Tag: Plastiboo

WWW Wednesday – May 6, 2026

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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 am between books.

Recently Finished

I skipped last week because there wasn’t much to report, but since then I have managed to finish a few books. First, I was determined to read through Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo, which seemed to follow a structure more similar to the second book but set things up like the first volume; namely, it told what seemed to be a singular character’s journey through these dark and strange lands with an ending unique to that character, yet it started once again with a selection of characters one presumes you’d be choosing from. It made things feel a little disjointed, as I wasn’t sure which it was truly going for at times. The settings, scenarios, and monsters contained within were truly inspiring though, and I continue to really love the art, so it didn’t detract from the experience too much. If a fourth volume is made, I hope things are taken in a somewhat different direction, however.

I also finished reading Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein. I don’t have much to say about it except that I loved it through and through. It’ll be great to have around as a reference book to recheck things, and I’m glad I read it cover to cover first so I could see all it had to offer.

Earlier this week I finished reading Absolute Batman Vol. 2: Abomination by Scott Snyder, Marcos Martín, and Nick Dragotta. I liked but didn’t love the first volume, as it had to juggle setting the stage for a new Batman origin story and tell of a compelling conflict in the present. With all of that groundwork laid, I really loved this book. I’ve not read many Bane stories before, but from what I’ve heard about how the character was presented at his inception, this seemed to me like a great return to form for a villain who is supposed to be one of Batman’s greatest rivals. Batman is so often presented as a man who can handle almost anything too, so it was great to see him put into such a vulnerable position by an adversary he is seemingly no match for physically or mentally. Seeing him overcome this challenge and the cost it incurred was sensational.

Reading Next

Next I plan to read Let Me In Your Window by Adam Ellis, a graphic novel collection of horror stories. There are some books I own that I really want to start reading, but I borrowed a bunch of library books like this one again that I really want to read and return first.

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

 

WWW Wednesday – April 22, 2026

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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

I’m still plucking away at the Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein. I don’t have much more to say on it, as it doesn’t exactly change as you get through it. I’m simply continuing to have dorky fun learning the distinctions between similar things and ideas.

Recently Finished

Late last week I finished reading The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’Ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta. Really I had already finished the story, as it was only about 45 pages long, but the remainder was a lengthy essay about the background of the story and cultural/literary inspirations for it, which helped to put it into a lot better context for me, especially in how it describes the sociopolitical climate in Japan at the time and how that worked its way into the story. It also goes into depth about how, of all things, the original Doctor Dolittle stories by Hugh Lofting had a huge influence on the story and Mothra in particular. One of Lofting’s stories features a gargantuan moth that flies Dr. Dolittle to the Moon to treat the animals that live there, and translations of his books had made their way to Japan some decades prior, to great success. Angles (the translator of this book) drew such clear connections that the influence is undeniable. It’s always fun to see how ideas are birthed from each other.

I also finished a couple volumes of One-Punch Man, but I haven’t got much to say on them. It’s a fun series, but each volume flows into the next in such a way that I don’t really have much of note to say about them.

Reading Next

I’m likely going to read Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo soon, and I’ve also got a few more graphic novels from the library that I want to get through so I don’t hang on to them too long. Besides those, I’m not sure what novel I might start next.

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

WWW Wednesday – April 1, 2026

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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

I’m still reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, the 29th Discworld novel and the 6th about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. I didn’t update last week because I wanted to get a little further along into reading this, especially as I haven’t been reading much of anything else. As expected, I’m really enjoying this novel, perhaps even a little more than the last couple of City Watch books. Taking Vimes and thrusting him 3o years into his own past and forcing him take up the mantle of another man while mentoring himself as a young man was an inspired choice that I’m really enjoying. It’s nice to get the focus almost solely on Vimes too. Though he’s typically a main character, there are usually more POVs he has to share the novel with. I’m also really enjoying the stark contrast between what the Watch was 30 years prior and what it has become over the course of the entire series. It does a good job of making fun of and highlighting the flaws in policing while also upholding a higher standard that can and should always be aspired to.

Recently Finished

Nothing for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been more singularly focused and have taken a bit of a break from the shorter books.

Reading Next

I’m not entirely sure what I want to pick up next in terms of longer reading, though I am finding myself still drawn toward finishing series that I’ve let languish for a long time. There’s the rest of my life for new books, but I shouldn’t let the series I’ve already started and bought the books for just sit there for ages. In the meantime, I do intend to read Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo because I simply love these art books, and I’ve also picked up a couple more volumes of One-Punch Man from the library to keep my progress on that series steadily moving forward. Thinking about the Spring to-read list I just put out as well, there’s a really good chance my next read will be The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’Ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta. Time will tell.

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

Top 5 Books I Read in 2025

Ryan1 Comment

I’ve let these posts run a little late before, but I apologize for letting it get quite this bad this time. I’ve had this list pretty much sorted out since the start of the year, I just let it slide too much after a sudden surge in work that I wasn’t expecting. It’s not really an excuse, but it is what happened.

