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Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann meet up with a Russian agent who is trying to get somewhere in the Midwest U.S., because the three astronauts who have been on the Space Station since the plague hit are going to try to land-- and two of them are men. Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann go to a “hot suite” and try to make arrangements to protect the men (so the plague doesn’t kill them as soon as they land), but the Israeli military force that’s been tracking Yorick gets in the way-- kidnaps Yorick, attempts to take out the landing capsule, possibly contributing to its explosive landing.

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Does a good job of summarizing what happened in Vol.1 (all the males on earth died except Yorick and his pet chimp Ampersand), and reminding us what a male-dominated world we still live in, as most of the business owners, pilots, construction workers, etc. are now gone. Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. Mann are working their way across the country to get to Dr. Mann’s laboratory and backup copies of the notes and data destroyed when her east coast lab was burned down. After a little incident on their train, they end up in a small town that seems Edenic in comparison to the rest of the places they have seen on their way through the country-- they have electricity, food, and seem to be taking care of themselves quite well, and even deal rather well with the news of Yorick’s existence (as compared to the other extreme reactions he’s seen before). Meanwhile, Yorick is being hunted-- by some Israeli troops, and by the extreme Daughters of the Amazon, now accompanied by his sister Hero, who seems to have been brainwashed by the care and attention of the leader who protects and feeds her and all the other women.

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After finishing reading Howl's Moving Castle, I wanted to re-read Castle in the Air. It is an unusual sequel, because the characters we know from the first book are in disguise (by magic of course, in this case not their own) when we first meet them in this story, and even that is not right away. We actually follow a day-dreaming carpet merchant named Abdullah, whose fairy-tale daydreams start coming true after he buys a magic carpet-- he meets a beautiful princess, he ends up wandering in the desert and runs into the villainous bandit he dreamed up, and ends up on a quest to rescue the princess he loves. Of course, his daydreams literally are coming true because a djinn has overheard them and is playing a bigger game.

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The delightful story of Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer. In a magic, fairy-tale land where seven-league boots actually exist (although they are demonstrated to be difficult to control when your balance is very good), Sophie doesn’t ever bother to seek out her fortune because she knows as the oldest of three sisters, she is destined to fail first and worst. Her sisters aren’t afraid to seek out what they want (even to the extent of deceiving their mother to trade places), but Sophie stays where she is. Only when she is cursed into old age does she venture out, and her “disguise” as an old woman gives her a new kind of freedom-- she isn’t afraid, she’s more willing to speak out and do what she wants, even to the extent of forcing herself into the castle of the wizard Howl as his housekeeper. Howl is selfish, vain, slapdash, and heartless (literally, in a way, because of his contract with Calcifer that Sophie is supposed to be trying to figure out and break), and yet he is also sweet, quite thoughtful at times, and tenderhearted. Of course, it is Sophie’s qualities as an older sister that make her capable of dealing with Howl-- when he has a tantrum of green slime, she and Michael push him to the bathroom and dump him in the tub, and Sophie mops up the slime that is everywhere.

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As an infant, Sabriel nearly-- or, to be more accurate, briefly-- died. But her father, Abhorsen, stepped across the boundary between Life and Death, and brought her back. Abhorsen is a necromancer unlike any I have ever read about-- instead of summoning the dead, he binds the dead that haunt the living, and he assists-- or forces-- them to cross the final gate. Now a young woman and nearly finished with her schooling in Ancelstierre, Sabriel learns that something has happened to her father-- he is either bound somewhere in Death, or perhaps actually dead. So, she crosses back into the Old Kingdom, where she discovers that Abhorsen is not a name but a title, and that she has inherited it. A powerful, Greater Dead creature and its minions are stirring, and she must outrace them to find her father and save the kingdom.

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For some reason, I was unaware of the fact that there were so many Buffy comic books before the new Season 8 run. This is the first book in an omnibus series that collects them all in chronological order. This one starts with "All's Fair", a story about Dru and Spike on a rampage at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, which I didn't particularly enjoy, but then it gets more Buffy-centric. "The Origin" is a comic-book adaptation of Joss Whedon's original screenplay for the Buffy movie; the stories after that cover the time between the movie and the TV series, while Buffy was on her own without a Watcher. She and Pike take a trip to Las Vegas to hunt down vampires in "Viva Las Buffy!". In "Dawn & Hoopy the Bear" we get a story of Dawn's experience while Buffy has run off and their parents are on their way to divorce; a teddy bear ensorceled with a djinn meant for the slayer is mistakenly delivered to Dawn, but her distracted mother just thinks Dawn has a wild imagination when she takes about the bear coming alive. Then, in "Slayer, Interrrupted" we get the story of Buffy's stay in the mental hospital, which is referred to in the TV series. Interspersed with these, we also get some interesting parts of Giles' path to becoming Buffy's Watcher.

