Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection

Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection by Kate Beaton, 166 pages

An excellent collection of comics from Canadian artist, Kate Beaton. Beaton finds her inspiration in literature, history, and old photos, and popular culture. She often mixes these all together with hilarious results, as with the Jane Austen / X-Files mashup, "House Full of Mulders".
Goofy and thoughtful, Beaton's comics often reference literary classics that I have not yet gotten around to reading, and in this volume she builds a series of strips around a classic of which, I swear, I have heard nothing, Kokoro. We have the book at UCPL, and it is in translation, so now I'll have to read it.
The comics can also be found at harkavagrant.com.

Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine

Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy, 294 pages.
Unlike several other books by physicians that I have read recently Tweedy's seems mostly positive. He doesn't spend much time talking about how the changes in health care have ruined medicine. He focuses more on the disparity of care that has existed for Black Americans, and the disparities that can still be found, despite improvements.
Interesting and readable,even if it is not the best of the recent crop of medical memoirs the author does tread new ground and seems to keep his sense of curiosity intact. He also refrains from displaying the omniscience that some long-time practitioners let creep into their narratives.
Tweedy seems to have a positive outlook on health care overall.

The girl in the spider's web

The girl in the spider's web / David Lagercrantz 400 pgs.

Lisbeth Salander is back!  Along with all your other favorite characters.  This time Lisbeth is involved with a shadowy group of hackers, murderers, and all around thugs.  Is this group a remnant of the crime syndicate her father used to run?  Of course Lisbeth is involved in a few other things too.  Mikael Blomkvist and the entire Millennium magazine staff is in financial hot water.  They accepted some money from an investor who is turning out to be a bit of a control freak and general ass hole.  Mikael thinks maybe it is time to end the magazine or he needs to come up with one heck of a scoop to increase revenues.

With many plot twists and some new interesting characters (plus MOST of the old favorites), new author David Lagercrantz does a good job of continuing the Millennium series.  I think Stieg Larsson would be ok with this book.  It isn't perfect but has many of the features that made the earlier trilogy a hit.  Plus, it is the first book in a long time that I could not put down.

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Step Aside, Pops

Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton  168 pp.

Subtitled "A Hark! A Vagrant Collection", Beaton has created another satirical collection of comics that touch on literature, mythology, famous people, and society with mixed results. Many didn't impress me much and others were just okay. I think the take-offs on the "Nancy Drew" book covers, "Wuthering Heights," and "Founding Fathers (in a Mall)" were my favorites.

Soon I will be invincible

Soon I will be invincible / Austin Grossman 237 pgs.

I can't get enough of this book told from the viewpoint of a villain Dr. Impossible - the smartest man in the world, and Fatale - a cyborg billed as the "next generation of warfare" and new member of the "New Champions".  The last couple of times I read this book, I raved about Dr. Impossible.  He is still impossibly funny to me but this time around I really have a new appreciation for Fatale.  She is the new girl in the club and is worried about making friends, being accepted and maybe getting some action from fellow team mate and all around hottie, Blackworlf.  There are so many great lines in this book but it adds up to more than just great lines...even the super heroes among us have the same doubts, struggles and issues.  Grossman does a wonderful job of telling a very human story with extraordinary characters.  Still waiting for the movie version of this book!

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Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams / Woody Holton 483 pgs.

The second first lady, Abigail Adams was a woman of many strong opinions that she shared freely with family, friends and acquaintances.  Abigail had strong opinions about women and the rights that were denied to them.  She was a great advocate of education for girls and a proponent of women owning their own property...something that was a bit of a legal quagmire at the time.  Through her uncle who acted as her "agent" she invested in government bonds and made a tidy sum for her family which she considered her own. She was devoted to her husband and those feelings certainly went both directions.

Also the mother of the sixth president, some of her other children brought more heartache than acclaim. This book reveals much of the lady herself through extensive letters and diaries.

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The secret history of Wonder Woman

The secret history of Wonder Woman / Jill Lepore 416 pgs.

