so many things have happened. fortunately those are reflected elsewhere.
it's not that i haven't been writing things down (perhaps that's another post). I'm not gonna lie. 2026 has been a very rough year on all fronts. i'm fine, we'll be alright. but one of the things that has gotten me through things is READING so many good books. history novels. historical fictions. graphic novels of the foreign and super hero variety.
recently i was trading emails with a fellow comic book creator (his latest graphic memoir SEQUEL just came out), and he asked me "have you read any good books lately?"
what a loaded question.
years ago i started a Goodreads account, but i don't maintain it. so this was as good a time as any to take inventory on library accounts, purchase history, etc. maybe i should start a podcast about it, lol. so here's a semi-organized accounting of the past year or so of my own good reads (partially inspired by my pal Brad's annual reading list, who's NL you should be reading)...
RECENTLY FINISHED...
- Mexikid Dreams (Pedro MartÃn): sequel to one of my favorite YA graphic novels of a prior year. I've been fortunate enough to become friends with the author after a podcast chat. loved how deep it went into the sharecropping from his childhood perspective - including how his many elder siblings were processing it as well. Eye-opening on so many levels. As a father, the latter half showing the patriarch's realization of his kids future/opportunity - and the son's maturity/realizations - was moving. And the levity of musical / artistic dreams was great, something i know my daughter (who loved the first volume) is going to love.
- Home/World: A Circumnavigation of Our Shared Earth (Ben Hatke): A beautifully told graphic travelogue circling the globe and reflecting on the planet we share. i did my time traveling the world before kids, and look to one day pick it back up again. Not sure how his wife let him get away with it for a few month, but when you hear of part of their life's tragedy, it's understandable. Stories like this make me want to make a life out of making great comics.
- The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence (Kevin Roose): I'm a fan of Kevin's former podcast (Hard Fork), so thought I didn't need to read this. But i'm a sucker for n first hand account / oral style history that made me feel like i was in the room. If you want to know the motivations, defections, feuds, and breajthrough of where our world is racing towards (whether we want it or not), this is an important read
- The End of Arab of the Future, Vol 1 (Riad Sattouf): the penultimate chapter in Sattouff's autobiogrpaphical pan Arab tale across Libya, Syria, anad France. This near final volume just dropped. Sattouf, also known for his work @ Charlie Hebddo and Esther's Notebooks is one of contemporary French comics greats
- All My Rage (Sabaa Tahir): Two Pakistani-American teens in a struggling California desert town, with flashbacks to a mother’s life in Lahore. My editor worked on this, and my writing partner loved it, so i kinda had to read it. Damn near broke my heart. This one is important
- Taipei Story (R.F. Kuang): A college girl goes back to Taiwan to learn to speak Chinese. By the author of Babel, Yellowface and the Poppy War trilogy. Babel was one of the best books I read last year. I’m jealous of this woman’s writing abilities.
- The English Problem (Beena Kamlani): In 1931, a young Indian man chosen by Gandhi travels to England to study British law for the independence movement and ends up torn between ambition, desire and duty.
- The Player of Games (Iain M. Banks): Second book in 'the Culture' sci-fi series. The Culture’s greatest game player is sent to an alien empire where a single game decides who holds power. I heard Cory Doctorow tell Trevor Noah a story about an argument he got into with Elon Musk over the meaning of THIS book, and I love good sci-fi world-building that’s really a commentary on the world today. Broke my brain a little.
- The Other History of the DC Universe (John Ridley): DC history retold through heroes of color and other marginalized characters, including Black Lightning, Katana and Renee Montoya. I've only read the first chapter on Black Lightning and was blown away. Can't wait to finish this one, but am reading it in pieces...
EVEN MORE FOREIGN COMICS RECENTLY READ, FTW
There’s a foreign language / indie section at our local library that keeps pulling me in. Spanish and Drench comics make me jealous of how damn good they are.CRIME COMICS (Brubaker & Phillips)
There’s a foreign language / indie section at our local library that keeps pulling me in. Spanish and Drench comics make me jealous of how damn good they are.
- Soviet Land: A Tragicomic Thriller Graphic Novel (Pierre-Henry Gomont) : A darkly comic caper about schemers scavenging the ruins of the collapsed Soviet Union in 1990s Russia.
