Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel by Milorad Pavić, translated by Christina Pribićević-Zorić

This entry is part 37 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway. (I read this in August.) The Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel is a very strange book. I guess I’d sum it up as dueling untrustworthy historical accounts by three sources, one from each of the religions of the book, about the Khazar people. The idea is that the accounts were compiled hundreds of years after whatever actually happened with the Khazars, and those compiled accounts have been translated and edited by a modern scholar. So you have a bunch of points of view, …

Continue Reading

The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell

This entry is part 29 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway.  I sometimes feel like I’m the only person I know who’s never actually read a novel by Neil Gaiman. I have read a couple of short stories and a few of the Sandman comics, yeah, and I’ve seen Coraline, but I’ve never read one of his novels. Decades ago I signed out Good Omens (his early collaboration with Terry Pratchett) from the library: this was back in high school, and I never got very far into it. (I haven’t even looked at the copy of …

Continue Reading

Dragons (Time Life Enchanted World)

This entry is part 14 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other books of 2020, this comes a while after I read it.  We visited my grandmother’s house in Quebec when I was a kid. That was the trip when I discovered one of my cousins shared my interest in RPGs. It was also the trip when I noticed our uncle’s book collection. He had piles of graphic novels—all in French, of course—but he also had what I remember as a full set of the Time Life Enchanted World books. If you were growing up in the 1980s, you probably knew someone who had them, or at least saw …

Continue Reading

Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, Vol. 3, by Various Artists

This entry is part 8 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

Just like with the previous volumes of this series, I read this book in a single sitting to my son, who was enthralled all the way through. I’d never read him anything that he was so interested as to insist on returning to it every day till it was done, the way he was with this series. (However, he is now similarly enraptured by David Weiger and Terryl Whitlatch’s The Katurran Odyssey. Expect a post on that at some point.) I know I praised the second volume of Legends of the Guard for embracing a wider variety of styles and …

Continue Reading

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses and The Anti-Racist Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez

This entry is part 7 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

Before I discuss these books, I want to note that I was able to borrow both in ebook form from my local library: that is, the National Library of Korea’s Sejong branch. I didn’t expect them to be available, but to my shock they both were! (If you’re in Korea, Libby connects with the National Library—or at least your local branch—pretty much seamlessly… at least for English-language books.) Anyway, as always, I’m sharing this at some remove after reading the books I discuss. I actually read these way back in early January, but it took me a while to collect …

Continue Reading