Spider-Gwen: Vol. 3 Long Distance by Jason Latour (Writer, Artist), Robbi Rodriguez (Artist), Chris Visions (Artist), Rico Renzi (Colorist), VC's Clayton Cowles (Letterer), Travis Lanham (Letterer), Chris Brunner (Artist), Emi Lenox (Artist), Olivia Margraf (Artist), Annapaola Martello (Artist), James Harren (Artist), Michael Walsh (Artist), Javier Rodriguez (Artist), Alvaro Lopez (Artist), Veronica Fish (Artist), Rico Renzi (Colorist), Jordie Bellaire (Colorist), Jim Campbell (Colorist), John Rauch (Colorist), Veronica Gandini (Colorist), Tom Taylor (Writer), Marcio Takara (Artist), Mat Lopes (Colorist), and VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

In the last comic, Gwen's powers were stripped from her by Cindy-65 and agent Jesse Drew of SHIELD gave her some isotopes that will give her her powers, but she only has so many.  Frank Castle has figured out who she is and Gwen's father is arrested for aiding and abetting Spider-Gwen.  Pushed into a corner, Gwen takes the offer from the Kingpin of Crime, Matt Murdoch to defend her father and get him out of this mess--for a price.

At Thanksgiving time, Aunt Mae lets Gwen know that she knows she is Spider-Gwen and that she supports her. Gwen spends the holiday with Spiderwoman and her husband and child. Later at Christmas, she encounters ninja fighters on the rooftop and must use one of her isotopes. Who sent them and why?

This book also includes two dossiers on Aunt Mae and S.I.L.K., the Spider-Gwen Annual #1 which takes place right when she has gotten her powers and decides to use them in the wrestling ring fighting She-Hulk, a Captain America with Sam, The Watcher, a week in the life of Gwen, and an all-new Wolverine Annual #1.  While it seems jammed packed, the storyline is a little skimpy, but then it only includes issues #14 and #15. I found the art lacking a bit in some of #14 especially with the drawing of Spiderwoman.  But overall the art was good.  I can only half-heartedly recommend this book. It could have been better.  Hopefully, the next book will be an improvement.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Spider-Gwen-Vol-Long-Distance-2015-ebook/dp/B0725GZXH4/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1518787815&sr=1-6&keywords=spidergwen

Siren's Call by Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz)

Jayne Castle is the name Krentz uses for her books that take place in the future when a group of humans left earth and landed on the planet Harmony and set up a base there.  But the curtain between the planet and earth would close and these colonists would be stuck with each other, for better or worse.  Aliens had once lived on this planet long ago and left it.  They are believed to have lived underground in the catacombs that are made of some kind of green mineral.  Over the years, the humans began to develop psi abilities which allowed them to use amber to "rez up" things such as cars, microwaves, cell phones, locks, etc... Some would develop particularly strong psi talents, such as tuning amber (it has a unique frequency and if you go into the catacombs without tuned amber you will wander around until you go mad and die), read auras, handle and create "ghosts" (electrical energy that manifests in the form of a ghost) in the catacombs, music talents, botany talents, the ability to find and handle minerals, the ability to use alien technology.  The list is pretty endless. There are also dust bunnies, mysterious creatures with an endless apatite, who come and go as they please, collect the oddest things and form attachments with humans. They have the loyalty of a dog who always knows when you need him and the independent streak and the insistence that you take care of his needs first of a cat. They're adorable.

The founders also insisted on what is called a Covenant Marriage.  If you have one of these, it is nearly impossible to get out of.  You can pay to get out of one, but you will be broke by the end of it. The founders believed that close connections were important if they were going to survive. And these days no one gets out of being nagged by some family member about getting a CM, even the gays.  The founders also set up what is called a Marriage of Convenience, which was basically a classy way of saying you were shacking up with someone.  It could be broken at any time, by either party.

