I’ve struggled for a long time to read short stories… my intuition was that they needed to be approached differently from novels, and so I could never really find a rhythm for them.

As a result, I’ve had this book on my shelf for several years. I finally decided to stop treating it like different stories, and just read it cover to cover like a normal book, whenever I had time (revolutionary, I know) and I ended up enjoying the book mightily.

The stories of this book are their own genre. Not sci-fi, not horror; always? More than both? Or, getting at the existential awe and intellectual humility that accompanies encounters with the unknown.

Harlan Ellison also writes in a way that makes ME want to write. As I’m reading, I can tell he’s making up the story as he writes, coming up with the beginning first, then the middle, then the end. You can tell he’s having so much fun. For the first time, it made me consider whether I have stories in me that might be worth sharing.

676 issues of Captain America have been published by Marvel since 1968, and the number continues to tick up each month. I’ve now read a large enough of a percentage that I’m confident in the silent goal I’ve had for about two years: I’m going to read them all.

It’s only a completionist goal like that which motivates me to read very old collections like this - this one covers 1969-170.

Sometimes the quality of these stories reveals their target demographic of kids walking through grocery stores, not adult nerds: there are some minor characters who names magically change between issues (or within issues) and there are a couple plot lines that get re-used, just a few issues a part.

But it was cool to see a comic book wrestling with such topical social issues: there were two different (albeit almost indistinguishable) issues about student protests, and an issue that reckoned with apartment building fires in Harlem. And asides on the destructive forces of racism and ground/air/water pollution are peppered through the book. It’s extremely political in a way that I found attractive.

But was surprised me was how romantic it was… which is to say: very. Surprising in a good way- I love sappy love in action comics: each tends to enhance the other.

This was also the debut of Captain America on his motorcycle: not stuck in New York, but riding all around the country. This is another version of Cap I really like, and wish we saw more of. It’s cool to see him in this mode so early on.

I wanted to read this book after seeing Wicked Part One last year. There is a light subplot in that first movie about the rights of individuals as it pertains to humans vs animals, that I could tell was hinting at a greater theme from the source material (the book). That theme was explored again a bit more in the second movie, so I decided to give the book a go.

Boy was I glad I did - this book is an absolute banger. Perhaps the first fantasy book I’ve truly loved. I frankly didn’t really like the movies; I thought they were a bit long and a bit uninspired. But the book was absolutely phenomenal. Dark, transgressive, political, complex. The author works to make Elphaba unlikeable as possible while still having you root for her, in an impressive and gripping way.

I haven’t seen the play, but I’ll say the book is nothing like the movie, plot-wise. Instead of a single story that takes place mostly during college, the book is spread out into five parts, each of which have multi-year time gaps between them. And Glinda plays a much smaller role in the book than in the movie.

What I was most enamored with was Maguire’s commitment to the religious and philosophical lore of Oz. There are a whole stable of different folk religions, each which weave in and out of different political leanings. One theme of the book seems to be how what we believe about ourselves and others has less to do with the truths of the universe we observe, and more to do with the stories we must tell ourselves in order to cope with our own selves and choices.

This book absolutely ruled. People with attachment to the musical or the movies should be warned: you may not like how the book originally portrayed these characters. But it’s a phenomenal read.