Tootfinder

Just finished "The Bodyguard Unit" written by Clément Xavier, illustrated by Lisa Lugrin, with colors by Albertine Ralenti and translated from French to English by Edward Gauvin. An excellent and fascinating history of Edith Garrud, a Jiu-Jutsu instructor who helped train suffragettes in Britain to fight the police, and who fought alongside them at speeches and political rallies. It also of course has a lot of details of the suffragette movement, many of which I theoretically knew but never actually thought about, and others which I was totally unaware of, especially the degree of violence and the connections to other radical movements of the time.
An excellent graphic novel, both educational and funny.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Just finished "Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich. It's a beautiful and entrancing novel in many ways, but I couldn't bring myself to like the ending. I think in one of my most recent book posts I complained about a deus ex machina, so it's ironic that in this case as the pages dwindled I was fully prepared to accept and even welcome one, especially with all of the deus-related stuff going on already. I am left profoundly unsure as to whether Erdrich imagines a positive future beyond our current oppressions, or just futility, when for most of the book it seemed like the former, which is something I seek out in earnest these days. It is of course impressive that a book about innocents being hunted through the streets of Minneapolis & Saint Paul, while a volunteer citizens network organizes to keep them safe, could be published in 2017. There are strong echoes of Octavia Butler here, and in both cases I think it's a marginalized position which allows authors to see with clarity that most mainstream authors miss or don't even attempt.
I think I will seek out more of Erdrich's writing, but only after a bit of a break.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Just finished "Red Stones" by Ernesto Saade. A harrowing graphic novel account of fighting and a massacre during the 1970s-1980s civil war in El Salvador. An excellent reminder of the realities of opposing an autocratic state and of the horrific legacy of the United States in fostering so many oppressive regimes throughout Central America which continues to this day.
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Just finished "Red Stones" by Ernesto Saade. A harrowing graphic novel account of fighting and a massacre during the 1970s-1980s civil war in El Salvador. An excellent reminder of the realities of opposing an autocratic state and of the horrific legacy of the United States in fostering so many oppressive regimes throughout Central America which continues to this day.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Just finished "Macunado: Welcome to Elsewhere" by Liniers, which is apparently a collection of newspaper comics. It's excellent and reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes, Minus, and Azumanga Daioh or Nichijou.
I'll always love a bit of meta in comics and Liniers sprinkles it in wonderfully here and there.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

In Agent Running in the Field, Le Carré gave himself a variety of characters through which he could vent his anger at Brexit, Trump, oligarchs, the state of the world & its intelligence services: Ed, Florence, Prue.
The main character, as ever, remains more circumspect but has clear sympathy for the other characters' views #Bookstodon #LeCarré #AmReading

Love this in Huysmans about the ideal reading experience
#amreading #modernism #literature

Just finished "Starfish" by Akemi Dawn Bowman. It was gripping (I basically barely put it down and finished in in a single day) but also feels flawed in some ways.
Things I liked: a protagonist that I really strongly rooted for, and a resolution that landed with a bit of complexity.
Things I'm feeling a way about: complete lack of depth in interrogating heritage, despite that being a huge theme, some tinges of deus ex machina in how the central conflicts are resolved, and a real lack of good messaging around consent.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Enjoying the framing of Le Carré's Agent Running in the Field, where it's clear from the beginning that the main character has already confessed his sins to 'the Office'.
I did pause reading once I saw how it might all end in calamity, but I'm glad I picked it back up #Bookstodon #LeCarré #AmReading