As usual, this is not a list of five books that came out last year, just my personal top five favourite reads from last year. Normally, I list them in no particular order, but this time around I’m listing them in the order that I read them. Otherwise, there is no ranking. Let’s get to it.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – March 19, 2025

Ryan1 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

Nothing at the moment! I am momentarily between books.

Recently Finished

Last week I finished reading Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes, which I’m not surprised I loved until the very end. It really had been a long time since I read any books about Greek mythology, and this was the perfect book for getting back into it. Although I’m now really curious about reading the author’s fiction, another book in a similar vein to this one, Divine Might, recently came out and I really want to read that one now too. I should read A Thousand Ships first, though, since I have a copy. Unsurprisingly, a big takeaway for me has been a newfound appreciation for the roles that women play in Greek mythology, especially in how they are often integral to different heroes’ successes, something that feels often overlooked or downplayed in more modern retellings.

I also read through Godhusk: Rebirth by Plastiboo, another art book in the form of a game guide for a game that never existed. Unlike Vermis, this book takes more of a science fiction approach and presents a game that seems to be very much in the Metroid-style action/adventure genre. Though I love the author’s Vermis books a great deal, I came away from this one desperately wishing that the game it depicts was real. The visual style, clearly inspired by the work of H.R. Giger, made for a captivatingly bleak world full of biomechanical horrors, and the lore was utterly engrossing. Beyond that, the game mechanic of swapping out different limbs of the player character’s “vessel” to augment how the character plays and interacts with the world sounds really cool as an idea. I could vividly imagine how the game would feel playing, so it’s a bit of a bummer that it’s only a work of imagination.

Reading Next

I have decided that I will start reading Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson next, so that I can finally continue the Trickster trilogy after having read the first book nearly three years ago. I really need to stop leaving book series hanging like this.

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

Top 5 Books I Read in 2024

Ryan1 Comment

I’m getting to this a little late this year, but nevertheless it is time once again to look back on the year just finished and determine which books were my top five favourite. As usual, this isn’t listing books that came out last year, just the five books I read last year that I enjoyed the most, in no particular order.

I think this may be the most difficult time I’ve had making this list; I enjoyed most everything I read last year, but a good number of them don’t really feel worthy of this distinction to me. It seems I had a similar problem last year, but I feel more pointedly dispassionate this time. At any rate, let’s see what made the cut.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – November 6, 2024

Ryan1 Comment
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 between books at the moment! I regret not posting last week, but my work schedule is weird and I had people over to carve pumpkins last Wednesday, so I was unable to get a post up in time. As a result, I have a few finished books to get to.

Recently Finished

Vermis IIThe first book I finished since I last posted was Vermis II: Mist & Mirrors by Plastiboo, the second book in a series of art books structured as game guides for a dark fantasy video game that never existed. I really enjoyed the first volume, and I liked this second one even more. The first book felt a little open-ended, as if you’re following a quest line that the player could follow regardless of chosen character, but this time around it seemed to be a guide for a specific character’s journey, with more characters listed at the end, presumably with their own quests. I really liked the focus this gave to the book, keeping the game guide motif while allowing itself a more concrete narrative.

Sherlock Holmes and the NecronomiconNext, I read Sherlock Holmes and the Necronomicon by Sylvain Cordurié and Laci, another Halloween read that I borrowed from the library. This wasn’t terrible, but I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about this book either. It was competently written and drawn, but had very little going on that I found interesting. It being a Holmes story felt especially pointless, as he doesn’t do any detective work. The only real significance is that, somehow, Moriarty has returned, and he is going to use the Necronomicon to fully revive himself because of some nonsense about part of his soul being in Holmes. Actually, that was the most interesting element, as the idea is brought forth that positive changes in Holmes’s character are a direct result of Moriarty’s soul hiding in him, but this isn’t focused on enough. I likely won’t be checking out the second book.

Meddling KidsFinally, I finished Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, my last spooky read for the Halloween season. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually finish it until November 4th, but the lion’s share of it was in October, so I’m counting it. I really like this book, I’d give it a solid four stars overall, though sometimes I want to say three and a half because the ending sections of this book became something of a struggle for me. There were some great twists and turns in the story that I enjoyed, but so much of it is this trio of burnouts fighting off a horde of amphibious monsters and it just wouldn’t stop; my eyes actually started glazing over and I had to snap myself back into focus during these continual, drawn out fight sequences. It was really good novel overall, but I can’t help but feel like Cantero wants it to be a movie, which can only really hurt a book if indeed the author doesn’t really want it to be a book.

Reading Next

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids AgainThe year is winding down, and I feel like I have to be realistic about what I’m going to be able to get to. Obviously, I can manage a good number of comics on short notice, but I have to be realistic about what novels I think I can read, especially since my work schedule may be dramatically changing soon. So, there are two books I definitely want to read before the end of the year: Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. I’m going to start with the Godzilla book, as I’ve been excited to read that one, and I’ll round out the year finishing off the Southern Reach trilogy. Reading a whole trilogy in a year is rare for me; I think the only other time I’ve done it was when I read The Lord of the Rings.

