Tag: #amreading

Whatcha Reading September 2026

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Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here, and today, our writers share what they’ve been reading over the past month. Feel free to share what you’ve been reading, because we’re all part of the Geekly Gang. I’ll kick off this post by sharing what I’ve been reading over the past month.

Kyra’s Fiction

First off, I like how Marvel Comics has adopted DC Comics’ Compact Graphic Novel format. Yay! These volumes fit much nicer on the shelf, they pack a lot of story in smaller space, and they’re cheaper than full-size graphic novels. Compact graphic novels cost almost half that of full-size graphic novels, so I can pick up multiple volumes at a time. Hint: You’ll be seeing a lot of compact graphic novels on my list in the near future. My unsponsored plug for compact graphic novels has concluded, let’s get to Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

I can see why the MCU used the Spider-Man: Brand New Day title and none of the story. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but the story was all over the place. The Spider-Man: Brand New Day comic book story arc plays out like a short story collection. The first story has little to nothing to do with the Mr. Negative storyline. Hammerhead’s tale builds up Mr. Negative as a shadowy figure working behind the scenes. Then, we get a yarn about a Bookie. While fun, the Bookie story doesn’t build off of Hammerhead’s. And then The Shocker shows up, and of course, he’s working with Mr. Negative. After that, we get an Anti-Venom comic, showing us who is Mr. Negative.

As you can tell, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is all over the place. Why does Anti-Venom reveal Mr. Negative’s identity? That reveal doesn’t carry much weight, because Spider-Man: Brand New Day sparingly shows Mr. Negative’s alter-ego and why Peter Parker would care. The original Sony Spider-Man Video Game does a much better job of telling Mr. Negative’s backstory. Heck, I only cared about the character because I played the video game first. You almost need to play the video game before reading the graphic novel for context. Spider-Man: Brand New Day defined Spidey for a generation. It may be rough around the edges, but it’s a good read.

I had to read at least one DC compact graphic novel this month. Gotham Central beat out a couple of others in my TBR pile. I’m glad I chose this one. I can see why Gotham Central earned several accolades (including multiple Eisner Awards). These stories show the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) working in a city that includes Batman. Some treat The Dark Knight as an extension of the GCPD. Others resent Batman. All of them navigate a criminal underground that includes heavy hitters like Poison Ivy and Mister Freeze. What can an ordinary cop do against someone like Mister Freeze? Gotham Central answers these questions.

Gotham Central also shows the inner workings of a city on fire. Crime is rampant. Death is everywhere. The GCPD officers we follow do their best. Renee Montoya (pictured above on the far right) is a standout, but Gotham Central fleshes out existing GCPD characters and introduces many others that remain staples in the Batman Mythos. You don’t see a lot of Batman in Gotham Central, but that’s the point. The Gotham television show made a half-hearted attempt at adapting Gotham Central. One of the show’s biggest issues may have been to age down Commissioner Gordon. Gotham Central ages up Gordon and showed the power vacuum left behind in Gordon’s absence. That would make for a good show.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day was the first of Marvel Comics’ Compact Graphic Novels. The series would become the Marvel Premier Collection, and the covers look similar to the one pictured above. Since I discovered Marvel’s compact graphic novel line, I read two of them this past month. I enjoyed The Visions more than I thought I would. I shouldn’t doubt Tom King (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow). You can see some of The Visions’ influence on the MCU’s WandaVision, but I’d like to VisionQuest take different elements from this storyline. I don’t want to spoil too much in this write up; you should read The Visions when you get the chance.

After gaining a new title (Avengers’ Ambassador to the Pentagon), The Vision moves to Washington DC with his family. The Visions explores what happens when a synthezoid constructs a family of his own. What could go wrong? Turns out, everything. The Visions does a great job placing us where The Vision is as a character. I am grateful for that. The Vision has one of the messier comic book origins you’ll find, but The Visions walks the reader through decades of confusing continuity. You don’t need a heap of comic book lore to know what makes him tic. Kudos to Tom King for making The Visions accessible.

