When Sam wakes up all he remembers is the argument. He needs to go and talk to Hayden to see if their friendship is still intact or if the damage is irreparable. When Sam gets to Hayden's house Sam finds him in his bed, dead. Next to Hayden is a thumb drive with a note that lets Sam know it is for him - a playlist Hayden has made to help him understand why he chose to end his own life. As Sam listens to the playlist, he gets more and more confused. He starts to meet some new people and realize that they had connections to Hayden as well, though the more questions he asks, the more questions he has.
Bad things start to happen to the kids Hayden and Sam called the "Bully Trifecta," which includes Hayden's older brother. People look at Sam and wonder if he is the vigilante "taking care of" the bullies.
I found myself seeking out the songs on the playlist to know exactly what Hayden left Sam with for clues to his life and the end of it. A truly beautiful and haunting playlist full of songs of introspection, frustration and a desire to be heard. This book at times pulls at the heart strings and at others gives glimpses of hope for teens today struggling with their own identities and how to be in this crazy world.
As for Seki, the boy who sits at the desk next to Yokoi, well, he rarely seems to be paying attention in class. Nope, instead Seki is busy creating a Rube Goldberg-esque domino course on his desk, or pulling out any number of unexpected things from his bag or his desk to create elaborate games or otherwise amuse himself, and yet no one except for Yokoi seems to notice this.
Seki's, and mangaka Takuma Morishige's imagination, is something to behold, as Seki's alternately amusing or weird or just stupendously creative ideas take shape on his desk. My Neighbor Seki is a deceptively simple manga. Each chapter follows the same formula: Seki starts working on something, Yokoi tells herself to focus on the teacher's lecture, but still can't help getting caught up in whatever it is Seki is doing. Within this simple framework, however, Morishige writes and draws a very fun and enjoyable comic, and you can't predict what Seki will devise next. Morishige's artwork is on the simpler, understated side compared to other manga I've read, and he makes great use of panels and page turns to depict Yokoi as realizes what Seki is up to. And you can't blame Yokoi for being distracted in class when Seki is so much more interesting.
A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel is a fascinating
book which conveys much scientific information in an interesting way.
There is much scientific information presented in the book, but it is
never dry or boring.
Right now, in the US, we're in a golden age of reprints. So many classic comics - from Bud Sagendorf Popeye collections and the Walter Simonson prestige format oversized edition, to comic strip collections like the Complete Far Side boxed set and Leonard Starr's Mary Perkins On Stage - are available, in print, and, for the most part, affordable. But there's notable holes in the material you can get, particularly when it comes to non-manga foreign material. One of the biggest missing pieces in the pantheon of comics greatness, however, is now available. The phenomenal Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt and his rogue adventurer hero Corto Maltese is now available again in English for the first time in over two decades through gorgeous reprints from IDW.
Robots that come to life is a story that's been around since Asimov wrote about them in the '30s, and before that too, probably, I'm no historian. That doesn't mean that every once in a while a story about androids and their human masters can't come along and take you on a really cool ride. Enter Alex + Ada, a story that demands your attention and keeps it to the very last page.
It's the near future, flying robots make your breakfast and you do all of your shopping, net browsing and socializing via a chip that you have implanted into the side of your head. It's like having Amazon.com as your sub-conscious, fun!
Our titular character Alex is depressed, he's still not over the girl that left him and he's not satisfied in his job. His grandmother wants to cheer him up by purchasing an android for him.
Now, when I say android, I'm not talking about something that looks like Johnny Five, these things are the real deal. They look just like you or I, the only way to tell them apart from humans is the logo they have tattooed on their wrist which they are legally obligated to keep exposed at all times.
Alex refuses his grandmother's offer, and she buys him one anyway. This is where things start to get really interesting.
Group think, lust for power, oppression of minority groups and flimsy justifications for war are all themes explored in Richard Kurti's Monkey Wars. If you think that those themes sound like they have been plucked from news headlines over the past decade then you are correct. The only difference is that these things occur in a monkey society in present day India.
Anita Silvey compiled "Life Lessons from Notable People from All Walks of Life" for this book.