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

WWW Wednesday – October 16, 2024

Ryan1 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

Meddling KidsJust this morning I started reading Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, a horror novel that I did not realize until today is published by Blumhouse Books; I didn’t even know Blumhouse had an arm for book publishing. I’ve only gotten about 20 pages in, but I’m really enjoying the setup so far, especially in how it’s an obvious send up of Scooby-Doo, but the members of their little detective group so far feel unique enough that it doesn’t feel like shallow parody. The setup has revealed that while they did in fact get an old man in a costume arrested, something else, much more sinister, was really going on at that mansion on the lake. The writing style has some interesting flourishes too, the narrator often describing things as if the characters are on camera in a film, but I’m not sure how much I like this yet.

Recently Finished

FrankensteinIn a surprising show of determination from yours truly, I started and finished rereading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley over the last two weeks. I didn’t post last Wednesday because I wasn’t that far yet and it was my birthday, so I decided to take a day for myself as much as I could. At first, I was worried about how well I would fare with this novel because it has been a while since I read older literature. Once I got back into the swing of things, it made for a very enjoyable reread. This was actually my first time reading the 1831 text as well, as originally I’d only read the 1818 version. The absence of overt incest does make it better. Wrightson’s illustrations were also a great addition to this reading experience. Some of them felt a little superfluous, but it was a delight anytime he depicted the Creature. How anyone could not understand how the Creature is supposed to be a sympathetic figure is beyond me; what ended up surprising me, a detail I’d forgotten, is that Frankenstein actually does admit his shortcomings on his deathbed. He’d been such an intolerant heel the entire book I had convinced myself he dies without learning a damn thing.

Reading Next

Vermis III still have a number of books I plan to get to for Frighteningly Good Reads this year, and I think what I’ll try to get through next is Vermis II: Mist & Mirrors by Plastiboo, the second volume of an art book series that creates game guides for a dungeon-crawling dark fantasy video game that never existed. Though I’ve recently watched a video that summarized a lot of the elements this book will cover, the details are fortunately receding from my mind already; a video summary pales in comparison to actually reading a thing as well anyway, let alone appreciating all the art that is has to offer.

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

WWW Wednesday – April 3, 2024

Ryan1 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

Watership DownThough by this time last week I had actually read up to page 203, I haven’t touched Watership Down by Richard Adams at all over the past week; things have been a little stressful with car troubles and whatnot, and for some reason that has made reading this book suffer. Still, I’m continuing to enjoy it, and I was surprised by the development that they’ve already reached the titular Watership Down. Where I’m at, their concern is finding female rabbits to attract to their new home so the warren doesn’t die out, as for some reason all of the rabbits that left the warren at the beginning with Hazel and Fiver were male. I can see how this will likely introduce conflict in the narrative’s future, so I really ought to pick this back up to see where things go.

Recently Finished

Vermis IOver the weekend, I did manage to push myself to read through Vermis I: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods by Plastiboo, an art book that is constructed as a guide for a dungeon-crawler game that never existed. As I knew when I picked it up, I absolutely loved the illustrations and designs in this books, and it actually ended up being a rather creative way to tell the story of a strange little journey in a strange land, as it outlines a game’s quest and thus has you progressing from point to point, encounter to encounter, outlining objects that can be found and choices that can be made along the way. The only thing I chaffed against is that this book really needed a better proofreader; for the most part it’s still enjoyable and very readable, but a lot of independent clauses are joined by commas alone instead of being separated, which reads awkwardly, and there are a lot of cases of missing articles and subject/verb disagreement.

Reading Next

I haven’t made up my mind on what to read next, though naturally I have some ideas. It will likely be a graphic novel of some sort.

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

WWW Wednesday – March 20, 2024

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

Watership DownI’m happy to report that I’ve made some fairly decent progress on Watership Down by Richard Adams since last week, considering that I haven’t had a huge reading window to sit down with it. I’ve finished Part One, which has me at nearly 120 pages in. Though I have no clue how things will develop going forward, I am excited by this story being an odyssey, though the promised land of the title that I presume they will be seeking hasn’t even been mentioned yet. Already they have faced many tribulations and encounters with other creatures and rabbits. I’m quite captivated by how many of the rabbits are characterized, with certain concepts being difficult for them to grasp; there’s an interesting balance between them thinking like people and thinking like the animals that they are.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week, as I have sadly continued to neglect comics and graphic novels.

Reading Next

Vermis IAs I laid out in the spring TBR I posted yesterday for Top Ten Tuesday, I want to make myself read more from my comic book backlog. Already I plan to be reading A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll soon, though this is hardly an old book that has been left waiting, but I also want to make myself read Vermis I by Plastiboo soon, a mystifying art book about a dungeon-crawler RPG that never existed. I hope I can make myself start or even finish these by next week, but we will see, as I’m not quite sure how my reading time will be divided up in that time.

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