December was a weird month because once again I feel like I’m forgetting something, and I feel as if I did a lot more shopping for myself than was actually the case, so I keep thinking the stock I’ve taken of my books is wrong. This isn’t helped by the fact that I actually did forget a book in November, busy month that that one was. All I can say for sure is, I didn’t get any books for Christmas, so I’m not carelessly forgetting a gift.

Enough waffling, let’s see these books.

New Books

The Little Book of Beetles by Arthur V. Evans and The Little Book of Spiders by Simon D. Pollard were rather impulsively purchased shortly after the holidays when one of my favourite local bookstores was having a sale for 25% off hardcovers. I’m not sure these are books I would ever actually read through from cover to cover, but I can’t help but want all of them in this little series from the publisher, especially the one on Dinosaurs.

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut is the novel I forgot about from November; I purchased it at one of my favourite used bookstores in Toronto after selling some books that I didn’t want anymore. I don’t really recall what this one is about, it hadn’t stood out in my mind previously like some of his other books, but it captured my interest at the time, and I’ve been meaning to read more Vonnegut, besides.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin is a novel I bought around Christmastime while bored and wandering about a small town while my partner perused a quilting store. Unfortunately, I did not come across a bookstore of any kind but found this on a rack at a drugstore for about $5. The reason I grabbed a Rankin book is that an aunt said he is one of her favourite authors while we were on a family trip last year, so I decided I’d give one of his books a go. This is the of many books about this detective too, as it turns out, so it doesn’t feel entirely random.

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Murphy and Batman: White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn by Katana Collins are books I also just realized I forgot to mention in November. I’ve been meaning to continue reading this “elseworld” Batman story and picked these up to enable myself to do so.

In keeping with that, in December I also bought The Immortal Hulk: Of Hell and Of Death by Al Ewing, the tenth and final volume in that series. It’s been far too long since I read the penultimate volume, and I’m really annoyed I didn’t realize I had one more to go when I read that ninth volume a couple of years ago. After this, I’ll just need the book of one-shot stories.

Novel Discoveries

Final Cut by Charles Burns is a book I’m surprised I added. Burns is the same author as the graphic novel Black Hole, which I read in university and, quite frankly, hated (this had nothing to do with reading it for school). This story about a group of friends making a grisly horror film in a cabin in the woods caught my attention nonetheless, however, and I do feel oddly drawn to do like his high-contrast art, despite my feelings about the story of Black Hole. Hopefully, I will feel different about this one.

Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown by Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart was an easy addition to my to-read list, though I’m a little apprehensive because Mignola books outside of Hellboy don’t have a spotless track record for me. On the one hand, Amazing Screw-On Head was excellent; on the other, I didn’t like Jenny Finn all that much. Hopefully I will like this one.

Weirdly, Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green is the first John Green book that I’ve actually had much of an interest in reading. I’m sure his fiction is fine, but I’m particularly fascinated by his championing of the fight against tuberculosis and highlighting how it is still a huge problem around the world, despite what we may think. As I also seek to continue broadening my horizons with nonfiction, I’d like to give this one a look, though likely as a library read.

---

Until next time, thank you for reading!