February was by Duluth standards a dry month, a warm month, an odd month. As I write, at the end of March, we’re in the middle of a storm that will drop more snow than we’ve had over the course of the entire winter. What a year, right? A warm month by Duluth standards does not mean a pleasant month, so I’ve spent plenty of time inside and, by extension, plenty of time reading. It is absolutely that time of year where I long to be outside again, am ready to take some time and plunge into all the fun of spring, but can’t just yet. The snow outside provides ample evidence of that. It will be gone soon enough, though, and all of that spring fun will arrive. Until then, books.

Henry V, by William Shakespeare

A tougher play than the two Henry IVs, Henry V gets into the muck of what it means to be a king, requiring the now King Henry V to inspire his men, to fight in battle, to see an old friend (Bardolph, one of Falstaff’s companions) hanged for looting. Unlike many of Shakespeare’s other histories, the battle does not take place onstage. What matters is not individual glory on the field but instead Henry’s inhabiting a role as the head of state. Taken together with the Henry IVs and Richard II, Henry V completes a fascinating arc. I’ve seen pieces of the cycle on stage, but not all four plays. Reading them together was really satisfying.

The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

What if first contact happened not in space but under the ocean? What does it mean to be human? Does the machine of capitalism require intention or will it grind on without a hand at the wheel? Ray Nayler’s book didn’t hang together for me on a plot level, but I found it to be beautifully written and I fell in love with all the questions it asks the reader. Your mileage might vary depending on how much time you want to devote to philosophy as opposed to plot, but I think the novel is worth the time investment. Also, octopuses are very cool and Nayler lets you spend a lot of time with them.

Henry VI, Part One, by William Shakespeare

Absolutely the weakest of the Henry VIs. Henry VI, Part One does a lot of table-setting for the Wars of the Roses as depicted in the following parts, but it never quite gets into gear as a standalone piece. It wants to spend time with the French court and Joan of Arc, with bickering English barons, with the English war hero Talbot, and the English court, none of which get enough time to become three-dimensional. I came to appreciate this play more after reading the succeeding parts, but it reads a bit like a Fandom wiki entry for other, better writing.

Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh

Space fascism can be just as bad as real fascism! Emily Tesh does a fantastic job of pulling together a good YA novel without falling into the traps of that mode. Tesh credits the intelligence of her readers while still providing great cliffhangers, a bananas (in a good way) plot, some fun sci-fi tropes, and characters who grow across the book. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be surprised to find the book coming to what feels like a close about halfway through. Don’t worry. It doesn’t drag after that. Instead, it only picks up speed. Very fun!

Wash Day Diaries, by Jamila Rowser

A really lovely graphic novel about four Black women friends and their lives. Relatively low stakes and beautiful, this book is absolutely great. I adored it. Pay attention to the colors in particular, which tell you so much about how these friends operate both separately and together.

Be Gay, Do Comics

A very cool anthology of gay comics! Not every contribution is perfect, but they all have heart and life and feel vibrant. A very good read in a sitting, or fun to dip into and out of over time.

The Times I Knew I Was Gay, by Eleanor Crewes

Crewes’s graphic memoir is great! I read it as a companion to Be Gay, Do Comics and enjoyed the way it felt like an expansion of many of the pieces contained in that anthology. This one is also extremely cute.

Imagine Wanting Only This, by Kristen Radtke

Not my favorite graphic novel. The personal parts about grief are gripping — Radtke writes powerfully about the loss of an uncle — but the attempts to expand that exploration of grief out into a broader theme don’t work as well for me. That’s fine, though. Not everyone’s grief makes sense to everyone else.

Henry VI, Part Two, by William Shakespeare

This is where things start to improve for the Henry VIs. The cast is bigger than the cast in the first part, but the play is more focused, with the Wars of the Roses really kicking off as the Yorks and the Lancasters begin to tussle over the English throne. Here, with England the prize, there is less need to flesh out so many characters and the politicking (and Shakespeare’s writing) can take center stage.

Hip Hop Family Tree, Vol. 1-4, by Ed Piskor

A graphic novel history of the early days of hip-hop. If you’re not familiar with early New York hip-hop, as I was not, definitely read this while listening to the tracks recommended at the end of each volume. The series as a whole isn’t perfect, but it is absolutely both entertaining and informative.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo

The first novella in the Singing Hills Cycle, The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a lovely rumination on the power of stories and consideration of who the prime mover in a given story really is. It’s nice, too, to get to read fantasy that isn’t set in a European space. Vo’s East Asian setting is well developed, even in just 100 pages. I’m looking forward to reading the books that follow!

The Tradition, by Jericho Brown

A Pulitzer-winning collection of poetry about the body, about bodies, and about survival. I cried reading this one.

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie, like Ray Nayler, is really into philosophizing in her sci-fi. She’s more plot-focused, though, and Ancillary Justice hums along at a decent clip. It keeps stories in two timelines spinning and still manages to find time to think about how societies change, the impulses that drive them, and the agony involved in getting an entire civilization to shift course. Then, too, there’s the question of gender, which matters less in Leckie’s Radch empire. “She” is a pronoun for everyone, with societies outside the Radch using different configurations in their own languages. And we haven’t even gotten into the whole thing where the protagonist is a spaceship! These books have been out for a while and I’ve been putting them off. I really shouldn’t have.

A Village Life: Poems, by Louise Glück

A village described in poems, but a village writ large. Not just the people, but the world. Whoa, right?

The Chinese Groove, by Kathryn Ma

A perfectly imperfectly paced novel about a young Chinese man who immigrates to San Francisco, stumbles (? Maybe not? I think he might be a slightly unreliable narrator) into a community and a family, and returns to China to find the same things there. The pacing is really weird — the ending in particular occurs very suddenly — but I think it lends a real ramshackle charm to an already extremely charming little book.

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, by Alex Ross

An incredibly in-depth examination of Richard Wagner’s influence outside of music. As someone who doesn’t have a great deal of familiarity with Wagner’s music, it helped to be able to hear the excerpts included in the audiobook, which I thought was very well done. The book is a little on the dry side, but it’s very interesting to consider Wagner’s impact on culture and politics with the Nazis (who used him and his music as a tool for propaganda) placed in context as part of a continuum of radical right-wing politics that Wagner himself engaged with in a variety of ways.