Comic Book Sabbath

     Unlike my list of 9 top films from 2019, I have no intention of keeping my book list confined by what was published in 2019. There are a few reasons for this, but the major one is that I just don't read that way. Like many of my bookish friends out there, I have a TBR (To Be Read) pile. It is a enormous list of books that I want to read, and realistically, will never get through all of. New books come along, interests diverge, goals for my reading suddenly shift, and some I just forget about. I'm certain that I will die with at least one book that is on my TBR pile right now, still sitting on that list waiting. Also, 2019 was one of those years where I had specific goals in my reading.      After finishing up my last sections of Comics as Lit at Pima Community College, I realized there was a major gap in my knowledge base. Most of the students I had been getting over the last couple of years may not have known mush about comics from the US and Europe, but many had a deep

     It's time to start that oh so important retrospective of 2019. To begin with, I thought I would start with movies. The main reason to start here is, first: movies are probably the only one of these lists that I am going to completely confine to things that came out in 2019. And second: I just didn't see as many movies as usual this last year. Making a list was kind of easy.      2019 was definitely the year of movies falling off my radar. As I went through lists to remind myself what was actually released this year (did you know a Spider-Man movie came out in 2019?), I realized there were a lot of movies I was very excited to see, but if I hadn't rushed out to the theater on opening weekend, they suddenly didn't exist, (did you know a Star Wars movie came out last week?...or was it the week before...see what I mean). So movies I was really amped for like The Kitchen and The Lighthouse , seemed to suddenly disappear from theaters only to have screens filled with s