Book reviews of mysteries, historical fiction and graphic novels with a smattering of non-fiction books.
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Amazona
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Always Never
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Chef's Kiss
Friday, May 20, 2022
Policing the City
The publisher's summary:
Adapted from the landmark essay Enforcing Order, this striking graphic novel offers an accessible inside look at policing and how it leads to discrimination and violence. What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from tragic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts obscure two crucial aspects of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols under constant pressure to meet quotas, and the banality of racial discrimination and ordinary violence. Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anticrime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities. This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin’s investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today in the United States as in France.
While described as a graphic novel, it is not a novel but rather a graphic memoir. Everything in the book actually happened. I dispute some of the author's conclusions, such as that French police officers copied bullying tactics from American law enforcement. I also do not believe that the anti-crime efforts of the French police are as black and white as they author shows us. Fassin says that almost all of the police rely on their political beliefs when dealing with so-called crime. He also says that the victims of police brutality are 100% innocent. Nothing is really this black and white and I think that Fassin has done a disservice to the problem of police brutality. I believe that he has a prejudice against the police because, as he stated early in the book, his own son had a run-in with the law.
3 out of 5 stars.
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Bootblack
Bootblack is a historical graphic novel of 1930s New York City. It takes place during the construction of the Rockefeller Center. Originally published in French in 2020, it has now been translated in English. The story is about Altenberg Ferguson who hates his German name and family. Leaving home still a child, he lives on the streets working as a shoe shiner also referred to as a blackboot. After changing his name to Al Chrysler, he soon tires of being hungry and sleeping outside in the cold. Al returns home only to see the building his parents were living in on fire. They perished. Returning to the streets he teams up with 2 friends to shine shoes. New friend Frankie talks the trio into running money for the mob but after deciding to steal some of the mob's cash, Al is caught by the police and sentenced to 10 years in an adult prison. By the time he is released WWII is ongoing. Al joins the army and is sent overseas to Germany, where he finds himself in the town of Altenberg, the town he was named after.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Django
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Olympia
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Flake
- Publisher : Jonathan Cape
- Publication Date: April 2, 2020
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1787330583
- ISBN-13 : 978-1787330580
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Swine
- Publisher: Humanoids, Inc.
- Paperback: 120 pages
- Publication Date: 10/5/21
- ISBN-10: 1643376047
- ISBN-13: 978-1643376042
- Swine takes the cake. The story premise concerns a miracle that the biblical Jesus performed. Two thousand years ago Jesus confronted the demon Legion in the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac and cast them into pigs to drown in the sea. You can read about it in Mark 5:1. The author poses this question: what would have happened if every pig didn't drown as Mark tells us. Tyrone Finch imagines that a handful of the swine swam to safety and have spent the centuries planning revenge and causing a few random disasters along the way. His plot is certainly creative. Swine contains all ten issues of this miniseries and it is Finch's first comic.
Saturday, November 20, 2021
Tunnels
Thursday, November 4, 2021
The Waiting
Sunday, July 18, 2021
Sentient
Saturday, July 17, 2021
Sara
Thursday, July 15, 2021
The Pull
Saturday, May 29, 2021
The Banks
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Shadow Life
Shadow Life was published in March 2020 by First Second. It is a graphic novel written by Hiromi Goto and illustrated by Ann Xu and is about Kumiko, a 76 year old woman. Kumiko's middle aged adult daughters place her in an assisted living home against her wishes. However, she agrees to give it a try. Kumiko does not like living there, runs away and finds herself a cozy bachelorette pad. She keeps her location a secret from her daughters, even while they are talking on the phone. Kumiko loves decorating as she pleases, eating whatever she wants and swimming in the community pool. Something has followed her though from the assisted living place - death's shadow.
Friday, March 26, 2021
Freiheit!
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Primer
Sunday, March 7, 2021
Women Discoverers
This small comic book contains the biographies of 30 female scientists. A few of these biographies are merely written in paragraphs while five are done in 20+ page comic strip panels. The ladies that are featured in the book are:
- Marie Curie (Poland, France) Physics/Chemistry
- Francoise Barre Sinoussee (France) Biology
- Donna Theo Strickland (Canada) Physics
- Dorothy Vaughn (USA) Mathematics/Computing
- Ada Lovelace (Britain) Mathematics/Computing
- Emilei du Chatelet (France) Mathematics
- Emmy Noether (Germany) Mathematics
- Grace Adele-Williams (Niger) Mathematics
- Hedy Lamaar (Hungary/USA) Engineering
- Katherine Johnson (USA) Mathematics
- Marthe Gaetier (France) Pediatrics
- Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran/USA) Mathematics
- Rosalind Franklin (UK) Physics/Biology
- Sophie Germain (France) Mathematics/Physics
- Irene Joliot-Currie (France) Physics/Chemistry
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell (UK) Astrophysics
- Mae Jemison (USA) Medicine/Space Exploration
- Stephanie Kwolek (USA) Chemistry
- Grace Murray Hopper (USA) Computing
- Xie Ye (China) Chemistry