SHUT IN THEATER: Weekend Reading – Week 11

Somehow, it’s Weekend Reading 11. How did it sneak up on us? We’d rather not speculate.

As always, we hope you will share your reading plans with us in the comments section!

AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m rereading Black by Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, Jamal Igle, and Khary Randolph. As far as prose, I still can’t get enough Octavia E. Butler, and I can’t wait to begin Xenogenesis.

RICARDO SERRANO: I’m going to be rereading Black as well, along with Avery. This week demands this type of read. I’m also reading Bitter Root by David Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Green. It’s set in the Harlem Renaissance and it follows a black family of monster hunters as they fight people who’ve transformed into demons for possessing souls fed by hate and racism. Echoes of BPRD here but really a book with its own identity.

THERESE LACSON: I have been making my way through the audiobook of Dune by Frank Herbert and intend to finish it so I can cross that off my list. And since, I’ve been drowning in existential emptiness, I’m revisiting a favorite: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Then for something saccharine to distract me, I’ll keep making my way through the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, this time it’s To Sir Phillip, with Love. Coincidentally, all three of these books will be adapted into a movie or tv show. 

JOSH HILGENBERG: I’m taking this weekend to reread Abbott from Saladin Ahmed, Sami Kivelä, Jason Wordie, and Jim Campbell. When this book was first coming out, I hadn’t engaged with the occult/mystery genre much, so it really opened my eyes. I remember absolutely loving Kivelä’s layouts, too, so I’m looking forward to revisiting it after a few more years of reading under my belt. 

TAIMUR DAR: Can’t think of a more appropriate time to revisit some of my favorite Dwayne McDuffie works like Icon: Mothership Connection and Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool. Now that legal battles between DC Comics and McDuffie’s widow have settled, I’m hoping the entire Milestone Comics line gets properly collected in trades for everyone to enjoy. Also rereading the complete collection of his hilarious Damage Control. After binge watching the American version of The Office, definitely in the mood for a superhero workplace comedy.     

ARPAD OKAY: After reading This is Serious a few weeks ago (what?), I realized while I loved and owned some of Geneviève Castrée’s anthology work I’d never read her graphic novel, Susceptible. Putting that right this weekend. It looks more like My New York Diary or A Child’s Life– boy I hope not- than the beguiling poetry I typically associate with her voice. To which I say good.

JOE GRUNENWALD: I started Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell a few weeks back. At nearly 600 pages I knew it was a long book, but I didn’t realize how dense a read it would be, so I’m only about a third of the way through it at this point. If I can avoid obsessively watching the news this weekend, I’m going to endeavor to finish that, but we’ll see how it goes.

NANCY POWELL: After the events of the past week, I have shifted to Derf Backderf’s Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio, a moving and troubling account about dissent that has proven equally relevant 40 years later. I am also looking at starting on an advanced reader’s copy of Box Brown’s Child Star.