Book Review: Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

Book Review: Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories by Naomi Kritzer This is the first collection of speculative fiction stories by Naomi Kritzer, headlined by the title piece, which won a Hugo Award in 2016.   There’s seventeen stories in all. “Cat Pictures Please” is a sweet story about an artificial intelligence accidentally created from a… Continue reading Book Review: Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

Comic Strip Review: Cartoons by Guindon

Comic Strip Review: Cartoons by Guindon by Dick Guindon During my teen years, one of the delights of reading the newspaper was the cartoons of Richard “Dick” Guindon.  Born in Minnesota, he had returned to the Twin Cities in the 1970s to draw his satirical cartoons. Mind you, it was pretty mild satire, but folks… Continue reading Comic Strip Review: Cartoons by Guindon

Book Review: In Winter’s Kitchen

Book Review: In Winter’s Kitchen by Beth Dooley When Beth Dooley first moved to Minneapolis from New Jersey in 1979, she was dismayed by the poor selection of fresh food in the commercial supermarket.  She’d heard that Minnesota was a farm state, yet the wilted vegetables and sallow fruit seemed to come from somewhere else… Continue reading Book Review: In Winter’s Kitchen

Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2017)

Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2017) by various This is my blog’s fifth anniversary!  And thus this is my sixth annual review of the state of Weekly Shonen Jump, the online version of the popular manga anthology Weekly Shounen Jump. The online edition, being aimed at the North American audience, is substantially different from the… Continue reading Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2017)

Manga Review: One Piece #27 & #28

Manga Review: One Piece #27 & #28 by Eiichiro Oda On a world covered with oceans, pirates run rampant.  Not so many years ago, the so-called King of Pirates, Gol D. Roger, was executed, but before he went, he proclaimed that he’d left all his fabulous treasure in “one piece.”  It’s assumed that finding that… Continue reading Manga Review: One Piece #27 & #28

Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (2016)

Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (2016) by various creators. It’s the fourth anniversary of this blog (where does the time go!?) and thus my annual review of the online edition of Weekly Shounen Jump, Japan’s best-selling manga anthology.   The 2016 reaper has been busy here as elsewhere, with several long-running series ending:  Bleach, Nisekoi, Toriko… Continue reading Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (2016)

Book Review: The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds

Book Review: The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds by Selina Siak Chin Yoke This is the life story of Chye Hoon, a Nyonya (Malaysian woman of Chinese heritage) who lives between 1878 and 1941, a time of great change in her homeland.  Initially a willful child who wants to break out of her culture’s tradition… Continue reading Book Review: The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds

Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2015)

Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2015) by various creators. It’s the third anniversary of this blog, and as is my custom, I’ll be looking at the current lineup of Weekly Shonen Jump, the online version of Shounen Jump.  For those just joining us, Shounen Jump is the top-selling shounen manga (boys’ comic book) in Japan.  Many of its series… Continue reading Manga Review: Weekly Shonen Jump (2015)

Magazine Review: Marvel Science Fiction November 1951

Magazine Review: Marvel Science Fiction November 1951 edited by R.O. Erisman Marvel Science Fiction started as a pulp magazine titled Marvel Science Stories that was published irregularly from 1938 to 1952.  The original publisher was the same one who eventually published Marvel Comics.  At the point this issue is from, the magazine was a digest-sized quarterly.… Continue reading Magazine Review: Marvel Science Fiction November 1951

Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (USA) 2014

Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (USA) 2014 It’s the second anniversary of this blog, so it’s time for the annual look at the online edition of Shounen Jump Weekly, the best-selling manga anthology in Japan. The big news this year was the end of the long-running and popular Naruto series (see my previous post on the… Continue reading Manga Review: Shonen Jump Weekly (USA) 2014