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,...

     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 ...