Title: American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Pages: 260
Reaction: This book takes three completely separate narratives and weaves them together into something which almost everyone who belongs to a minority (and let's face it, we're all in the minority in one way or another) can relate to. Interesting reading, all around, if not something I'd have picked up if it wasn't a class text.

Title: Fun Home
Author: Alison Bechdel
Pages: 232
Reaction: I have to admit, I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. It's the pseudo-autobiography of a lesbian who grew up in an obsessively restored Victorian mansion in a small town with a closeted gay father who ran a funeral home (the "Fun Home") on the side. It's, erm, complicated. But I liked the author's sense of humor, and it served as a fascinating contrast to, say, Persepolis.

Title: Falling For Gracie
Author: Susan Mallery
Pages: 405
Reaction: Stumbled on this while doing some cleaning, and couldn't help reading it. Susan Mallery has a tendency to write these lovely, fluffy, happily-ever-after romances which feature baking prominantly in some way or another. Women who run bakeries or design custom cakes or whatever. In short, they're a lot of fun, and oddly informative when it comes to some of the details surrounding large-scale and commercial baking.

Title: Speed Dating
Author: Nancy Warren
Pages: 220
Reaction: Sometimes, a Harlequin can be a really nice way to relax and just allow your brain to calm down for a few hours. Light, fluffy, and it has the advantage over fanfic of having been through a professional editor (which means that the number of major SPaG errors is markedly low). I blame wychwood for recommending this particular story my way. Going in, I knew absolutely nothing about NASCAR, so this was actually moderately informative as well as being brain candy.

ETA: Now, I'm going to go and pass out, b/c I've been up since 3:30 this morning due to insomnia. Seriously, you'd think reading The Scarlet Letter at 4AM would put anyone to sleep, but no...

Title: The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Pages: 222
Reaction: Read this for my ENGL 432 class on the Bible in American Lit. It's not as bad as I feared it would be, although the "Introduction" runs on and on and on (and bears little actual relevance to the rest of the work). Basically, adultery is committed, there are a bunch of consequences, rocks fall, people die.

Next on the School-related list? Last of the Mohicans

Book #2
Title: Black Hole
Author: Charles Burns
Pages: 368
Reaction: This book is, essentially, one long acid trip about why abstinence-only is the way to go. Or, well, kind of. It's about an STD rampaging through the Seattle region that only affects teens, and which causes random mutation in those who get it (anything from a tail to gross deformity). While the author makes some interesting points about the dangers of "taboo", I couldn't help feeling like there was an element of "I'm going to see just how much I can get away with" in the graphic nudity area (and the number of in-page euphemisms to various parts of anatomy). I'm sorry, but I find it distasteful to compare the vagina to dissecting a dead frog.

Tonight? I have to read The Scarlet Letter. We'll see how that goes...

Book #1
Title: Ordinary Victories: Life is Precious
Author: Manu Larcenet
Pages: 128 (one of my five shorts)
Reaction: Read it for my "Studies in the Graphic Narrative" class, and it's the first book for that class which I haven't enjoyed very much. Not only am I not a big fan of the artist's style (I don't find characters like Tintin easier to relate to, I just find them ugly), but the book came off as highly ambiguous in that "I'm never going to follow a thought through long enough to come to a point" kind of way.

Personally, I don't recommend it, but if you liked Tintin, you might get more out of it than I did. Also, keep in mind, I read this after having plowed through about 300 pages of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis earlier in the evening. I like Satrapi's style a heck of a lot more, for a number of reasons.