Category Archives: Culture

Reading Graphically: 5 Graphic Novels

Posted on December 23, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{so, yeah … many months have passed. We’ll be catching up over the next few weeks.} Another interlude … Pierre Paquet and Tony Sandoval‘s A Glance Backward (2015) is a translation of Paquet’s original work in French, telling a fantastical … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Oyinkan Braithwaite‘s debut novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer (2018) is a rollicking ride, the arc of which is described quite well by its title. Set in contemporary Lagos, the strength of the novel is the relationship between the two … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

This massive collection encompasses The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), The Broken Kingdom (2011), and The Kingdom of Gods (2014). A shorter novella, The Awakened Kingdom (2014) is tossed in for good effect. Having been really pleasantly surprised by N.K. Jemisin’s … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted on June 28, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I have very high expectations each time I start a book by Barbara Kingsolver. Most of the time, she exceeds them. Unsheltered (2018) is a good book, but not among her best. The premise/structure is pretty lovely: the novel alternates … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Infinite Detail (2019) is the debut novel from Tim Maughan, a journalist of some note. It’s a good read, focusing on the relatively cataclysmic aftermath of an extended Internet outage. The setting is the near future, a world just slightly … Continue reading →

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Reading Graphically: Five Graphic Novels & One Comic

Posted on May 31, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Another interlude between the novels … Paul Kirchner‘s Hieronymus & Bosch is an amusing distraction, detailing the torments of a medieval ne’er do well (Hieronymus) and his toy duck (Bosch). While some of the inspiration is obvious from the names, … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Posted on May 25, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Lisa Halliday‘s Asymmetry arrived to much acclaim in 2018. It’s a novel in three parts, really two parts and a coda. The first part details a relationship between a young woman who works at a publishing house and an older … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Power by Naomi Alderman

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Published in 2016, Naomi Alderman‘s The Power attempts to answer a fundamental what-if: what if something happened to give women a physical advantage over men? In this case, it’s a chemical added to the water supply in WWII that, over … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Silence is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{This post published early by mistake, so some of you may have seen it before. Apologies for the misclick.} Sulaiman Addonia‘s Silence is My Mother Tongue (2018) tells the story of Eritrean refugees displaced into a camp in the Sudan. … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Posted on April 28, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I had never heard of Shirley Jackson before, yes, Marlon James mentioned her (this is the last of the books I bought from James’ interview). But, evidently, many of us have read her, as the introduction claims that her short … Continue reading →

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