Bookstabber

At the end of time stand two opposing forces: The Willow Agency, who finds this book to be a bloated Writing 201 experiment, and the Gene Garden, for whom each book is like a newborn bird being hatched. Can either win the Time War? Obviously not, it's in the title.

Willow has started publishing absurdist-horror-comedy comics stories at hauntedskull.com -- please check them out! And you can still find comics Gene and Willow make together at librarycomic.com

Willow fondly remembers someone else's childhood and battles alien spiders. Gene laughs at poop jokes and parenting foibles. Together they ask the immortal question: is it okay to smell the underwear of an extra terrestrial?

Gene is delighted, as usual. Willow drinks deep the sorrows of children's literature. Four Loko and books about peanuts are banished from the kingdom.

Gene and Willow disagree about this magical novel set in 1940s New York, in which an uncanny assassin and others with strange powers try to create a safe space for love and family. (Trouble the Saints won a 2021 World Fantasy Award.)

This week Gene and Willow discuss Nicola Yoon's YA romance The Sun Is Also A Star. Gene loved this story of love at first sight story about a young man on his way to a college interview for a school he doesn't want to attend and a young woman trying to keep her family from being deported that evening. Willow was not as swept away.

You can find the comics Gene and Willow make together at librarycomic.com

This week Gene and Willow discuss the weird and Lovecraftian novel A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill. Are monsters real? Are all tentacles evil? And how does Willow feel about flying werewolf sex? Find out in this exciting episode!

This episode Gene and Willow discuss The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, an Arthurian tale of forgetfulness. It's the first episode featuring work by an author who has won the Man Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Do you think Willow was impressed?

You can find comics Gene and Willow make together at librarycomic.com and barbariangirl.com

This week Gene and Willow discuss Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang, Perfect Little World). Gene loves Wilson's novels, and Willow's reaction to this one surprises him.

You can read the comics we make together at librarycomic.com and barbariangirl.com  And please email suggestions about what we should read for a future episode.

This week we're doing something different! Willow and I discuss four graphic novels we both love: Robot Dreams by Sara Varon, King City by Brandon Graham, Legion of Super-Heroes: Teenage Revolution by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, and Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks.  (Of course we don't agree on everything.)

To find comics we make together, visit librarycomic.com

Gene and Willow discuss All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. It's an apocalyptic book that both defies and embraces the conventions of fantasy, science fiction, and coming of age novels. Gene loves it, and was sure Willow would, too. Wrong.

You can find the comics Gene and Willow make together at www.librarycomic.com 

And if you know a book Willow might like, please please please email us your suggestion at [email protected]