Time for mini reviews! Most of what I currently have left to review is from my home library, so I'm going to shift to mini reviews to get some of them knocked out.
Alyce of
At Home With Books (a dormant blog since 2016) very kindly sent me a copy of
Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby (an Oatmeal book) by Matthew Inman and a gift card to buy more books when I was in desperate need of cheering up. I can't even begin to tell you what a huge upper that was. I am still so grateful for the laughs in a week that was mostly about crying and anxiety.
Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby is equal parts gross and hilarious. I was familiar with
The Oatmeal comics but I guess I'd never really paid much attention to them. The gross ones involve a lot of illustrations of baby vomit and poop; they were not my favorites. But, there were plenty of comics that lacked the yuck factor and made me laugh, especially the ones specifically about cats. I shared my absolute favorites with the Spousal Unit and he enjoyed them, too.
Recommended but may require a strong stomach - I have a pretty strong stomach, I guess. I did have babies, after all, and the gross part goes with the territory. If you love
The Oatmeal, you'll love this book.
I used part of the Amazon card Alyce sent me to buy a copy of
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle, a book that's been on my wish list, for a while. I absolutely love
Strange Planet comics, little 4-box comics in which aliens make sense of life on Earth.
Deb Nance of
Readerbuzz put it this way: "What if we could look at our world through fresh, if alien, eyes?" That's what Nathan Pyle does in
Strange Planet. I'll share the comic that first caught my attention, below. I love the way Pyle examines humanity through slightly different viewpoint, the language making a lot of the strangeness of our lives clear. On the lower left cover of the book, an alien proudly shows off his sunburn saying, "It's the star damage." In one comic I read off Pyle's Instagram, a few days ago, the aliens were ordering pizza (I forget their name for pizza) and I laughed at one of them shouting out, "More fungus slices!"
Here's the comic that made me fall in love with
Strange Planet:
Highly recommended - Loads of laughs and a huge upper. I will read this many times, in the future, I'm sure. So grateful to have a copy in my home library.
I love Connie Willis but I'd never heard of
Crosstalk till recently. It sounded like my kind of book so I bought a copy.
When Briddey Flannigan and her boyfriend, Trent, get a procedure that's supposed to help them connect emotionally, it has a shocking side effect. Briddey (short for Bridget) becomes telepathic. At first, she can only hear one other voice. But, eventually, her telepathy becomes stronger and the thoughts coming from other people's heads overwhelm her. With the help of C.B., the first man she heard upon coming telepathic and a co-worker of hers, she learns to block the chaos. C.B. is weird. He's brilliant but he works in the basement and stays away from people. And, Briddey is in love with Trent. So, why is she finding herself so drawn to C.B.?
When Trent begins to show signs of telepathy and Briddey finds out his real reason for wanting to get the procedure, things go haywire.
Recommended to sci-fi fans - Not Willis's best but a fun read. In comparison to past works by Connie Willis,
Crosstalk comes closest to
Bellwether. Both are light, funny, romantic, and silly, even a little slapstick. Both have sci-fi attributes but
Crosstalk didn't entirely make sense to me. I got the telepathy but not the idea of harnessing it via technology. I just couldn't buy into that concept. And, it was a bit too long, but I enjoyed
Crosstalk enough to keep going and I have no regrets.