A selection of February graphic novels

 Marie Curie: A Quest for Light by Anja C. Andersen and Frances Andreasen Osterfelt, with art by Anna Blaszczyk (2018) 136 pages

The writing is succinct. The art on every page looks like collages with paper cut outs of different colors and textures. Diary entries and letters make this biography very personal. I really enjoyed the creativity of this one.

 

 

 

 

Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman (2018) 288 pages

I'm working on the Hoopla challenge for 2025 while focusing on reading more graphic novels this year. February is Romantic Reads.  I flew through this first volume in one day. There is a lot of space between the panels on many pages and not much text in speech, thought, or mobile texts. Very creative how it tells the story visually as often as it does. I have not seen the TV series yet, and I'll probably wait to continue this comic series.

 

 

 

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell (2019) 289 pages

Compared to the one above, I liked the art and writing a bit better. The pages are denser with emotive visuals. Freddy Riley has her group of queer friends in high school. Laura Dean doesn't see their relationship as monogamous. Laura has so much extrovert energy and doesn't seem to care that she discards Freddy so easily when she wants attention from others. Freddy is so enamored with Laura's brief moments of attention that she doesn't notice her other truly good, close friends, or the new girl working several part-time jobs in town to pay for college. Freddy's eye opening journey is pretty special.

 

 

The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History by John Vasquez Mejias (2024) 112 pages

I appreciate the timeline and interview with the author that is included at the end. It is a short story of Puerto Rican history that I was not familiar with before. The author makes prints from woodcuts. The text is challenging to read at times, but with concentration it could all be understood. The unique style is visually expressionistic and very detailed.

Deep Cuts by Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark with various artists (2024) 312 pages

I loved this! #1 in New Orleans 1917, the art and story are amazing, looking at the roots of modern jazz. #2 in Chicago 1928, a novice Broadway songstress has an adventure that references The Wizard of Oz. You begin to see that there are threads that connect the stories. #3 in Kansas City 1940, Alice, a young black girl, tries to solve the mystery of why her dad stopped his music career. This includes research at her local library! #4 in New York City 1956, is documentary-like looking at the jazz scene and the influence of harder drugs. #5 in Los Angeles 1968, shows threads connecting some of the previous stories, but is more countercultural and the art took me longer to embrace. #6 in multiple locations 1977, ties all the issues together. Characters and themes return. Jazz history comes full circle. Oh, and the lead sheets at the end are a cool bonus. I, too, wonder if there are audio tracks somewhere of this music.

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White, 451 pages

I first read this "giant robots from space" book a couple years ago, and my blog post from then still stands. I think I liked it a bit better this time around, though that could be because I had a better idea of what was going on. I'm curious what the Orcs & Aliens say about it tonight!

The Ballad of Perilous Graves

 

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings  456 pp.

First I want to acknowledge Kara's review of this book. I listened to the audiobook version which is amazing with the narrator embracing the patois of New Orleans beautifully. Perilous "Perry" Graves, his sister, Brendy, and their friend Peaches live in a version of the city where there are sky trolleys, dead cabs, graffiti comes alive, and haints dance in the streets to the music of haint musicians. Doctor Professor, a haint piano player enlists Perry, Brendy, and Peaches with saving the city by saving the music that is rapidly disappearing along with other parts of the city. They find themselves up against some of the songs themselves, like Stagger Lee. If the music is lost, the city will die in a storm that is coming. Perry must learn to use music to combat the evil that is trying to destroy them. This book is confusing, amusing, a little scary, and I loved it. It is rare to read a book with so much life in it (even though a lot of the life is already dead). Now I want to visit New Orleans again. 

Moon Over Soho

 

Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London series #2) by Ben Aaronovitch  375 pp.

