maiakobabe's reviews
3834 reviews

Blue Period, Vol. 1 by Tsubasa Yamaguchi

informative inspiring

3.0

This manga follows a high school boy who's good at school, has a pack of friends, but no specific ambitions in life. A few comments by a charismatic art teacher challenge him to try and honestly express himself through art. A competitive streak pushes him to join the art club and begin actually applying himself. Along the way, the teacher and his fellow art club members explain many concrete basics of drawing from life, and how to apply to art colleges in Japan. These aspects of the story reminded me of the real-life manga creation information included in Bakuman. I like the idea of a manga series focused on fine art and the challenges and rewards of pursuing it. I did struggle with the fact that the drawing in this book is only okay. Some of the figure drawing of characters is downright bad, with bizarre pose choices. There are also some kind of confusing interactions between the characters early on- one member of the art club is either a cross-dresser or trans femme, and the way this character and the main character talked it felt like they were supposed to be childhood friends? I kept expecting a flashback to their earlier relationship that never came. So, we'll see if I end up reading more. Great concept, mid-level execution. 

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat, Vol. 1 by Sakaomi Yuzaki

funny lighthearted fast-paced

3.5

This slow-burn lesbian comic is as cute as everyone has been saying. A woman who loves cooking elaborate meals, but lives alone, notices a female neighbor in the apartment complex carrying a huge amount of takeout food home. Impulsively, she invites her neighbor in for dinner. This begins a gentle routine of joint shopping, cooking, and meal planning together. Will this food-based friendship develop into something more? I will have to keep reading to find out! 

I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying by Youngmi Mayer

dark emotional funny fast-paced

3.75

I was only vaguely aware of Youngmi Mayer from tiktok before picking up the audiobook of this blunt and honest memoir, read by the author. I think experiencing it as an audiobook greatly enhanced my experience- the sections in which the author's voice shook with emotion when describing, in particular, the hardships her family experienced during the Japanese occupation of Korea, meant the memories hit much harder than they might have if I was reading in print. Overall I was very impressed by Mayer's insights on her multi-cultural mixed-race childhood, how her parents' traumas impacted their ability to be present for their kids, and how that damage played out in her teens and early twenties. This book tackles a lot of heavy subjects including colonial violence, bullying, fat-shaming, eating disorders, drug use, suicide, and depression. The tone, which is almost aggressively matter-of-fact, with flashes of piercing insight and occasional jokes, kept me riveted. I do wish a late chapter on a brief queer relationship had been more thoughtful; that was one section that felt kind of half-baked and unnecessarily gender-binary. But overall I'd still recommend this memoir, especially for those looking for critical takes on the fault lines of both Korean and American culture. 

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This book is accessible and fairly short, but provides a rich overview of the history of trans people in public in the United States from the 1850s until the first Trump administration. Stryker outlines the increasing awareness of trans people and trans issues; the rise and fall of many different organizations and publications over the past century; the building of and challenges to medical resources and healthcare access. Two overarching threads are the relationship of trans activists to the wider gay, bi, and lesbian liberation movements, and the views of trans people within feminist thought. There were many familiar people and places here (Marsha P Johnson, Silvia Rivera, Compton's Cafeteria, the GLBT Historical Center, Lou Sullivan, Brandon Teena) and also many who were new to me (Vanguard, Reed Erickson, Dr Harry Benjamin, the NTCU, Beth Elliot). Definitely recommend it as a great starting place on trans history- look for the revised 2018 edition, which also has a nice audiobook. 

Artificial: A Love Story by Amy Kurzweil

reflective sad slow-paced

2.5

This long, thoughtful, meditative comic unfolds the story of a family driven by creativity and invention, traits which have both saved and consumed their lives. The author's grandfather, Fredic, was a Jewish musician and conductor living in Vienna before WWII; his talent provided the connection he needed to flee to the US on the eve of war. He married and had two children before dying young. His son, Ray, became an inventor whose early experiments in machine learning and machine generated art and music, as well as various robotics, proceeded much of the invention we see today. In middle-age, Ray became obsessed with the idea of typing up all of his father's letters and journals and turning them into an AI chat-bot which he and his daughter could communicate with. Whether you find this meaningful or monstrous will depend a lot on your own personal relationship with AI. Honestly, I struggled to understand why someone would feel they could know a deceased loved one better by chatting with them through an algorithm (owned by an outside tech company, mediated by human and machine decisions) than by simply... reading the journals and letters. Ray's desire to create a digital simulacrum of his father, dead for fifty years, felt motivated by unprocessed childhood grief and folly. My understanding is that the majority of this book was written before our current Chat-GTP dominated era, so there is no discussion of how the majority of AI programs available today are built on stolen creative work and are already straining our energy grids and water resources. (Google recently proposed building seven new nuclear reactors, simply to power its AI). Please know that the comic does delve into more than this one topic; there are thoughts on the meaning of life, of health, death, immortality (through art or AI); on inherited family neurosis and memory. I think many people will find much to enjoy in this book. I simply found myself in such strong philosophical disagreement with so many of the ideas expressed by Ray that it was hard for me to focus on some of the other threads of the narrative. I would still recommend checking out the book if the themes seem interesting to you! 

