Well, we triple checked the tally marks, and we regret to inform you that not only is this Weekend Reading 15, but it’s also July.
Nevertheless, the Beat staff is ready for another weekend filled with reading. We hope you’ll share your plans in the comment section, too!
AVERY KAPLAN: I’m going to be having a graphic nonfiction weekend! First up is The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66 by Shing Yin Khor (about a cross-country road trip, back when such things were possible). Then, Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists by Mikki Kendall, A. D’Amico, Shari Chankhamma, and Erica Schultz, followed by They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker (recommended by Beat reader Jim Perreault in the comment section of Weekend Reading 4… a very long time ago).
JOE GRUNENWALD: For once I have no trouble deciding what to read this weekend. After dipping my toes into the first six issues of Denny O’Neil, Denys Cowan, and Rick Magyar’s late ‘80s run on The Question for this week’s DC Round-Up, I am absolutely hooked on that series. I’ve already read a few more issues beyond those first six, and I’m planning to read that and probably nothing else this weekend. If I should finish that 36-issue run, I also just picked up the Image Humble Bundle almost solely because I want to read David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, so that’s waiting on-deck for once I’m done with The Question.
TAIMUR DAR: I never expected Promethea from Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III to be available on the DC Universe streaming app but it just became available this week. It’s been on my list that includes various books, movies, TV shows to consume in my lifetime for ages but just never found the right moment to read it. Couldn’t have come at a better time with a holiday weekend.
PHILIPPE LEBLANC: This weekend will be spent with my son, we’re going strawberry picking (with masks of course), but we’ll sneak in some reading together. Nancy’s Genius Plan, the boardbook by Olivia Jaimes and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham by Zeb Wells, Will Robson and Wendell Dalit. It’s unexplainably listed as Peter Porker: Aporkalypse Now on Comixology though, so who knows what it’s actually called.
RICARDO SERRANO: This weekend will be all about The Goddamned, written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by R.M. Guéra. The book follows Cain, the man who created murder (according to the Bible) as he crosses paths with a cult leader-like version of Noah. Guéra’s art makes Earth look post-apocalyptic way before the apocalypse even happens. It’s dirty, filled with death and human waste, and aggresively unwelcoming. The second story arc for the series just kicked off this week with The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides. A lot of goddamned reading this weekend!
JOSH HILGENBERG: It seems like Hoopla is jumping on board the Avatar: The Last Airbender hype. A handful of Dark Horse’s spin-off series are available there now, so I’m going to check out Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru’s The Search, which goes into what happened to Zuko’s mother. Like anyone with a beating heart, I loved this creative team on Superman Smashes the Klan, so reading their Avatar work is a no-brainer.
NANCY POWELL: It has taken me a while to get over Anthony Bourdain’s last comic book Hungry Ghosts since the book was really depressing in light of his death. But I’m ready to jump back in with Get Jiro 2: Blood and Sushi. Continuing the theme with food, I’m diving into the first volume of Restaurant To Another World by Junpei Inuzuka and Takaaki Kugatsu.
TORSTEN ADAIR: A few weeks ago, we were watching Blue Hawaii, and my mother wanted a recording of his version of Hawaiian Wedding Song, but not the movie soundtrack. A quick search on Discogs found a nice collection of 24 of Elvis’ love songs at a decent price. (It’s a nice compilation… his standards, plus a few covers and some I didn’t recognize.) However, the shipping was almost as much as the cost of the CD, so I went into my wishlist and added a book. It’s my birthday next week, so I figured I could explain it away as a birthday present.
That book is To Drink and to Eat Vol. 1: Tastes and Tales from a French Kitchen by Guillaume Long, from Lion Forge. This French title hit my radar years ago, after it had won a German comics prize. I love non-fiction comics, and the sample page on how a moka pot works immediately made me yearn for an English translation! It took a few years, but here it is, and it’s a lovely edition. My mother says it’s too wordy, and the script lettering is a bit difficult to read. Still, I figure this will be a nice digestif as I recover from too much food this holiday weekend.
If you want a similar title, one that’s perfectly suited for social distancing and home baking, then you’ll have your mind blown by First Second’s Maker Comics: Bake Like a Pro! by Falynn Koch. Like the other titles in the series, there’s a simple story which helps explain the many techniques. In this book, Sage is a wizard-in-training, apprenticed to master alchemist Korian. To Sage’s dismay, she’s learning alchemy via…baking? There are recipes in the book, part of the story, so you don’t need to skip them. What I enjoyed most were how variations in a chocolate cookie recipe change the outcome (as well as how the cookie dough changes as it goes from room temperature to oven temperature), and that there different types of dough!
