Graham, Brandon. King City.

Berkeley: Image Comics, 2012.

I’ve read a fair quantity of graphic novels over the years and I guess I’ve reached the point where I’m usually satisfied to find either a good story rendered in merely competent, minimalist art, or interesting art used to relate a merely passable story. Because I seldom find both. King City is a blazing exception.

Sidebottom, Harry. Lion of the Sun.

(Warrior of Rome, Book 3) NY: Overlook Press, 2010.

I take my history seriously so it’s always nice to find a writer of historical novels who cares enough about his craft to include another thirty-odd pages of commentary, context, discussion of original sources, and glossary at the back.

Ray, John Klingel. Jane Austen for Dummies.

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006.

I’ve read a number of the “. . . for Dummies” books (and also the “Idiot’s Guides” series) and, except for the off-puttingly stupid standard title, a perhaps surprising number of them have been above average. Unfortunately, this particular one is rather below average for the series.

Cernenko, E. V. The Scythians, 700-300 BC.

London: Osprey Publishing Co, 1983.

The Scythians were early Iron Age nomads whose range was the Pontic steppes, just north of the Black Sea. Since that’s part of Russia, it was Soviet archaeologists who first excavated the royal tombs and warriors’ barrows where most of the Scythian artifacts in existence were discovered. Because, besides horses and alcohol, they loved decorative gold work, and they were very accomplished artists.

Nakamura, Fuminori. The Thief.

NY: Soho Press, 2012.

I kind of have a thing about contemporary Japanese fiction. I don’t know why, really, but books by people like Ryu Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Natsuo Kirino, and Mitsuo Kakuta, who are very different from each other in style and subject matter, nevertheless appeal to me on a number of levels.

Fryer, Jonathan.The Great Wall of China.

South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1975.

I have a longstanding interest in military history, but since it focuses on Europe, or at least the Western world, I’ve never paid much attention to China. In rereading Keegan’s A History of Warfare, however, I came across his discussion of the military reasons behind the piecemeal construction, over a period of a thousand years or so, of the Great Wall, the most massive construction in the history of Man — roughly 4,000 miles, total.

Geary, Rick. The Saga of the Bloody Benders.

NY: NBM Comics, 2007.

Geary’s graphic documentary “Treasury of Victorian Murder” series is a guilty pleasure, the sort of thing you almost don’t want to admit you enjoy reading. They sometimes range into folklore and myth, but this volume is solidly historical, set in Labette County, Kansas, in the southeastern corner of the state, in 1870-73.

Renault, Mary. The Last of the Wine.

NY: Random House, 1956.

This was the first of Renault’s historical novels set in the classical Greek world, and it’s still arguably her best, encompassing life in Athens and in the Aegean during the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War.

Healy, Mark. New Kingdom Egypt.

(Elite series, 40) London: Osprey Publishing Co, 1992.

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve worked my way slowly through perhaps one-third of Osprey’s long, long list of small, nicely illustrated volumes of military history. Even though I’m widely read in this field, I always learn something new, and (I admit it) I enjoy studying the full-color plates of uniforms and weapons. The quality of the writing, however, does vary somewhat, and this is one of the less successful efforts.

Grossman, Anna Jane. Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By.

NY: Abrams, 2009.

I have a bright adolescent granddaughter who can’t imagine there was ever a world in which music came from flat plastic discs, or that telephones tethered you to the wall, or that a flashlight was too large to dangle from the zipper of your bookbag, or that car windows once had to be cranked up and down by hand.