I won't get these read in 2024, but this was my stupidly expensive gift to myself this Christmas. This was a Kickstarter that was trying to raise about $50k for special set of hardcover compendiums and ended up raising just shy of $3.8 million. The initial funding goal was hit in SIX MINUTES. I bought both sets, GI Joe and Cobra, and got almost all the extras. Each set has specialized box art. The extras include reprints of key issues of the comic, over 30 exclusive trading cards, die cut stickers, patches, pins, and a bookmark. The spine/cover of each compendium on each one that feels like it's etched into the material. The covers are larger etchings of the spine etchings and each has a different color to the gilding on the pages, that matches the coloring of the star on the front cover. The collection has almost everything from the original run of GI Joe in Marvel comics (missing Yearbook #1 - reprinted as an extra in the box sets). That's GI Joe: A Real American Hero #1-155, GI Joe Yearbook #2-4, GI Joe Special Missions #1-28, GI Joe and the Transformers #1-4, GI Joe Order of Battle #1-4, and GI Joe Special #1.
Always fun to find out you have a large collection of books, including a signed copy from attending a book store talk, from an author who is revealed to be a complete piece of crap.
The number of Christian romance novels that don't mention the whole Christian part anywhere on the cover or in the synopsis is too damn high.
DOGE strikes again! The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency, terminated a $117,000 grant to the Emily Dickinson Museum that supported digitization of records related to its newly catalogued collection and identification of related information in other repositories with Dickinson family materials. The IMLS notice said that the grant is “no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States and the IMLS Program.” https://www.wwlp.com/news/local-new...useum-loses-federal-grant-due-to-budget-cuts/ If a museum dedicated to one of the United States greatest poets is not a priority, what the hell are the priorities of IMLS?
It's about damn time. Emily Dickinson?!? She was a "DEI hire"! ALL poets were men, of course. I mean she never married or has a bunch of kids, so she must be a lesbi...
Pope Leo's distant cousins include . . . https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/pope-leos-famous-cousins-justin-164359581.html Jack Kerouac
I just pledged for the next batch of GI Joe compendiums, that collects everything after the Marvel run through issue 300, which was the last one before Skybound (Robert Kirkman) started up with 301 and then launched their own re-imagined series. That got me looking back at a few things, including this video that starts talking about the cartoon but quickly delves into the complexities of Cobra in the comics and how Cobra has morphed over time to represent whatever subversive group is preeminent at the moment.
“An SF library book was checked out before the 1906 earthquake. It was finally returned.” (SFGate.com - Sunday, 4/12/26) The Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco, April 7, 2026. (Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE) -G
100 best novels of all time, as voted by authors, critics, and academics worldwide. https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/16/story-behind-100-best-novels-all-time But a list that has Heart of Darkness, but not Nostromo, and has The Sound and the Fury, but not Absalom, Absalom!, should not be taken seriously. Also missing — Clarissa, Villette, The Way We Live Now, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Meanwhile, I have written a book. If you can try to read it.... it is not a true story. Boston, 1990s. A city of a quarter million students scattered across more than fifty colleges and universities. They come from everywhere—Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, New York—each searching for something. A degree. A fresh start. A place to belong. Patrick Lam was just one of them. He had many friends. He had no friends. Then his girlfriend left him. His old friends stopped calling. He never told anyone why. He drifted through the city, carrying a secret he could not share. He was failing out of business school, trying to understand how his life had fallen apart. But then a professor believed in him. A quiet Indonesian boy named Bayu saw him clearly. And a girl named Sarina trusted him with her deepest wound. Over three semesters, Patrick found friendship, betrayal, and something that looked like love. He learned that some wounds never fully heal — and that sometimes, the people we love most are the ones we have to let go. For a moment, everything was right there. A second chance. A new beginning. And then it wasn't. https://www.amazon.com/Moment-We-Were-Here/dp/B0H82N97J2