Graphic Novel: Nimona, Noelle Stevenson

Nimona
Noelle Stevenson
ISBN: 9780062278234
Stylized people in a techno-mystic empire are faced with an enigmatic shapeshifter with awesome power.
Read June 2015

Love everything about this book.  The art is a little weird, and once you hear her admit that she does "dot eyes" because she doesn't do eyes well, you just can't not notice it, but the movement and shading and emotion are all simply brilliant.

Nimona is our title character, but in a very real way, our viewpoint character is the "supervillain" Lord Blackheart.  He's not really a very good villain tho, and a lot about the set-up made me think fondly of Megamind.

Nimona herself tho - she's an interesting little enigma.  The repressive kingdom that Blackheart faces off against wants to catch her and use her as a weapon, and she's got some deep psychic scars regarding that sort of idea.  She's also sweet, helpful, insightful, hostile, brittle, a-moral, and nearly entirely undamageable.  LOVE.

My final joy with this lovely quirky book was the relationship between Blackheart and his moral enemy and sworn foe, Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin (LOVE THESE NAMES) who works for the kingdom's military complex.  The two of them make a lovely throughline through the story, and I was quite happy with where they ended up.

  

Nonfiction, Microhistories: How We Got to Now, Steven Johnson

Related to a PBS special, this book is oddly flat, especially considering the interesting innovations and conceptual foundations it deals with.  It took me several weeks to finish, which is rare for me - I kept putting it down and procrastinating getting back to it.

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World
Steven Johnson
ISBN: 9781594632969
Finished November 24, 2014

Our six innovations are:
Glass
Cold
Sound
Clean
Time
and
Light

The idea is that while individual "gee whiz" inventions like lights or phonographs or detergent are really great and all, what really matters to society and the development of culture and technological advances are the underlying relations between scientific concepts, and that the area of the "near possible" - the stuff that is just close enough to current technology and social mores to imagine - drives the great majority of the underlying stuff we all take for granted as part of a modern world.

Interesting idea, but somehow the execution of it just fell a bit flat for me.  I don't know if it was because it's tied-in to a television series, and the passion and energy went towards the visuals and the presentation there, but it just didn't click with me.

Still, really nifty information, and that concept of the "near possible" is a newly named one for me, and one I'm going to keep in mind.

The Big Disconnect, Catherine Steiner-Adair

The Big Disconnect, Catherine Steiner-Adair

ISBN: 9780062082428

Read November 7, 2013

Nonfiction: scary stories about kids of various ages misusing tech and social media.

Hoped this would be more of an advice-giver, rather than a scary-story collection, but you win some and you lose some.  The subtitle is "Protecting Childhood and Family in the Digital Age" and the takeaway seems to be that it's pretty darn hard to do unless you are a Luddite or convert to Amish until your kid is about 30.  

There are some bits of advice, but sadly, the majority of the book really does just cover horrible events where kids are kids, do something stupid, and the nature of tech and media means that now they'll never live it down.

Harsh lessons, but no real advice or steps to follow to mediate or alter the potential.  Leaves this on the "interesting but not really worthwhile" reading list.