Elliot for Christmas got Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer, an interesting noir homage graphic novel, set in the 1940s Hollywood and Pacific Theater.  If you are my age and a certain  income class you probably read a lot of Feiffer cartoons and comics during your childhood.

Another Christmas present was Patience, by Daniel Clowes, who apparently lives just up the road in Oakland.  A good read; science fiction, time travel, melancholia, wasted lives, and that one chance.

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a strange tale out of South Korea.  Not well-crafted enough to be high literature, at least not in the English translation, it is still an interesting novel.  It is short, so you lose little by giving it a try.  Has little to do with being a vegetarian, and everything to do with maintaining a coherent identity as a person over time, once the absurdity of our consciousness of consciousness starts to infect your brain.