Books of 2021: February

Obviously, from the title and from the last post regarding this year's reading list, I'd meant to post this last month but, you know, lazy.

 
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

"I can't force the things that happen to be fair. I can't make them happen for only good reasons that I understand and agree with. But I can do my own things. And I can do them for equally pointless and equally nonsensical reasons. Which is sort of like fairness. If you can't win, start playing a different game and score just as many points."

Allie Brosh's second book after "Hyperbole and a Half" and a long hiatus from updating her blog, "Hyperbole and a Half". Filled with stories ranging from her childhood to present-day adult life, from crazy and almost nonsensical to depressing and real, and all of it illustrated with her trademark crude, Paint artwork (at least I think that's what she uses). Some of my favorite stories are "Richard" describing how, as a child, she stalked her neighbor, stealing items from his house and leaving others at his house. It got to the point that her parents started to suspect that he might just be a child predator. I also enjoyed "Fairness," a story about how she got revenge on a neighbor who would hammer things too early by leaving a lone stick in the same spot in his yard every single morning for months. The chapter "Losing," .... this was a tough chapter to get through as it's about Brosh's downward spiral: her depression, health scare, her sister's suicide, and all the thoughts just racing through her head at this time. I literally needed to close the book after I was done just to take it all in.

I'm still not sure how I found the original website (I think someone must've recommended it to me). For the longest time, she disappeared and stopped updating it until several months ago when it announced she was releasing another book, "Solutions and Other Problems" (thankfully a link to her blog still appears on the right-hand of my own). Also, if for some strange reason you actually use these posts to find books to read (no one does because no one reads this), you're probably wondering why I have this since I've said multiple times that I always try to avoid buying hardcover books. Well, in this case, the timing worked out: I needed something to add to my Christmas wishlist for our Secret Santa game, and apparently I'm just as bad at thinking up gifts for myself as I am at buying them for other people. And that's how I got this book to read months earlier than I would have if I waited for the paperback.

Deadly Class written by Rick Remender, illustrated by Wes Craig, colored by Jason Wordie, and lettered by Rus Wooten

This ongoing comic series follows Marcus and a group of students from several different cliques at King's Dominion Atelier of the Deadly Arts, a high school to train students to become the best killers for their respective groups. They are trained in various ways to hurt, maim, and kill to make them useful assets to their respective families or organizations ranging from the CIA, Yakuza, Cartels, street gangs, freedom fighters, or anarchists. Navigating classes, friendships, teenage romance with violence constantly in the forefront of the story, the gang tries their best to make the right decisions for their survival. Though I originally started reading this comic for the cool fight scenes, it was the rest of the storyline that kept me coming back and wanting to read more. If you think that this just being a school where children are trained to kill is the craziest part of the story, it gets so much more insane. A roadtrip to kill someone's asshole father. A final exam testing yourselves literally against your peers. The artwork (as I mentioned previously when I talked about "The Umbrella Academy" I'm not good at art so my opinion means jack shit) wasn't the polished stuff you'd find in the pages of Marvel comics. Instead it has a grittiness to it that complements the storytelling. Like when I talked about reading "The Umbrella Academy" comics, I thought about writing about each volume individually, but I didn't write a summery after each one and I don't want to go scanning through the pages again to find out exactly what happened in each book, so that's not going to happen this time.

As I mentioned when I talked about Volume One a year ago, I found out about this series from the great but short-lived Syfy adaptation. If you can find it someplace, I'd recommend watching it. Originally, I had picked up volume one a year or so ago. Then, toward the end of last year, Gecko Books in Kaimuki went out of business and I picked up volumes 3 through 7 at a discount. Then it took me two tries to get volume 2 through Amazon (the first got returned without a reason and I was waiting for my refund before re-ordering). So, as timing would have it, I managed to get the full set at the same time I was reading "Solutions and Other Problems" and I dreaded carrying such a huge tome to work to read during my lunch breaks. So the timing of it worked out, and eventually I'll get around to picking up the other two volumes.