Suffrage, women's rights, feminism and Wonder Woman are all featured in this book about the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marsden.  Marsden was an interesting character with a family life that deserves to be chronicled in a book.  Marsden was highly educated but had problems holding a steady job.  His number one occupation often seemed to be self promotion.  He developed an early version of a lie detector test but in addition to monitoring some physical phenomenon, it required Marsden to interpret answers from the subject.  He was a psychologist and a lawyer, a professor and a writer...none of which supported his family.  He was a smart man who was supported financially and emotionally by the women in his life, I found the story very interesting.

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Mess

Mess: one man's struggle to clean up his house and his act / Barry Yourgrau 276 pgs.

Always willing to judge a book by its cover, this one really spoke to me. The piles of newspapers making up the word "Mess" reminds me of the challenges I read about in Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee.  This book, however, is better because it is a first person account of a very challenging living arrangement that prevented the author from having things fixed in his apartment and threatened his romantic relationship one day when his girlfriend stopped by and he wouldn't let her in his abode.  I could relate to almost all of the reasons the author kept the things that he did and have a lot of empathy for his situation.

This book is funny, endearing, and very readable.

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The Diviners

The Diviners by Libba Bray, 578 pages

Evie O'Neill is a thoroughly modern girl - bobbed hair, flapper style, and a desire to have nothing but fun. When her ability to hold objects and divine the owner's secrets from them gets her in trouble in her hometown of Zenith, Ohio, her parents send her to stay in New York with her uncle until things quiet down. But trading in the Midwest for the skyscrapers of fabulous, fashionable New York is hardly a punishment for Evie, even if she is stuck working with her uncle Will and his staid assistant Jericho in the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Soon she's zipping around town, hanging out with Ziegfeld dancer Theta and her best pal Henry, figuring out how to get her friend Mabel into Jericho's arms, and avoiding that wretched sneak thief Sam Lloyd at all costs. Meanwhile, Memphis Campbell, a Harlem numbers runner with aspirations of being a poet, keeps dreaming about a tall figure standing at a crossroads and an eye with a lightning bolt under it, which is thoroughly disconcerting. And a killer with a penchant for the occult is stalking the streets of New York, making Evie, Jericho, Will, and Sam race against time to stop him.

This was a re-read for me in preparation for the sequel, but I still enjoyed it. Bray is building a very lush world that is grounded in the history of the 20s but with the added element of the supernatural, and it's a great melding. One thing I appreciate more and more each time I've read this book is that the killer gets creepier and creepier, and the overarching mystery put into motion gets more and more intriguing. Libba Bray is one of my favorite authors, and while I've only just started on Lair of Dreams, I'm looking forward to what she comes up with next.

Luka and the Fire of Life

Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie  240 pp.

After seeing the horrendous treatment of the animals of the "Great Rings of Fire" circus, young Luka Khalifa curses the circus owner. The curse causes the destruction of the circus. A month later Luka's father falls into a coma as a result of a curse placed by the owner of the destroyed circus. Luka heads off on a quest to retrieve the "Fire of Life" which is the only way to save his father's life. Accompanying Luka on his journey are a dog named Bear and a bear named Dog, two of the escaped circus animals. They are led by Nobodaddy, a hologram-ish representation of Luka's father who gains more substance as his father grows closer to death. Along the way they join up with a variety of magical beings who assist him in his quest against sinister rats, old Aztec gods, deities of extinct civilizations, and others. Rushdie includes elements of mythology, video games, and pop culture throughout the story at random moments. At one point there is a brief reference the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Who and his Tardis appearing, vanishing, and reappearing, Doc Brown from "Back to the Future," and the dwarves from Time Bandits dropping from the sky all along the River of Time. This was closely followed by the Eddies in the river, specifically known as Nelson, Duane, and Fisher. These and other random bits of humor pop up in the story but you have to be paying close attention to catch them. Somehow this mashup of fantasy, mythology, magical realism, and heroic quest all works to make a fascinating, if sometimes confusing story. It was written as a children's book but I know of few children who would really "get" it.