March 26
2018: Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is Bite Me! by Dylan Meconis. This is a graphic novel (that originated as a webcomic, it’s still up, check it out) about a bar wench who gets turned into a vampire during the French Revolution and it is RIDICULOUS. It’s a crazy farce and it’s hilarious, and Dylan Meconis is actually a fantastically thorough researcher so a lot of it is weirdly accurate. Anyway, Claire and Lucien, her vampire boyfriend, team up with a member of Lucien’s vampire coven and go to Paris to free the rest of the coven from a man who kidnapped and imprisoned them all. It’s a bunch of wacky shenanigans and decapitation puns. There’s also an ongoing prequel comic that tells the origin story of a supporting character, called Family Man, that is incredibly beautiful but I’ve been following it for like 8 years and it’s been on hiatus for 9 months, so who knows when it’ll be finished? But I also highly recommend that as well. The art is really cool in each of them and Dylan is a fantastic writer and I can just tell that she’s way smarter than I am. She’s also got a lot of weird niche interests, and they come through in the comics, and that makes me happy because I have a lot of weird niche interests too, and it’s cool to read about the weird things other people are fascinated by. She also started Bite Me! when she was in high school and it’s really neat to see her art evolve as it (and Family Man) progress.
2017: Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book recs are all variations on a theme: teenage girls talk to ghosts, aka the best literary subgenre and my favorite way to reckon with history through an individual character’s story.
-Now, the absolute pinnacle of teen girls talking to ghosts is Meg Cabot’s Mediator series, in which Suze can see and talk to and punch ghosts and falls in love with a hot dead cowboy named Jesse who haunts her new house, specifically her bedroom. A six-part series that ended about when Twilight started, which is funny because the sixth book is called Twilight.
-Then we’ve got Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol, a graphic novel in which a friendly ghost follows Anya around and helps her with her school and social situations and then turns out to be not so friendly. A+.
-The Year of Shadows by Claire Legrand (who is a gem and writes only good books, go read them all) is about a marvelously cranky girl, Olivia, who was abandoned by her mom and has to save her scatterbrained father’s decrepit old orchestra hall with the help of the resident ghosts. Extremely sweet, poignant book.
-The Shades of London series by Maureen Johnson is also excellent. The first one is about someone recreating the Jack the Ripper murders, the second is all about the ghosts of the crazy folks at Bedlam, and our heroine joins the secret London police force that has to stop them.
-Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks is also about a haunted girl, but this one is just joining high school after being homeschooled for her whole life, so it’s really more about making friends, but it’s good fun.
-I’m fairly certain ghosts/spirits play into Libba Bray’s Diviners series, set in 1920s NYC, but tbh I don’t remember and need to reread the first and read the second, but it’s super great.
-Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender is extremely pulpy fun, where the ghost of Marie Antoinette goes around killing the descendants of the people who sold her out to the mob and got her killed.
And this isn’t a book, but Crimson Peak involves girls and ghosts and a bunch of other great stuff and you should watch it immediately.
