Reviewing the Mail: Week of August 28, 2021

I'm actually pushing this one forward a week, because I got the "wrong" book and I think I might be able to get the right one as well, and keep that all together.

But perhaps I should explain.

As I write this, I've just picked up a book from the library: The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 7 by Herge, which collects the three bandes dessinees The Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714 to Sydney, and Tintin and the Picaros.

I have been reading the Tintin books over the past few years, fairly slowly: one, two, three, four, five.

A careful reader will have noticed that I read up to volume five and have now gotten volume seven. That is the mistake: my library system has the books without the volume numbers in the title, so a reader has to go by the cover color and remember where in the series he is by said intricate color-coding.

So, as I am typing this, I've also been placing a hold on volume six at the library, and I hope it arrives within the next week, so I can read them both in the correct order. If not, I'll try to renew this one and make other plans. Look below for any updates, a week later. 

Spongebob narrator voice: One Week Later

Four books from the library, starting with the obvious one:

The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 6. This is by Herge, of course, and I expect to be reading it in a car later "this" afternoon (on Saturday as I'm typing) taking my younger son back to college for the first time in eighteen months. That has nothing to do with the book, sure, but what else can I say here about fifty-year-old adventures stories for boys that I haven't read yet?

Save It for Later is a new collection of mostly short, mostly topical (maybe "all" on both of those counts, but I'm equivocating since I have also not read this one) comics by Nate Powell. Powell is best known as the cartoonist of the March books, but, to my mind, he'll always be the guy who did Swallow Me Whole, which I still think is one of the very best graphic novels of the past generation.

Thirsty Mermaids is the new graphic novel by Kat Leyh, author of the really impressive Snapdragon. It looks like a really weird, different "Little Mermaid" take, with three mermaids transforming into human form (apparently without the aid of a wicked witch, or by giving up anything central to their communication abilities) and finding themselves stuck in the human world. I gather some kinds of hijinks ensue, and probably more than hijinks.

Last is Glass Town, a graphic novel about the Brontes by Isabel Greenberg. Greenberg's previous books - at least the ones I've seen - were the mythic The Encyclopedia of Early Earth and One Hundred Nights of Hero, so I'm not expecting this will be a straightforward historical story. I think "Glass Town" was one of their fictional worlds, actually, so it may be something more like Hurd-McKenney and Geary's Infernal Angria. It will be interesting to compare the two books, he said, having no idea if they go anywhere in the same territory as each other.