Ella Morgan comes from a very famous musically talented family, but her talent has been kept secret.  She is a siren.  Something that is not supposed to exist.  She has resigned herself to not marrying, as from what she has read, men either fall slavishly and obsessively in love with sirens or head for the hills as fast as they can.  So far all the men she has dated seem to be the runaway type.  Her talent allows her to see people's auras and so she has gone into the dreamwork business, which means that she helps adjust their auras while they dream.  When she goes into business for herself, her first client is a dust bunny.  She borrows a sled to go into the catacombs and follows the bunny to a cave where other dust bunnies are being held in cages and alien technology is lying around.  It appears that the bunnies are going to be used as test subjects. Ella uses her voice to melt the special glass cages and when she is confronted by the owner of the weapons, she is forced to use her voice in self-defense and kills him.

In walks, Rafe Coppersmith who is doing a consulting job for the FBPI (and Hard Joe Harding, himself, whom those who have read her early Harmony books may remember not so fondly as the glory hound who takes all the credit) and he is really not happy to find the man dead.  It has ruined the whole sting operation he had planned.  Rafe recognizes her from a news story a while back where she stopped her friend from marrying a serial killer at the last minute and then was taken hostage by the groom who suddenly had a "stroke" of some sort and ended up in the mental hospital.  He's figured out pretty quick between that story and the melted glass that she must be a siren.  However, a group of mob men are coming to buy the alien artifacts and Rafe quickly takes over the role of seller, but when things go wrong, he grabs the artifacts and touches Ella's shoulder and a blast explodes killing all the men.  Rafe's ability is to handle minerals and alien technology.  He promises to keep her secret if she'll have coffee with him.  But she does not hear back from him.

Soon after this, Lorelei, her first client, and dust bunny companion, brings her a hunk of red crystal that is worth a lot of money and Ella is able to move her business to the best neighborhood, which is good, because, in her business, people will only take you seriously if you have a fancy office to work out of.  Three months later in walks Rafe Coppersmith to ask her for a contract for her services as a music worker. The problem is, he does not look so well. Ella can tell in his aura that he has a psi fever which occurs after a burn-out when you have overloaded your talents to the point that they might never come back, you might develop an uncontrollable new talent, or go mad.  She can quickly tell that he is in control and not about to go off his rocker, but still can't help but still feel a bit peeved that she never heard back from him. She thought she had felt a real connection between them.  Of, course he has never forgotten her and he cannot tell her that his talent is gone and he has no idea what is going on with him.

The project is on the island of Rainshadow, which has a very dangerous forest preserve where people are not supposed to go into (there's a fence for a reason) and now a bizarre place dubbed Wonderland, where the aliens are believed to have first, began their bio/psi experiments with creatures, only they seemed to have failed and put the animals in stasis and their habitat was killed off.  Well, now its a land of crystal and quartz and blue energy and the animals have been awoken and they resemble dinosaurs--who now do not have anything to eat and are making their way out of Wonderland and killing people.  Coppersmith Mining wants to explore the minerals but they need to be protected from the dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs use singing to communicate and to put the put their prey into a trance.  Rafe's idea is that Ella will be able to tune their frequency to amber and provide it to the scientist to use as a repellent to the dinosaurs.

Rafe's job is to get her out of Chrystal City and to Rainshadow Island and into Coppersmith Security hands.  Ella, however, has two conditions. One is that she has to go to an important academic dinner that night that will be important to her career and two that she needs to be back by a certain date because a friend is having a covenant wedding in which she is once again the bridesmaid (it seems to be her permanent role).  Rafe explains that the reason she needs security is that there is an organization called Do Not Disturb that believes in leaving all alien things alone.  They're a bit of a low rent wack job group, but you never know.

