Weekly Round-Up #14

Welcome back to the Weekly Round-Up! I had a great week of reading although I was out of town for four days. It was nice to get off of the island and visit my friends and family and GO SHOPPING. Yes I did buy books while I was up there, of course I did because I’m a book hoarder and I can’t resist. I hope you all had a great week as well!

Best of the Week:

• Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower (finished)
  • I read this book after I went to the literary seminar in Key West a few weeks ago and the author Eric Shanower was a speaker there. I loved Greek mythology when I was in the eighth grade and this book took me right back to that place. The art was black and white and mostly thin lines so it can be a bit busy if a lot is going on in the scene. It didn’t really bother me but I know from talking about it with my coworkers that not everyone likes the style. This volume ends right as the Trojan War is about to begin so I NEED to read the second volume asap! But my library doesn’t have it so it might be awhile before I can get it from one of our other branches.
• Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy (finished)
  • This is the book that the new Netflix movie is based off of. The main reason that I liked this book was the main character Willowdean Dickson. First of all, her name is amazing. As someone from the South (who was almost named Maybell according to my mom – dodged a bullet on that one!) names like that are pretty prevalent down here (not so much anymore though, sadly). I really liked that Willowdean was a real teenager. She fights with her mom and her best friend throughout different parts of the book. She grieves her aunt who passed away. Her car dies and she can’t afford to get it fixed (highly relatable!). I really felt like this was just an amazing book about so many different things. If you are a YA fan, you will find something in this book for you.
• Garden Dreams by Fumi Yoshinaga (finished)
  • This is a one off manga that I found while we were weeding (going through and getting rid of old books) last week. I was told that it is a BL manga but after reading it I’m not 100% convinced. While it was a very sweet (and also sad) manga, I don’t think that it qualifies as BL. This really left me kind of sad after I finished it but in a good way? If that makes any sense. This is a story of a baron who lives a lonely life and watches as most of his companions either die or leave him. I don’t want to give away what happens in the book but the end is worth it. And this is a quick read, I read it in about 30 minutes. Also the art style is really clean and very pretty.

Worst of the Week:

• Nemo: Heart of Ice by Alan Moore (finished)
  • This was a pretty interesting story but it was so SHORT! I wanted so much more! More about the killer penguins in Antarctica, more about what happened after Antarctica, more about the Queen (WHY is she killing all those doves???). I might try and read the next volume but I’m not really that impressed with this first one. I’ll have to see if I can find volume t2 at the library because there is NO WAY I’m buying it for my collection.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier by Alan Moore (finished)
  • I’m not hating on Alan Moore this week, I SWEAR. But this volume in TLoEG (God that title is SO long) was beyond bad. I thought volume 2 was bad but at least it was interesting! This was 90% a long chase scene. There were very few of the characters from the first two volumes which lead this volume to ultimately just be boring for me. I’ve now read three volumes of this series and I’m just done with it. Each one has been worse and worse. I will NOT be continuing this series.
• Disney Manga Beauty and the Beast  – Special 2-in-1 Edition by Mallory Reaves (finished)
  • It’s literally just Beauty in the Beast in a manga style. The artwork was just, not good? I can’t really describe it like I want to but to me it just seemed like a watered down version of real manga. Does that make sense? Like if someone who had never done manga before tried to do it FROM MEMORY. Disney just needs to go away from manga and leave it alone. It was fine but really if you’ve seen the movie you don’t need to waste your time.

Come say hi on Twitter and let me know if you’ve read any of these books! Or feel free to leave a comment! I love to hear about your book-scapades (can I make that a thing? I’m not sure). See ya’ll on Tuesday!