The notables include many great writers, but also a heart surgeon, a TV film critic, at least one librarian (Yay!), a physics professor, a cancer researcher, a climate scientist, and so on. I'll quote Azar Nafisi's recommendation (She wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran, a wonderful memoir/piece of history, by the way.)
I first heard about The Thousand and One Nights when I was about four, and my father each night would choose to tell me a story from the treasure trove of Persian classical literature. The last time I read it was for a private class I had with seven of my female students in 1995.
And yes, that appears to be the actual title of this small book, though one usually finds it as Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman, with graphic design by Chip Kidd. The text is something that Gaiman wrote for a commencement speech, which he delivered in 2012 to the University of the Arts. The book is a triumph of graphic design, using a variety of fonts, font sizes, and several colors (turquoise, red and white), to convey the text, which is both inspirational and aspirational. It's the perfect gift for new graduates, or for anyone anywhere involved in a creative life (which is, to be fair, most everyone I know).
It includes bon mots like:
"People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. . . . If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do."
"If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that."
". . . I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work."
"The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them."
"Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: MAKE GOOD ART."
"[W]hile you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do."
I could go on, but I won't.
This book has no pictures, yet it's a highly visual undertaking. Chip Kidd, noted book designer, did the layout, and manages to visually represent the text in exciting and interesting ways, conveying with font, size, and text placement the meaning or feeling of the textual passages. If you are interested in book design or graphic design, this is a not-to-be-missed book.
Two links for you:
Firstly, you can get an idea what the book looks like by checking out the online web preview at HarperCollins. It lets you see what the pages actually look like, and is somewhat better than photos I could manage, since they lit it just right - the turquoise print doesn't come over well in most photos.
Second, here's the speech in full, as delivered by Neil Gaiman in 2012, if you are so inclined. I warn you that it's awesome, and also that it may make you want this book a bit more:
My school uses a student information platform that tells me,
as the classroom teacher, which of my students has a known medical condition.
But a scant few medical notices refer to any sort of mental
illness.
Not because my school is untouched by the vagaries of
neurochemistry—rather because mental illness remains too often undiagnosed,
untreated, and too uncomfortable to discuss.
As Caden Bosch, the main character of Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep, says, “Dead kids are
put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids are swept under the rug.” Challenger Deep, with lyrical power,
challenges us to change this reality.
The Boys Who Challenged Hitlertells a long overlooked story from World War II that is incredibly interesting. Phillip Hoose, author of The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, Claudette Colvin and many other impressive nonfiction titles, tackles here the story of the teenagers who served as the primary resistance against the German occupation of Denmark starting in 1942. It's a story of stealing guns, cutting wires, sabotage and bombing during wartime. For readers looking for something new on WWII (which I think is pretty much everyone), this is a must read.
Hoose takes readers through his discovery of the story and how he met Knud Pedersen, one of the teens primarily involved. Using numerous sources as well as Pedersen's own words (denoted throughout the text), he explains how the RAF Club was formed soon after the German Army arrived and then, a few months later, how the larger Churchill Club was formed. In both cases the members were teenagers (and later a few young men), who dedicated their time to making life difficult for the Germans even though most of the adults around them appeared determined to cause as little trouble as possible.
The personal story of the boys and their escalating efforts is peppered with information on the larger issues of the bloodshed in Norway (which did not allow the occupation), the underground efforts in Sweden (which was neutral but supportive of the resistance), and more importantly just why the Germans were interested in any of these countries to begin with. (It's not about occupy and conquer for the sake of occupy and conquer, but rather about raw materials, trains, industry and infrastructure).
I have long felt that WWII literature for children's & teens relies far too much on the Holocaust to the detriment of many other important stories from the war. It's way past time for books like The Boys Who Challenged Hitler (and M.T. Anderson's upcoming Symphony for the City of the Dead) to be written so teens can learn more of the complex elements of the war.
And yes, that appears to be the actual title of this small book, though one usually finds it as Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman, with graphic design by Chip Kidd. The text is something that Gaiman wrote for a commencement speech, which he delivered in 2012 to the University of the Arts. The book is a triumph of graphic design, using a variety of fonts, font sizes, and several colors (turquoise, red and white), to convey the text, which is both inspirational and aspirational. It's the perfect gift for new graduates, or for anyone anywhere involved in a creative life (which is, to be fair, most everyone I know).
