Author: Ryan

WWW Wednesday – July 16, 2025

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Yikes, I’m only just realizing how I missed two whole weeks of these. Two weeks ago I just hadn’t felt I had enough to write about, and last week I was vacationing at a cottage. At any rate, there have been a lot of changes in that time. First and foremost, I’ve been reading Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson, the third novel in the Trickster trilogy. Though I liked the previous book well, I am especially enjoying this one. Trickster Drift slowed things down a bit as Jared struggled with settling into a new place with unfamiliar family and his commitment to sobriety, so there was a subtle atmosphere of suspense, which erupted at the conclusion of that book. This book has continued the trajectory, and I’m really enjoying the domino effect as the fallout continues. I’m only about 120 pages in, which isn’t nothing, but I should be further along since it’s been a couple weeks, I’m just not very good at reading on vacation.

Recently Finished

Likely about three weeks ago now, I finished reading Curses by George Wylesol, a book collecting various surreal comic book works by the author from over the years. Many of them didn’t have much of a narrative to speak of and were very abstract, so my mileage varied a little. The final story involving ghostly possession, prophecy, and the end of the world in a deeply strange town was a lot of fun, though, and I really appreciate this author’s unique visual style that is really unlike anything else I see in comics right now, so I can’t help but be fond of this. I do want to track down another of his books that seems more singularly focused though, as I think I’ll like that more.

This week I read through Ew, It’s Beautiful, the new False Knees comic collection by Joshua Barkman. It’s not really a narrative thing, so I don’t have much to say except I was delighted as usual by the strips, both old and new, and continue to love the art, which is beautifully realistic but somehow just as evocative as a cartoon.

Reading Next

I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to read next. This month’s theme at a monthly book mixer I go to is pirates, so I was thinking of reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, but with the pace I’ve been going at this week I’m not sure I can actually get to it in time, as I don’t want to shelve Return of the Trickster to do it. We’ll see where things take me.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

New Books & Novel Discoveries (June 2025)

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Goodness me, I’ve let it happen again: I’ve waited far too long into the next month to post one of these, but I feel like I’ve got a decent excuse this time. You see, the first week of July I was fairly busy with work, and then all of last week I was on vacation. So, this was left to languish, but I was at a cottage! Surely you can understand. I’ve had some last minute remembrances of what I bought, so it’s one of those months, but I believe I’ve got them all remembered properly now.

Let’s see what I picked up.

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Book Review – Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel

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Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel is the third and final novel of The Themis Files. For the past ten years, Rose, Vincent, and his daughter Eva have been stuck on an alien planet. Through Rose’s ingenuity, the alien invaders who made Themis and massacred 100 million people were persuaded to leave Earth, taking their creation with them. Unbeknownst to them, however, Rose and company were celebrating inside Themis when she was beamed away. Though initially prevented from leaving, Rose, Vincent, and Eva have managed to make their way back to Earth using Themis, where they hope they can finally return to living a normal life. Things are never quite that simple, however, and 10 years is a long time following so much destruction and so many lives lost. Humanity and their understanding of who they are in the universe has forever changed and must be reckoned with before peace can ever be attained again.

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Books on My Summer 2025 To-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. This topic is actually from a couple weeks ago. I meant to post about it then, but work has been a little busier lately and I believe that kept me from remembering to do it. At any rate, this week’s topic is a freebie for any previous topic, so I’m taking advantage of that now. I actually finished 7/10 books from my Spring TBR list this year, so I’m hoping this will be a good way to help cement what I want to be reading this season too.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – June 25, 2025

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Once again, I am between books. Work has been whooping my butt a bit this week so far too.

Recently Finished

Over the past week, finishing on Sunday, I read through all of The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel I honestly should’ve read years ago, as it feels like one of the biggest pieces of required reading in the medium. The book details the author’s father’s experiences in Poland leading up to and during World War II and his persecution at the hands of the Nazis. The people are all drawn as anthropomorphic animals (Jewish people are mice, Germans are cats, Polish people are pigs, etc.) in a style reminiscent of newspaper comic strips, but in its abstraction of this heavy subject it manages to be both haunting and full of raw humanity, depicting the horrors of the Holocaust in a way impossible to ignore yet not so grisly as to be an unpalatable reading experience. The frame narrative, depicting Art’s conversations with his father about his experiences during the war, wonderfully complimented the core story as well, making the book not just about history but the rippling effects upon those who endure it.

