Culture Consumption: July 2018

Hi, lovelies. I’m currently in Egypt, so I pre-prepared and scheduled this post. Anyway, here’s my month in books, movies, television, and games. 🙂

Books

Pretty much all of my reading this month has been focused on working through the 2018 Hugo nominations, or as many of them as I could get to.

My favorite read of the month was My Favorite Thing is Monsters, the stunning graphic nvel written and illustrated by Emil Ferris. It has some of the most gorgeous art I’ve seen in a graphic story. My full review is here.

From My Favorite Thing is Monsters.

I also adored An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (review) and Provenance by Ann Leckie (review), both of which present beautiful albeit very different stories set in space. In addition, No Time to Spare is a moving collection of blog essays from the late Ursula K. Le Guin (review) and Paper Girls is a great time travel romp (review).

The only non-Hugo book I read this month was How to Make Friends with a Ghost, a picture book by Rebecca Green. A charming picture book, presenting the idea of ghosts as friendly companions with instructions on how to obtain and care for such a friend. The art is soft and whimsical. I was delighted to hand this over to my niece for her birthday.

How to Make Friends with a Ghost by Rebecca Green

Books Read Last Month:
1. No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (audio book) by Ursula K. Le Guin
2. My Favorite Thing is Monsters, written and illustrated by Emil Ferris
3. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
4. Provenance by Ann Leckie
5. River of Teeth (audio book) by Sarah Gailey (novella)
6. “And Then There Were (N-One)” by Sarah Pinsker (novella)
7. How to Make Friends with a Ghost by Rebecca Green
8. Paper Girls, Volume 1, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher
9. Paper Girls, Volume 2, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher
10. Paper Girls, Volume 3, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher

Total Books for the Year: 37

Still in Progress at the End of the Month: The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang and The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Short Stories

Most of my favorite reads for the month came from the Hugo nominated novlette short list. Each of the stories (which I talked about here) is moving and powerful in their own way.

Allie Marini also has a killer poem up at Burrow Press, “If Florida Was a Man, This is How I’d Miss Him“. And here’s three more amazing poems for your reading pleasure.

Movies/TV

None, or more accurately, nothing of note. So much of my time has been spent reading or working on a number of writing projects this month that I haven’t been able to sit and focus on a single show or movie. Instead, I’ve been throwing on various episodes or movies that I’ve seen a dozen times before as a kind of background noise while I worked on other things. This includes the three Jurassic Park movies, Stardust, Stir of Echoes, and various episodes of Stranger Things and Buffy the Vampire Slayer — and other stuff that I’m not remembering at the moment.


That’s it for me! What are you reading? Watching? Loving right now?


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