This book was illustrated by Koren Shadmi. A short graphic novel about the rise of video games and who really deserved the credit for them, a tale about Nolan Bushnell (Atari, Chuck E. Cheese) and Ralph Baer (Magnavox Odyssey, Simon). I didn’t know much about this history and liked learning about it. Each man wound up with some credit. The story is great, though told in a slightly weird style with equally not-that-engaging (to me) graphics. A quick read if you’re into the topic.

This was probably a great story IF you had read The Lunar Chronicles series which it is based off of. Instead we got a whole host of characters at the beginning and a lot of unstated motivations which were opaque to me. Well-illustrated and lively, but I couldn’t keep track of the people and places and when I was halfway through it and still not tracking, I decided it was not for me. Nothing wrong with it, it was just made for people who know the series.

A “based on true stories” tale of the friendship between a Sephardic man (Papoo, a first generation Jewish immigrant) and a Japanese businessman, Sam Akiyama, who form an alliance when Sam gets sent to an internment camp. This is all told through the eyes of Papoo’s grandson, who only learned about this story after his grandfather had died. It all takes place in Seattle, so it’s extra interesting for people who are familiar with the area.

This book was illustrated by Marcus Kwame Anderson. It’s a re-telling of the story of Huck Finn but centering Jim and making his story his own, not written by someone informed by all the racism of the time and told by a white man. It’s the 1800s so there’s still a lot of gnarly shit going down but the author and illustrator do a great job showing you another way this story could be told and there are ample notes and reading lists in the back. A quick read and pretty accessible to all kinds of readers.

I had to interlibrary loan this book from Colorado! This is the six-years-later sequel to the first Rabbi Vivian book about a lesbian rabbi in Providence trying to work with her congregation to bring more justice into the world. This one deals with a hurricane (and citywide preparations led by Rabbi Vivian’s partner) as well as the launch of an autonomous robot which, for money-raising reasons, is also having its AI shared with Israel. Written in 2023, hits a bit different in 2025 as far as the Israel stuff goes, but still a very good read

An excellent book highlighting the range of Native Americans doing comedy and the challenges they face, from overt racism, to large amounts traveling, to trying to make jokes about the grim history of colonization, residential schooling, land theft and massacres. Each chapter is an anecdote which builds upon the general theme though the sequence is a bit all over the place. Some standout names who you may have heard of like Charlie Hill and Will Rogers (and attendant controversies) and some new names you’d like to know like The 1491’s.

Another epic tale from Richard Powers. This one appears to be about friendships and class and the competitiveness of young people, the differing trajectories of lives. The kid from the poor Black neighborhood and the kid who grew up privileged but also with parents who kind of hated each other. It’s also about the way the world is mostly ocean and the complex ecosystem that exists there mostly unseen. There’s a woman who likes to go scuba diving who figures prominently as a bit of a third character. But it’s also about AI and there are about two sentences where you realize, you might realize, that the plot is different than you expected or thought it was. And I had all sorts of weird feelings about that. I don’t know what they call it when the book turns out to have a large part of it which seems true at the time but then is shown (maybe) not be true? This is one of those.

Lily is a high school senior who sees a newspaper ad for a San Francisco club with a male impersonator and starts to have some new feelings. She has a friend from school she thinks she can go with. Complications are that Lily is from Chinatown and her family is very traditional and will not understand. And it’s during the Red Scare so there is an awful lot of pressure to not attract attention, pressure that comes from family and from friends. And maybe her friend is more than a friend. The author’s afterword showed how much research she did for this YA coming of age novel and it shows.

I occasionally get books from Library Thing’s Early Reviewers program. Free books in exchange for an honest review. This book’s blurb did not match what I found inside the book, or maybe I got the blurb wrong. The author wants to talk about the idea of being a blessing, of oneg, of embodying the idea of joy through being a conduit (somewhat) for the divine. But it’s VERY Bible-heavy and Israel-heavy and thus not right for this secular pro-Palestine Jewish person.

Ted Kooser was getting cancer treatment and had turned a corner in a positive way. His doctor told him to exercise and avoid the sun so he took walks by his home in Nebraska in the early mornings and wrote short poems also mailed to his friend Jim Harrison. They take place every day and discuss usually the things that he sees. This collection spans December through March and was so familiar to me, living through my own winter both in the weather and at large. Some lovely observations and elegant turns of phrase which stuck with me. I sent Kooser and email thanking him for writing these and got a very nice note back.