The Visions is a page-turner. Each issue presents a new twist. Each issue ends on a moment you can’t wait to see what happens next. The Visions may have been my fastest read from this past month. It may have little to do with the greater Marvel Universe, but that makes The Visions endearing. It dives into who The Vision is and what kind of synthezoid family he’d create. The Visions explores what is to be human. Funny how a story about a synthetic person lends itself to examining humanity.

Elements of Style Book Cover

Kyra’s Nonfiction

It’s the summer, so I reread Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. I don’t do this every year, but I do it most years. I’ve mentioned The Elements of Style last year, I believe. I love my illustrated copy. The pictures aren’t neccessary. You can buy a cheaper copy of The Elements of Style for less than five dollars, but if you want to splurge, the illustrations (by Kalman) add whimsy. Reading books like The Elements of Style may be more vital this year than in past years.

AI writing is everywhere. One of the ways you can spot AI writing is its overuse and misuse of em dashes (–). Em dashes are valid forms of punctuation. But you shouldn’t use em dashes in place of a semi-colon, colon, parentheses, or commas. Right now, large language models (LLMs or AI) abuse em dashes. Programmers can change which forms of punctuation their LLMs will overuse and misuse. You’ll need to read style books like The Elements of Style to make sure you don’t sound like a toaster or the slur The Visions introduced, a Socket Lover.

Those are all the books I’ve read or finished this month. I started a couple of others but didn’t want to include them until I was closer to finished. Looks like I’m on my own this month. Hopefully, Season and Skye will join us for next month. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Whatcha Reading, Geekly: July 8, 2026

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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.

The House in the Cerulean Sea Book Cover

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.

The House in the Cerulean Sea Book Cover

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.

Whatcha Reading Geekly March 2026

Whatcha Reading, Geekly? March 2026

Published on by KyraLeave a comment

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

Kyra’s Fiction

The Comedy of Errors was a welcome change after Titus Andronicus. Slapstick comedy, mistaken identity, The Comedy of Errors has it all. This is another one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and while the puns don’t always land (you’ve gotta love how language can change over almost half a millennium), the situational comedy of two sets of twin brothers habitually getting confused for one another bridges most eras.

It also helps that The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays. It didn’t take long to finish; I half wondered if my anthology (which is over a decade old at this point) might have missed or omitted a portion of the play. Nope. The Comedy of Errors was that short of a read. If you’d rather begin with a light-hearted tale of Shakespeare’s, you can’t go wrong with The Comedy of Errors.

I also restarted Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings in audiobook format. I’ll mention it here and again in my next segment, but audiobooks totally count as reading a book. The only issue I’ve found is stopping an audiobook and then returning to it can be difficult. More difficult than physically reading the book. That’s why this past month wasn’t the first time I began reading The Way of Kings. But that may be my problem and not everyone’s issue.

The narration of The Way of Kings switches between Kate Reading and Michael Kramer. Both narrators are a joy to listen to and bring extra pizazz to the text. Kramer is a long-time narrator for Brandon Sanderson’s books. He also narrated the Mistborn series. And I like how Reading and Kramer narrated different characters in the novel. Excellent. This eased my getting into the characters’ heads. I don’t know which one of the two stories I enjoy more. Sanderson does a good job of making both protagonists’ storylines unique and a page-turner.

I like listening to audiobooks as I walk, and I’ve gotten in a lot of walking. Thank you, Brandon Sanderson.

Kyra’s Poetry

I’m sticking with Shakespeare this month and going with an unconventional way of consuming The Bard. During the pandemic (2020), Patrick Stewart self-taped himself reading each one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Here’s a link to Shakespeare Network’s playlist. I’ve heard Stewart has teamed up with a company to rerecord these with higher-quality audio, but I like Stewart’s original recordings. These recordings show Stewart in various rooms of his home and in his favorite reading spots. Simply magical.