After an interesting dinner, they leave only to be snared in what appears to be a kidnapping attempt.  With Ella's ability to melt glass, they escape the limo and hide out in an abandoned building when two more men arrive with an alien bell whose ringing does not affect Ella, but begins to make Rafe want to follow the sound.  When he holds on to Ella's hand while she sings, however, the sound is dimmed and he is able to use his stun gun to knock the two men out. He searches the men and takes all the technology they have on hand and in the process notices that they both have tornado tattoos.  He turns the matter over to the FBPI and he and Ella head out of town.

Rafe's psi burn is causing him to hallucinate again and he is beyond tired, since every time he tries to sleep he doesn't get very far before he has what he calls "waking nightmares".  Ella insists on driving and just like Rafe said, after twenty minutes the nightmare seemed to begin and he started saying a few words including "ghost city" and "sing for me siren". So she began to sing and patched up his aura a bit and he went into a peaceful sleep and stayed there for the next three hours until they got to the airstrip. Rafe cannot believe what has happened; he can finally sleep again. Ella is worried though.  Ghost City is a legendary place where treasure supposedly lies and the few people who are said to have found it has come back mad.  Eventually, Rafe will tell her that he was sent by his father on this expedition right after meeting her and he ended up in a psi storm, which will basically kill you.  To escape, he dove into a crystal pool.  In his dreams, he sees a place, but he does not believe it is real.  He grabs a piece of grey mineral and with that is able to walk right through the storm and back to the team. Ella tells him he is coming into a new power and that the hallucinations are really visions that are a part of his new talent somehow.

Someone on the island takes shots at Ella's window on her first night and a body is discovered.  He is a member of DND.  But there are others on the island and something larger may be going on.  Coppersmith may be compromised.  It appears there are people working for them who are really in the employ of others.

Rafe finally takes Ella into Wonderland with a team to find a dinosaur and see what she can do.  Quickly she is able to find the harmonic of their song and tune it to the amber.  It is given to the scientists who believe that they might even be able to hunt them now.  It's over and now Ella can go, but Rafe realizes he's not ready for her to go. But Ella has a covenant wedding to go to and of course, Rafe will follow her.  Along the way, he will have to figure out how to use his new talent, even if he does think it is stupid and useless.

Ella keeps insisting that men just don't want to make a commitment to someone like her, but as you will realize, she does an awful lot of pushing away.  Rafe, meanwhile, can be the typical man at times: I've lost my talent (manhood) I am not a real man and not worthy of someone like Ella.  But you know they are made for each other if for the only fact that he can listen to her sing and not be affected by it.  His talent makes him immune in some ways.   The twist at the end (there always is one) was unexpected for me. I went one way, the book went another, so I was pleasantly surprised.  I really enjoyed this book. The banter between the two was sharp and witty and the woman rescued herself for a change.  Ella can and does take care of herself, but as the song goes "she gets by with a little help from her friends".  This is a wonderful addition to the Harmony series, which you do not need to read in order, by the way.

Quotes

Men are remarkably oblivious about a lot things, provided the sex is good.

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 45)

Oh, shut up, I’m not upset, I’m stone-cold furious.  There’s a difference.

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 126)

“A music talent who does dream analysis, remember? The reason I’m good at dreamwork is because music energy travels on the currents of dreamlight.”

“I didn’t know that,” Rafe said.

“Not many people, including the researchers, have figured it out. But for me, it’s obvious. I see the connection every day in my work. Think about it—music takes a  direct paranormal path to the senses.  It can give you chills or make you cry or induce a kind of euphoria or a sense of transcendence—all without having to be interpreted by logic and reason. Just like dreams.

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 135-6)

Why couldn’t I just have normal hallucinations like normal, ordinary psychos?

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 224)

“Does it occur to you that all we ever do when we go out is run from bad guys?”

“One of these days we’ll do coffee.  I swear it.”

“Promises, promises.”

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 229)

Carbs and caffeine—two of the basic food groups.

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p250)

Wonderland and the Preserve and the Rainforest are all dangerous places. Heck, the catacombs are dangerous.  Since when has danger ever stopped people from investigating secrets? Humans seem to be on an endless quest.  Probably something in our DNA.

