Lara

Lara is an illustrator and comic artist who slings books, flings paint, and shuffles soles. Find her at Elliott Bay or anywhere rugs are cut.
Reviews & Recommendations

Hoffer dissects the socioeconomic and emotional conditions that spawn mass movements and forge fanatics. Focused, forceful, and free of judgement, this brilliant little book was written in the '50s but is essential reading for every era.

Thoughtful and tender without going sticky sweet, these tales console and delight at any age. I return to Jansson's tales time and again as reminders to treasure solitude, indulge curiosity, and accept the love that people are able to give. Let's be little creatures together!

Almost unbearably beautiful. The temptation is to tumble headlong into the ever lovely, ever necessary "Duino Elegies" but consider stopping for the subtle grandeur of "Autumn Day" or passing a little while in the Jardin des Plantes with the muscular fury of "The Panther". Galway Kinnell's poetic voice with Hannah Liebmann's native ear combine to conjure my very favorite translation of this truly essential poet.

Just look at that cover—delightful! Detailed descriptions and lush photographs are excellent identification aids for new explorers in the mushroom kingdom, while interspersed vignettes, harangues, recipes, and quotes from a mix of mycophiles livens up the read. Inspores! Inspires!

Witness two (three?) small beings caught in a vast cosmic mechanism. Fate! Longing! What does it mean to be whole? Who can complete us? Mazzuchelli's words and pictures are precise, sophisticated, and intentional in every detail. A masterpiece.

Set aside a full afternoon to read this book because it will mess you up. The deliberately dingy color schemes and missing pieces put me in a state of frustration and paranoia. Drnaso's book begins in the aftermath of a murder and spins out into the questions of our time: Is our media just a vehicle for hysteria? What is truth? Is personal tragedy doomed to drown in a sea of sociopolitical agendas? Brace yourself for Sabrina.

With bold, sensitive linework and a keen ear for dialogue, Davis captures scenes of playful intimacy and sobering violence that squeeze the heart and punch the guts. If Drnaso's Sabrina expressed the paranoia and alienation of 2018, The Hard Tomorrow nails the confusion, hope, and heartbreak of 2020. Required reading!

"No one can serve two masters
like we can, be future
and what they threatened to forget,
be Richard Pryor Live on Sunset
and be the sunset. Kiss the ground,
burn it to the ground" (pg. 72)
These are heat-seeking missile poems, rich with radio thrum and wine-damp with sorrow.
Brutal and funny and complicated.

Who's got a bossy older brother, a tricky pet monkey, and a well-developed sense of adventure? Akissi! Follow our fierce and funny protagonist as she hunts down big trouble in her little west African village. Jokes! Snakes! Capes! Parasites! Soccer! Hijinks! (For a grown-up follow-up try Aya: Life in Yop City).