Peter Grant returns as a London Police Constable / Sorcerer's Apprentice in this second magical installment of the series. This time his investigations turn to the deaths of jazz musicians dropping dead but carrying supernatural signs which show the deaths are magical instead of natural. In the mean time Peter has a new "girlfriend" who is also supernatural but doesn't realize it. While Peter's magical teacher recovers from injuries sustained at the end of the first book, he has to do most of the investigating alone with his limited magical skills. Constable Lesley May, Peter Grant's love interest in the previous book is recovering from the extreme disfiguring injuries she sustained in book one. Because she cannot actively investigate she instead is analyzing old records from Oxford to help with the investigation. To add to the mysterious, magical crimes, a creature Grant calls "The Pale Lady" is killing men she mutilates with her vagina dentata. With all the dangerous supernatural creatures there is quite a bit of grotesque goriness but it is all integral to the story. I have to read the next one to find out how the wizard Thomas Nightingale and Constable May are getting along.

Blues People

 Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka (1963) 256 pages

Baraka, who was also a poet and playwright, published this originally under the name LeRoi Jones. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Prentice Onayemi. I added this to my reading list because I've become more interested in the roots of rock 'n roll. Being new to the St. Louis area I'm excited to explore the National Blues Museum eventually. Baraka's essay writing is super inciteful and detailed. He touches very briefly on rock 'n roll toward the end as it was still such a new genre in 1963. However, his illumination of the history and culture of Africans brought to the Caribbean and the Americas as slaves provides so much value in understanding the development of blues and jazz. White mainstream popular music constantly adopted aspects of black music, but always with a delay and a watering down through racist attitudes of each era.

Half-Blood Blues

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, 321 pages.

One of those library and book things that keep happening and that no longer surprise me all that much is that there are great books and great authors that zoom on by you sometimes. I heard the early buzz about Washington Black last year and read it relatively soon after it came out, but somehow I had gotten the idea that this was Edugyan's first novel. Turns out it wasn't. Somehow I had missed the Booker award finalist title from 2011 that was the Canadian author's second novel. So, I read this because I was fond of Washington Black, but I have got to say that I enjoyed this book even more. I think, because I hadn't heard of Half-Blood Blues, that I was expecting it to be not-quite-up-to the level of writing that Edugyan had achieved with her most recent book. I was wrong. Edugyan is an excellent writer and a great storyteller.
Half-Blood Blues moves between the early years of World War II and 1992. The Hot-Time Swingers were a jazz band featuring Chip Jones on drums, Sidney Griffiths on bass, Paul Butterstein on piano, Big Fritz on clarinet, the incomparable Hiero (Hieronymous) Falk on trumpet, along with their manager Ernst von Haselberg, filling in sometimes. In 1939, in Berlin, they have fallen on hard times. They are not able to play gigs anymore; Hiero was considered a "mischling," with a German mother and an African father, Paul was Jewish, and Chip and Sid were African-American. And they were playing jazz in Nazi Germany, which wasn't the best career choice. As the threat of war looms and their lives become more precarious a potential lifeline appears. Famed trumpeter and bandleader Louis Armstrong is in Paris. He has heard of them and he is interested in playing with them; he is particularly interested in playing with Hiero, whom he dubs the young Louis. If the Hot-Time Swingers can get papers to leave Germany before the war starts, they might be safe and working again, but complications arise.
The narrative moves back and forth between the war years and 1992 when the first jazz festival devoted to Falk is taking place. Sid, who is telling the story, and Chip offer different answers to the questions about what might have led the Nazis to detain Falk, and what happened to him. They both go on a journey to find some answers.
This is a wonderful story about jazz, the war, memory, old grudges, and jealousy, both professional and personal. Ably narrated by Kyle Riley.

The Green Mill Murder

The Green Mill Murder by Kerry Greenwood (1993) 173 pages

Another mystery featuring Phryne Fisher, another satisfying read! The murder occurs on page one as a dance marathon reaches its 48th hour, ending when one dancer is stabbed to death. Phryne was on that dance floor enjoying the jazz music at the Green Mill club (but not as a contestant in the marathon) and when her date runs to the loo, presumably to be sick after seeing the dead body, he never returns. He appears to be a suspect, and his mother hires Phryne to find him, as well as his brother, who had left home after his return from the Great War many years ago. The overexcited woman appears to be more interested in figuring out her financial status than anything else.

This adventure takes Phryne into the Australian bush in her airplane. Set in the late 1920s, she's using memorized maps from the mid-1800s in order to navigate over the mountains. Runways? Easy access to fuel? Not where she's going! I've found this series really engaging, and this book is no exception.

