The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 by Brian Froud (and others)

The full blog title should be The Dark Crytal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 by Brian Froud, Brian Holguin, Alex Sheikman, and Lizzy John. But that was a lot of people to list in the title, so here it is.



My parents bought me this one for my birthday. They've been slowly building my Brian Froud collection over the years because I've enjoyed every book he's been involved with. It's pretty complete by now, which really surprised me because I hadn't heard of the Dark Crystal Creation Myths.



This one's a graphic novel. I saw graphic novel mostly because this thing is a hardcover book, but it's not a lengthy volume. It's about as thick as a Sandman volume, but the panels are much larger for the scope of the world of the Dark Crystal. There's a lot of full-page/most-page panels with some really beautiful illustrations. The stories are mainly focused on Ogra and the people around her, which is a delight. If you like The Dark Crystal and want to learn more about the time before the crystal shattered, you should definitely have a look at this book.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

A book post!

I recently read through Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I went through a Crichton phase at the end of high school where I just read Crichton books until my brain couldn't deal with it anymore, but Jurassic Park didn't end up on my list. I have no idea why. There were definitely copies of it in the library, but I skipped over them.

This is a great book. I think my experience reading it was affected by being familiar with the movies and, I will admit, that I ended up rewatching the first two movies in the middle of this book because I kept getting the theme stuck in my head. While I do enjoy the movies, I really liked this book by the time I finished it. I was impatient with the set up when I first started it, but I think this ends up being a better story by the end.

A lot more of the island is explored during the book and I really enjoyed the behavioral observations and experiences with the dinosaurs. There was some especially interesting observations of the T-Rex, which made parts of the movie actually make more sense to me. Also, the luxury of time with books explains the mutation and adaptation of the dinosaurs in a much more comprehensive way. The socio-political climate in the book, which wasn't really explored in the movies, added another interesting layer to the whole thing.

I really liked this book. It expanded the whole world of Jurassic Park, but it didn't ruin the movies for me, which was really nice. Sometimes it's hard to really like the book and the movies at the same time, but that isn't the case with this one for me.


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Cat Hoodies and Scoundrels

1. Cat Hoodie

You know, I never thought I would be one of those people forcing his pets into clothes. I blame Audrey. Because, frankly, she's adorable in costumes and sweaters and loves trotting around in them, so The Gabbers will dress her up whenever. Who doesn't love a corgi wearing a Batman cape?

So my poor cat is an old man. He's about... 17? Ish? He was a stray that we took in when my brother was in preschool and that brother turned 21 this past fall, so he's been around for a long time. And he's had some thyroid issues over the past couple years, when ended up costing him more than half of his body weight. He was eating regularly again and putting on some pudge, but he's been sick again, so he lost that. So he gets cold very easily and not just the normal cat need to be on top of anything warm. I mean, sometimes he shivers when he's cuddling up to Mom because she doesn't give off as much body heat as Dad or I do.

Mom told me to make him a sweater to see if he would wear it. So I did.


He doesn't stay in it for very long if he's walking around and he hates the process of putting it on, but he's pretty content to wear it when he's taking a nap on someone's lap. He definitely recognizes it as something his. He gets annoyed when we pick it up off the floor and if someone leaves it on the couch, he will curl up on top of it.

Pattern: Cat Hoodies
Needle: US 7 - 4.5 mm
Yarn: Merry Little Lamb Handspun in Sage/Iron; Palmer Family Farm grey


2. Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn

I've missed finishing books and writing about them, but I don't think I'm going back to the video reviews. Those ended up feeling too much like work and I wasn't really having fun anymore. One of these days I will make a video on that channel to explain, but I mean... I haven't done a book review in about a year.

So I'm going to write about them hear, instead.

Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn is a Star Wars book set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. It looks into some of the shenanigans that Han Solo gets into in the time between those two movies.

This book is a lot of fun, actually. It's basically a heist starring our favourite smuggler and copilot. Han and Chewie are approached to steal some coded credit chips, so they put together a team of thieves, hackers, pilots, and con men to break into a vault owned by a high profile official with ties to Black Sun. It's a pretty straightforward book, which I think is precisely what my brain needed after Christmas, but the plans put into place and the adjustments made due to unforeseen complications keep it interesting. Like any heist story, there's plenty of clever gadgets and secret identities and witty banter among the team. I really enjoyed it.

If anyone's interested in picking it up, familiarizing yourself with Black Sun and where it operates in the Star Wars universe might be helpful, but it's been ages since I read anything which involved Black Sun in great detail and I wasn't confused by any of the political talk.


My next book is The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, so stay tuned if you'd like to hear about that one.