April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Novels/prose books:

Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the Second: The Reptile Room.

Stephenson, Neal: The Big U
(the wheels fell off somewhere in this book. It's still an enjoyable read, but I can see why he was reluctant to let it be brought back into print; god forbid someone should read this and imagine that this level of writing is what made Stephenson famous. Obviously, this is not as ambitious as one of the monster tomes, like Cryptonomicon, or the Baroque Cycle, but as a shorter work, it doesn't live up to the tighter, more focused plotting of Zodiac. Maybe I should excuse the lack of grounding as probably being intentional--it's very much about the university as a place that's insane and closed-off from the real world, higher education as a mental institution--but it was hard to connect to the book because of that).


Graphic novels:

Lemire, Jeff: Essex County vol. 3: The Country Nurse
(Top Shelf).

Campbell, Ross: Water Baby
(Minx. Wow, creepy. Campbell, doing that thing he does, so weirdly compelling and so well-illustrated).

Abel, Jessica, and Warren Pleece, artists (?), Gabe Soria, writer (?), Hialry Sycamore, colorist: Life Sucks
(First Second. Cute, but not exactly a work for the ages. I vastly prefer Abel's other work--La Perdida, Artbabe--which are better written, and frankly, much better illustrated as well. Abel's linework suffers from the coloring here).