This is the second book in a series I started a while ago. It’s one of those “All the books will be at the library” types of series, a straightforward--forensic archaeologist and cops encounter weird stuff on the salt marshes and need both of their skill sets to investigate-- thing. The archaeologist is a middle-aged Vera-style frumpy no-nonsense woman who, in this book, is pregnant and so there’s that subtext as well. There’s some interesting delving into UK and Roman history. A solid read.

Kevin brought a stinky egg to school and now everyone is calling him Eggboy. One of his old friends isn’t talking to him. His other friends are just as nerdy as he is. His grandma from the old country has moved in with their family because his dad left. His seamstress mom is stressed. There’s a school field trip. It’s a tough time to be Kevin. This is a great graphic novel, so evocatively done. Kevin feels real, proud to be nerdy but still trying to figure it all out.

In a small community in Scotland where everyone knows everyone, one of the families is planning a party. We meet two extended families (the laird and the other his childhood friend - both now grown with families) and the folks in their orbits. It’s mostly well-off people and their trials and tribulations as they get ready in the months preceding a very big shindig. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the ins and outs of rural Scotland, at once both familiar and not.

A graphic novel for tweens about a girl going to a new school who wants to do math club but winds up in swim club. She doesn’t know how to swim and eventually learns to swim and learns to be part of a team. This book touches on the racist history of Black people being denied access to pools and beaches (and offers further reading on the topic in the end notes) though it’s not the central point of the story which is about teamwork and overcoming fears.

A book that is about a lot of stressful stuff--a bank robbery, some bad relationships, people with complicated lives--but you can see partway through that it’s heading somewhere sweet and gentle. A little less relentless than A Man Called Ove (if you read that one) but the same type of writing. I enjoyed trying to figure out where it might go. Don’t let the title make you think it might just be a lot of people being nervous and upset. There’s some of that but not too much.

This book was suggested by my librarian after I returned “Big Jim and the White Boy.” This is another Jim-centered reimagining of Huckleberry Finn. My enjoyment of this was only marred by thinking “What is wrong with me that I haven’t read anything by Percival Everett before?” Really well-told, a mixture of his relationship with Huck but also the US’s relationship to slavery and enslaved people just before the Civil War. Hard to read in parts, as you would expect; more humor than you might expect.

A world basically the same as our own except there’s an app where you can hire a person to play a role for you in your life. Usually this is just “Attend a wedding/funeral/party with me” but sometimes it’s “Help me raise my young child, come every Thursday and pretend you’re her dad” Told through the eyes of the stranger/Dad who has his own story that only slowly gets told. I liked it, weird and a little funny with some empathy and some “wtf?”

Kathy lived in Bangkok with a Thai mom and an American (and older) dad. Her family is quiet. They do a lot of things separately. They take summer trips to Maine. Kathy doesn’t feel at home in Thailand OR the US and this graphic novel takes place mainly as she goes to her first year of summer camp in Maine and tries to figure out her family, and herself. I liked the storytelling, and there was always a lot going on in every panel. It didn’t feel like the usual introvert’s angsty memoir.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.