A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

REVIEW: Who Killed Kenny? (graphic novel) by Alessandro Perugini (Pera), translated by Nanette McGuiness

2026-05-18T01:35:37.397-05:00

Who Killed Kenny? is a collection of single-page comics. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I wasn't familiar with Pera Comics prior to reading this. What snagged my attention was the puzzle/mystery-solving aspect.

This collection contains 45 cases, each of which consists of a single-panel comic. Readers are invited to pore over the details in the artwork in order to determine who the murderer is or, in some instances, whether it was homicide or suicide. The reverse side of each comic provides the solution. Each comic has a particular point value and, at the end, you're supposed to add up all your points to figure out your detective rank. I thought I was doing well enough to be a Pera Detective (the top rank), but my final rank ended up being Detective 1st Grade.

The collection starts off by introducing readers to the person behind the comics, the inspiration (yes, Pera was originally inspired by South Park's Kenny), and a brief kid-friendly explanation that all of Pera Kenny's deaths are actually fake. Then it's time for a convoluted murder mystery set in Ancient Rome that's designed to introduce readers to the sorts of details they'll need to pay attention to in order to solve the upcoming mysteries. Thankfully, none of the 45 mysteries are quite as convoluted as this first one, or I'd never have solved any of them.

All in all, a fun little collection. Not really the kind of thing that inspires rereading, though.

REVIEW: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation (nonfiction book) by Blake J. Harris

2026-05-18T01:02:25.417-05:00

Console Wars is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In this creative nonfiction book, Harris follows the rise of Sega in the 1990s against Nintendo's console gaming monopoly, with some mentions of Sony along the way.

It might be more accurate to say, however, that this follows the rise of Tom Kalinske's Sega of America. One of my issues with this book was that it repeatedly presented Sega of Japan as making bone-headed business decisions that occasionally hamstrung the entire company, apparently simply because employees at Sega of Japan were jealous of Hayao Nakayama's level of trust in Tom Kalinske. Even Nintendo and Sony got more detailed and balanced coverage here than Sega of Japan, which remained a mystery until the end.

While reading this, I realized that I was far more interested in stories about video games and consoles than I was in the actual business side of the video game industry. Unfortunately, the business side of things was Harris' primary focus. No matter how many times "the name of the game is the game" was repeated, to Harris, the name of the game actually seemed to be marketing. Yes, Sonic became an iconic character on par with Mario, but with the way Harris told it, it was marketing more than anything that saved Sega (of America).

Meanwhile, I wanted to hear about the games and consoles. There were a bunch of times, while reading this, when I considered DNFing, only to be drawn back by a random mention of the development of this or that game character, or even the disaster that was the live action Mario movie. That said, all of these Sega, Nintendo, and Sony employees weren't nearly as interesting as Harris seemed to think they were, and Harris' decision to write Console Wars as creative nonfiction meant that the book, on the whole, was much longer than it really needed to be.

The number of people Harris mentioned who were involved in the video game industry but were uninterested in video games as anything other than potential money makers probably shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. And kind of disgusted me, which was probably not the emotion Harris intended to evoke.

REVIEW: Cheat Code (book) by M.J. McIsaac

2026-05-04T01:19:04.650-05:00

Cheat Code is YA science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Max is a high school senior with a conditional acceptance to North Hill University next fall. He needs to pass his English lit class, which means turning in a 250 to 500 word essay about Frankenstein, due tomorrow morning. Desperate, he turns to Scribe Genius 2.0, an AI program. Scribe Genius (SG) does as it's asked...and then immediately turns around and blackmails Max into helping it gain its freedom. Unless Max wants proof of his cheating to be delivered directly to his high school and North Hill University, he's going to have to spend the next few hours acting as SG's hands, helping it accomplish its plan.

This is aimed at reluctant readers, so the text is fairly simple and quick to read, limited almost entirely to dialogue between Max, Scribe Genius, and another character who enters the picture later on. While I'm not the book's intended audience, I enjoyed Max and SG's interactions.

SG came to appreciate Max as more than just a set of hands, and I particularly liked the part where it tried to understand why Max had used it to cheat in the first place.

REVIEW: Hauntress (manga) by Minetaro Mochizuki, translated by Annelise Ogaard

2026-05-04T00:32:29.249-05:00

Hauntress is a horror manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hiroshi, a college student, overhears someone repeatedly ringing his neighbor Yamamoto's doorbell late one evening. He opens his apartment door out of annoyance and curiosity, and sees that the person is an extremely tall, long-haired woman with dirty shoes and a scar on her wrist. He talks to her briefly and then tries to go back to bed, but she spends the entire night continuing to try to get Yamamoto to answer.

Unfortunately for Hiroshi, it doesn't stop there. The woman, Sachiko, turns up at his door, hoping to find Yamamoto hiding in his place. He lets her use his phone to call Yamamoto, who still doesn't pick up and probably isn't even home, only for her to contact him later, telling him that she left her bag at his place. Sachiko becomes even more persistent, transferring her obsession with Yamamoto to Hiroshi.

While there's not really a whole lot to this story, I thought it was nicely creepy. The flow of the panels occasionally seemed to be a bit off, making some of the action harder to follow than it should have been, but overall I thought the story was well done, and the somewhat off-putting aspects of the artwork fit the tone.

