Cul de Sac Golden Treasury: a Keepsake Garland of Classics, Thompson
Seems to be very similar coverage to Cul de Sac (reviewed here) but with artist commentary. Pretty nice! Four stars.
The Loving Dead, Beamer
Friends in their twenties witness the start of a zombie plague in Oakland and struggle to survive. The twist in the “rules”: the zombies are lust-filled in addition to being hungry for flesh, the infection is spread through both lust (kisses) and hunger (bites). I’m pretty sure there’s some deep meaning in this one, but I’m not sure what it is, yet. It was definitely both scary and sexy. I liked it. Three stars.
Happy Hamster, Paauw
High-tech hamster owner shares his cute recipes for hamster treats. The photos are fairly low-quality, making me suspect that they just bought images from his web site rather than actually making the book from scratch. Two stars.
The Fat Boy Chronicles, Lang & Buchanan
The premise is pretty simple: Jimmy relates what happens in his freshman year in his English class journal, especially talking about the teasing he gets because he’s fat. The part that sets it above other books is that his voice is very authentic (and appropriate for the present day, unfortunately uncommon) and he is a thoughtful and kind person who sees the difficulties his classmates are going through. It was also nice that the support he got from his family and his church made a difference in his inner resources, but not in a heavy-handed way. I’m a bit concerned that he was able to lose a bunch of weight successfully as part of the resolution (apparently this is the “inspired by a true story” part), especially in contrast with the more complex picture painted in Daniel Pinkwater’s career of loss and then gain again– I’m glad that Jimmy’s change in outlook is also there, since that may be more lasting than his change in size. Four stars.
Dead Men’s Boots, Mike Carey
When I tried the audiobook version, I gave up as soon as I heard Felix Castor speak. The voice was wrong. Castor is tough, hard-bitten and hard-boiled, and gets the stuffing beaten out of him on a regular basis (not that he doesn’t do the same to others, too). His voice should be tough, too. The guy on the cover is wrong, too (too handsome and symmetrical). I bet Castor is far rougher, but you’d secretly swoon, a bit like Gene Hunt. Definitely has had a broken nose a time or two. But also has quite the soft spot for people in need, despite his better judgment, the best sort of noir hero. This book still has the twists and turns of a good mystery and I continue to love Carey’s expressive descriptive writing. The characters are still evolving (especially Julia) which makes me look forward to future volumes. Four stars.
Moyasimon 2: Tales of Agriculture, Ishikawa
Further adventures of the Ag School student who can see microbes with his bare eyes. There was a lot of focus on sake this series, and a wonderful interlude with the spring festival, when the farm fraternity closes the campus down to create a self-sufficient economy and elimination game. No lectures from the professor in this volume, but I liked it a lot anyway! Four stars.
The Brinkley Girls: the Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons From 1913-1940, Trina Robbins (editor)
I would have loved this book to death when I was in grade school. Brinkley’s drawings have gobs of luxurious curly hair, fabulous glamorous and jewel-encrusted outfits, and dreamy lush backgrounds. I was obsessed by the drawings in my copy of The Snow Queen (especially when whats-his-name lived with the gypsies) and the books of Mucha art prints. Three stars.
Red Star Over Russia: a Visual History of the Soviet Union From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin: Posters, Photographs and Graphics from the David King Collection, David King
I was hoping for a book of propaganda posters of the sort that depict utopia and how we’ll get there, but this was a bit of everything: handbills announcing (12 hours prematurely) the end of the revolution, pictures of political meetings with purged people x-acto’d or markered out, a picture of a baby being “Octobered” rather than baptized, Intourist posters, and more. Less utopia and more the influence of fear and oppression on the graphic arts. Two stars, mostly because it was too scary.
Journey Into the Deep: Discovering New Ocean Creatures, Johnson
I got a stack of those great youth science books this week, the kind with an accessible rundown on a topic and great color photos in a large format. This one is on the process and discoveries of the Census of Marine Life done from 2000 to 2010. While there was a good overview of the techniques (from counting creatures per marked square on the shoreline to mini subs to deep sea robots) and the discoveries in the various depths and undersea climates. The drawback was that segments of the book are written in the second-person, which was sort of distracting and less engaging than the quotes from the people actually involved in the census. Great photos and fascinating ocean facts, though, so I may want to spend more time learning about the census. Three stars.
Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot, Montgomery
Another great book in the Scientists in the Field series, and another from Sy Montgomery who has written some pretty great animal books. The Kakapo is utterly charming (eight-pound downy-soft endangered friendly flightless parrot that smells like honey!) and the book emphasizes the collaborative effort to breed the birds in the wild, an effort that allows volunteers to join the effort for a season at a time. The photos (by Nic Bishop) are gorgeous and I can see this one getting awards (and I can see myself booktalking the hell out of it). Five stars.
Project Seahorse, Turner
Another Scientists in the Field book, on the people working in marine sanctuaries off the coast of the Philippines, especially with seahorse populations. The group works with local fishermen to protect the sanctuaries without forcing locals out of their livelihoods. They also have worked with people in the traditional Chinese medicine industry to have them voluntarily not buy dried seahorses under a certain length (allowing them more time to breed). I was disappointed that the description of the seahorses use in TCM didn’t at all mention that the whole thing is a crock. I guess that’s not the way to work across communities. The Scientists in the Field books make sure to include a variety of people in the fields, and this one not only has female biologists, but female biologists with children! They also have student biologists from the Philippines (though they were going to go on to grad school in the US). Again, a pretty good book from this solid series. Four stars.
The Adventures of Jack Lime, Leck
Why would you make a character orphaned, living in a planned corporate community built up around his grandmother’s house, with episodes of narcolepsy that give him near-prophetic dreams AND THEN NOT DO ANYTHING WITH THAT???? Boo. No stars.
Frozen Secrets: Antarctica Revealed, Walker
After an introduction talking about the first people to explore the continent, you get a really thorough overview of the various scientific projects going on in Antarctica by different disciplines and teams and countries. An awful lot of them involve climate change over time (seen in changes in ice cores, soil layers, trapped water beneath glaciers, trapped gasses, trapped plant matter, fossils and whatnot), and I have been thinking about the political aspects of funding for and acknowledgment of global warming research, so it was a good match for my mindset. Four stars.