30:100 Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World by Seanan McGuire

Sharon is the smart one, the good child but not the good girl, and her parents treated her as such. Her brother gets the comic books from their dad but he doesn't think to bring them for her.  When she asks her brother about them, she learns about how Superman came to earth after being placed in a rocket from Krypton when their planet was dying.  Not very realistic she thinks. So when a stranger who seems familiar comes up to her at the library and drops a piece of paper on her book and walks away, she looks at it and finds an equation.  Now that is something she can sink her teeth into.  That equation leads her to places she could never have imagined but now that she has started down that path, she can understand Superman's parents better.  The planet is dying and there is no rocketship to save any of them....or could there be?

A patreon short story by Seanan McGuire and one of her more depressing ones as I look around at our world today.



Page count: 20p/7,398p ytd/318,283p lifetime

29:100 Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks

A collection of short stories written by the award-winning actor, Tom Hanks.  I was excited by this as I love him as an actor, enjoyed listening to interviews with him, and was intrigued by what he would do with his stories.

I was disappointed, big time.  There were a couple of the longer stories that were good but the majority were boring and pointless.  Nothing happened.  I read a lot of short stories and even though they are short, you can still build a new world or make interesting characters that the reader wants to know more about or a plot that grips the reader.  That was not the case here.  It was really more like sitting around listening to your grandfather tell boring old tales of people he knew in his youth that you don't know and don't care about and the stories just ramble for no reason and most of them have the same basic premise so you don't even get any type of departure from type.  My dad is 90, trust me I'm really familiar with it and that's not what I want to read.



Page count: 416p/7,378p ytd/828,263p lifetime

28:100 A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott by Louisa Young

Kathleen Scott was the widow of Captain Scott who died in Antartica and has been a largely misunderstood footnote for her husband and their son, Peter Scott.  Louisa Young, the author, is the granddaughter of Kathleen Scott and wanted to show the world a different side of her.  Her unwavering devotion to seizing life and all it had to offer and to always choose happiness.  The author does stress these points at every opportunity as well as giving long lists of the famous people in whose company she was often found but it felt more like laundry lists than anything else.  While I admire the things that she did accomplish, especially as a woman during that time, I felt that much of the more interesting accomplishments were given very short mentions.

This is a huge issue with this book.  The depth is lacking in so many areas.  Places where it would have been really interesting to know more about.  Her helping with recreating the faces of wounded soldiers.  Her relationships with so many of the artists that she knew.  But it was just mentioned and then quickly moved past.

I also found that the fact that there would be years in the chapter titles and then stuff from all over the place would get mentioned in that chapter so it was jumping time all over the place regularly very frustrating.

And then there is Kathleen Scott herself.  I understand that the author wanted to help get better information about her out there but honestly, she came across as a misogynist, self-centered, and emotionally needy and controlling to me.  I was mostly frustrated and just didn't find her likable at all.  Apparently in real life she was but this book did not bring that across to me.



Page count: 320p/6,962p ytd/317,847p lifetime

27:100 Becoming by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama's autobiography was a fabulous read.  I greatly admired her as First Lady (and her husband as President) but getting to hear about her childhood, growing up, school, meeting Barack, and the subsequent rise to becoming First Lady was fascinating.  The writing was fresh, open, honest, and made it feel like we were just sitting having tea and chatting.  Listening to her struggles as she tried to figure out what she wanted to be doing with her life, as a politician's wife which she hadn't really wanted to get into, balancing family and work and politician's wife responsibilities, making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again.  You know, being real, and it only increased my respect and admiration for her reading this.


Page count: 426p/6,642p ytd/317,847p lifetime

26:100 Bounty Hunt by Kelley Armstrong

Reese hasn't wanted to talk about his past with anyone but that doesn't mean that his past has forgotten about him.  The Australian pack wants him back for their own reasons especially since they can use this to try and get their hands on the daughter of a non-pack member as well.  Reese will have to learn to trust his new pack if he wants to survive this.

Story was ok but nothing amazing.  I'm not a fan of this artist's style and had a really hard time telling the different North American pack members apart.  I like that authors are branching out to tell new stories via comics but this one just needed something a bit more to make it memorable.


Page count: 80p/6,216p ytd/317,421p lifetime

25:100 To Be a Slave by Julius Lester

From 2014:

In this small book are tales of slavery told by the slaves themselves.  Tales of heartache and pain and subjugation that I never read in any of my history books.  Slavery is awful and that is something that I've always felt in my bones but reading what they went through, in their own words with just the narrative of Julius Lester to weave the tales together is gutwrenching.  Families broken apart we knew but infants torn from their mother's breast to later be drowned.  The absolute lack of any type of  compassion for another living thing, much less another human being.  How the horses were cared for better than the people.  To hear of the beatings in their own words.  Even after reading this I can't imagine how so many endured it for so long and my heart breaks for what they went through and for those around the world today that are still not free.  While this is written as a children's book, I do find the subject matter to be very heavy and am glad that our curriculum did not include this until high school but I definitely feel that it is a book that everyone should read to better understand the history of our nation from the side that wasn't in charge.

Page count: 160p/6,136p ytd/317,341p lifetime

24:100 Black Panther: Avengers of the New World Part Two by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Really hard to summarize this series as there are plots and subplots and just a lot going on.  I'm reading slowly trying to catch it all.  In order to not give stuff away, I'm going to just use my review from the first volume for all subsequent volumes.  Know that I'm really enjoying them but I think the way they unfold means they are best experienced fresh.

I have so much to say about this but it's hard to nail it all down.  Having read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and completely loved the Black Panther movie, I was super excited when I saw that Mr. Coates would be writing for the comic.  I was not disappointed.  The story was a bit slow in this as it was the first installment but that is because there was so much being set-up.  There is a lot of depth to T'Challa (from my understanding drawing from many different comic versions of the character), the "villains" are ones that are understandable even sympathetic, the questions being asked are not simply answered and force T'Challa to question so much of what he thinks he knows and understands.  Layers upon layers.  On another note, I also really enjoyed the art which I tend to be incredibly picky about (or why I don't read tons of comics).

Page count: 144p/5,976p ytd/317,181p lifetime