Stewart’s performance elevates the sonnets. I love reading along with him, and typically, he gives some mild commentary with each poem. He even shares which sonnets are his favorites. Want to know? You’ll have to watch or listen. P.S. I count audiobooks as books I’ve read. People have shared stories long before they began writing them down. And listening to someone knowledgeable–and I would consider the Shakespearean-trained Sir Patrick Stewart knowledgeable of Shakespeare’s work–informs the listener of how the writer may have intended the written word to be perceived.

I could listen to Patrick Stewart for hours, and with this YouTube playlist, I can listen to Patrick Stewart for hours. Yay!

Kyra’s Nonfiction

I’ve been reading The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures and figured I’d read its companion piece, The Element Encyclopedia of Fairies. I always thought of fairies as predominantly a European invention, and they are for the most part. But this encyclopedia shares fantastic creatures from around the world. Creatures from East Asia tend to be my favorites. Which ones are yours? Let us know in the comments.

That’s all I have for this month. Our other writers don’t have entries for this month. Hopefully, we’ll hear from them soon. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Whatcha Reading, Geekly: January 2026

Published on by KyraLeave a comment

Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. During today’s post, our writers share what they’ve been reading over the past month. Feel free to share what you’ve been reading in the comments. We’re all part of the Geekly Gang. I’ll start off with what I’ve been reading this past month.

Kyra’s Nonfiction

I don’t think I included reading a tabletop game (board game) design book in my New Year’s Resolutions, but I meant to add reading at least one board game design book this year (there aren’t that many, to be honest). Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms is required reading for anyone wanting to design board games. Geoffrey Engelstein set the groundwork for the game mechanisms mentioned on boardgamegeek.com, so it makes sense he cowrites this encyclopedia. And Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design reads like an encyclopedia.

I’ve found multiple game mechanisms I didn’t know had an official name, and seeing all the terms in one spot inspires me to try designing games with mechanisms I’ve never tried. Heck, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design offers ideas on how to use each mechanism. Hmm. I may have some game designs to steal. I mean, create.

Kyra’s Poetry

I love Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder. The poems within this collection manage to pack a literary punch while delving into geek culture. Come on All You Ghosts was the first poetry collection I read that proved one could embrace their inner geek, and poetry can be approachable. Don’t be surprised if you find references to Blade Runner, Lovecraftian Horror, or the Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback of the 1970s Jim Zorn. All the while, Come on All You Ghosts shows Zapruder at his poetic best. He uses startling imagery, and his enjambments are second to none. You can’t finish Come on All You Ghosts without wanting to play with words. And yet, Zapruder remains direct, which makes the poems within this collection easy to understand and digest. If you’ve ever been intimidated by poetry, give Come on All You Ghosts a read.

I’ve been reading other books, but I haven’t finished any others–yet–so I’ll save them for a future month. Let’s check in with Skye.

Skye’s Fiction

I’ve never read Maus. While I’ve been meaning to read Maus for a while, and I anticipated reading it since grade school for an assignment, it never happened. So, I decided there’s no time like the present. Let’s be fair; I probably don’t even need to introduce Art Spiegelman’s Maus to y’all. Either you’ve heard about Maus on account of its impressive accolades (the first graphic novel to earn a Pulitzer), or (unlike me) your teachers were cool and went over it in class. Despite the heavy themes contained within Maus, now might be the best time to re-examine the horrors of what took place in fascist Germany. It might shed some light on our current political climate.

Skye’s Nonfiction

Writing Arguments (Twelfth Edition) makes my list this month. Be you didn’t see that one comin’, huh? I didn’t either. I’m taking English Composition II this semester. This might be cheating, but you can’t deny it’s also funny. At least I thought it was. Despite being a general education course, I’ve enjoyed reading through my assigned chapters and already learned a lot. Writing Arguments isn’t just about solving disputes for the sake of passing a class; Writing Arguments takes these ideas to the next level and expands one’s understanding of perspective. So far, Writing Arguments has done a fantastic job. I look forward to learning more. You know, I might be a nerd. Aren’t we all nerds? At least I’m in good company. 😉

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle back again. That wraps up what our writers have been reading over the 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.