Reading Next

I have a few things lined up that I want to read through soon. First is Curses by George Wylesol, a book I request for the library back in February that finally arrived recently. Though I still have a bit of time on my loan, somebody else has already reserved it after me, so I want to make sure I read it promptly. I also want to start reading Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson soon too, but I think I’ll make sure I’m done with Curses first. Lastly, I just got a copy of Ew, It’s Beautiful by Joshua Barkman, the latest collection of False Knees comics, and I’d really like to give it a read-through in the near future as well, especially as I expect it won’t take me very long.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – June 18, 2025

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment, I’m between books.

Recently Finished

Last week, I read through An Illustrated History of Urban Legends by Adam Allsuch Boardman, which details well-known and perhaps less-well-known urban legends from around the world, covering broader subjects like cryptozoology and UFOs and specific phenomena like Sasquatch sightings  and various hauntings. On the one hand, I enjoyed the colourful simplicity of the art; it was pleasing to look at and made it easy to digest in a single reading session. I do wish it had indulged in being a little more creepy, however, befitting the subject matter. I read this book because I liked books like this as a kid, but this one was a little too sanitized. It would’ve been hard to get a spooky thrill out of this book. There were also an unusual number of glaring mistakes, such that I had to question who proofed this book. Still, I enjoyed this enough that I’d like to read more of the author’s work.

Yesterday, I finished reading Begotten: A Gothic Novel by Kate Cherrell. It feels like I was reading it a lot longer than I actually was, and I’m honestly having a hard time pinning down my feelings on this book. It’s atmosphere was immaculate, and while the characters felt fairly archetypal, they were also well fleshed out. However, I struggled with the pacing, which was slow and ponderous. In some respects this added to the atmosphere well, but I felt like I was waiting far too long for something to happen. The story was also too obscure for its own good. I do find myself tantalized by the mystery of what was really going on and why, but so much is obfuscated from the reader that it’s difficult to form any concrete interpretations. Though I have others queued up that need writing, I’d particularly like to review this book to get deeper into my thoughts on it.

Reading Next

The next novel I plan to read is Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson, the third and final novel in her Trickster trilogy. Until then, however, I plan on reading The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel I feel remiss in not having read despite being a life-long fan of the medium. I’ve borrowed it from the library, so I’m going to more singularly focus on this comic before starting another novel. Comics tend to be much faster reads, but this one is a lot longer than the average volume, and I have a feeling it is also a lot longer content-wise.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

New Books & Novel Discoveries (May 2025)

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I managed to show a bit more restraint last month, though I couldn’t help succumbing to some random whims. I really don’t know how it is that you can decide for years that you don’t need certain books, that it doesn’t matter to you if you read them, and then suddenly your mind completely changes—for arbitrary reasons, no less.

Enough talking around it, let’s check out these books.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – June 4, 2025

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www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m currently in the early chapters of Begotten: A Gothic Novel by Kate Cherrell, and so far I wish I liked it better. However, I’m still pretty early into it, and in no way do I think it’s bad, so I’m going to soldier on. I think the main hurdle I’m having trouble with, other than my poor sleep habits this week, is the fact that this is written as a Neo-Victorian novel, embracing both the setting and the style of novels of the period, and this book is certainly reminding me of Victorian novels I’ve read in the past in terms of style. It having been a while since I read any, I think the problem is more a deficiency on my part, one that I hope will change as I get further into this book. Style notwithstanding, I have found the pace to be a little slow too, but I’m hopeful that will pick up.

