The Katurran Odyssey by David Michael Wieger, illustrated by Terryl Whitlatch

This entry is part 13 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  This year, I’ve decided it’s time to start reading longer stories to my son. I’ve been reading to him since before he could speak, but until now, it’s been shorter books. He’s gotten into some longer things on his own, despite being unble to read for himself as yet—the Dog Man comics are a big hit, as are Captain Underpants, but until now I hadn’t read anything longer to …

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The Wages of Whiteness (Revised Edition) by David R. Roediger

This entry is part 12 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  The Wages of Whiteness is a book that’s been on my shelf since I read John Strausbaugh’s Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture back in Bucheon, years ago when I was preparing to teach a course in American Popular Culture. That was a book that yielded up a few fascinating-sounding references: I read Nick Tosches’ Where Dead Voices Gather pretty soon after (and …

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“The Slave” from Anna Brownell Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada

I recently stumbled upon an account of an event in Niagara in 1837 that I cannot resist posting here, as it brought to mind the more recent (and ongoing) Black Lives Matter protests within the U.S. Like others who stumble upon the reference, I was a bit baffled that I’d never heard about it before.  Here’s some context: Anna Brownell Jameson was a (white) Anglo-Irish feminist writer and art historian. This account is from her description of a trip through the Ontario countryside during a visit to Canada around this time. Her stop in Niagara came early into that trip, …

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Hidden Folk, by Eleanor Arnason

This entry is part 11 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Eleanor Arnason is a longtime speculative fiction writer: she’s been publishing since the 1970s, and her work spans SF, fantasy, and poetry, but this is the first thing I’ve read by her. I was attracted by two things: a positive comment about another book of hers by a friend, and the fact that Hidden Folk explores the mythic landscape of Iceland. At the time, I was finally reading some …

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Elements of Fiction, by Walter Mosley

This entry is part 10 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Elements of Fiction was okay for what it is, but what is it? It’s a followup to an earlier book by Walter Mosley, This Year You Write Your Novel. The title should tell you that this earlier book is aimed at someone early in the process of becoming a writer, and my impression is that Elements of Fiction is, too. It’s a very short read: the ebook I borrowed …

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Wanderhome, by Jay Dragon

This entry is part 9 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, I’m posting about books sometimes weeks after reading them. In this case, I’m actually waiting to post this until after I’ve played the game, since I happen to be playing in a one-shot trying it out this weekend.  Wanderhome is a relatively rules-light, fantasy RPG featuring anthropic-animal player characters who wander around, expressing and enacting care towards others, expressing their personality while keeping their secrets and staying attentive and open to the world and to those who cross your path. It’s cozy, pastoral, rules-light, and… has no mechanics for violence. If you’ve played many …

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Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, Vol. 2, by Various Artists

This entry is part 6 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

Like with Volume 1, I read to my eager and happy son, who loved it as much as the first, and was just as eager to get to the third volume. (We finished it long after his bedtime and he was yawning but still was upset when I told him we’d do the third book the following day.) I liked how the range of styles and approaches expanded. One of the “tales” is in the form of a song, and I am curious to try see if I can figure out a way of making a nice recording out of it! …

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Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard, Vol. 1, by Various Artists

This entry is part 5 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

My son took an interest in this boxed set, which I got for my wife a couple of years ago. So… I sat down and read Volume 1 to him in a single sitting. He adored it, and was crestfallen that we couldn’t read Vol. 2 immediately. (But by that point—after about an hour and forty minutes straight of doing voices—my throat was getting a bit hoarse and it was his bedtime.) This series consistes of short Mouse Guard-related tales by other authors. They’re lore set in the world, but aren’t canonical events so much as folktales, legends, and fairy …

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Jack Vance’s The Book of Dreams (Demon Princes, Book 5)

This entry is part 4 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

Well, this is the saddest of the Demon Princes novels, because its villain, Howard Allen Treesong, was the most sympathetic of the series: a lunatic, to be sure, but he lost his mind through abuse and bullying and a horrible childhood. The eponymous The Book of Dreams feels like some kind of metonym for a lot of SF as a literary form: a kooky, self-aggrandizing remix of obscure adventure stories, folklore, and religious tracts. The “high school reunion revenge” scene is the stuff of a Netflix miniseries season climax, I tell you. Also, the parallels between Gerson and Treesong are… …

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Samurai Cat in the Real World by Mark E. Rogers

This entry is part 2 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

The third of the Samurai Cat books—and the the last to have full color art—features adventures through gangland Chicago, pulp Nazi Germany (with, yes, Nazi dinosaurs), and b-movie Communist Russia in the time of Stalin. That sounds worse than it is: the Nazis here are strictly for punching (or, you know, stabbing or blowing up: they’re pulp movie Nazis), and the Russian Commies are kind of the same. In other words, this is Samurai Cat’s adventures in three violent, awful moments in history, but the whole thing is a big weird snarking mockery of mobsters and the Nazis and the …

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