#22: Heroes, Vol. 1 – graphic novel hardcover of the collected free 8-page comics that NBC published online during season 1.
#23: Pink Gingerbread – a novella ebook about a woman who goes into the woods to find the man she dreamed about as a child. Little conflict, no emotional movement– it was not a story, but rather a writing exercise that I could have done without reading.
#24: Will Eisner’s Comic and Sequential Art – a book on creating comics by the master.
#25: Invincible, Vol. 2 – hardcover collection of a bunch of the comics from Invincible, which is one of my favorite comics.
#26: Memory – a short novel that seems autobiographical (but probably isn’t) about a man who grows up in a post-Holocaust family with a big, terrible secret, and his forgiveness of his parents for that secret. I don’t know… this probably would have been a better autobiography, but as fiction, it lacks something (conflict, maybe).
#27: The Writer’s Guide to the Business of Comics – a slightly outdated guide to comic publishing.
#28: Save the Cat! – an excellent book on story structure for aspiring screenwriters. I disagree with some of the movie beats as broken down on the Save the Cat blog– at various points, I’m left wondering if they’re just kind of skimming over time or fudging where the beat should fall.
#29: Fables 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers (tpb) – Another one of my favorite comics, in trade paperback. Wooden g-men invade the mundane world.
#30: Finding Mr. Right – I listened to this on audiobook. It’s hard to explain the concept in a minute or less. After her death, the protagonist returns to earth to try and help her best friend find a new husband (cause she, the protagonist, had been cheating with her best friend’s now-late husband). But her mission is complicated by the fact that she must do so from the form of… a Welsh corgi. It’s a really entertaining story, but the plot is pretty transparent from about a third of the way in, and you’re just along for the ride, hoping there will be some surprises on the way (there aren’t).