Recently Finished

Having skipped last week, I have a number of books to report here now. First and foremost, since my last post I finished reading Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel. Though I had the benefit of reading it shortly after the previous book, I’m a little dismayed to find that I liked this book the least of the whole trilogy. As usual, when it explores more concrete sci-fi ideas this book continues to be really intriguing, but I think my main problem is I don’t particularly care for most of the main cast, and more than ever this book felt focused on them rather than a bigger picture with a cast of recurring characters. The ending, though thematically on point, felt a little too convenient for me too. Still, I’m happy I finished this trilogy, and hopefully I can flesh out my full thoughts in a review soon.

I’m happy to announce that I finally let The Immortal Hulk languish no longer and properly finished the three volumes I had left over. The big one was Of Hell and Death, the tenth volume that concludes the series’s story line. I really loved it, despite having waited literal years to pick this volume up, though I wish all the same that I’d read these closer together. Volume 11, Apocrypha, was more a collection of tie-in comics with other series and a lot of content from old Hulk comics that helps flesh out background details a little better. It was fine, but definitely below par for this series for me. Lastly, Great Power is a collection of one-shot stories that could be slotted in between issues in the main series, and I’m happy I finished off with this volume, because I really enjoyed it; this volume was a great demonstration of how to write great supplemental chapters.

Reading Next

At the moment, I’m not sure what novel I would like to read next, though I have some ideas lined up; I’m just not ready to commit to any yet. In the meantime, I do have more visually oriented books from the library, the graphic novel The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman, which I can’t believe I still haven’t read, and An Illustrated History of Urban Legends by Adam Allsuch Boardman, a book which I suspect would have captivated me as a child. I’ll likely be giving these books a look fairly soon, especially the latter, as Maus will be more of a commitment.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – May 21, 2025

RyanLeave a comment
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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Last week I started reading Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel, the final novel in the Themis Files trilogy. It’s been a bit of a busy week with work, however, so I’m only 86 pages in at the moment, which isn’t terrible, but I feel like I should be a lot further along considering the transcript format of it. So far, starting this book so soon after the last one has definitely been a benefit, as I’ve been able to get right back into the story. However, this book’s approach is a little different; before, each transcript, report, etc., was told in more or less chronological order. This time, chapters are inter-cut between the main characters’ time spent on an alien planet and after they return 9 years later. It’s an interesting place to situate the reader so far, and I’m curious to see where Neuvel is going with it.

Recently Finished

Last week I read through Dark Entries by Ian Rankin, a John Constantine graphic novel. I was very surprised with how much I ended up liking this story, especially since I have very limited experience with Constantine as a character. As far as I can tell, it is a completely standalone story that may not even been canon to the Hellblazer comics, but despite this it characterizes Constantine and the people he’s thrust into a bizarre reality TV show with really well. More than once I have picked up a random one-off graphic novel and found something about the story and/or the characters to be lacking (We Stand on Guard comes to mind) despite the strength of the premise. It was a pleasant surprise that this book, picked up completely on a whim, was full of intriguing characters and some great twists and turns in the story. A subtle stylistic shift happens halfway through that I really enjoyed as well, corresponding with a narrative reveal.

Reading Next

I have decided that the next novel I’m going to read is Begotten: A Gothic Novel by Kate Cherrell, the author’s debut novel that is set to come out this week. My preorder is waiting for me to pick it up right now, in fact, I just need to go get it. I’ve enjoyed Dr. Cherrell’s work concerning the paranormal on the Loopholes podcast, and I’m excited to see her storytelling skills. Considering how much I have left of Only Human, I may not get to it until a couple weeks from now, depending on how my schedule works out. I’m also really determined to finally catch up on the volumes of The Immortal Hulk that I have left to read. I will likely try to push through those in quick succession, so that’ll make for a bit of a heavier week when the time comes.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

New Books & Novel Discoveries (April 2025)

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Somehow, I went absolutely ham with buying books last month. I don’t think it’s an egregiously high number, all things considered, but it was enough to make me procrastinate writing this post. I didn’t mean to indulge myself this much, I just wound up having too many opportunities to pick up new books at decent prices. I’m once again concerned I forgot one or two, but I do believe all of the are presented below.

Let’s see the damage, shall we? I’m seriously running out of places to put these things.Read More »