American Vampire Volume 7

Written by: Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, Matías Bergara, Dave McCaig

First line: We can't stay much longer.

Why you should read this book: I don't know how I ended up reading volume seven in a series of which I hadn't read volumes 1-6, but I'm glad I did, because every time I think vampires are played out and nobody will ever have an original thought about vampires, someone does. I loved the concept of the evolution of vampires and the different species with different origins living together as refugees with a common and terrifying enemy, and the historical pieces of the tale, hinting at ancient evils buried in the earth. With no background on the world or the characters, I was still able to follow the narrative and find myself engaged by the plot in this refreshing and compelling volume.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some creepy monsters and also a very creepy pregnancy.

Free Country: A Tale of the Children's Crusade

Written by: Neil Gaiman, Toby Litt, Rachel Pollack, Alisa Kwitney, Jamie Delano, et al.

First line: Later the newspapers were to describe Flaxdown as a fairytale village.

Why you should read this book: There is much to love in this complete story arc, which stands on its own as a complete graphic novel even as it works as something of a coda to the Sandman series. Bringing together old stories from history, mythology, and poetry—the Pied Piper legend, the actual Children's Crusade, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,"—with other comic books and novels, Children's Crusade is a story of a two dead boy detectives searching for a village's worth of missing children, and stumbling upon another world, and the crazy machinations of the beings inhabiting it. Beauty and delight hide the endless cruelty and greed that exist in the universe, and the most outlandish fantasies are based on the truth of our world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you're wondering how two dead boys became detectives, you have to read the Sandman books first.

Before Watchmen: Minutemen/Silk Spectre

Written by: Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner

First line: You come into this world, and your point of view is narrow.

Why you should read this book: So far, it's definitely the strongest of the Before Watchmen books I've read, primarily due to the Minutemen section, which provides fresh stories about the original team, particularly Mothman and the Silhouette, that are barely hinted at in the original book. The section on Silk Spectre reflects the silly historical sensibilities of the other books in this series, with young Laurie refusing to fight crime on her mother's terms, and instead busting up an improbable ring of drug dealers in San Francisco in the 1960s, in order to stop the supply of a new variety of LSD that turns users into materialistic proto-Yuppie consumers. The entire book also gives us more details about Sally Jupiter that most readers have probably already figured out.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The Comedian, not being funny.

The Grim Grotto

Written by: Lemony Snicket

First line: After a great deal of time examining oceans, investigating rainstorms, and staring very hard at several drinking fountains, the scientists of the world developed a fancy theory regarding how water is distributed around our planet, which they have named, "the water cycle."

Why you should read this book: The Baudelaires find themselves on board the submarine Queequeg, finally learning more about the V.F.D organization, their parents' involvement in the group, and the great schism. The concept of moral ambiguity is further examined, as are some deadly mushrooms, and the idea that blood is thicker than water. There is also a great deal of discussion of the water cycle.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Fear of drowning. Fear of the dark. Fear of enclosed spaces.

The Slippery Slope

Written by: Lemony Snickett

First line: A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled," describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used.

Why you should read this book: The themes of chaotic momentum coupled with utter loss of control swarm to the fore in a book that begins with children careening backward down a mountain in a caravan with no steering mechanism and no brake, and ends with children careering forward down a mountain on a toboggan with no steering mechanism and no brake. In between they do a fair amount of climbing, with some breaks for digging, preparing and eating raw food, and potentially making out. The Baudelaires are growing up on the road, making new enemies (and running into old ones) wherever they go.

Why you shouldn't read this book: I hardly think that "privacy" is a good excuse to skip over possibly the least unfortunate event in the series.

Alternate Histories of the World

Written by: Matthew Buchholz

First line: Tracing the evolution of humanity through the early ages has always been a difficult task.

Why you should read this book: In a world where painting monsters into thrift store landscapes has become de rigueur, fake news can change the course of history even when everyone knows it's fake, and anyone can learn Photoshop, this book practically had to happen. The author lays his own fantastic template of robots, aliens, and zombies, with the occasional dinosaur, over the boilerplate of history to create an almost plausible timeline in which Teddy Roosevelt was an early adapter of the jet pack and alliances with river monsters or martians have more than once turned the tide of battle in war. Funnier the more you know about world history as well as the history of speculative fiction, this silly but satisfying book is a delightful distraction from the actual history in which we currently live.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You go ballistic when anyone suggests that humans and dinosaurs ever coexisted.

The Book of Negroes

Written by: Lawrence Hill

First line: I seem to have trouble dying.

Why you should read this book: Wonderful and terrible, this brutal novel recounts the life of African girl Aminata Diallo, at a young age kidnapped by slave traders who murder her parents in front of her and burn her village to the ground, and then subjected to every indignity man can execute upon man. Framed by Aminata's work with British abolitionists at the very end of her life, this story is written in minute, painful, and accurate detail (I would liken it to Lolita in that the author use the most exquisite prose to illustrate the most disgusting atrocities) making the journey of a remarkable and resilient human more real than the most meticulous chapter in a history book. Intense, fast-paced, and incredible, this book forces the reader to examine every modern and dehumanizing assumption about race and gender to which they have ever been exposed.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It contains a decent percentage of all the most terrible things than can happen to a person.

El Deafo

Written by: Cece Bell

First line: I was a regular little kid.

Why you should read this book. Following a bout of childhood meningitis, the author loses most of her hearing and must wear a large and unsightly hearing aid to help make sense of the world around her. In this Newbery Honor graphic novel, the people are all portrayed as rabbits, but the feelings and reactions of a child who is constantly aware of her differences are all too human. Only by embracing her abilities and reframing the giant hearing aid as a secret superpower does Bell regain her confidence and her place among the community of children from which she's felt ostracized.

Why you should read this book: You think deaf people should only hang out in the deaf community.

The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith

Written by: Joanna Brooks

First line: On Monday nights, my father and mother gathered their four children around the kitchen table in our tract house on the edge of the orange groves and taught us how the universe worked.

Why you should read this book: Raised by devout parents among a loving faith community, Brooks is proud of her heritage and content with her place in the universe, until she goes to college and develops a feminist conscience. In modern Mormonism, she learns as a young adult, feminism, is considered anathema, and those who espouse it deserve excommunication. Brooks does not leave her faith, but she refuses to compromise her own beliefs, marrying a man of another religion, campaigning on behalf of marriage equality, and researching church history to find evidence that racism and sexism were not tenets of the early Mormon pioneers.

Why you should read this book: You would never question anything your religious leader said.

The Carnivorous Carnival

Written by: Lemony Snickett

First line: When my workday is over, and I have closed my notebook, hidden my pen, and sawed holes in my rented canoe so that it cannot be found, I often like to spend the evening in conversation with my few surviving friends.

Why you should read this book: The harrowing tale of the hapless Baudelaire orphans continues where it left off, with the orphans hiding in the trunk of their worst enemy's car, disembarking at the pathetic Caligari Carnival. Taking a note from Count Olaf''s playbook, the siblings disguise themselves as freaks—two-headed Beverly and Elliot and Chabo the Wolf Baby—and take up with least freaky sideshow freaks ever to strut beneath a canvas tent, in front of an audience of the worst humanity has to offer. Fortune telling is debunked, people are eaten by lions, arson is committed, and, at the end of it all, the kids are in a worse place than they were at the beginning of the book.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You object to the use of the term "freak" to refer to those exhibiting human physical anomalies, or you object to unremarkable amateurs taking rare sideshow gigs away from truly deserving freaks.