I had a little bit of trouble getting into this book because I didn't enjoy the first story; I know some people really love Spike and Dru, but a whole story with them killing and destroying just isn't my thing. In this story and in some of the others, I felt like there might be references to characters or events in the TV series, but I'm not familiar enough with them to catch it-- and not sure I care enough to go to the trouble of looking it up. Angel shows up in the Las Vegas story, and I wondered about the time lines of that, but again, I guess I'm not familiar enough with all the details of his back story to know how this fits in.

As Scott Allie points out in his brief introduction, these stories include Dawn-- which is an interesting choice. Like him, I'm glad that we got the story of "Dawn and Hoopy the Bear"; but other things make me wonder a bit about how things would have worked without Dawn being there. For instance, Dawn is the one who reads Buffy's diary (because she misses her), and that is how Buffy ends up getting sent to a mental institute.

Artwork for comic books based on TV shows and movies can be a little strained sometimes-- either they are too creepily like the actors or they aren't quite recognizable. In this case, I found the artwork to be quite good, and it certainly never distracted me from the story being told.

I enjoyed this enough that I'd be interested to read the other Buffy Omnibus collections, although I'm a bit intimidated by the fact that there are 7 volumes.

Title:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 1
Author:
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Young Adult, Graphic Novel, Horror
Series:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Number of pages:	296

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Bryson is an author who is knowledgeable and entertaining at the same time – a combination not to be taken for granted! As stated in the title this book gives a general overview of the history of the world, scientifically speaking, and includes glimpses into a wide variety of subjects – chemistry, physics, geography, lots of -ologies, but in a way that they are comprehensible. Bryson talked with a large number of specialists, visited them, learned from them, asked lots of questions. And we get his summaries.

One of the best parts of the book is the stories about various characters. Many of them incredibly strange. Brilliant – but strange. One Oxford professor that I remember reading about was extremely absent-minded. Upon returning home one evening, his wife told him to go upstairs and change for their dinner party that evening. He got undressed, but then couldn't remember what he was doing, so he changed into pajamas and got into bed. His wife was duly exasperated when she found him shortly thereafter. Or the chemist who insisted on tasting all of his experiments, something which clearly aided his death in arriving sooner. Or the fact that if a meteor were to actually hit earth, it wouldn't be visible to the naked eye until one second before it hit earth, and the impact could easily damage a whole continent and most likely throw the whole ecosystem wildly off-kilter. In the process of reading this book, two facts became more clear to me:

1) we often take for granted things for which the margin of error (or possibility) is actually incredibly narrow.

2) there must indeed be a Creator!

Title:	A Short History of Nearly Everything
Author:	Bill Bryson
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Nonfiction
Number of pages:	478
Notes:	from c. knapp

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This story is set in India which means that as one reads, bits of culture are picked up along the way. In a quiet and delightful way. A number of stories are woven together into one novel, with themes running through each of them, and deep connections. Kanai is a well-to-do Indian going to visit his aunt, to read a story that his uncle wrote and left to him years ago. Piya was born to Indian parents but grew up in America, and is back in India to study dolphins. Fokir is a man who catches crabs for a living and knows the islands and rivers and tides in the Bay of Bengal as well as his own home.

As always, nothing is quite as clear as it seems. People meet each other and their initial reactions are rarely correct. Especially in this setting, where there are so many factors that are unseen. Each of the characters in this book is searching for something .. meaning, a place to call home, worth, accomplishment, a better life, love. In various ways, with varying amounts of success. Fokir is a simple man who is viewed as inferior by many, but Piya sees him as someone who is knowledgeable, and could be a boon for her research. This is a beautiful example of someone who sees differently. So often we get caught up in matching things to the standards of the world, but Piya refuses to play into that and is willing to see value in anyone around her. Her example, while not perfect, is a reminder to me to be careful of who and how I see those around me.

Title:	The Hungry Tide
Author:	Amitav Ghosh
Date published:	2005
Genre:	Fiction
Number of pages:	329
Notes:	from Karen K.Y.

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