Ms. Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson

I was searching for another book in my stacks when I saw this. I flipped it open, read 2 pages and didn't stop reading until I was done. That's what adults do sometimes, sit on their floor in front of a bookcase, reading comics....right??

Kamala Khan is just some sixteen year old Muslim girl in New Jersey. Nothing special, except because she's brown, Muslim, has weird diet restrictions and a crazy Muslim family, she's on everyone's radar. She just wishes to be blonde, pretty, and superhero-y. Is that too much to ask for?

After sneaking out of her bedroom to go to a party that her father explicitly vetoed, she realizes that the students whom she thought were nice...really are not nice. She leaves just as a strange fog envelopes the city. When she passes out from the fog, she's visited by her favorite Marvel heroes. When Kamala wakes, she's become what she always wanted: a pretty blonde superhero.

I really wish this type of graphic novel had been around in my teen years. Being pretty and blonde amazingly does not fix Kamala's problems. Crazy, right?  Instead, this new power of hers is something she really needs to master, all the while not pissing off her parents anymore than she has, not getting detention anymore and not alienating her friends. This part sounds very familiar to me, being a HUGE Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. Which maybe why I loved this so much.

Already on my way to get the next volumes in the series.

The Walking Dead: Here's Negan! by Robert Kirkman

I KNEW IT!  Negan could only have had one career in his pre-zombie life that made sense and I WAS RIGHT. I feel....validated.


This is a quick graphic novel that gives us a look at Negan's past. Yes, he was always an asshole. But he wasn't always a leader. Now we know where Lucille comes from, we know where the bat and the jacket come from (did you catch that??) and we know how Negan created the Saviors and rose up in the ranks.



Spoiler.....................




He was a  GYM TEACHER. I knew it. It's the only thing that made sense, dammit.

Origin by Dan Brown

Usually I love a good Robert Langdon book. It seems odd to me that a professor gets into such physical peril and he's not Indiana Jones. Origin, just judging a book by its title, should have been an awesome book with crazy codes and patterns and running around beautiful cities.

Origin teased the questions: Where did we come from? Where are we going? Essentially, it was trying to cause "discussion" between evolutionist and creationists. Science vs. Religion. Because of this I thought we'd be in for one hell of a ride.

We weren't. Honestly, the best character out of this book was a computer named Winston. Edmond Kirsch is a futurist, and one time student of Langdon's, who believes he has answered the two questions the book poses. He is also a grandstander and apparent drama queen who always needs all eyes on him. He meets with the top three religious leaders from different religions to show them his presentation that will all but obliterate religion. Obviously, they are upset and then things started rushing along to a worldwide announcement and people dying left and right.

Somehow we get the upcoming King of Spain involved because his fiancee, Ambra, is now running around with Langdon trying to release the announcement to the world (Kirsch is.... indisposed) and set off this science vs religion firestorm.

But, we're not really running around, we're not really solving much, and the supercomputer Winston is doing the majority of the brainwork for Langdon. Yes, there's a guy out there killing people, but he seems very inconsequential. Once we get to the announcement, we seem to spend A LOT of time with Ambra and Langdon sitting on a couch just listening to something that isn't that spectacular and was really pretty obvious.

The end, I think, was supposed to have some jaw dropping revelations, but the only one I thought was pretty good was the Winston reveal. For some reason, that made me happy.

If you are new to Robert Langdon, professor-slash-action-hero, don't start here. Go back to the beginning and enjoy those. Perhaps skip Origin altogether.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

I started listening to the Book Riot podcast and on a few episodes, they mentioned Sourdough. It sounded interesting: an IT woman is gifted a special sourdough starter that turned out to be magic.

I'm on the fence. I'm not really sure that I liked this although I did finish it. Maybe I just didn't LOVE it.

Lois Clary is the young woman who graduates college and gets recruited to a robotics firm in San Francisco. All was well until Slurry was introduced. She doesn't have the time or inclination to cook so she orders from a Clement Street restaurant every night. She gets spicy soup and sourdough bread. When the brothers of the restaurant are forced to leave America, they leave her their starter for the bread (as well as all the ingredients and utensils Lois needs because she clearly has nothing in her kitchen).

Amazingly, Lois learns to bake perfect bread and build a brick oven from a book. Her bread is so perfect that she is accepted into an alt-food market full of bizarre fake food, cricket food and weirdness. Because that's the next big trend, apparently.

