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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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This delightful, entertaining book is written in the style of Chinese stories, and set in an ancient China filled with magic, monsters, and gods. The story is narrated by Yu Lu, known as Number Ten Ox, from the village of Ku-Fu as he goes to find help to save the children of the village who have been accidentally poisoned. He goes to Peking to find a sage who will help, but they all turn their noses up at his bag of copper coins-- until he stumbles upon an alley where the ancient, drunken Li Kao is slumbering-- a sage who always introduces himself with the fact that he has "a slight flaw in his character." As it turns out, Li Kao may be the only man who would have been capable of helping Number Ten Ox and his village, because their quest for the great root of power which may cure the children leads them all over the country, facing powerful humans, labyrinths, and terrible monsters, until they eventually realize their quest overlaps with the story of minor deity, the princess of birds, who was unwittingly betrayed by her handmaidens and lost divine protection and access to heaven.

The tone of this book is perfectly suited to the setting of the story and the characters. Every time Li Kao introduces himself, he mentions that slight flaw in his character. More than once, the two adventurers face near-certain death, and before they dive in they decide what they will request the Yama Kings to let them be reborn as-- for Li Kao, a sloth, and for Number Ten Ox, a cloud. As they gather and lose other members of their parties, this becomes a recurring refrain as they invite their friends to join them in declaring what they will ask to come back as just before they face deadly danger together.

At first, this story seems to be just a wandering tale of strange encounters, but eventually Li Kao puts together the pieces of the story, and it seems that every little detail is a piece of the puzzle-- even the story of the village of Ku Fu and the section of wall that doesn't connect to any of the rest of the Great Wall because the general building it had a dream where he met the August Personage of Jade who adjusted his maps. All the strange characters they meet along the way seem to have a part to play or some key piece of information that allows Li Kao eventually to put the entire puzzle together-- Miser Shen, who later falls in love with Lotus Cloud and wants to be reborn as a tree named "Old Generosity"; the scholar Henpecked Ho and his daughter Fainting Maid, who always falls two steps back and six to the left; the Ancestress and the fearsome Duke of Ch'in, and even the greedy villagers Ma the Grub and Pawnbroker Fang.

The magnificent ending is completely satisfyint and beautiful, and none of the pieces of the story seemed forced when I finally discovered the whole story of what Li Kao and Number Ten Ox's quest was really about, and who was guiding things all along with an unseen hand.

Title:	Bridge of Birds
Author:	Barry Hughart
Date published:	1984
Genre:	Fantasy, Fairy Tale
Number of pages:	248
Notes:	loaned to me by Catey

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