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 309)

“You ready to sleep yet?”

“No. You?”

“No. Still pretty rezzed.”

“Me, too.”

“I can think of one way we could take the edge off.”

“You’re talking about us having sex?”

“The thought did occur to me.”

“To take the edge off.”

“Sex can be very relaxing.”

“You and I have never had relaxing sex.”

“I know. We should probably try it sometime. But tonight I’m fine with our regular sex.”

--Jayne Castle (Siren’s Call p 310)

Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Call-Rainshadow-Book-4-ebook/dp/B00QH8324K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518614514&sr=8-1&keywords=sirens+call+jayne+castle

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

This book gets its title from the Martin Luther King Jr. quotation "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way."  Ruth Jefferson was raised by a mother who worked her ass off as a maid to a very rich family and she raised her daughter to do "small things in a great way".  She pushed her daughter to succeed academically and she got scholarships to go to private schools. Her sister Rachael, not so book smart, went to school in Harlem. Rachel had friends, while Ruth really didn't. Ruth was light skinned and Racheal was dark skinned. Rachael always accused Ruth of trying to fit into the white world and forgetting where she came from.  Ruth would go on to get a degree in nursing from Yale and get a job at Mercy-General Hospital in Vermont.  Ruth is a war widow with a teenage son, Edison who is preparing for college.  She's saving money from her job as a labor and delivery nurse to help pay for it.  

Then one day she goes into the room of a woman, Brit Bauer who had recently delivered a baby boy, to come in and give it an exam and try to get it to start breastfeeding.  She senses some tension in the room and the parents are discussing something angrily when she takes the child over to the table to examine him. When she goes to try to get the child to breastfeed, the father, Turk, explodes and demands to see her supervisor. When her supervisor arrives he tells her he does not want a black person touching his child or wife.  Marie, her supervisor, buckles under the pressure of this man and puts a note in the file that no African Americans are to touch the child. And Ruth happens to be the only African American working on the floor. 

Ruth is highly upset about this, of course. She's their top nurse and has been there for twenty years and to be told she cannot do her job based on her skin color?   Then when Ruth is taking a break during a double shift, the Bauer baby is wheeled into where she is. He has just had his circumcision. Corrine the nurse watching him when suddenly she has to go to do an emergency c-section with Marie in tow leaving Ruth the only person to watch over the Bauer baby.  Suddenly he goes into respiratory failure and Ruth is confronted with a dilemma of whether or not to risk her job and her license by touching the child and going against orders.  She does but stops when Marie comes in and says she was doing nothing so she wouldn't get in trouble. A code is called and Ruth does compressions.  The Bauers hear the code and come into the room to see Ruth touching their child and then see their child die.  

The Bauers would seek to have Ruth charged with first-degree murder and negligent homicide due to her hatred of them and the belief that she did nothing when the baby went into distress.  It is believed that she deliberately compressed down too hard injuring the baby.  Ruth will get a public defender, Kennedy McQuarrie, a white woman whom she must try to learn to trust and somehow get her to understand her world and what it means to be black. Kennedy does not want to play the "race card" in the courtroom because you cannot win that way, but Ruth demands it because she wants to have her say.  Can these two women find a common ground?

This book is told through the eyes of Ruth, Kennedy, and Turk. It's hard reading the Turk parts because some of it is so vile in its racist rants and actions. But you also see the Turk who loves his wife and his dead son whom he is mourning just like any parent.   Kennedy at the beginning suffers from the "white knight" syndrome and thinks she's the least racist person she knows, but she will learn to see race differently as the book progresses.  Ruth learns to accept help from others and perhaps trust others.  

This book will have you examine your own views on racism. It doesn't just come in the obvious packages like Turk Bauer's skinhead.  It comes from the storeowner following you or demanding to see a receipt just because you are a person of color.  It's noticing that there is one person of color in your office but not ever asking why.  This is a powerful book that examines all sides fully and shines a light on something Americans like to avoid talking about: race.

