Kampung Boy   
by Lat (2006)

read: 24 June 2026
rating: [+]

This graphic novel is a classic of the genre which somehow I had never come across until I found it in a local LFL. It’s an excellent story about growing up in a rural village in Malaysia as a Muslim kid at the same time as the rural ways are disappearing. The drawing is goofy and expressive and there is so much going on in each page it was fun to flip through it. It highlights just how isolated rural communities were and yet how much was still going on in each one.

Love, Misha   
by Askel Aden (2025)

read: 22 June 2026
rating: [+]

Misha doesn’t feel that their mom has been supportive of their gender transformation. They are going on a road trip together (one that Misha doesn’t want to go on) and get lost. They wind up in a spirit world, meet a lot of unusual creatures, some friendly, some not. Being lost is both true in the story, but also a metaphor for Misha’s relationship with their mom as they work together to find a way back to their own world and get to know each other. Really well done and illustrated.

The Last Word   
by Elly Griffiths (2024)

read: 20 June 2026
rating: [+]

Funny story, I’d read the beginning of this earlier because Griffiths' other series ends with a book with a very similar title. I went into this book, the last in the Harbinder Kaur series, with a bit of trepidation since the reviews in the little slip my library puts in the back for patron reviews PANNED it. I thought it was fine. Wraps up a few things nicely. The mystery is fine. I find the multiple-perspective writing a little tiresome since I want more Kaur and her family and relationships and and this was more about her group of friends and a mystery they encounter about a writers' book group with a very high mortality rate.

How To Die   
by Mike Monteiro (2026)

read: 16 June 2026
rating: [+]

This book is not about how to die. It’s a collection of essays by Mike Monteiro who is an Old Web guy and a designer answering questions that people pose to him about life stuff. Simple questions like how to make a grilled cheese, or a mixtape, and more complicated ones like how to get your joy back. He writes these up for his weekly newsletter and this is a collection of them. If you’ve read his other work, you’ll know if you’ll dig this or not. Pulls no punches. Very good.

Platform Decay   
by Martha Wells (2026)

read: 13 June 2026
rating: [+]

This was just on the shelf at my library! I like the Murderbot books. This one had a bunch of characters which I wasn’t totally familiar with and did not have the other characters I did know and like (for the most part). There’s a lot of Murderbot “emotional growth” if you can call it that, but a lot of the logistics of the mission they do are “And then I hacked into THIS thing and made it work for me.” Not enough ART. These feel more like serialized magazine stories at this point, a good time but just sort of one mission at a time and while there’s suspense, it’s not like it used to be.

Conversion Therapy Dropout   
by Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez (2026)

read: 8 June 2026
rating: [+]

I got this book as a giveaway in exchange for an honest review. This is an achingly poignant story about a guy who grows up in a religious household trying to “pray the gay away” for eight years with conversion therapy programs all the while enjoying a very successful career as a social media marketer for the same churches which don’t accept him. He eventually comes to a better place as a queer adult but it’s a long slog to get there and he remains very religious, but within an affirming community and supportive friends. If you’re someone who just can’t stomach people with strong religious beliefs, this one may not be for you, but it probably is for everyone else.

Love By the Book   
by Jessica George (2026)

read: 8 June 2026
rating: [+]

This is a story within a story of a platonic and yet also romantic (bot not sexual) friendship between two women. Remy is dealing with the inevitable aging-and-distancing of her best-friend group and she meets Simone who is pretty closed off but maybe open to being friends. Both women go through a lot in the short course of this novel. Remy is also trying to undo some writer’s block after her first successful novel and decides to write about their friendship.

Lovely Recipe   
by Myra Rose Nino (2026)

read: 7 June 2026
rating: [+]

A graphic novel about two teenagers in their last year of high school who are both interested in food. One works in her parents restaurant. One misses the way her grandmother would make big meals that brought the family together. They meet up during the whirlwind of senior year and the whole “Who is going away to college and who is staying nearby?” uncertainty and begin cooking together and healing some of their unrecognized underlying feelings. Sweet and well-drawn.

Open Borders   
by Bryan Caplan (2019)

read: 1 June 2026
rating: [+]

This is a graphic novel about why open borders make sense both from an economic perspective (i.e. most immigrants give more to their new country than they receive $-wise) and also by other measures. It traces some of the history of immigration in the United States and shows, using a lot of stats and studies, why fewer restrictions on immigration would benefit the US in a number of material ways and help turn it into a more just society. Not just an essay with pictures.

Bleeding Heart Yard   
by Elly Griffiths (2022)

read: 31 May 2026
rating: [+]

Another book in the Harbinder Kaur series and, unlike the Ruth Galloway books, this series really doesn’t center the protagonist (a late-30s queer southeast Asian detective in London) as much as I might have liked. It’s a story about a group of popular kids who are some part of a murder in their school days and now it’s 20 years later and... there’s another murder. Plotwise it’s fine, wraps up better than you think it’s going to.

The Gales of November   
by John Bacon (2025)

read: 28 May 2026
rating: [+]

I grew up listening to Gordon Lightfoot and the song he wrote about this tragedy is one of my favorites. This book is about what actually happened before and after the shipwreck with some postulating of what may have happened to cause the wreck. It’s a well-researched, readable book that is very clear about what is known and not known. The author doesn’t speculate, he just lets you know what the facts are, and since so little is known about the actual sinking, it doesn’t turn into a traumafest. It’s a great story about a community and culture with a lot of Great Lakes boat lore tossed in as well.

The A Word: A Global History of the Abortion Struggle   
by Elizabeth Casillas (2025)

read: 26 May 2026
rating: [+]

This book was a “graphic essay.” It’s an overview of the history of abortion rights worldwide, from when abortion was just considered a medical concern, to the currently hyper-politicized fraught topic which it is today. There’s a lot of good information, from an author who is unapologetically in favor of abortion rights and I appreciated the global perspective but it did read sort of like an essay and didn’t make as much use of the graphic medium as I’d hoped. It was nice to get a worldwide perspective on the topic.

Northern Borders   
by Howard Frank Mosher (1994)

read: 25 May 2026
rating: [+]

Mosher writes Lake Wobegon-type novels about a fictional location in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont “back in the day.” Very evocative of a sense of place and time and the people in that place and time in both good ways and sometimes less-good ways, heavy with nostalgia. This one is more of a collection of shorter stories all with the same narrator with slices of life from when he went to live with his grandparents between the ages of six and 18.

Constituent Service   
by John Scalzi (2025)

read: 15 May 2026
rating: [+]

A novella by Scalzi which is short and goofy and a good time. If you liked Kaiju Preservation, you’ll probably like this story of a woman who does constitutent services on a future Earth where the district she is living in is minority-human so there are a LOT of different things to take into account when you’re helping various people of various species help solve their civic problems. Humorous and a quick read, not a lot happens but there’s a satofying and amusing story arc and a good solid ending.

The Everlasting   
by Alix Harrow (2025)

read: 13 May 2026
rating: [+]

Harrow keeps getting better. This is a story about a legend and the person writing the story about the legend while also becoming part of the story. It’s got time loops and female knights and some academic drama and a mean old queen (and a misunderstood horse) and a lot of ruminations on the nature of freedom and of love. How do you tell the story of a people? How do you perfect that story, if it wasn’t quite right? Hard to talk about without spoilers. Treat yourself.