenstein's monster (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) with his army of reanimated corpses and rescue the world's dorkiest Green Lantern, Medphyll, who is a plant-based alien with wheat stalks for hair.

There are pages and pages and PAGES of superheroes fighting, which is more like figures being tossed around panels in a chaotic frenzy.  Batgirl is now literally a bat and Wonder Woman gets sliced 'n diced.  It's ridiculous and boring at the same time.  Then, because the DCU can't really keep operating when all of its heroes are Rot-Zombies, there is a lovely deus ex machina and everything is as it is before--kind of.  Time travel, you guys: not as helpful as you would think.

And then there's the actual writing and plotting of this ... thing.  With much respect and admiration to both Jeff Lemire and Scott Snyder, it is not cool to pull dialogue directly from Star Wars in order to further your version of the Light Side of the Force versus the Dark Side. now with 500% more tentacles and vines!  And yes, I know that Star Wars draws on a long storytelling tradition of good versus evil, of the Chosen One and the rogue and the princess, of Shakespearean daddy troubles and wise old teachers.  However, some of this dialogue, in conjunction with the main concept of this world, is really obvious.

Observe:  Yoda Cat (AKA Socks, which is the silliest name for a super-powerful "totem" animal ever) tells Buddy Baker, Animal Man: "Dig deeper, Buddy Baker.  Let your consciousness touch the near infinite number of things that swarm this old swamp.  Become one with the Red."  "Stretch out with your feelings, Luke ... Let go, Luke."  Yoda Cat.

Abby, Swamp Thing's girlfriend and the niece of the Avatar of the Rot, solves the problem of impending world doom by intuitively possessing knowledge of where the "Parliament" of the Rot is.  Yoda Cat tells her that know one knows where it is, but she replies that she does.  "Somehow, I've always known."  Look, Abby, I like your haircut and the whole vine thing going on with your skin, but you are not Princess Leia.

Felix Faust to John Constantine: "Together we could rule the rotlands!"  That's nice, Darth.  I mean Felix.  Whatever.

I know it's not a particularly unique line, but Steel shouting, "There's too many of them!" just brings back Grey Two (Y-Wing)'s words at the Battle of Endor.

Also, a proofreader would be nice.  Earth's new Green Lantern, doesn't exactly have the best grasp of English grammar (although, I mean, really, I can't blame him since he's an alien.  Let's blame the writers!).  Buddy asks what imprisoned him and Medphyll returns, "Not what.  WHOM."  Look, if you're going to correct someone's grammar, please actually correct it instead of just making the problem worse.  There is a really easy way to test whether you've used the correct pronoun: put it back in the original sentence.  "Whom imprisoned me" simply doesn't work because we need a bloody subject pronoun!  "Who imprisoned me" works!  Hooray, English!  Boo, writers!

Every time I read something in the DCU I'm reminded of why I prefer the Marvelverse.  At least Marvel embraces the weird, the goofy, and the just plain off-the-wall WHAAAAT? and runs with it.  Like, "Yeah, this guy wears spandex and has ... spider ... powers, but we're totally cool with that!  That other guy works for chimichangas.  You got a problem with that?"

And then you've got Mr. Strength-of-a-Hippo over here trying to save the world and his precocious daughter, but how in the name of Cthulhu am I supposed to sympathize with him when he inflicted that haircut on his son?  I'm done, Buddy Baker.

Romance and Garlic

Inspired by my recent success with a few YA books that I normally wouldn't have ever picked up (read: romance), I decided to test the waters even further outside of my comfort zone (mixed metaphor?  Sorry, if so).  I grabbed two books from that library, ensuring that they had a) pretty covers and b) romance.  I can do this romance thing, right?

Well, you see ...

Perhaps romance is a bit like garlic.  Delicious when cooked properly and added in the correct proportion, but overpoweringly sickening when eaten in abundance.  Let me give you an example.

My grandfather, who was capable of many things, including building a house when not an actual carpenter, navigating through life with only one working eye, and eating literally anything and everything you can think of, once made an uncomfortable mistake with garlic.  My grandpa was the kind of person who listened to radio at night, and evidently on these radio shows, which are aimed at freaking out the elderly or scamming them, they dispense health advice.  One night, the radio advised persons with chronic heart problems (I've got it from both sides of the family--this isn't going to end well, I know) to eat a clove of garlic a day.

I have to give Grandpa props; he was trying to be proactive about his health.  So, when making soup the next day, he tossed in an entire bulb of garlic.  And then he ate it.  And then he called my mother, asking, in a pained voice, how big a clove was.  I remember this conversation as a little kid:

Mom: "Dad!  How much garlic did you eat?"

Grandpa: "Well, I thought a clove was the whole thing, so I tossed it in the soup."

Mom: "You ate an entire BULB of garlic?  A clove is just one piece!  Besides, why are you eating garlic?

Grandpa: "Well, they said on the radio that garlic was good for your heart, so I figured I'd take some."

Mom:  "I could get you some of those Garlique pills if you want to take that!"

Grandpa: "I didn't want to bother you."

The point is, besides that if you have Eastern European grandparents, they are simultaneously stubborn and skilled at using the guilt complex, that even my grandpa's iron-clad stomach could not handle a bulb of garlic, no matter how good for his heart it might have been.

And so it goes with romance.  Perhaps I'll feel differently as I get older, but right now, my taste in books prefers something seasoned with love, not drowning in it.  Some authors have the romance perfectly balanced, others minimize it so that it goes down like a nice, no-feels-necessary capsule of love.  I can handle that.  Now I just need to find more books that suit my fussy romance palate.

The Meursault Investigation

The Meursault Investigation was a Kindle special a few months ago, and Twitter told me I should read it.  So I did.  Depending on your familiarity with Albert Camus' L'etranger (The Stranger), you'll fall within a range of opinions about this book.

Was it well-written?  Absolutely.  There were points were the prose was just achingly beautiful.  Did it tell me something I hadn't already considered?  Not really.  However, I had already read Camus' work at least three times for academic purposes, and I had professors who challenged us to think beyond the narrative.  In fact, I thought that was the whole point of the book.

The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated)

Caution: if you are expecting a run-of-the-mill teen slasher, please turn around and go find another book.  This is not that book.  Yes, there is a serial killer.  Yes, there are things that go bump in the night.  And yes, there is my very favorite plot element in a horror novel: the evil hotel.  But The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) probes dark and twisted elements of human nature as well.  And, cherry on top: it's got an unreliable narrator.  Is it really any wonder that I loved this?

Beyond the Red

At first, this book hooked me with its killer desert planet setting.  And then it killed me with awkward sexytimes descriptions, completely unrealistic situations, and an ending that deus ex machinas itself off a cliff.

The Inn Between

I don't know if I've ever been as viscerally scared by a kids' book before as I was while reading The Inn Between, and I'm not sure if I ever wanted to be.  If I'm looking for horror, I generally don't say to myself, "Aha!  A children's book!  This will scare the pants off of me!"  Yet, here I am: utterly freaked out and metaphorically pantsless.

The Thing About The Thing About Jellyfish ...

... is that it reads like a love letter to jellyfish with a story wedged in there, uncomfortably.

More Unpopular Opinions; or Books I DNFd

It is once again time for another installment of Books I DNFd, which really needs a catchier title.  Often, the titles that I end up disliking are ones that are popularly or critically praised, so many readers might be a bit miffed that I didn't finish Book XYZ that they looooooved and want to maaarryyyyyyyy.  Oh well!

The Fall of the House of West by Paul Pope and some other people too.  I enjoyed Battling Boy, was okay with The Rise of Aurora West but this was just like a gigantic snore.  Loud (as in lots of BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA FWOOOM soundgraphs) snoring.  But, like a snore, there's no substance to it but the ruffling of nasal passages transferring air from here to there.  I don't care about Aurora or her mission or ... anything in this world.

The Aftermath by Jen Alexander.  A smashing, twisty, mind-bending beginning gives this gamer story loads of momentum, but it screeches to an abrupt halt about six chapters in because the main character has already figured out the plot of her own story.  The concept is pretty cool: a girl named Claudia Virtue figures out that fighting for her life against cannibals in post-apocalyptic Nashville isn't actually real.  She's somebody's avatar.  But she also has free will, so is she human?  What's up with this game, anyway?

Needless to say, I was disappointed, because The Aftermath was poised to discuss really deep topics, like personhood, and death, and the vaguely A Clockwork Orange-esque reason for the game's existence.  But no.  The main character figures out that she's being played--literally--and then spends the rest of the book running around doing missions with this guy she probably shouldn't trust but he is soooo hot you guys.  Excuse me while I have an eye-rolling session.  Alexander showed her hand way too early in this one to sustain any sort of plot tension.

Actually, I thought I quit a lot more books than this.  Star Wars has played a mind trick on me.  Now, off to review the ones I managed to finish!

The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field (or blogging)

is approximately 3,720 to one!

Never tell me the odds!

But oho!  It is Star Wars: The Force Awakens weekend and I am spending most of it either a) watching the movie at the theater or b) discussing the movie with my friends before c) going to watch the movie again.

I am not reading at all.  I am gloriously, deliriously happy.

Just pretend I've been frozen in carbonite.  I'll be quite well-protected.  If I survive.

Stay AWAY from the bandwagon. Yes, you, author I love.

My heart hurts to say this, but: Hunter by Mercedes Lackey was awful.  I never thought I'd say that about any of her books.  I adore the Valdemar books and am currently binge-reading the Elemental Masters series, so I know she is an excellent writer.  Which is why I keep asking myself, "How did this go so very wrong?"

What I'm Reading Wednesday

Okay, I got a little carried away with digital ARC requesting again.  I've found some amazing new titles, but at times I feel like I'm being smothered by furry, happy books.  Like sitting in a pile of kittens or puppies.

So, in addition to that famous French book that I've totally been ignoring, (Bénissez-moi mon père Hugo, parce que j'ai péché...) I'm reading these!

Cress by Marissa Meyer.  Am I behind in this series?  Yes!  I was so afraid to start Cress before Winter had a finalized release date, and now I've gotten myself all muddled up in the series.  But I think (fingers crossed) that I can dive back into the Lunar Chronicles.

The Aftermath by Jen Alexander.

Harley Quinn, Vol. 3: Kiss Kiss Bang Stab by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti.  Love Harley!  Love, Harley!  Harley!

Future Shock by Elizabeth Briggs.  This is a time-travel story that's rather light on the science, but I am really loving the main character.  And I want to know just how evil this Evil Corporation is!

Mini-Review: The Empire Striketh Back

I've had the boxed set of William Shakespeare's Star Wars for several months now, but have been moved to read books V and VI because of the movie opening this week.

These are quick reads--easier than "regular" Shakespeare if you know the movies, and if you know the movies really well (like "grew up watching them on repeat so you know all the lines" really well, or "saw them in theaters" really well) you might even hear the dialogue in the actors' voices.  Ian Doescher is really talented at fusing Shakespeare and Star Wars, and it's ridiculously fun for a book nerd like me to see famous Shakespearean soliloquies, lines, and ripostes delivered in a galaxy far, far away.

I particularly liked the self-reflective lines from Leia and Lando that flesh out their motivations and internal struggles.  And I didn't realize how many snowspeeder pilots actually died.  I guess having someone call out, "Ah, I die!" alerts you to that fact.

Doescher includes endnotes regarding the use of prose for Boba Fett's lines and trimming down the Chorus' involvement in things, and they're well worth reading.

Also, both the wampa AND the space worm have their own soliloquies.  So helloooo, why aren't you reading this yet???

The Impostor Queen

Lately, I've been taking my fantasy nice and bleak, preferably with little to no romance.  But to my surprise, I fell head over heels for The Impostor Queen by Sarah Fine.  Much like another fantasy romance that stole my heart earlier this year, The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas, The Impostor Queen has incredible world-building, an intricate magic system, and a realistic yet swoon-worthy romance.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery

Lammeroo and the Incorrigibles go off to London in this crackingly good second installment in the series.  Wolves out of water?  Well, yes, mixed metaphor.  But indeed they are!  In this book you will find: deuced adorable playwrights, fancy restaurants, ferns, velocipedes, West End premieres, and singing pirates.  And those are just the big ones!

My Top Ten Favorite Posts of 2015

This is utterly shameless self-promotion, people.  And I am owning it.  I love writing here, but because my memory is like "Wheeee ... wait ... what was I talking about?" I often forget some of the things I've ranted and raved about.  So here are my favorite posts from the past year (don't worry; I'm doing a top ten books as well, but it's going to be REALLY DANG HARD and maybe 20 books).  I'm including the posts that I had the most fun writing and the ones where I just laid myself bare.

10. I Need A Silkwood Shower.  Improbably alien sexytimes and really abusive relationships in a book that lots of people saw as "romantic" and "adventurous."  Eugh.

9.  Sweets for My Sweet.  Think of this book as the teen version of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, but with a much higher body count.

8.  "I Feel Stupid ..."  I made my very own infographic for this one, which is the major reason you should read this post if you haven't already.  

7.  Why Can't A Girl Just BE?  One of my favorite rants.  I'll tell you now which book inspired it: Walk on Earth A Stranger.

6.  Spoil Me Baby One More Time!  Did I listen to old-school Brit Brit on repeat after this?  Yes, yes I did.

5.  Gaslighting, Moral Complexity, and the Past Few Days.  In which I muse on some incredibly uninformed comments about YA literature and the intersectionality with the industry's treatment of women and how it's de rigeur to bash YA lit.

4.  Saturn Run: The Review.  Costarring Jesus and Derek Zoolander.  I had so much fun writing this that it was probably criminal.

3.  The Intensely Personal, Private Act of Reading.  More bookish musings on the quantum qualities of the act of reading.

2.  When My Heart Was Wicked Fails in a Tangle of Cultural Appropriation and General Strangeness.  The exceedingly knowledgeable Debbie Reese linked to my review (!!!) from her blog, and I was proud that I had come so far in critical reading and recognizing harmful stereotypes.

1.  I Crawl Through It.  I put so much into this review, but I could only do so because A.S. King's brilliant novel tugged at all of these feelings that I didn't even know I had pushed down inside of myself.

What I'm Reading Wednesday

I'm trying to read the beginnings of books that have been sitting patiently on my TBR and figure out if I want to go through with the whole thing or not.  It's like first dates, but with books.  Apart from Les Mis, which I've completely neglected since moving on to Tome II.  Sorry!

First up is Beyond the Red by Ava Jae.  I was happily surprised to find this on Netgalley ... or was it Edelweiss?  In any case, this is promising to be a solid YA sci-fi for 2016!

The Aftermath by Jen Alexander.  I've had this on my list for a long time--so long that I didn't even remember what is was about.  It's a GAMING book!  I love gaming books!  W00t!

Hunter by Mercedes Lackey.  To be completely honest, I almost put this one down several times.  It's not going to get a high rating from me, but I hit a point where the action picked up, and I think I can finish it.  The quality of the writing here is so ... pedantic.  I cannot imagine that Lackey actually wrote this.  It makes me want to cry.

TSU Talks Orbiting Jupiter

I didn't do a full-on blog post for Orbiting Jupiter by Gary Schmidt, because a fellow Teen Services Underground blogger and I had a rumble about it!

Actually, we both agreed!  Not so much of a rumble, but I don't think our opinions fall on the popular end of the spectrum.

Check it out here: Reader Vs. Reader: Orbiting Jupiter

The Detour

In case the innumerable horror books and movies haven't gotten through to you yet, remember: when traveling, never, ever, ever take the detour or the short way around.  Turn around, go home, and binge watch some TV.  This is much preferable to being stalked by a serial killer, eaten by Bigfoot, or kidnapped and tortured by cannibals.

MARTians

MARTians is one of the most relentlessly depressing, incisive, and thought-provoking novels I've read this year.  And I'm afraid that books with more marketing hype and smoldering love interests with Dark and Painful Backstories will overshadow this small red gem of a book, which would be a tragedy.    Almost as bad as not making your sales quota for the day.

Revival

When I finished Revival, I wondered what, exactly, the King family has against the name "Charles."  It's the name of the villain in this book, as well as in Joe Hill's NOS4A2.  Unfortunately, King's evil Charles isn't nearly as menacing as Hill's, and while Revival was a fine book, it wasn't a great book.

A New Hope: The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy

Retellings of cultural icons are tricky.

Wow, that was the most colossal understatement I've made in a long time.  Here, let me be frank: the majority of retellings or companion novels are festering gobbets of sewage in comparison to their inspiration.  On their own, they might be perfectly decent works, but many writers feel the need to stamp themselves all over the canon.  Because they're more focused on their own ego and reputation, the believability of the book in relation to the original work goes completely down the toilet.

But Alexandra Bracken gets it.  Her dad, whose hand I'd like to shake, instilled in her a love of all things Star Wars.  She fleshes out the characters in a very believable way, and sticks to the original dialogue.  And she passed the ultimate test.

What I'm Reading Wednesday

Do you hear the people sing?  It is the song of Pamela, who finished the first of five books comprising Hugo's Les Misérables.  Ha-HA!

In addition to that, here's what I'm reading:

All Saints' Eve by Amelia B. Edwards.  I'm a sucker for Victorian mysteries and supernatural tales.  This is like comfort food.  Not particularly mind-blowing, but cozy in a creepy sort of way.

MARTians by Blythe Woolston.  I loved Woolston's last novel, Black Helicopters, and I feel like she really doesn't get the recognition she deserve.  This is about our consumerist society, and I plan to consume it with gusto.

The Detour by S.A. Bodeen.  This is Bodeen's fast-paced take on Misery, but with a teen writer who's so full of herself that she probably can't eat.

The Impostor Queen by Sarah Fine.  The worldbuilding in this is top-notch.  I mean, I kiss my fingers and say "Brava!"  I may be dragging this out because I don't want to wait so long for the next one!

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1

Words cannot properly express how mind-blowingly awesome this comic is.

"Wait a second.  Isn't this about a 'superhero' who's half-squirrel, half-girl?  This sounds like the corniest idea ever."

Tell me that again after you've been swarmed and immobilized by hundreds of angry squirrels.

Paper Wishes

If wishes on papers thrown to the wind were real, I'd wish that stories be told by those whose heritage they are, and that publishers promote and lift up the voices of the marginalized.

While Sepahban handled the difficult material rather well, I really wish it had been written by an author of Japanese-American descent.  Maybe the publishing house hit their diversity quota for the year.  I don't know.