Technolandy

Day 43 (of 2025/26) Book Recommendation in time for the holidays! Thank you @misterosman and @jasonaaron and @fantagraphics 

I’ve got a few titles I want to promote – one for very selfish reasons…

Traditional Novel/Great Gift

I have long been reluctant to recommend reads for others (I’m one who reads Brave New World as a utopian amongst the many other dystopian novels that I enjoy so much…) but the one series that I am happy to encourage, because it is so well constructed… continues to be Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club Series (I read through the fourth in the series within a day of it being released in the UK which was a week or so before it was available in North America… don’t ask me how…!) 

The Thursday Murder club is like an ogre… Shrek explains that ogres are like onions – they have many layers… and this ‘British murder mystery’ is done very well – with a bonus nod to another luminary of the British game show circuit (Countdown and 8/10 cats does Countdown) Susie Dent who has written many books about the English language – but has also written a very well crafted (more traditional) British Murder Mystery: Guilty By Definition – definitely had me thinking back to some AS Byatt books, a very good compliment. But the more recent Thursday Murder Club, The Impossible Fortune further explores the cast of characters who are delightful in their own unique ways. I read through it quite quickly because I didn’t want to put it down (so it’s a good light read to help build your own reading rigor!!)

Thursday Murder Club is one of the few books that I have felt confident recommending – with about 80% who I’ve introduced to it immediately reading the rest of the series… and what I love is that it has also burrowed into my brain as a possible way to create another club to build community in our Provincial Online Learning School… don’t have it quite worked out yet – but something more than the isolated reading of Encyclopedia Brown, but not as complex as an in-person escape room… I love how Osman has highlighted how mystery need not be formulaic!

The best of the comic book world:

The personal connection that I hope gets some uptake involves the return of one of my favourite comic serials: Uncle Scrooge – Fantagraphics Publishing has started issue 01 (with a legacy count of issue 461) bringing forth the character who has been tougher than the toughies and rougher than the roughies: Scrooge McDuck. Starting with Carl Barks, these comics have always blended the best of both worlds – completely fantastic comic book characters (walking talking ducks! Often with Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey, and Louie along for the adventure) that took pains to ensure that the background was accurate  – even if there were some storylines that are not so appropriate because of the use of stereotypes that has been frequent in previous decades – and why many cartoons on the disney channel now come with a very appropriate warning… But a three(?) issue adventure story pittin $crooge with one of his newer nemesis – Flintheart Glomgold is always going to be a good adventure – 

But wait, if you act now you can also get Marvel’s (Yep – Marvel – not just the housebrand “Disney or Gladstone publications of the past!) Uncle Scrooge: earths mightiest duck – written by Jason Aaron, the writer of the $crooge reboot: the infinity dime! (And some of the Avengers Infinite War stories that you might be aware of… something like that😇) Cuz it was a success, Marvel is now starting with a mini series that IF we get enough re-connected to the McDuck adventures could help the Fantafraphics reboot be a series without “mini” preceding it! 

I would also be thrilled if Marvel continues $crooge with Jason Aaron – I was hopeful that his work in the Infinite Dime could continue as the next Duck author, following the greats Carl Barks and Don Rosa… (though I also appreciate the additions of Daan Jippes and William Van Horn amongst the other storyteller/drawers who have taken on the duck clan!) 

So, if you want to take a chance and introduce comic books (graphic novels if that term makes you feel better…) to readers of all ages… the Uncle Scrooge “mini” series via Marvel and Fangraphics are my “number one dime” for 2025!