Reviewing the Mail: Week of 3/30/2024

Three books this week: one that actually did come in the mail (after I paid for it) and two that I found at the yearly library sale at the next town over.

The book in the mail was Thorn: The Complete Proto-Bone College Strips 1982-1986 by Jeff Smith, which I got because I (like what I think was several thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people) backed the Kickstarter. The book has a real ISBN and price printed on it, and Smith has had a real publishing company, Cartoon Books, for a good thirty years now, so I think this is a "real" book that will also be available other places. (Update, thirty seconds later: Yes, since I was able to grab an Amazon link for it with a pub date of July 30, I'm pretty confident it will be widely available.)

As the subtitle says, these are really early work by Smith, from his college paper, featuring early versions of the characters he later used in Bone. I've never read any of this stuff before, so I have no expectations.

The two books from the library sale were both random non-fiction that looked vaguely interesting in a sea of David Baldacci and similar bestsellers:

How to Be a Victorian by the historian Ruth Goodman, a 2014 trade paperback that goes through everyday life in the Victorian age. I gather this focuses mostly on middle-class people, not the aristocracy, and "Victorian" is a pretty wide swath of time, too. I'm fascinated by books on small details, and this looks like one full of them.

Five-Finger Discount is a memoir from 2002 by reporter Helene Stapinski, who grew up (according to the blurb on this book) in an "unforgettable [Jersey City] family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes." Hey, local color!  And I also like seeing reporters tell bigger and/or more personal stories.