3 Graphic Novels

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge /

Look at me finishing up a category from the Cybils shortlist. (Unfortunately it’s an easy category. Hah.)

The Dumbest Idea Ever was ok. A little long and I didn’t much like the kid. Or his friends. The illustrations were good, though.

Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust was very good. I liked it a lot. I can see a grandmother telling that story to her grandchild but not to her son.

Ballad was beautiful. Really beautiful. But, I did not love the story that went along with it. It was too choppy and I don’t think it needed to be. Definitely worth reading just for the illustrations.

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Alice + Freda Forever

2015, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Feminism, Non-Fiction, Queer, Women, Young Adult /

I impulsed selected Alice + Freda Forever because I liked the font on the cover. I was also interested in reading more about this case. I’ve heard about it in passing but knew very little about it, really.

It was interesting. A little dry considering the subject matter. There was a lot of crazy going on back in the late 1800s and it wasn’t all just the Alice kind of crazy. Just sayin’.

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The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

One of our favorite series to listen to on audio is The #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series. We absolutely love them and The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe was excellent.

I particularly enjoyed that Charlie plays a prominent role in this story and I think maybe he grows up just a wee bit more in the process. I think Mma Makutsi might have grown up a little bit, too…

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The Chicken Keeper’s Problem Solver

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I’ve been talking a lot about having chickens someday… like next year, when we leave Chicagoland. During one of these periods when I was talking about chickens, my mom sent me a link to The Chicken Keeper’s Problem Solver and I said I’d have to check it out later since it was only available for pre-order.

Time passes and my mom texts me to tell me she sent me a present and it will arrive on Sunday. It did and it was that book!

I read it straight through and was reminded again of how little I know about chickens. Hah. Because I know so little about chickens, I’m not really sure if this is a good and useful book or not. It felt like a good and useful book, so I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.

It also was a little bit scary of a scary book– because all the bad things can happen! Gah. I guess if bad things do happen, I’ll have this book to help me figure out how to solve the problem, right? Assuming this is a good and helpful book, which I think it probably is. I’ll let you know in a year or two.

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2 Non-Fiction Books

2015, Art, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

Explore Mixed Media Collage was pretty good. The projects themselves weren’t really my style and none of the techniques were new to me — but, it was a pretty book and there were bits and pieces of projects that I really liked and will probably end up doing myself, at some point.

Then, Leonard Nimoy died and TW said RESERVE ALL THE BOOKS so I reserved all the books available in my library system. Turns out the books she wanted weren’t in our library system so, poop. I’ve already seen a zillion images from The Full Body Project but figured what the heck — I have the book. Nimoy died. I’ll read it. And it was ok. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. I’m not sorry I read it.

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The Dress Shop of Dreams

2015, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Fiction /

Awhile back, I was looking for a book to read and remembered that TW liked The Dress Shop of Dreams — she said something about it being Sarah Addison Allen-like. So, I read it. And, it took forever for me to finish — which is crazy because it’s not really long and it’s not a bad back. There just end up being a lot of characters and they’re all pretty much falling apart or tearing their lives apart in order to put them back together and it all felt exhausting to me. So, I felt like I needed to read it in short chunks, at least til the end when everyone’s life got put back into proper order and such.

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Hell on Wheels

1 Comment / 2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Mystery, Women /

I would very much like to know how I found Hell on Wheels, since it’s like the 9th book in the series, it seems somewhat unlikely that I reserved it based on a series recommendation. Maybe I just picked it up from the new arrivals shelf? I don’t know but I loved it.

I really like Odelia Grey. I like the body positive female sleuth. I like her paraplegic husband. I like pretty much everything about it and will have to go back and read the whole series.

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