Just finished "Song of A Blackbird" by Maria van Lieshout. It's an excellent and extremely timely historical fiction graphic novel about rediscovering a family connection that was severed by war, and the Dutch Resistance figures under Nazi occupation who saved many lives, in some cases at the cost of their own.

Despite being fiction, it's very closely grounded in historical facts, and the inclusion of photographs within the illustrations is really cool.

Now is an interesting time to be thinking about the fates of Nazis, collaborators, their victims, and the resistance, as well as how we remember them all. I especially liked the section at the end about the real historical figures and their fates. So "fascinating" that none of the Nazis were executed or died in prison (mostly they did serve long terms before their release), even those who oversaw mass killings and deportations to concentration camps. I'm a prison abolitionist and not a fan of state capital punishment, so on *some* level this seems like an outcome I should be happy about, but I somehow doubt that the state was this lenient for all prisoners during this time period...

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Just finished "The Phantom Scientist" by Robin Cousin, translated into English by Edward Gauvin. It's a book I really enjoyed, although of course being an academic computer scientist it pushes a lot of my buttons. The idea of an "Institute" fated to descend into chaos, a systems expert tasked with slowing that process, and researchers whose results are a bit too effective for their own good is a catnip setting for me, and the points about epistemology although somewhat diluted are quite nice.

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Just finished "Mimosa" by Archie Bongiovanni. A super cool graphic novel about a queer friend group in their 30s and their drama. I think it does a prey great hob portraying both fixable and unfixable lapses and how things evolve as a result.

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Black Holes
by Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Key-Understanding-Universe/dp/0062936697

Just finished "Macunado: Welcome to Elsewhere" by Liniers, which is apparently a collection of newspaper comics. It's excellent and reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes, Minus, and Azumanga Daioh or Nichijou.

I'll always love a bit of meta in comics and Liniers sprinkles it in wonderfully here and there.

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Just finished "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas. In an unusual twist of fate, I had read "Concrete Rose" earlier, which gave me a rich backstory to relate things to. "The Hate U Give" is really good, but I found the resolution of King's arc slightly disappointing, even though the ending was strong. It's definitely not my place to judge Thomas' perspective here, but I do think that the book's broad popularity including among more liberal audiences probably stems at least in part from the way it allows a "the cops have issues but are ultimately-necessary/sometimes-positive" reading that undermines the strength of the core message.

In the end I like Concrete Rose better, but they're both great and I'll be putting Thomas' other books on my to-read list.

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Just finished "Bunt!" written by Ngozi Ukazu, illustrated by Mad Rupert, with colors by K. Czap. A really fun and well-written graphic novel about crappy college financial aid and a ridiculous softball team of misfits. It's light-hearted but also touching, and has a wonderful cast with lore that's introduced deftly: a great balance of just enough exposition supported by a whole lot of implication and background art details to flesh out 8 supporting characters in a single book.

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Just finished "Dawnrunner" written by Ram V, illustrated by Evan Cagle, with colors by Dave Stewart & Francesco Segala and lettering by Aditya Bidikar. It's a graphic novel that's heavily Evangelion-inspired, and while the artwork is *fantastic*, I felt that the story was kinda meh. The overall plot setup and big points were predictable, which I don't mind, but several of the details got lost or didn't bind into a coherent message, and the final philosophical conclusion doesn't stand up to the setting or even really make much sense. These days I'm finding myself with much less patience for sci-fi stuff that doesn't tackle social problems, presenting a society where they're driving forces but then not bothering to even try to ponder how they might get resolved. The art is as mentioned excellent though, so I won't say I disliked it overall...

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Just finished "Breadcrumbs" by Kasia Babis. A super interesting graphic novel about growing up in 2000's and 2010's Poland. It's autobiographical, which naturally means lots of plot threads without clear resolutions (they aren't plot threads after all, they're real events). Lots of interesting info on Polish history and politics, which showed me way more than the occasional glimpses I get through social media.

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Just finished "The Daughters of Ys", a graphic novel written by M.T. Anderson and illustrated by Jo Rioux. Is apparently a telling on an ancient Breton legend, which explains some of the narrative devices and plot choices. The drawings are beautiful and the tale is interesting, but takes a royalty-focused and -friendly perspective I've grown unfond of at this stage in my life.

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