- 5,000 km per Second (Manuele Fior): A watercolor love story that follows two people across years, countries and missed connections.
I’m a sucker for a love story. - Always Never (Jordi Lafebre): A forty-year unfulfilled romance told in reverse, ending where the couple finally gets together in retirement.
See above. I’m a sucker. - I Am Their Silence (Jordi Lafebre): A Barcelona psychiatrist in the middle of a bipolar episode investigates a death in a wealthy winemaking family.
- Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians (Salomé Parent-Rachdi & Deloupy): Graphic journalism about the intimate lives of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.
CRIME COMICS (Brubaker & Phillips)
I recently binged a complete re-read of ALL of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ indie work. Criminal is a classic (10–12 vols), Kill or Be Killed was a head-trip, and Reckless (5 vols) was the best.
- Criminal / Reckless (Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips): Hard-boiled noir about crooks, cops and a 1980s LA fixer who takes cases for cash.
- Kill or Be Killed (Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips): A depressed grad student believes a demon is forcing him to kill bad people to stay alive.
MUSICALLY INSPIRED YA COMICS (Brinkman & Chiki)
- Lucy in the Sky (Kiara Brinkman & Sean Chiki, 2021): A coming-of-age story about a girl who finds herself through music, drawn in a mix of clean-line and psychedelic art with Beatles references throughout.
- Rhiannon (Kiara Brinkman & Sean Chiki): A coming-of-age graphic novel set in the 1980s, with skateboarding and goth/punk culture. Quiet, poignant and full of heart.
- Kololo Hill (Neema Shah): A Ugandan Asian family is torn apart by Idi Amin’s 1972 expulsion order.
- A History of Burning (Janika Oza): A multigenerational saga that follows one Indian family from indentured labor in East Africa through the Uganda expulsion to Canada.
- The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (Yasmin Khan; US title India at War): The story of India’s WWII, including the more than two million Indian volunteers who made up the largest volunteer army in history, told through the voices of ordinary soldiers and civilians. This is the one I’m slowly chipping away at to inform a future writing project.
- From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain (Mahmood Mamdani, 1973): Mamdani’s firsthand account, written right after Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s Asian community in 1972, of the expulsion and of life in British refugee camps, analyzing the class and racial politics behind it.
- Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State (Mahmood Mamdani, 2025): Part memoir and part political history, it follows how Amin and then Museveni turned Uganda’s anti-colonial project into tribal division. It draws on Mamdani’s own life through expulsion, exile and return.
- Both Ugandan history books are by Zohran’s dad, a renowned academic on Uganda. The more I read his work, the more nuanced my view of the whole situation gets (and I’m finding I’m not always on the same page with him, which makes me want to reach out for aa deeper chat with Mahmood, which is in the works)
EVEN MORE COMICS ON MY BEDSIDE (yet to read)
Much of my renewed interest in DC above and below has inspired by recently watching LANTERNS on HBO Max, which blew me away, and arguably one of the best (most important?) shows of the year (after Andor, of course).
Much of my renewed interest in DC above and below has inspired by recently watching LANTERNS on HBO Max, which blew me away, and arguably one of the best (most important?) shows of the year (after Andor, of course).
- Beirut Won’t Cry (Mazen Kerbaj): A sketch diary the artist drew during the 2006 bombing of Beirut. Highly recommended by a historian / fact checker I've started some exploratory work with. I"m really excited about this one
- DC: The New Frontier (Darwyn Cooke): For me this is is a re-read of a A Cold War–era epic that bridges DC’s Golden Age and Silver Age heroes and the BS of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Feels relevant.
- The Green Lantern (4 volumes, Grant Morrison & Liam Sharp): an acclaimed 2018-2021 by one of modern comics' OG subversive writers. Hal Jordan as an intergalactic space cop working cosmic crime cases, in a psychedelic, Silver Age–flavored run across more than a few volumes.
- Absolute Green Lantern (4 volumes Al Ewing & Jahnoy Lindsay): I've been blown away by DC's Absolute line (Batman + Wonder Woman especially, so want to dig into these right after i finish Grant Morrison's prior run. A strange reimagining of Green Lantern in which alien judges seal off a small town and put humanity on trial.
