Gingerbread Girl, Tobin and Coover
The light-hearted, flirty pretty girls of Coover’s other work (especially Small Favors) get more depth and a lot more darkness. Unresolved, but in a realistic way. I loved the way the narrative was drawn forward by passing people and animals, I loved the clearly-recognizable Portland setting, and the briefest glimpses of trauma and love. Four stars.

Feynman, Ottaviani & Myrick
I’m a big fan of Ottaviani’s science comics and a big fan of Feynman (mostly from that almost rite-of-nerd-passage reading of Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think)– which I didn’t realize until I started reading would lead to some pretty high expectations of the book. Well, expectations met and exceeded! Loved it, misted up at the sad parts, laughed at the funny parts, and I find myself even more fond of both Feynman and Ottaviani. Five stars. PS: check out Ottaviani & Myrick’s guest strip at Unshelved on Feynman’s favorite books!

Best American Crime Writing, 2003
Another enjoyable collection of true crime essays, covering a variety of crimes all over the world. A couple were especially interesting, even being a few years old: one about Enron, another about a woman who was pivotal in the Rwandan genocide. Four stars.

The Children’s Object Book
Like a more sedate Busy Town, or a picture dictionary for time travelers, it’s a book of everyday objects in England in the 1880s. I learned a lot, but would still make basic time-travel errors, since they don’t explain the WHY of a Milk Pan. Is it just a heavy-bottomed pan? Is it important that it’s square? Four stars for being intriguing.

Tokyo on Foot: Travels in the City’s Most Colorful Neighborhoods, text and illustrations by Florent Chavouet
Chavouet spent 6 months biking and sketching around Tokyo and this is his sketchbook, complete with stickers from the various fruit he ate. I liked that he was able to start conversations with the locals who were curious about what he was drawing (and even got a free snack from a delighted food vendor). It was interesting to spot what I felt were very French aspects of his experience (the book is in translation) after I spent two weeks wandering around Paris– especially that he kept getting bike parking tickets. I don’t think anybody in Paris seemed to care where they parked their bike (or even motorcycle). It’s a pretty cool book and made me want to travel that way– getting into the daily life of the city and observing. Four stars.

Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis, James L. Swanson.
I learned a whole bunch of stuff about the end of the Civil War, reminding me that I’m on a slow-motion reading jag on history: I pick up interesting and well-written books to gather bits of history and weave the whole picture together in my head. The growing emotion among the mourners as Lincoln’s funeral train traveled back to his home gave me a picture of how the nation was dealing with the grief of the Civil War. Four stars.