Quotes

I fold my arms and stare down at the newborn. Babies are such blank states.  They don’t come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don’t like. They don’t come into this world with anything really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 102)

I pound this stranger into someone who will never be recognized, since it’s the only way to remember who I am.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 166)

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Maybe however much you’ve loved someone, that’s how much you can hate. It’s like a pocket turned inside out.

-Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things p 685)

 Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Small-Great-Things-Jodi-Picoult-ebook/dp/B01AQNYZ3I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518445906&sr=8-1&keywords=great+small+things+by+jodi+picoult

Black Panther Volumer 4: Avengers of the New World Part One by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Writer), Wilfredo Torres (Penciler, Inker), Chris Sprouse (Penciler), Jacen Burrows (Penciler, Inker), Adam Gorham (Penciler, Inker), Terry Pallot (Inker), Walden Wong (Inker), Karl Story (Inker), Dexter Vines (Inker), Laura Martin (Colorist), Andrew Crossley (Colorist), and VC's Joe Sabino (Letterer)

"In the aftermath that set change against tradition, the nation against their king and even the living against the dead...Wakanda must rebuild."  With the arrest of Tetu, one of the rebellion leaders, the air has been let out of the rebellion.  The entire country is hoping to put this whole thing behind them and move forward as one nation.  T'Challa starts this process by calling together a council of new representatives from each region to write a new constitution and enact a new government.  When he cannot be there in the council meetings his mother, Ramonda acts in his stead.

T'Challa is talking with Ororo about something that has him worried. The Wakandian gods, the Orisha, including Bast, the Panther Goddess from which he derives his powers from, seem to be missing.  When the rebellion was going on and they fought the ancestors rose up to fight with them, but the Orisha were mysteriously absent and T'Challa isn't the only one who noticed that.

On top of that, the rains won't stop in Birnin Kashin. There is also a door that has opened there where half snake half man creatures called Simbi, have come out of. Black Panther killed them off, but when he did one of them said that it was useless that the "Originators" were returning.  While the door is open more of these creatures can come through.  Worse, more doors are opening across Wakanda and when the shamans tried to close it by praying to the Orisha, they were struck down dead.

While T'Challa seeks out an ancient sorcerer who might be able to help them, Doctor Faustus, the explorer of minds, is hiding out in the enemy nation of Wakanda, Azania, looking to grab a Wakandian citizen to work on.  And he has just the perfect one picked out.  This comic takes the story of Wakanda into a new and refreshing territory.  The scenes with Storm are incredible to see. They crackle with the vibrancy of her personality in the drawings and colors depicted.  This is a fabulous book and I can't wait for Part II to come out where Coates takes the story to next.

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/gp/buy/thankyou/handlers/display.html?ie=UTF8&asins=B06XKJ8BSM&asins=B077R8VKBC&isRefresh=1&orderId=114-0068156-3523432&purchaseId=106-3855976-0529053&viewId=ThankYouCart

All New X-Men: Vol. 2 Here to Stay by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), David Marquez (Artist), Stuart Immonen (Penciler), wade Von Grawbadger (Inker), Marte Garcia (Colorist), VC's Cory Petit (Letterer)

In this X-Men's series, Scarlet Witch took away the powers of 99% of all mutants on earth.  The Phoenix decided to get involved and possessed and corrupted Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men who then struck down Professor Xavier. It took all of the Avengers and the X-Men to bring him down.  The Phoenix Force was dispersed across earth creating new mutants. Cyclops, with Emma Frost and Magneto, have joined forces to start recruiting mutants for the new Charles Xavier School for Mutants.  At the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, Kitty Pryde, Beast, Iceman, and Storm are concerned about this as no one has ever trusted Magneto and now they aren't sure about Scott after what happened to the Professor.  They would, of course, rather have these mutants under their roof learning.

