Geek Out

Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Today, our writers share what they’ve been reading over the past month. Feel free to share what you’ve been reading over the past month, because we’re all part of the Geekly Gang. I’ll get things started with what I’ve been reading this past month.

Kyra’s Fiction

I’m still on my DC Compact Comics kick. I love this series. So many of my collected graphic novels take up too much space on my bookshelf. As the name suggests, these versions do reduce the amount of space a graphic novel will take on your shelf. My only gripe is that I’m more likely to have pages with text that falls inside the crease. It’s a minor issue. By now, I’ve read five or six of these graphic novels. Overall, great series.

Alright, pitch over for the DC Compact Comics series. I had never read Batman: Hush before this month. Gasp! How could I have gone this long before reading one of the better Batman stories of this millennium? I’m joking…slightly. Batman: Hush is one of the more popular Batman stories since 2000, and it deserves that distinction. I don’t want to give too much away. After all, Batman: Hush is a mystery. By the way, I just realized DC Compact Comics has a genre notification in the top right corner. What?

I don’t want to spoil too much in Batman: Hush. The mystery did string me along. That’s good. The reader had to figure out who Hush was. Harvey Dent was a red herring. Sorry. I spoiled it. But Dent does reveal himself as “Hush” midway through the story. Classic red herring. I didn’t believe it for one minute. Honestly, I didn’t want Hush to be who he was. I shouldn’t say anything else. If you haven’t yet read Batman: Hush, you should give it a read. It deserves the praise it gets. Jeph Loeb knows how to spin a good Batman yarn, and some of the splash pages by Jim Lee are iconic.

I had never read a Green Arrow solo comic book before picking up Green Arrow: Year One. Sure, I’ve read plenty of Green Arrow/Green Lantern, and I’ve read Green Arrow in Justice League and other team-up books, but never a solo comic book. Green Arrow: Year One is a great place to start. It’s the basis for the Arrow television show, the island portion at least. And Arrow takes plenty of liberties with the source material, but still. I got plenty of Arrow vibes while reading Green Arrow: Year One.

Green Arrow: Year One has a brisk pace. Great for an adventure story. I was surprised that writer Andy Diggle was English. He sold Oliver Queen’s West Coast voice well. And Jock’s artwork at times cleanly conveyed action and at other times dipped into Ollie’s emotional state. Green Arrow: Year One features a section where Ollie detoxes from opium addiction. I don’t want to spoil too much.

I’m loving this new DC Compact Comics Series. Uh oh! The pitch is back. While I could’ve picked up Green Arrow: Year One in a single, standard-sized volume, I chose to pick it up in the DC Compact Comics Series. At $9.99, the books in this series are half the price of typical trades. I’m down for more books at the same price.

This month was a month for finishing novels for me. I start so many novels at once, reading several at the same time, and occasionally forget to finish one or two or all of them. The House in the Cerulean Sea is a fantastic novel to finish during Pride month. I have a poetry collection for this month as well; more on that in a minute. I’d classify The House in the Cerulean Sea as a romantasy. In fact, I appreciate that The House in the Cerulean Sea can be viewed through this lens. It’s cozy. It even qualifies as cottagecore. It’s not overly sexual. Throw in some comedic moments, usually revolving around a ragtag team of magical children, and The House in the Cerulean Sea sings.

I love The House in the Cerulean Sea’s message. Magical children and beings are a stand-in for LGBTQ+ people. While T.J. Klune does get on his soapbox at times (one time, protagonist Linus Baker literally stands on something akin to a soapbox), The House in the Cerulean Sea tells an adorable, heart-warming story that just happens to contain a strong message. Works like The House in the Cerulean Sea can speak to the LGBTQ+ community while still delivering a story that non-community members can enjoy. I still like the blurb on The House in the Cerulean Sea’s cover. It is like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket. Ah! And that blanket feels so warm and comforting.

Kyra’s Poetry

I covered Alok Vaid-Menon’s Beyond the Gender Binary in a previous Whatcha Reading. I highly recommend reading Beyond the Gender Binary. It’s so good. This past month, I read Alok Vaid-Menon’s poetry collection your wound / my garden. There is some striking imagery in your wound / my garden, especially in the poems near the beginning of this collection. “what lives in death” is a fantastic opening poem. Here’s a taste at some of Vaid-Menon’s images:

“i’m all the packages no one claimed at the post office.”

“if you want to know how people live, spend some quality time with their trash.”

“the discarded do not die, they go somewhere else.”

I like a lot of Vaid-Menon’s imagery in your wound / my garden. There are a few standout poems in the middle of the collection, like “pronouns” and “disassociation,” but I found myself editing some of the poetry in my head. I haven’t edited poetry in years, but some of the enjambment could’ve used work. your wound / my garden featured a lot of repetition. Some repetition was used to great effect, like “the dead, the dead speak over the living.” Other moments of repetition felt like Vaid-Menon repeating themselves without purpose. And inchoate is too conspicuous a word to use in more than one poem. After the second occurrence of inchoate, I literally thought, this poetry collection is brought to you by the word inchoate.

Still, I love your wound / my garden’s message. This collection takes the reader on a journey of self-exploration and acceptance. It’s a great collection to read for Pride, and that’s what I did. I do love a lot of Alok Vaid-Menon’s imagery. “dying is the longest verb” hits hard.

That’s what I read over the past month. Let’s see what Season and Skye have been reading.

Season’s Fiction

I also read T.J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea. The characters were adorable. I loved all of the kids, the two main characters, and some of the townsfolk. The plot moves at a decent pace and the setup is straightforward. Linus gets assigned as a caseworker to Arthur’s orphanage and gets way more involved than he’s supposed to by company rules. Who cares about rules anyway? I highly recommend The House in the Cerulean Sea if you’re looking for a cozy read with civil rights elements. If you aren’t, you may or may not get brained.

There’s a second book in The Spellshop universe, and you bet I read it. The Enchanted Greenhouse features different characters (Terlu and Yarrow) from The Spellshop. I enjoyed The Enchanted Greenhouse, but the plot followed similarly to The Spellshop. Without giving too much away, Terlu starts a new life on the Isle of Belde, far away from the capital (Alyssium), without the government or her family knowing where she is. Like The Spellshop, The Enchanted Greenhouse has stakes that feel more severe than they are. Terlu’s goal is to restore magic to the greenhouse because the magical greenhouse’s rooms keep failing. That’s good to have, but the rate at which Terlu learns spell casting and how to experiment with spells feels a bit unbelievable. She’s not trained. At all. Also, the story takes place over a few months.

The Enchanted Greenhouse was still fun to read, and I recommend it if you’re looking for something cute and cozy. I believe there’s a third book in The Spellshop series that I plan on reading. You know, for research.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here again. Those are the books our writers have been reading this past month. What’ve you been reading? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.