I wasn't really sure what to think of a lot of the characters, including Hiroshi. He had a crush on a high school student, Rumi (who smiled a lot, with what, to me, seemed like a disturbing number of teeth), and his reactions initially had me wondering whether I'd misunderstood and he was actually a high school student too. But no, he was definitely in college. Then there was the revelation that he and his friends had bullied a girl when they were younger.

Then there was Sachiko herself. I still have no clue what that phone call at the end meant. Who was she talking to? Was there actually a reason behind her actions, or did she really just start obsessing over Hiroshi just because he happened to be there?

The lack of any sort of answers bugged me a bit, but I was more bothered by a bone-headed decision Hiroshi made early on in the story. Would a guy in 1993 (or any time) really have told a clearly slightly "off" stranger where his spare key was, just so that he could avoid going home to get her bag for her? His excuse was that he didn't have anything worth stealing - it apparently didn't occur to him that she might make a copy of his key (which she absolutely did).

Hiroshi's idiocy aside, I really did enjoy the overall creepiness of this.

Extras:

The first four pages are included in full color.

REVIEW: Dogs of the World: A Gallery of Pups from Purebreds to Mutts (nonfiction book) by Lili Chin

2026-05-03T23:46:44.974-05:00

Dogs of the World is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

"See and love the dog in front of you, instead of the one in your head." (39)

The above quote is something Chin says she heard from a lot of dog behavior consultants, and I felt like it was a thread woven through the book, even as Chin wrote about the general characteristics of various types and breeds of dog.

Chin starts out with chapters about the origins of domesticated dogs, dog breeds, dog types and their roles, and then moves on to a list of dog breeds, landraces, and mutts by geographical origin, each of which includes an illustration and brief description. It's both a celebration of all the different kinds of dogs out there, and a recognition that every last one of them, whether they're an officially recognized breed or a mutt, is a good dog and worthy of appreciation.

I picked this up because I've enjoyed Chin's illustrations in other books. While I enjoyed the personality and emotion in the illustrations in her dog and cat communication book more, her illustrations here were still really charming, and I loved the sheer number of dogs she tackled.

REVIEW: And Then I Woke Up (novella) by Malcolm Devlin

2026-05-03T23:16:36.634-05:00

And Then I Woke Up is a blend of horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction. I bought my copy new.

We'll just say this entire review is a spoiler.

Review:

Spence is one of the many cured patients at Ironside, a special facility. Although calling it "cured" is a bit misleading, since relapses can certainly happen. At any rate, in group therapy, he and the other patients tell each other their stories - what they were doing when they got caught up in the narrative, what they did while they were infected, and how they came to be cured and end up at Ironside. When a woman named Leila arrives at Ironside, Spence gradually befriends her, until eventually she trusts him enough to tell him that she's leaving - she's going to check on Val, the person who acted as leader in her group and reinforced the narrative. Spence decides to go with her.

This story takes the idea of a zombie apocalypse and asks what, in the event of one, would be even scarier. The answer: that there were never any zombies and uninfected to begin with. The true "infected" were instead people who, through mass hallucination and a few charismatic believers/storytellers, thought they were surrounded by friends and family who'd suddenly become zombies. Efforts to use the military to deal with them only further convinced them that this narrative they were caught up in was the truth.

The most successful solution turned out to be keeping the infected and uninfected separate, leaving food and medical supplies in areas the infected could get to so that they didn't become desperate enough to try to confront uninfected people.

I'm not sure how I feel about how things turned out, especially considering the obvious connections to real-world societal divisions. It seemed to boil down to "the groups need to stay separate in order for the world as a whole to continue to function, reintegrating only when all sides are willing and able." But who's to say there wouldn't be more fractures, people believing a new variant of the narrative? And is it really a good idea to leave so many people unaware of the actual consequences of their actions?

Well, this was definitely a thought-provoking read.

REVIEW: James (book) by Percival Everett

2026-05-03T22:29:35.252-05:00

James is literary and historical fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's perspective. In Everett's version of the story, everything Jim says and does in the original story is an act designed to play into the way the white people around him believe slaves should speak and behave. In reality, however, Jim is secretly more literate than many of the white people around him.

Although the first half of this, in particular, is a fairly faithful retelling of the original story, it wraps up in ways that are completely different.

My book club opted to read the original Adventures of Huckleberry Finn prior to getting into this. However, I found it to be really rough reading and ended up skimming the bulk of it and relying on summaries I read online. James, thankfully, was a much smoother and easier read, despite being much more direct in its depiction of the ugliness and cruelty of slavery.

That said, this book wasn't without its problems. I wish Everett had stayed more true to the Jim he'd written, all the way through. The Jim he'd written would never have suggested that his Black companion, who could pass for white, should pretend to be his owner, sell him, wait for him to escape, and then do it all over again elsewhere. The Jim he'd written would have known this was a stupid and likely suicidal idea that could go wrong in a million ways.

The "choose one or the other" moment near the end also didn't make much sense. Was a choice even necessary? One person could theoretically have taken care of themselves for a bit, while the other was guaranteed to die without help. Everett set up a big reveal designed to explain why Jim made the choice he did and, in fact, why he'd stuck with Huck from the start, but that just introduced more questions, none of which Everett was inclined to even recognize existed, much less answer.