Just finished "Quiet Crossings" by Vivi Partridge. A wonderfully cozy short graphic novel about hanging on and letting go, full of cute mushroom sprites.
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Just finished "Skating Wilder" written by Brandon Dumais and illustrated by AJ Dungo. It's a really amazing graphic novel history of skateboarding, from the 1960s through to the present. It's got multiple threads from the commercial angle, to the magazines and music, to the individual tricks.
I've never skated myself (never taught myself to balance properly) but I loved Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 as a kid and I still like watching skate videos. I learned a lot of details from this book that I never knew growing up and the way it talks about skating surviving multiple waves of commercialization is inspiring.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Just finished "You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty" by Akwaeke Emezi. I liked a ton of things about it but a few other things bothered me a bit, and I kinda feel like I need to read more of Emezi's work to figure out how I feel. There's a lot of grief and a lot of joy in this book, as well as some nice deep truths about relationships and grief, but maybe also some deep-feeling not-quite truths?
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Just finished Kageki Shoujo volume 3 by Kumiko Saiki, and figured I might as well post about it even though I'll be reading it for a while more.
My library has a great selection of manga, so sometimes I check one out at random when I'm waiting for next volumes of the series I really love (With Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama is top of my list right now). I was expecting Kageki to be more of a classic shoujo manga, but it's actually hardly focused on romance at all, and the deep background on Japanese theater traditions is a lot of fun to learn about along with the drama of the different characters.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Just finished "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas. In an unusual twist of fate, I had read "Concrete Rose" earlier, which gave me a rich backstory to relate things to. "The Hate U Give" is really good, but I found the resolution of King's arc slightly disappointing, even though the ending was strong. It's definitely not my place to judge Thomas' perspective here, but I do think that the book's broad popularity including among more liberal audiences probably stems at least in part from the way it allows a "the cops have issues but are ultimately-necessary/sometimes-positive" reading that undermines the strength of the core message.
In the end I like Concrete Rose better, but they're both great and I'll be putting Thomas' other books on my to-read list.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Just finished "Wake Now In the Fire" written by Jarrett Dapier and drawn by AJ Dungo. It's a really amazing graphic novel with fictional characters but centered on a real event where Chicago Public Schools banned the book "Persepolis." I love the way that it traces so many characters and therefore avoids making any single person the hero but instead illustrates how such a robust protest response arises out of a community of resistance.
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Just finished "Squished" written by Megan Wagner Lloyd and drawn by Michelle Mee Nutter. A lovely graphic novel about the ups and downs of being one of seven kids and dealing with various life transitions at the end of elementary school.
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Just finished "Mimosa" by Archie Bongiovanni. A super cool graphic novel about a queer friend group in their 30s and their drama. I think it does a prey great hob portraying both fixable and unfixable lapses and how things evolve as a result.
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Just finished Aarzu All Around by Marzieh Abbas. A really excellent story in verse about a teenage girl in Pakistan who has a passion for cricket, but faces a number of barriers to pursuing it.
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Just finished Iveliz Explains It All by Andrea Beatriz Arango. Once I picked it up I couldn't put it down till I finished it, in less than a day. A really tender and entrancing novel-in-verse about a kid Puerto Rican kid struggling with some deep stuff. I loved the way that the journal focalization let deep feelings flow while also giving the reader a bit of a puzzle in the beginning to understand what exactly was going on. Deals with friendship, loss, and mental health (including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and flashbacks).
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Just finished "Armaveni" by Nadine Takvorian. A fascinating graphic novel about the author's family history through the Armenian genocide in Turkey, and the echoes of that story into her life in America and a visit to both Armenia and family in Turkey, where prejudice and denial linger on.
Fascinating to read right now both in light of American denial of our own genocidal history that's rarely questioned, and the ongoing modern genocides in places like Ethiopia and Gaza.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Just finished "The Phantom Scientist" by Robin Cousin, translated into English by Edward Gauvin. It's a book I really enjoyed, although of course being an academic computer scientist it pushes a lot of my buttons. The idea of an "Institute" fated to descend into chaos, a systems expert tasked with slowing that process, and researchers whose results are a bit too effective for their own good is a catnip setting for me, and the points about epistemology although somewhat diluted are quite nice.
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Just finished "Song of A Blackbird" by Maria van Lieshout. It's an excellent and extremely timely historical fiction graphic novel about rediscovering a family connection that was severed by war, and the Dutch Resistance figures under Nazi occupation who saved many lives, in some cases at the cost of their own.
Despite being fiction, it's very closely grounded in historical facts, and the inclusion of photographs within the illustrations is really cool.
Now is an interesting time to be thinking about the fates of Nazis, collaborators, their victims, and the resistance, as well as how we remember them all. I especially liked the section at the end about the real historical figures and their fates. So "fascinating" that none of the Nazis were executed or died in prison (mostly they did serve long terms before their release), even those who oversaw mass killings and deportations to concentration camps. I'm a prison abolitionist and not a fan of state capital punishment, so on *some* level this seems like an outcome I should be happy about, but I somehow doubt that the state was this lenient for all prisoners during this time period...
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