Category Archives: Sarah’s Book Reviews

Books that Sarah reads, updated monthly. Some of these books are free review copies, the rest are mostly checked out from the library.

November Reading

The laugh-out-loud cats sell out, A. Koford
Not only enjoyable funny comics, but so beautiful! Four stars.

Asylum : inside the closed world of state mental hospitals, photographs by Christopher Payne
Payne is especially interested in the self-sufficient state asylums, and includes really neat pictures of farm building and shops in addition to lobbies and patient areas. I liked the giant sauerkraut vats in Pennsylvania! The short essays included discussed how the (already financially strapped) institutions were unable to continue after they were legally barred from relying on free patient labor. Quite interesting! Four stars.

I shall destroy all the civilized planets! : the comics of Fletcher Hanks
Reprint of the (now public domain) comics of Fletcher Hanks. I can see why he was influential despite the stories being not at all good and the characters being near-omnipotent to the point of draining the dramatic potential of the story. It’s amazing stuff, but I’m not sure it was done on purpose. It’s a bit like looking at outsider art: it’s good stuff, but it is still nine kinds of crazy, too. Three stars.

Little Wolf’s book of badness by Ian Whybrow, illustrated by Tony Ross
This book has great character voice, even more character in the illustrations, a fun story, and is overall really neat and adorable. It brought me back to my favorite books as a kid (and the illustrations measure up to my childhood favorite, Quentin Blake). Please pick it up to at least see the pictures of Little Wolf and of the lunch his mother packed for his journey. Five stars.

August Reading

Little Brother, Doctorow (Y)
It was good, but not great. At the end he recommended the books that inspired him and I think they were all better overall than this book. Not that it isn’t worth reading, but it’s not an all time great. Three stars.

Little Vampire, Sfar
Collecting Little Vampire Goes to School, Little Vampire Does Kung-Fu, and Little Vampire and the Canine Defenders Club. I had previously read (and apparently forgotten great swathes of) the first two books. Adorable stories and excellent art. And did you know that there are four more books yet to be translated? And a cartoon? Four stars.