Miles: The Autobiography

Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis, with Quincy Troupe, 441 pages.
The 1989 autobiography of the great jazz musician was a fascinating read / listen. Davis was born in East St. Louis in 1926. His father was a dentist and a pillar of the community, a man who gave Davis much needed support throughout his life.
Davis is bluntly honest about race in America, and the racism he faced throughout his life. He was (Davis died two years after this book was published, in 1991) not a man who would put up with the disrespect of others. Davis is also very forthright with his opinions of other musicians, and he played with every great musician of the second half of the 20th century. He was close to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, though his relationship with Parker deteriorated as Parker's life spun out of control.
Davis also discusses without flinching his own problems with drugs, including his lengthy battle with heroin addiction. The book was co-written with St. Louis luminary, Quincey Troupe.
I chose to listen to this book because I am on a Dion Graham kick lately. I don't think I would have picked this book up and read it now, otherwise. Graham does a phenomenal job of becoming Miles Davis, at least I believed he was Davis. Graham is a great narrator.

The Last Sultan

The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenburg  431 pp.

As books about the recording industry go, this one is just okay and a bit of a slog. Ahmet Ertegun was raised in luxury as the son of a Turkish Ambassador to various countries including the U.S. Ahmet and his brother, Nesuhi, became fans of jazz while in their teens. Soon the two young men became experts in the field and owners of a tremendous collection of jazz records. Eventually they both went into the record business in order to support and promote the talented African-American musicians who were being ignored by agents, promoters, and record manufacturers. Eventually Neshuhi set out on his own with a small record label but later rejoined with his brother after  Ahmet created Atlantic Records with co-founder Herb Abramson. Atlantic became a giant in the industry eventually signing many big names in jazz, blues, and rock including Ben E. King, Percy Sledge, Ruth Brown, LaVern BakerBobby Darin, Ray Charles, and later, The Rolling Stones,  Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, and many more. This book details shady deals, and double crosses, Ertegun's love-hate relationships with both industry collaborators and competitors, and Ertegun's wild life of partying. While he's not a man to be admired for his personal life, his contribution to the music industry cannot be understated.  

The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best Kept Secret by Kent Harman  292 pp.

Many people do not realize that a large portion of the popular music recorded in the 1950s, 60s, & 70s was really performed by a collection of very talented studio musicians who were never credited on the albums featuring their talents. With the exception of a few, like Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, and Billy Strange, who went on to have successful musical careers outside of the studios, they are names few recognize. However, their music is known by millions from recordings by Sinatra, Streisand, The Beach Boys, Johnny Rivers, The Mamas & The Papas, The Carpenters, Simon & Garfunkel, and so many more. Some members of the Wrecking Crew toured in the bands with a variety of big name acts. Others moved into the production end of the business. These talented musicians were paid well for their work but also worked long hours, frequently late into the night. This is a very readable and fascinating look at the unsung heroes of the music industry. I enjoyed reading about what went into recording the songs I grew up with. And how many remember a thirty year old Glen Campbell being called an "overnight sensation" after he'd been working in the business since he was sixteen years old? Ah, show business.

Night in Shanghai / Nicole Mones 277 p.

NPR's Alan Cheuse gave this a rave review; I thought this novel was terrific, too, although not for the same reasons.  Sometimes historical novels have a story in the front and a bit of history in the back; Night in Shanghai is rich history with the 'story' in a supporting role.

Thomas Greene, a gifted musician who's been subjected to American racism his whole life, arrives in 1937 Shanghai to lead a jazz band in one of the city's hottest night spots.  Song YuHua is an educated, English-speaking woman indentured to the most powerful man in Shanghai as repayment for family debts.  Together and separately they live through the tumultuous years leading up to the takeover of Shanghai by the Japanese.  China's Communist party gathers strength during this period and Song is drawn to their beliefs. Meanwhile, Thomas has friends who work to bring a large group of Austrian Jewish refugees to the city, one of their few safe havens.  This is a complicated story and is chock-full of historical figures and little-known (at least to me) events.  The period and local detail is wonderful. (Who knew Mandarin curses made such free use of animal vaginas?)  It's also almost a love letter to a city that was changed entirely by the war and the rise of Communism.  Recommended.