comic books

More Books to Add to Your 2022 Reading List

December 17, 2021 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

I don't know about you, but my to-read pile of books is absurdly out of hand. Every year, I manage to knock a hundred or so books from the stack. This makes no dent in that ever-growing behemoth. It does, however, mean that I discover a few gems each year. (A few duds, too, but I'm here to give love, not to disparage. Sorry.)Anyway, this isn't a goddamn recipe blog, so let's skip the boring story leading up to the reason why you're here and get to the goods.Please note that these are not necessarily books published in 2021, just books I read this year that made such an impact on me that I want other people to read them, too. Books by Authors Not New to Me, Who Still Managed to Surprise the Hell Out of Me:Look, this book was published in 1997 and takes place during peak AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Yet, it feels current and chillingly relevant....

The Things You Loved as a Kid are Still Pretty Great

April 8, 2021 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Google Alerts is a useful tool. I added a couple of alerts about 10 years ago and occasionally, I'll get one letting me know where my books are being pirated. Pretty handy. But mostly, I get a bunch of alerts for Wrestlemania. Why? Because apparently, Rasmenia translates to Wrestlemania in another language. I haven't figured out which one yet.What's weird is, I'm not into wrestling.Okay, what I mean is, I'm not into wrestling anymore.When I was an eight-year-old kid living in Indiana, my mom's boyfriend took me and my friend Patty Foreman to a wrestling match. We drove all the way up to Fort Wayne from our little trailer park in Bluffton. I didn't like Mom's boyfriend, but that night, I didn't notice him. Patty and I bounced around in our seats squealing and giggling with glee while large sweaty men punched one another and bashed faces with folding chairs.Months later, me and Mom were in Colorado with her new...

I Got Nerdy & Ended Up With a Ridiculous Comic

November 20, 2013November 30, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

I like to get my nerd on. One of the really cool things about the internet - aside from funny animal .gifs on Buzzfeed - is the bottomless pit of nerdery. This year, I've spent countless hours getting lost on various subjects in iTunes U, Open Culture and Coursera.This summer, I enrolled in a writing class on Coursera. It wasn't on craft, but the basic mechanics of grammar, along with paragraph and sentence structure. It was a nice review on the basics, but also a nice intro to a MOOC (massive open online course), which I'd been curious about.I got into it. I enrolled in a few more courses. One of which was Comic Books and Graphic Novels, from the University of Colorado in Boulder.I fucking loved this class. Come on... a class where I get to watch PowerPoint lectures about Batman and study Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman? For free? HELL. YES.In all seriousness, though, this was an interesting...