Books: Killer, Lamb, Real Children, some comics re-reads

Kimmy Walters — Killer (poetry)

Feb 7.

Man I like Kimmy Walters' poems. You should get this book, forget you have it, and find it again when you're in a Mood that you don't have a name for.

Completely unrelated to the content, which is excellent: Hey, what's up with these Bottlecap Press books? Like, why are they so physically bad. The print looks like gritty-pixeled inkjet, and they're bound cockeyed so the line of print is tilted out-of-square with the page. If there's a chance you'll fuck up that hard, you usually play defense with a typewritten zine aesthetic so it looks plausibly DGAF intentional, but this is in like the uncanny valley of unprofessional book-objects — perfect-bound, trimmed pages, book-like page and cover stock, interior jank.

I happened to flip through a Two Ravens Press book (David Troupes's The Simple Men) as I was re-shelving Killer, and the difference was brutal. They're both in the $10/£10 zone, and since they're both slim books of weird poetry you have to figure they aren't making up the difference on volume.

Well, maybe Two Ravens has an endowment or has those crucial three or four bestsellers or is a rich kid's hobby or something else that makes the comparison unfair, I don't know. I just get curious about how these things happen!

Jo Walton — My Real Children

Jan 25

Wow, this was a fuckin' wild ride. I loved it, even though the first half of Tricia's timeline was seriously hard to read.

I don't have anything particularly smart to say about this book. It's great, check it out.

Margaret Killjoy — The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

Feb 12

This didn't quite do it for me.

There's this thing that I think might be a common failing of the novella format, where everything is just a little too baldly-stated and on-the-nose. Like, you're trying to have more shit happen than would fit in a short, but you don't have enough space for any of it to happen in a naturalistic or nuanced way. I was feeling that in a major way here. An excess of tidiness.

Carolyn Nowack — Diana's Electric Tongue (comics, re-read)

Jan 21

I finally got my books shelved!!! I can re-read comics on a whim now!

Nothing to add to my previous review. This story is great.

Meredith Gran — Octopus Pie, vol 5 (comics)

Jan 27

This final volume collects the best parts of one of my favorite comics. (Also, it's the run where Valerie Halla was doing the colors, which look SO GOOD.)

Even just considered as a series of setpieces, this is an excellent book. (That long tracking shot following Jane through the circles of chaos around her weird apartment is a particular standout.) But it also closes the story in a satisfying way, which is an impressive achievement for an open-ended soap opera.

If you're reading this for the first time, I feel like this volume in particular benefits from some room to breathe. Consider setting it down for a few days between stories instead of gunning through in one sitting.

HEY INCIDENTALLY, Gran is running a kickstarter for a new videogame right now. Maybe go check that out.