The cartoonist Kate Beaton is known for her incisively funny and parodic takes on everything from Aquaman to Hamlet in her series "Hark! A Vagrant!" But earlier this year, she released her memoir "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a harrowing account of the isolating, infuriating, and at times terrifying job that Beaton took after graduating in order to pay off the $40,000 debt from her arts degree. Even as a young woman in her early 20s, Beaton is tough and confronts each conflict with wit and biting sarcasm — but when you're in an environment where men outnumber women 50 to one, that only goes so far.