It goes without saying that in this world the law and others like them want to lock up mutants. Beast, however, has another plan to try to change things.  He finds a way to go back in time to when he and Scott were just starting out as X-Men in order to bring back the past Scott to see his future self in order to prevent him from becoming that.  Like a Christmas Carol in a weird, yet cool way.  Only it all goes awry when all of the X-Men insists on coming too. Back then Jean didn't have her telepathic abilities yet and more importantly, she's still alive.  Neither side knows what to make of the other when they arrive back in the present.  Jean's psychic powers become suddenly activated and she has to figure out how to use them herself on the fly.

Kitty Pryde helps Jean begin to learn how to use her powers and boy does she. Some would say she might be abusing her powers. Kitty also gets the old X-Men and begins to train them in combat.  Warren Worthington III meets up with Angel, his adult counterpart and goes on a mission with him which leaves him shell-shocked. 

Meanwhile, Scott has left the mansion with Wolverine in pursuit. He comes across Mystique who tells him half-truths and sows dissent into his head in order to try to keep the X-Men busy battling themselves so she, Sabertooth, and Lady Mastermind can do what they need to do in peace.  When Scott gets back to the mansion he feels as though he is not the leader of the team, just like Mystique predicted.

This stunning book ends on a real cliffhanger that will have you asking "who?"  Bendis really comes through with the writing as always and Marquez's art is incredible especially with the hallucination sequences.  Garcia does an amazing job with the color bringing in dark reds for the X-Men and Mystique fight scenes but keeping it light and airy for the scenes with Angel. I really loved this comic even better than the previous one and with that ending, I can't wait to read the next one.   

Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/All-New-X-Men-Vol-Here-Stay-ebook/dp/B00EAROYSI/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1518009496&sr=8-6&keywords=all+new+xmen

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah, comedian, and host of The Daily Show, has written a powerful book about his life growing up in South Africa as it moved away from Apartheid.  Trevor's father was a white Swiss and his mother was a black Xhosa. Either one could have gone to jail for five years if it was found out that they had had sex with each other and Trevor was proof of that, so he was kept hidden indoors throughout most of his early childhood.  If his mother wanted to go to the park she asked a colored woman to walk beside him while she walked behind them.

Under Apartheid the government separated people into categories: white, black, colored, and Indian.  The colored were a mix of decedents of whites and native slaves.  They were treated as second-class citizens in order to sow discontent amongst the races. It was like they could almost be white, and sometimes you could actually go down to an office and have your race changed to white if you looked white enough. At the same time, you could be colored and have it changed to black just as easily.  Some blacks would be able to get changed to colored or Indian.  Which goes to show how arbitrary the system was.  Now, Trevor wasn't colored. He was mixed race. The coloreds did not accept him. But he found he could fit in with the whites a little bit, but he felt most comfortable with the blacks especially since he knew several different languages that they spoke, even though English was the first language he learned first.

Trevor was always an outsider wherever he went due to the color of his skin and therefore it was hard to make friends.  He was also a troublemaker from the first. He received plenty of hidings from his mother for the things that she knew about but there were plenty of things he did that she didn't know about.  Very intelligent, and out to make a buck, he used his speed to get to the lunch truck at school as an advantage by taking orders for a price. That snowballed into other ventures such as CD pirating when he got his computer and a friend gave him a CD writer when he no longer needed it.  Ever the entrepreneur he and his crew saw ways to capitalize on this and expand out into other venues.

His relationship with his mother is a close one and she is a no-nonsense woman who applied for a job as a secretary when companies were just starting to hire blacks for such positions as token jobs while Apartheid was ending.  She also lived in a white neighborhood at a time when you just didn't do that.  A very religious woman she made Trevor go to three churches on Sunday: the mixed church, the white church, and the black church.  Then there was prayer meeting during the week. He only got Friday and Saturday off. If a special prayer was needed to be said at prayer meeting they asked Trevor to say it since he spoke English and was considered white by the blacks of the prayer groups and they believed that God would really listen to the prayers spoken in the language the bible came to South Africa in and that since Jesus was white.

