u/glowing-fishSCL

This is considered a masterpiece, and for good reason. Kurt Busiek writes, and Alex Ross paints, a history of the Marvel Universe seen from the view of civilians. This library book is also overdue!

This is a good first person account of infantry warfare in World War II.
The thing about books like this is it is hard to go from a strict military history to a first person account, in a way that communicates how chaotic and scary the war was, while still giving the reader some idea of how combat unfolds in space and time. And Wilson mostly does this. Even though I have read lots of World War II history, and I knew the basic outline, I feel that I know more after reading this book.

This book was published around 1890, and my copy dates from that time (I don't know exactly, it lacks publication data). I got this for $1 at a Grange Hall. This is the type of sentimental, romantic novel that people read in the 1800s. Most of what we know about books like this come from authors who wrote the same thing, but at a more "literary" level. If you have read books like George Elliot's Middlemarch or Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, this book resembles that, only at a much lighter level. I was pleasantly surprised by it, and found it charming. The author apparently wrote over 200 books like this, and while reading one was fun, I wouldn't specifically go looking for 19th century sentimental romances.

Looks like I am up to 100 books...

Every Goosebumps book I've read (and I've read many of them) starts with a premise or an idea that a reader can easily get into, and then extends or subverts that premise in some interesting way. The fact that they manage to do it in such a short space, and having to keep it within certain context guidelines, says a lot about how good they are.
The twist here is that the protagonists are the villains. They start out trying to scare a "snooty girl", but for me, it was clear that they were mean and were just bullying a girl they were jealous of. To me, that was the real point of the story.

I read this while travelling, because short stories are good for reading while waiting for the bus. Harlan Ellison going off on a ranting tangent for a dozen pages is also good while waiting for the bus, even if you are waiting by the side of a highway in exurban Clark County while wildfire smoke roils around you! Anyway, as mentioned in a previous comment about the many volumes of this that I have read, 1988 was kind of a dim year for science-fiction, but I kept reading and learned something.

This was a short story collection by Robert Silverberg, who has written a lot of science-fiction. The stories here were accessible and interesting, and I read it story by story while travelling. One of the problems with Silverberg was that he was working at the same time as greats like Philip K Dick or Frank Herbert, and he never wrote stories that quite got to that level. But he still wrote interesting, serviceable stories, and he was good at just writing a story with a premise and a narrative that a reader could get into. Especially while waiting at an Amtrak station.

I read this while waiting for a bus at the library. Which is a good place to read something like this. But, while I adore Snoopy and friends, long form stories are not exactly where Peanuts shines. Peanuts is better when it is pithy. But still, it made my wait go better.

I like graphic novels, I like the DCU, and Geoff Johns is a good writer. But this story, while adequate, seemed to touch on ground that I've read too many times. There is a crisis and time itself is being undermined by an unstoppable villain, and heroes from different eras have to match together to stop him...
One of the things that Marvel and DC keep doing is having "crisis" storylines...that don't actually have any stakes or character development. And I will keep reading them, of course, but sometimes, it falls flat.

It is Superman. Written by Kurt Busiek. Which to me means it are perfect stories that keep the character in his mythological state, but have just enough new elements to keep it interesting. This was also like 600 pages, but I just read right through it.

I like Ace Doubles (and I just bought a whole bunch more of them that will be showing up here in the coming weeks, probably). Like a lot of Ace Doubles, the great concepts (dueling alien races in disguise are both trying to infiltrate earth), are muddled by aggressive editing and too many abrupt scene changes and plot twists. Silverberg went on to do much more, but this novela still kept me entertained.

Most of that $71 was the stack of Ace Doubles on the left. I got Philip K Dick's first novel for $2! Yes, it needs to be held together with a rubber band, but that is still a good price. Other than that (and the TPBs, also $2), most of those books were 25 cents to a dollar. The stack on the right were free, they were on a rack as I left the library, and I was like "yes, maybe if I am in the mood, I can read a Dragonlance novel!"