The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1 by Sumiko Arai

emotional funny hopeful fast-paced

5.0

Aya is a pretty, popular high school girl whose only unusual trait is her taste in retro western rock and indie music. Her love of this music leads her into a CD shop where she develops a bit of crush on the cute dark haired boy who works behind the counter. Little does she know that this "boy" is one and the same as the girl she sits next too in school! Mitsuki has always marched to the beat of her own drum; she's loved rock, dressed mostly in all black boys clothes, and struggled to find anyone who shares her interests her whole life. I LOVED the art in this comic, and I'm already so hooked on the sweet, nuanced friendship (or more?) between these little alternative teens. 

Please Be My Star A Graphic Novel by Victoria Grace Elliott

emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

4.5

Erika has been called creepy in the past for her tendency of liking things Too Much, for getting crushes on people she doesn't even know, for building alters to her obsessions. She starts at a new high school for her senior year without much hope of making friends. Quickly, she falls for a tall, handsome boy, Christian, who is also in the drama club. In an attempt to get closer to him, Erika writes a whole one-act play with the hope he will star in it. What she didn't account for was how much time you end up spending with someone during rehearsals, and what it might be like to get to know your crush for real. I really enjoyed this pop culture-infused teen rom-com, the little kpop easter eggs, the clear aesthetic references of mid-90s and early-2000s manga. Silly and sweet and poignant! Can't wait to see what this author does next. 

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown

hopeful informative slow-paced

3.0

I realized, about a third of the way into this book, that I picked it up wanting a book primarily about activism, and instead was reading a book primarily about pleasure. I think the book I wanted maybe was one that would have been titled "Sustainable Activism" or maybe "Joyful Activism". After I re-framed my expectations, there was a lot of value in this collection. I liked how it was composed of many different short sections by a very diverse array of authors. I liked how many of the authors seemed to know each other, to have worked at overlapping organizations, to be friends. It gave me the sense of a whole network of people working to make the world a more equitable and pleasurable place. I enjoyed the interview with the owner of a sex toy shop; with an indigenous activist and comedian who protested at Standing Rock, and with two sisters on the theme of burlesque as liberation. Many of the sections that focused on pussy power/sex acts spoke to me less; as an aromantic, asexual person, sex is just not one of the main avenues of pleasure in my life. My suggestion is to treat this book like a buffet, reading the chapters speak to you and skipping the ones that don't.

Love on the Other Side - A Nagabe Short Story Collection by Nagabe

challenging dark emotional fast-paced

3.0

I picked this up after enjoying Nagabe's other short comic collection, The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms. This one leans closer into horror themes, including several stories in which children are at risk of being dismembered and eaten by monstrous beings who control their physical space. The majority of the stories are of a relationship between a child and a nonhuman creature, whether that is a just a large animal (a lion, a massive crow), a half-human/half-animal, or a creature composed mostly of claws, teeth, and darkness. It's honestly too unsettling for my personal preference but the stories are striking. 

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

emotional funny tense fast-paced

4.0

In the near future, Britain appropriates a tool that allows them to create doors through time. For unclear reasons, they decide to bring multiple people forward from their historical eras to see if it is possible for them to live in and acclimate to a time outside of their own. The project chooses people very shortly before the time in which they would have met their deaths in their original timeline, in hopes that removing those due to die will not mess up the flow of history. The main character of this story is an unnamed ministry worker, a mixed-race linguist, promoted to the role of "bridge" for one of the historical expats; she moves into a small government-owned flat with Graham Gore, a man yanked from 1847 and an early grave as part of the doomed Terror expedition. Her job is to answer all of his questions, fill him on current attitudes and social norms, and to observe him very closely and report everything back to her handler. Gore is an intriguingly self-contained man with a dry sense of humor; after an initial period of extreme shock, he develops a keen sense of curiosity about the world in which he now has his second chance at life. Our main character develops, maybe inevitably, intense feelings for her object of study. I loved the writing style of this book; full of clever metaphors and delightful little turns of phrase ("he looked confused, as if handed and egg and told to hatch it"; "it was a dull toothache of a day"). The humor of the story really worked for me- there is something just inherently ridiculous in having to explain cell phones, modern dating, and germ theory to a man from the Victorian era. There is an undercurrent of danger, suspicion, and tragedy underpinning the slice-of-life bulk of the plot, which kept me hooked. Unfortunately, I did think the thriller/action sequence in the final quarter was the weakest section of the book, but I still really enjoyed it overall and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what this author publishes next.