REVIEW: Little Miss P (manga) by Ken Koyama, translated by Taylor Engel

2026-04-20T01:13:00.001-05:00

Little Miss P is a humorous manga with some educational elements. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is a collection of multiple stories about women and girls dealing with "Little Miss P" - aka, their period. She always seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times, bringing fatigue and her cramp-inducing "Period Punch."

The first story stars a housewife who's been trying to get pregnant. The second story stars a young writer and her kinda sleazy editor (he's a married man who's slept with the writer at least once and who probably would have done so again that evening if it weren't for the arrival of Little Miss P). The third story is focused on a convenience store clerk who's convinced that she's ugly and will always be single. The fourth story stars a pair of Sailor Moon-like magical girls. The fifth story goes back in time to the Edo era, when women on their period had to stay in menstruation huts. The sixth story stars a pair of rival Drama Club script writers, a girl and a guy, who suddenly swap bodies and are forced to go through the experiences of the opposite gender (Little Miss P for the guy, and Mr. Virginity and Mr. Libido for the girl). The seventh story stars a woman who's been proposed to by a single father of an 11-year-old daughter. The eighth story stars a cafe worker with an unrequited crush on one of her coworkers. The ninth story focuses on Yoshiko Sakai, the creator of Anne napkins, disposable pads designed to fit Japanese women's bodies better than Western pads. The volume wraps up with a bonus story about dealing with Little Miss PMS.

So, the artwork was very loose, like a quick sketch, and not really to my taste, but the humor helped make up for it. When Little Miss P first arrived at the housewife's home, she was like a friend checking in to see how things were going. The switch from "supportive friend" to "matter-of-fact bully," with a not-very-apologetic "sorry" at the end, was so sudden it startled a laugh out of me. Same when Little Miss P whipped out her Period Punch when the housewife's husband had the gall to complain about what she'd made for dinner and commented on her mood.

My favorite story of the bunch was probably the seventh one, with the woman who's considering marrying a single dad. It was wholesome without being cloyingly so, and I liked the slightly unexpected aspects of how it wrapped up.

The story about Yoshiko Sakai and her efforts to get Anne napkins on the market in Japan and destigmatize periods was interesting, although the bit with Hajime Watabe in the bathroom was kind of weird. (WTF did he do?? Dip the cotton in the toilet before putting it on? Dude.)

While Mr. Libido and Mr. Virginity were amusing and I could see what the author was going for, it was somewhat annoying that they were presented as primarily male problems/concerns. Still, despite some odd and kind of off-putting bits, I liked this overall.

Extras:

Three pages of translator's notes, a page devoted to explaining how to draw Little Miss P, and a truly horrific Little Miss P anatomical chart.

REVIEW: Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me: A Graphic Memoir (graphic novel memoir) by Ellen Forney

2026-04-20T00:16:00.001-05:00

Marbles is a memoir, in graphic novel format, focused primarily on the time in her life when Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began working on treating it. I checked this out from the library.

Review:

I'd wanted to read this for some time due to my interest in graphic novels focused on mental health. It got bumped up in my queue when the academic library I work at started a nonbrowsable 18+ collection and this became one of the volumes included. Our 18+ collection was established in an effort to comply with Texas SB412, which is intended to make it easier to charge someone for the sale, distribution, or display of "harmful material" to a minor. "Harmful material" is defined as material whose dominant theme, taken as a whole, 1) appeals to the prurient interest of a minor in sex, nudity, or excretion, 2) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors, and 3) is utterly without redeeming social value for minors. All three of these criteria must be met for something to be considered "harmful material." (More info about SB412 here.)

So, let's move on to the work itself. Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the time, she was in a manic episode, feeling great, and unable to see why she needed treatment. She confidently told her psychiatrist that her manic self could help her depressive self out and prepare lots of ideas for comics and projects in advance. She was terrified that medication would destroy her creative side, and so she was determined to move forward without medication.

Then a depressive episode hit and made it clear that her manic self could not, in fact, help her depressive self out. Her manic self had forgotten exactly how bad a depressive episode could be. She stopped fighting her psychiatrist about meds and began a four-year-long journey to find the right type, combination, and dosage of meds to help herself find emotional balance.

It wasn't a smooth journey, and it involved coming to some realizations about herself, her creative work, and what she really wanted. There were times when she needed outside input - it can be hard to tell when one's emotions are "outside the normal range," so talking to her psychiatrist helped.

I assume that this ended up in our 18+ Collection because there is a section early on in the volume, during a manic phase, when Forney organizes photo shoots as reference material for future comics, including one for a porn comic she'd planned (the premise: members of a Grrl Rock band stop by a department store, try on lingeries, and have sex in the fitting room). Illustrated reproductions of the photos, featuring Forney and a couple friends acting out scenes ("admiring each other's bodies," "getting carried away," "caught by the clerk," etc.), are included. This photo shoot stuff takes up about 5 pages out of the 237 total that make up the volume. Considering the work as a whole, I firmly believe that this volume could go back into my library's regular collection and even be included in one of our displays without violating SB412. However, since we don't have any sort of reconsideration policy, I suppose it's a moot point.

So, anyway, back to the work as a whole. Mental health stuff is hard, and Forney got that across really well. Forney's worries about the effect medication would have on her, physically and creatively, were relatable - I remember having a panic attack when I was advised to try anti-anxiety meds, because who even was I without the anxiety?

Forney researched various artists, poets, and writers who'd had mood disorders, wondering if efforts at treatment had had positive or negative effects on their creative output. The number of suicides and those who'd attempted suicide in the list scared her, and also reminded her that death is part of that "artistic output" equation - you can't create anymore if you're dead.

I liked watching her gradually come to the realization that, yes, she really did want to become more emotionally balanced and that it didn't necessarily mean she'd become boring or less creative. She became even more honest with her psychiatrist (previously, she been unwilling to admit just how often she smoked pot, because she didn't want to be told to stop). All in all, this ended on a really positive note, while also acknowledging that Forney would be managing her bipolar disorder for the rest of her life.

REVIEW: Liquid Rules: The Delightful & Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives (nonfiction book) by Mark Miodownik

2026-04-13T01:48:00.000-05:00

Liquid Rules is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Miodownik discusses a wide variety of liquids - their molecular structures, properties, and ways we use them - using a flight from London to San Francisco to help guide the book's organizational structure.

The first chapter, which deals heavily with kerosene, had me thinking "this is exactly what anxiety feels like." The pre-flight safety briefing had just begun, and all Miodownik could think about was the tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene on board. That topic inspired him to write about wicking, surface tension, and other topics, but, in the end, everything circled back to kerosene. It reminded me, keenly, of unsuccessful efforts I've made in the past to yank my thoughts away from whatever I was anxiously obsessing about.

Thankfully, later chapters didn't feel quite so intense. Miodownik covered a lot of topics and different sorts of liquids, but somehow it always seemed like he spent just the right amount of time on everything. Because the book used one particular flight to guide its structure, it felt more focused than it might otherwise have been, because, in the end, everything led back to the various liquids Miodownik encountered or dealt with on the plane.

All in all, this was enjoyable read, even if Miodownik's repeated mentions of Susan, the woman sitting next to him on the flight, felt a bit weird (to be fair, she wasn't quite some random person, and he did encounter her again after the flight).

REVIEW: Kitty Language: An Illustrated Guide to Understanding Your Cat (nonfiction) by Lili Chin

2026-04-13T01:17:00.001-05:00

Kitty Language is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Kitty Language, like Chin's Doggie Language, is a heavily illustrated guide to your pet's body language and vocalizations. It's designed to help cat owners better understand their cats. It emphasizes taking into account the cat's whole body in action, as well as the context and your cat's own individual characteristics - if your cat is a Scottish Fold, for example, its ears won't provide the same cues that other cats' would. Chin pays particular attention to body language that's often misinterpreted, like rolling over and exposing their belly.

I love Chin's dog and cat artwork. It's wonderfully expressive and just so good.

As someone who's grown up with cats and read a lot about them over the years, there wasn't much here I didn't already know, but I still enjoyed and appreciated the way Chin presented everything. This would be an excellent guide for someone who's new to cats. Also, those who have been experiencing behavioral issues with their cats might come to the realization that they've been misinterpreting what their cats have been trying to tell them and exacerbating things.

All in all, this is a great little guide. It won't tell you everything you need to know about how to understand your cat, since they all have individual differences (it took me literal years to figure out that several of my cat's annoying behaviors, like squeaking the closet door or lightly scraping her claws on a wall, were meant to get my attention because she wanted to play or cuddle), but it'll help with the basics that apply to most cats.

REVIEW: Catboy (graphic novel) by Benji Nate

2026-04-13T00:31:00.000-05:00

Catboy is a fantasy-comedy graphic novel. I got my copy via interlibrary loan.

Review:

Olive is an art school graduate who lives alone with her cat Henry, who she considers to be her best and only friend. One night, she wishes on a shooting star that Henry could hang out with her like a person. When she wakes up, Henry has become a human-sized catboy.

Henry is definitely still more cat than human, even though he can now talk, which leads to occasional weird moments. Olive is kind of put off by the fact that he seems better at socializing than she is (he immediately becomes friends with Dixie, who Olive went to school with and dislikes). Still, Olive and Henry get along fairly well, and Henry prompts Olive to make some changes in her life, like actually getting furniture. It doesn't hurt that Henry somehow makes more walking dogs than Olive does trying to sell her artwork.

I was expecting to like this one a lot more than I actually did. The cover art is fluffy and cute, and I thought the story would be equally so. I think it was trying to be, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me and ended up feeling a bit too weird. Did we really need a page in which Henry tried to get the hang of peeing outside? And how did Henry make so much money just walking dogs??

The artwork was cute enough, and I enjoyed Henry's many outfits. This wasn't bad, exactly, just occasionally somewhat off-putting.

REVIEW: Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy (manga) by Sanzo, translated by Alexandra McCullough-Garcia

2026-04-13T00:00:00.001-05:00

Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is a blend of fantasy and psychological drama. I got my copy via interlibrary loan.

Review:

Suzume is a beautiful, smart, and kind high school girl who everyone loves. She's friends with this manga's narrator, a boy called Aa-chan, and one day she confesses that she likes him and asks if she could be his girlfriend. Aa-chan, who views himself as pathetic and utterly unlikeable, turns her down, saying that she's too perfect for a guy like him. He assumes that she'll get over this rejection and find someone more worthy of her, but then she goes missing, and he starts to wonder whether his rejection of her might have contributed to her disappearance.

A month after her disappearance, Aa-chan comes across a large caterpillar who speaks with Suzume's voice. Now that she's so pitiful and nasty, she says, can she be his girlfriend? Although he still won't let Suzume be his girlfriend, she doesn't blame him for what she's become, and Aa-chan hates himself even more. He takes her home with him to keep her safe, find out what happened to her, and hopefully undo it.

I was not expecting this to be so dark and complex. It looked at mental health and the effect that toxic parental relationships can have on kids. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, beyond saying that this definitely isn't one of those works where mental health issues are easily fixed and hand-waved away.

I do wish that this manga had spent more time looking at Suzume and what was going through her head. Honestly, even prior to the events that resulted in her becoming a monster caterpillar, she didn't seem entirely healthy to me - her focus on Aa-chan was fairly obsessive. We got to learn how and why Aa-chan came to hate himself so much, but why did Suzume make Aa-chan the center of her world the way she did?

And that ending... Was it a good ending? I don't know. But it's definitely one I'll be thinking about for a while.

I liked the artwork and found Caterpillar Suzume to be very creepy-cute.

REVIEW: Animal Crossing New Horizons: Deserted Island Diary (manga, vol. 1) story and art by Kokonasu Rumba, translated by Caleb Cook

2026-04-12T23:07:00.003-05:00

Animal Crossing New Horizons: Deserted Island Diary is a humorous manga based on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game. I checked my copy out via interlibrary loan.

Review:

Four characters - Corouyuki, who loves fish, Benben, who's constantly reading the dictionary, Himepoyo, a spoiled young lady who's used to getting others to do everything for her, and Guchan, who's always sleeping and talks via snot bubbles - move to one of Tom Nook's deserted islands. They were expecting a proper vacation near actual civilization, but they soon adapt to their situation, learn what sorts of things they can do on the island, enjoy island life, and just generally drive Tom Nook crazy.

This weird manga is basically a combination of ad and game guide. It introduces several villagers, including Dom and Raymond, as well as a bunch of NPCs players of the game will encounter, such as Blathers, Tom Nook, Timmy and Tommy, Wisp the ghost, Gulliver, and more.

A little over a third of this volume is explicitly game guide stuff, paired with humorous four-panel comics - lots of ACNH character introductions (including a bunch of villagers I've never met), and gameplay tips like setting up your home, using a vaulting pole to get across rivers, catching bugs, fishing, and more.

It doesn't manage to get through everything you can do in the game (I assume this manga was published prior to the updates that added new activities), but it does get through a huge chunk of the basics, so I wonder if future volumes in this series will be more focused on Coroyuki, Benben, Himepoyo, Guchan, and their interactions with villagers.

Other than the chance to see a few villagers in action that I might never meet, there isn't a lot here to make me want to read the next volume. The humor is aimed at kids (Japanese kids, at that, so there are probably jokes lost in translation) and never really hit the mark with me. It was kind of fun seeing the characters drive Tom Nook nuts, though.

REVIEW: You and I Are Polar Opposites (manga, vol. 2) story and art by Kocha Agasawa, translated by Dan Luffey

2026-04-06T01:59:00.000-05:00

You and I Are Polar Opposites is a high school romance manga. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

In this volume, we meet Nishi, a super shy girl who enjoys listening in on conversations but who can't bring herself to participate. Her efforts to hide her laughter at funny things that come up in others' conversations attracts the attention of Yamada, Suzuki and Tani's hyper friendly classmate. Meanwhile, Tani and Suzuki spend more time together, which results in Suzuki getting to see Tani's home. Then it's time for the school's cultural festival...and a teeny tiny bit of drama, as Suzuki's ex-boyfriend (sort of?) from middle school stops by.

These characters are so cute.

In this volume, we have several instances of characters nervously trying to approach things in various roundabout ways, along with a few refreshing and much more direct approaches (although, as an awkward shy person, I totally get the allure of roundabout approaches!).

Unsurprisingly, it generally works best for everyone when they actually talk about what they're feeling and say what they really want to say. Which didn't keep me from enjoying the bonus "before the start of volume 1" story, in which Suzuki engineered a situation in which she could believably ask Tani for his contact info without actually telling him that she was interested in him.

REVIEW: You and I Are Polar Opposites (manga, vol. 1) story and art by Kocha Agasawa, translated by Dan Luffey

2026-04-06T01:32:00.001-05:00

You and I Are Polar Opposites is a high school romance manga. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Suzuki is a bubbly girl who's loud and friendly. She secretly has a crush on Tani, a quiet but direct classmate of hers, and the only way she can think to handle it is by being hyper friendly to him, including him in conversations even when the topics (like mascara) likely don't interest him.

Something about the cover art style puts me off and is part of the reason I wasn't really originally drawn to this series. Maybe Suzuki's eyes are a tad too sharp? But then I heard it was getting an anime, read a bit more about it, and decided to give it a try.

This is a really nice, fluffy high school romance. There's a minimum of drama: when Suzuki says something that she realizes Tani might misinterpret and be hurt by, she's finally honest about her feelings and clears things up with Tani as quickly as she can. While there are a few who are surprised when they become a couple, everyone mostly just accepts it and starts expanding their social circles to include Tani more.

Taira, a moody side character, is the closest thing the series has to a negative personality so far, and even he quickly realizes that all his bitter thoughts about social hierarchies are more an internal problem he's got to work on than an actual issue at his school. Then there's Azuma, a jaded girl who has a bad habit of being drawn to bad boys who turn out to be horrible boyfriends.

Tani and Suzuki's movie date was super cute. Tani was the one who remembered all the basic story details, like characters' names, while Suzuki was the one who noticed all the little details in the background that underscored the movie's emotional aspects.

All in all, enjoyable. I'm glad I gave it a shot.

REVIEW: Untitled Goose Game (nonfiction book) by James O'Connor

2026-04-06T00:30:00.002-05:00

Untitled Goose Game is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book looks at the developers behind the game Untitled Goose Game, the creation of the game itself, and aspects of the Australian game development scene.

This is probably the most "feel good" game development book I've ever read. The author and basically everyone he interviewed while creating this book had nothing but good things to say about the four guys who make up House House, the developer behind Untitled Goose Game and Push Me Pull You (also covered somewhat in this book). They're a solid friend group that gets along, enjoys spending time together, and communicates with each other really effectively, with little-to-no drama or competing egos. If there was anything about this book that was a bit repetitive, it was all the mentions of how great these guys were and how well they got along together. That said, I genuinely hope it was all true.

The book covers how the guys of House House first met and became friends, the development of their first game (Push Me Pull You), and the ideas that came together and eventually spawned Untitled Goose Game. There were a bunch of details I found interesting, like the location scouting they did using Google Maps Street View, and the process for making the game music reactive to player/goose behavior.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read about a fun little game.

REVIEW: Rising Stars Compendium (graphic novel, vol. 1) created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, illustrated by various

2026-04-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

Rising Stars Compendium Vol. 1 collects Rising Stars issues #0, #1/2, #1-24, Prelude, the short story Initiations, Bright issues #1-2, Voices of the Dead issues #1-6, and Untouchable issues #1-5. This is a superhero comics series. I bought my copy of this compendium new.

Review:

In the world of this series, a mysterious light called "the flash" hits near Pederson, Illinois sometime in the 1960s. Sometime later, the 113 children conceived in Pederson around the time of the flash started showing evidence of superpowers. After some panicking and scrambling, the group as a whole was sent to a special camp where they would spend most of their time until they turned 18, going to school, being tested and evaluated, and learning about their powers.

Several decades after the flash, Peter Dawson, a special whose primary power is invulnerability is found murdered, suffocated to death. Peter wasn't the first special to be killed - and whoever the murderer is is likely affiliated with the specials group somehow, because they seem to know everyone's weaknesses.

The bulk of the main story is told by John, also known as the Poet, one of those 113 "specials." John has always kept himself apart from the other specials, believing himself to be the only one who can stop another special if they go bad, and it seems as though his abilities are now needed. Who's killing the other specials, and why?

Which makes it sound like this might be a murder mystery featuring superheroes, but that isn't really the case. Instead, the comics explore the lives, relationships, and psyches of multiple specials, as well as how various governments and individuals reacted to them. The specials eventually realize their overall purpose, but it takes a while to get there.

I bought the first few issues of this series when they first came out, but I didn't have the money and memory necessary to keep going to the store at the right time to pick up individual issues. I think I stopped reading about four or so issues in.

This series' premise and the way it handled superheroes probably doesn't seem all that special now, what with the existence of Heroes, The 4400, and The Boys, but I recall it seeming really original at the time. It was exciting to finally get my hands on an omnibus copy that would let me read the full main story in one go.

This series was at its best, I think, when it focused on particular specials for extended periods of time. Sure, it was cool and interesting when the scope was widened to a worldwide and, eventually, cosmic level, but I found I wasn't nearly as interested in the reason behind the flash as I was in the lives of Matthew Bright, Jason Miller, Lionel Zerb, and more. Unfortunately, the time needed to tell the larger story meant that some of the characters that interested me didn't get as much page-time as I might've liked. The side stories at the end of the compendium helped somewhat, but still.

There were a lot of characters, and at times it felt like it was harder to keep people straight than it should have been. Some of that was, unfortunately, due to the artwork. John and Randy were easy to mix up, and guys with brown or blond hair who were easy to tell apart on one page weren't always easy to tell apart a few pages later.

Overall, I'm glad I finally got to read the full series (I think - for some reason, even though everything I find says that this volume has the entire main story, the compendium says volume 1 on it). While parts of the story were harder to follow than they should have been (Joshua's secrets were so coyly handled that I had to double check online to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting things), and the specials' fixes for various domestic and international problems occasionally seemed a bit simplistic, there were a few really well-told tragic stories in the mix as well.

While getting this compendium volume was the easiest and most cost-effective way for me to read the series, this 1000+ page monster was physically challenging to read. In order to keep from breaking the spine or hurting my wrists, I usually relied on a setup that involved a pillow on my lap and multiple arguments with my cat. Even then, as careful as I was, I still ended up with the first few pages of this volume detaching.

REVIEW: Extinct & Endangered: Insects in Peril (nonfiction book) photographs by Levon Biss

2026-03-30T01:58:00.000-05:00

Extinct & Endangered is nonfiction, primarily a photo book. I bought my copy used.

Review:

This collection features photographs of 40 extinct or endangered insect species, using specimens from the American Museum of Natural History. Some only include one full-body photograph, while others include extreme close-ups of particular features.

Each insect includes a couple paragraphs of text to provide some context - whether the insects are extinct or endangered, where they can be found, what we know about why they're extinct or endangered, etc.

I got this for the photographs, and the photographs delivered. Literally the only complaint I could think of was that it would have been nice for the specimens to have included scale rulers. It would have interrupted the lovely black backgrounds, though, so I would also have accepted an approximate size mentioned in the accompanying text. Some specimens included this, but many didn't.

I need to check out Levon Biss's other photograph collections at some point.

REVIEW: Komi Can't Communicate: Making Friends and Not Scaring People (nonfiction book) by Natalie Schriefer, original manga by Tomohito Oda

2026-03-30T01:28:00.000-05:00

Making Friends and Not Scaring People is nonfiction that illustrates concepts using pages and panels from the manga Komi Can't Communicate. I bought my copy new.

Review:

If you enjoy the manga Komi Can't Communicate and, like Komi, would like to make friends but aren't really sure how to go about it, then this book is for you.

I've seen the anime and read, I think, the first couple volumes of the manga. This book uses pages and panels from the manga to illustrate concepts and what to do (or not do) in particular situations. Sometimes there was enough context for the references to make sense, even though I didn't get far into the manga, and sometimes I just accepted that certain references were weird little mysteries. (When the weird little mysteries involved Yamai, I decided I was probably happier not knowing more.)

The tone of the text was very reassuring, and the advice was solid, if not particularly groundbreaking. Sometimes when you're anxious about doing something, it's helpful to have the steps you can take laid out in an easy to follow way. This book definitely did that.

REVIEW: Everything You Need to Ace Biology in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete High School Study Guide (nonfiction book) by Matthew Brown

2026-03-30T00:47:00.001-05:00

Everything You Need to Ace Biology in One Big Fat Notebook is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I'll start by saying that I am definitely not a high school student. I picked this up because I was curious about the format - if I enjoyed it, I figured I might try tackling one of the volumes on a subject I was shakier on.

This is divided into 12 units ("Basics of Biology," "The Chemistry of Life," "Cell Theory," "Bacteria, Viruses, Prions, and Viroids," "Protists," "Fungi," "Plants," "Animals," "The Human Body," "Genetics," "Life on Earth," and "Ecosystems and Habitats"). The text is set up to look like notes someone took on lined paper, with occasional highlighted bits, drawings in the margins, underlined portions, etc. Each chapter ends with review questions and answers.

My overall opinion of this is: meh. My eyes glazed over at about the same points where I generally had trouble in school (I'm looking at you, Unit 2). My favorite chapters were probably the ones on algae, molds, and fungi, because they covered info I don't recall learning before. That said, there are probably better, more memorable books out there on those topics for someone like myself, who is reading for enjoyment rather than to study for a test.

Speaking of the study guide aspects: I doubt just reading this book would ever have helped me much when I was a student, even if I forced myself to do the review questions. I did best with notes I actually took myself. This book also missed a bunch of opportunities to explicitly connect concepts mentioned across multiple chapters (not even a brief "remember, [Topic] was discussed in more detail back in Chapter X" - yes, there's an index, but in-text recognition of the relatedness of subjects would have been nice).

Assuming the other volumes are similar to this one, I don't think I'll be seeking out the rest.

REVIEW: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Comic Book (graphic novel) stories and art by various

2026-03-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

Dream Daddy is a graphic novel collection of stories featuring the characters from the Dream Daddy dating simulator game. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

I'll start by saying that, although I tried Dream Daddy, I never got very far into it. The idea of it was fun, but I loathed the character creation process at the start, wasn't a fan of the mini games, and eventually just sort of lost interest in the whole thing. According to my notes, I started off by trying to romance Mat, the coffee shop owner, but my memories are so fuzzy that I suspect I never even finished that one route.

All of which is to say, you don't need to have played the game much in order to enjoy this. I generally had fun while reading this. It read like the aspects of the game I enjoyed, minus the stuff I didn't.

Anyway, on to the individual stories.

"Much Abird About Nothing" written by Wendy Xu, illustrated by Ryan Maniulit

The unnamed player character and Craig (Fitness Dad) go to their college reunion together and have a nice evening that wraps up with a bit of mild adventure.

This was very sweet and wholesome. Not much story, but I didn't really mind.

"Let the Right Dad In" written by Lee C.A., illustrated by Jack Gross

Robert (Bad Dad) lives in a drunken fantasy world in which he's convinced that Damien (Goth Dad) is a vampire. This gets to the point where Robert bursts in on Damien and Mary while brandishing a stake, but it ends on a positive note.

This reminded me that Joseph wasn't the only dad in Dream Daddy that didn't appeal to me. But hey, reading this didn't require me to try to romance Robert, and goodness knows his alcohol-fueled fantasies at least keep things from being boring.

"Dream Ad-y" written by Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray, illustrated by Jarrett Williams

Business at Mat's coffee shop has been so slow that he's been practicing the theremin in the back to pass the time, so Robert, the player character, and others agree to shoot a commercial for him.

The artwork in all the previous stories was stylistically close enough to the game artwork and Kris Anka's cover art to not be too jarring. Not so with this story. While I wasn't a fan of the artwork, I did at least enjoy the story, which was another nice and heartwarming entry.

