Rating: 4/5, good Shortcomings is a graphic novel about cranky 30-something Japanese-American man (Ben) whose relationship with an idealistic 30-something Japanese-American woman (Miko) is strained by his constant negativity and his undeniable interest in white women. Set in Berkeley and later New York, it is very down-to-earth and realistic. If you know the San Francisco Bay Area, you’ll recognize the leftist political art that is gauche to critique, the experimental nude live shows, and the references to Mills College’s lesbian hookup culture. Ben’s best friend Alice is a promiscuous lesbia ..read more

Rating: 3/5, average My brother’s been bugging me to read this for a long time and I haven’t been too interested, but he came and visited and started reading it at my house so I thought “what the hell” and picked it up after he left. The front cover looks tasty but doesn’t tell much about the contents of the book. The back cover reads: “The doughnut is a thing of beauty. A circle of fried doughy perfection. A source of comfort in trying times, perhaps. For Theo Bernstein, however, it is far, far more. Things have been going pretty badly for Theo Bernstein. An unfortunate accident at work has ..read more

Rating: 4/5, good I first read this book when I was seventeen, as part of summer reading before senior year of high school. It’s a short book, but very dense and philosophical. It was a bit hard to read and I remember not quite getting it, but the idea that religion is human-constructed and shouldn’t be taken too seriously buried itself deep inside my brain like a wasp burrowing into an oak gall. I recently reread it with my local science fiction book club and I understood and enjoyed it more on the second reading. I remembered most of the characters, the general outline of the plot and major ..read more

Rating: 4/5, good I really enjoyed this book! It’s comprised of four short horror stories with plenty of blood, guts, and chaos. In the first one, “Emma”, a group of “party girls” get terrorized by a haunted virtual assistant. In the second, “A Grave Situation”, an abusive executive is dogged by undead unfortunates he took advantage of. In the third, “Slime Dwellers”… if I say what the premise is, it’ll spoil it, so I’ll just say that it’s as sexy as it is scary. In the fourth, “Gnome More, Gnome More”… I also won’t spoil that one, but it does literally involve garden gnomes and it’s equal pa ..read more

Rating: 5/5, excellent Trigger warnings: anorexia, bulimia, emetophobia, child abuse, sexual abuse, CPTSD, alcoholism I was too old for iCarly by the time it came out. I caught bits of it walking in and out while my younger brother watched it, but it seemed really mean-spirited to me, especially the character of Sam (played by Jennette McCurdy). I also thought it was reckless for a show geared towards preteens to glamorize having a web show without warning kids about the potential dangers. I was surprised to learn that McCurdy disliked being on the show, and curious as to why since she starre ..read more

Rating: 4/5, good If you’re looking for a comfort read with supernatural characters, look no further… Strange Practice is about Dr. Greta Helsing, daughter of Wilfert Helsing. Greta inherited her father’s practice when he died a few years ago. She works to keep the undead in good “health”—in this universe, vampires and ghouls can suffer from the same ailments as human beings. Enter the Rosary Ripper, a ruthless murderer who leaves cheap plastic rosaries on their victims… Greta treats Varney, a vampire who got attacked by a group of monks that the heroes suspect are the group behind the Rosary ..read more

Rating: 3/5, average TW: rape This book is either brilliant or stupid and I’m not sure which one… possibly both. I saw this as #1 on a list of Weirdest Science Fiction some years ago and tried to read it, but only got about 30% in because there’s a pretty brutal rape scene that seemed to come out of nowhere and I didn’t know what was happening in the story. I decided to pick it up again after reading sections of Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia. She discusses the idea of the chthonic (associated with the feminine, earthy, sexual, consumptive) and I thought it might make more sense to me now ..read more

Rating: 4/5, good   This is the story of a water fairy born from a shipwreck who helps a fox god escape the wrath of a wolf god. Caldyr, the fairy, has a take-no-prisoners personality with extremely strong water magic to back it up. Reynardine, the fox god, is a flirty, selfish trickster god. The story feels like a buddy cop movie in book form with a lot of supernatural elements mixed in. It took a little while to get into this and it seemed a little overly edgy at first (the characters have a similar rapport to those in The Magicians show where they can seem unnecessarily prickly) but I ..read more

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente Rating: 4/5, good When this was published last year (2018), it took the Twitter world by storm. It seemed like everybody was posting about it, but I didn’t buy it when it first came out because the premise didn’t appeal to me. It’s a scifi novel about some Earthlings who get abducted by aliens and are forced to compete in a singing contest. I’d seen this plot before in the Jimmy Neutron movie, so I wasn’t sure if it would be too cartoony for a novel. It is in fact very cartoony, but it’s also got a lot of good queer representation, interesting scifi ideas ..read more

Transmutations by Vergere Street Rating: 3/5, average   This short story collection was written by someone from my university. They were in my Animal Theory class and I remember them saying they hunted all their own meat and that made me curious, so I friended them on Facebook a little bit ago, and through that found this story collection. There are six stories in the collection: “Suitcase”, “The Magic Fish”, “Exorcism of a Lazy Student”, “Feathers”, “Wish”, and “Heritage”. The first five are fictional, and the last one, “Heritage”, is autobiographical.   “Suitcase” is about a young ..read more