The starter turns out to be magic and there is a "thrilling" adventure.

It was ok. Probably more of a beach read than anything serious.

The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson

If you haven't heard of the concept of the butterfly effect, it's essentially "small causes can have larger effects". Ronson ends up immersing himself in the porn world so he can understand how the man who started the concept of free porn has changed people's lives, usually for the worse.  This was a free download on Audible for a bit. At about 3 hours long, it's well worth downloading and listening to.

We start off listening to how a man, Fabian, made his fortune offering up free porn. Illegal porn, uploaded by users after it's stolen from other sources. He doesn't worry about that, because he put a warning on the site to tell people not to upload stolen media. That should help.  Ronson, chasing the butterfly effect, travels to San Fernando Valley and interviews a porn director who laments his lost money because, as soon as his films hit dvd, they are uploaded for free. He barely makes ends meet, but yet continues directing porn.

We meet folks who create custom porn videos for anyone who has money, as well as a porn star whose 13 year old daughter found out the hard way what her mom did for a living....on the daughter's bed. What?? That is some damn poor decision making there, mom. Seriously.

In the end, we learn that even male porn stars can't "get it up" without help from free porn sites even when their naked female co-star is RIGHT THERE WAITING. It's a little crazy how much damage sites like this actually cause. And how much money the people who run them make.

Jon Ronson is always interesting to listen to, so give it a whirl.

Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence

Sometimes, I enjoy reading books about books. My To-Read list on Goodreads is toppling at 1,775 books now so why not add more? I found this book on the new non-fiction shelf at my library, skimmed through it and decided I needed to read it.

Spence, a librarian, wrote love letters and breakup notes to the books in her library, personal or work. Through those letters, I only had one that shouted at me to mark as a to-read (Big Stone Gap series). Still, I was ok. Even getting one idea is good, right? The letters were funny and made me laugh.

The second section REALLY made my to-read list grow. Things like, excuses to make to get out of going out, book hookups, books about librarians, falling down the rabbit hole books, etc. I was constantly putting this book down and picking up my phone to add another book to my Goodreads list. Whew. I won't live long enough to read all of these, but that's ok.

This is the perfect little book to read in between your heavy hitters. I'm the type who loves to think about all the possible books I could read, and want to read, when I'm finally retired or find that sugar daddy. This indulged that habit.

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Well now, this was an interesting book. I loved the premise. What happens if the women in the world fell into a deep sleep and men were left to handle things on their own? If you guessed guns and bloodshed, you would be right. I actually don't think King is too far-fetched with this notion.

The folks of Dooling are what you might think of a small Appalachian town. There's a women's prison and we meet some of the inmates and employees of the prison. Immediately, we hate Don Peters, a guard who freely takes what he wants from the inmates and threatens them if they speak up. He was a touch too on the nose to Trump (I assume King intended that). The prison psych doctor is Clint Norcross, whose wife Lila is the town Sheriff.

Lila is called to a homicide scene at a meth lab that is pretty brutal. En route, she clips a woman walking in the middle of the road. Evie Black is beautiful, nearly naked and seemingly crazy. Lila takes her to the prison for a psych eval.

We get into the mundane lives of the Dooling folk when, inexplicably, women start falling asleep and becoming cocooned in a gauze-like fabric.Destroying the fabric to "free the women" leaves them feral and ready to kill the ones who disturb them. Leave them alone and they end up in another place where women are the sole gender.

In this place, they form a pretty decent society and get along well. Back in reality, the men have lost their shit and are tearing up the town. They know Evie Black is the one woman in Dooling who can sleep and wake up so they form a mob (really, that's what it is) to get her.

This book is 700+ pages so much more happens and much more is explained. It really is a good story and it was slightly disheartening to read some of the threats and slurs against women in this book, only because I know they are said on a regular basis in this time.  The Blowtorch Brigade was sickening because I have no doubt that men would take sleeping women and torch them. Because, clearly, it must be the woman's fault - which is touched on here as well. My goodness, women want to wear pants and get abortions! This is their fault!

They threw a bit much into the pot, including a white cop shooting a black person, in my opinion. Not every social injustice needed to be represented. It got slightly overwhelming.

Not my favorite King book but still worth reading!