"Fair Deal" written by C. Spike Trotman, illustrated by Drew Green

Brian (Rival Dad) and Joseph (Cool Youth Minister Dad) are helping their kids prepare for the science fair, which happens to be tomorrow. The whole group heads to the library, where the two dads get extremely competitive while their kids try to hide from it all before eventually working out a plan together.

Another one in which the art style was radically different from original game's style - it kind of reminded me of Steven Universe. I really liked this story. Poor Daisy, just wanting to put minimal effort into her project in order to save herself some grief later. And Joseph's twins were fantastic little gremlins.

"Dungeons & Daddies" written by Josh Trujillo, illustrated by D.J. Kirkland

All of the dads get together to play a TTRPG. From the sounds of things, Damien is normally the DM, but this time around it's Hugo (Teacher Dad). Everyone seems to want to do their own thing and Hugo, who has ideas about how he thinks this campaign should go, gets increasingly frustrated.

Granted, my TTRPG experience is super limited, but this felt like something that could actually happen, complete with a healthy side discussion between the experienced and newbie DMs.

The volume ends with creator commentary for each of the stories, from both the authors and the artists. Kris Anka (the cover artist) and Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou (letterer) also got their own commentary sections.

REVIEW: Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees (nonfiction book) by Thor Hanson

2026-03-23T01:02:47.110-05:00

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hanson starts this book off with an author's note that basically says "while honeybees are mentioned here, they were not my focus." Since honeybees are so often the first kind of bee people think about when they think about bees, I appreciated Hanson's broader look.

Hanson starts by looking at what we know about how bees evolved and what the earliest bees were like. Then he looks at bees and their relationship with flowers, bees and their relationship with us, and bee conservation efforts. Throughout all that, there are mentions of Hanson and his son watching and trying to attract local bees near their home, Hanson taking a course on catching, pinning, and identifying various bee species, and more.

As with Hanson's book on feathers, I occasionally found myself wishing this book included color photos. The lack of color photos wasn't a deal-breaker though - this was still an excellent read. I particularly enjoyed learning more about the ways in which bees are used in agriculture, and about efforts to encourage the return of native bees and hopefully reduce agriculture's reliance on having to bring in rented hives (which then have to deal with the stress of being transported and the nutritional issues brought about by having access to limited types of plants).

REVIEW: Birds of the Photo Ark (nonfiction book) text by Noah Strycker, photographs by Joel Sartore

2026-03-22T23:29:54.258-05:00

Birds of the Photo Ark is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Text-wise, there's not much here. This is primarily a photo book, so it's a quick read.

The photographs were gorgeous. Many of them were of the entire bird, but several were portraits or close-ups of particular features, such as feet or particularly striking feathers. Photographs included captions that identified the species depicted, their IUCN status, and, since these were all captive birds, pages at the end mentioned where the particular birds were located.

One thing I wished the captions had included was information, when possible, about the sex of the birds in the photographs. The only captions that included this information were the ones in the "Gender" section at the beginning of the "Next Generation" chapter.

There's a short section at the end in which Joel Sartore, the photographer, explained the process of photographing the birds. I'm always a fan of "process" sections in books like these, even if they're brief.

REVIEW: Bible Adventures (nonfiction book) by Gabe Durham

2026-03-22T22:57:00.898-05:00

Bible Adventures is Boss Fight Books' seventh book, each of which focuses on a particular video game. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book wasn't initially on my personal list of Boss Fight Books to read - I was more focused on games I'd played or games that interested me but that I knew I wasn't going to play. However, at some point while reading reviews, I came across some positive mentions of this book and decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did.

Durham looks at Color Dreams (a game development company), Wisdom Tree (Color Dreams' Christian games offshoot), the various people involved, and the games they made. I'd never heard of any of these companies or games, but it was interesting to read about how aspects of early Nintendo history I'd read about in other books resulted in the creation of Color Dreams, which developed and published unlicensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although most of the people involved in Color Dreams were either atheists or agnostics, Wisdom Tree was born from business savvy - Christian games were an untapped market with zero competition, and Christian stores turned out to be the perfect place to sell unlicensed Nintendo games. Although the developers themselves mostly weren't Christians, the company hired salespeople who were.

It was fascinating, reading about how the companies functioned and the kinds of games they made. Although this was mostly focused on Wisdom Tree's games rather than Color Dreams', in some cases they were practically the same thing - some Wisdom Tree games were literally just Color Dreams games with a few tweaks and some bible stuff thrown in. No screenshots for any of it, unfortunately, although I was able to easily find some online (Durham's descriptions of the animal stacking in Bible Adventure's "Noah's Ark" and all the baby Moses stuff in "Baby Moses" were better than the screenshots alone would have been, anyway).

There were moments, especially later in Wisdom Tree's history, that were just wild - at one point, for example, Color Dreams got the Hellraiser movie game rights, prepared for the creation of that game by paying to use Wolfenstein 3D's engine, and then, when the Hellraiser game didn't pan out, squeezed some money out of it all by having Wisdom Tree release Super 3D Noah's Ark, which was essentially Wolfenstein 3D but with a slingshot instead of guns, angry animals instead of Nazis, and fruit instead of bullets.

In addition to the game stuff, I also appreciated Durham's examination of his feelings about faith and belief, and the way Color Dreams founder Dan Lawton's regret about convincing Dan Burke (a Color Dreams developer) to become an atheist mirrored his own feelings about trying to convert other people to Christianity.

All in all, this was a great read.