Trevor's mom would eventually marry a mechanic named Abel who would drink too much and become mean. The thing was he would only hit them every year or so so the abuse was enough for you to fear it will happen again, but not enough to actually leave.  She went to the cops about the abuse but they refused to press charges.  Abel had ideas about how a woman should be, mainly subservient.  Trevor's free-spirited independent mother did not fit that bill no matter how hard he tried to beat her into that cage she refused to go into it.  She would have two sons by him, Andrew and Isaac and they would keep her from leaving him for a long time.

This was an amazing book and a real eye-opener to life in South Africa during the time period when Apartheid was ending.  It's also a look at race and race relations that holds some truths that can be found in America too.  Trevor Noah has lived an incredible life and this well-written book is a testament to his sense of ingenuity and survival instincts and the love a mother for her son and a son for his mother.  This book is a must-read.   

Quotes

And it [black church] lasted forever, three or four hours at least, which confused me because white church was only like an hour—in and out, thanks for coming.  But at black church I would sit there for what felt like an eternity, trying to figure out why time moved so slowly. Is it possible for time to actually stop?  If so, why does it stop at black church and not at white church? I eventually decided black people needed more time with Jesus because we suffered more.

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p 8)

“Wathint’Abafazi wathint’imbokodo!” was the chant they would rally to during the freedom struggle. “When you strike a woman you strike a rock.”

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p39)

Learn from your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p66)

A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicycle but with emotions.

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p97)

The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p253)

In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it—what it means.  As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing. “Well, that was shameful, now wasn’t it?”  In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way.  We aren’t taught judgment or shame.  We were taught history the way it’s taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.” It was the same for us. “Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s move on.” Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had been given a mandate, “Whatever you do, don’t make the kids angry.”

-Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood p183)

Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Born-Crime-Stories-African-Childhood/dp/0399588175/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517836321&sr=8-1&keywords=born+a+crime

Wonder Woman The New 52!: Vol. 3 Iron by Brian Azzarello (Writer), Cliff Chiang (Artist), Tony Akins (Artist), Dan Green (Artist), Goran Sudzuka (Artist), Amilcar Pinna (Artist), Rick Burchett (Artist), Matthew Wilson (Colorist), Nick Filardi (Colorist), and Jared K. Fletcher (Letterer)

In the last books, Hermes has taken off with Zola's baby, the one everyone believes will take Zeus's place and kill one of the gods for the prophecy says that a child of Zeus will do just that.  The other gods are looking to stop Wonder Woman because they believe she may be the one the prophecy pertains to.  Hera has lost her powers and her place in Olympus and has found a place with Wonder Woman and Lennox, her brother.

Lennox decides that they need help from other children of Zeus like themselves to help in their fight to find Zola's baby.  One such child is Siracca, the wind, who hears everything and might be able to hear Hermes speak and find out where he is hiding. But she isn't too fond of Wonder Woman right now and the two must work something out if she is to get the information from her that she needs.

Siracca isn't the only child of Zeus that they consult. When they consult the other one they meet an unusual man.  Meanwhile, in Antarctica, a man has been unearthed by scientists from the ice and he is not happy that seven thousand years had passed since he last walked the earth.  War is also up to something and can't be trusted.  The colors of the ice dragons' blood are quite vivid and the scene with Siracca is incredibly done in such a windswept way.  As usual, the scenes with the gods are tinged with red, to perhaps indicating their bloodlust?  I really enjoyed this volume of the series and it stands up well against the other two.  I can't wait to see what's in store for the next one.

 Link to Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Woman-Vol-3-Iron/dp/1401246079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517584583&sr=8-1&keywords=wonder+woman+new+52+vol+3&dpID=61gKhWd7SxL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch