Back to the BoB reading! This one is off the Great Graphic Novels list and is a very quick read. Anya is a high school student from Russia. She’s only got one friend, has a crush from afar on a golden boy, and is a bit embarrassed by her family’s Russian-ness. She no longer has an accent, but her mom still does, her last name is still long, and it seems that her mom likes them to be part of the Russian community. So while Anya is feeling a bit woe-is-me she falls down an abandoned well and is totally freaked out to discover not only an old skeleton, but also the ghost that goes with it. During her two days stuck in the well the ghost befriends her and tells her sad story about how she ended up in the well 90 years ago and died. Once Anya is rescued and goes home she finds out that having a little piece of the skeleton with her the ghost has accompanied her. Now she has a new friend! But….not quite. At this point I thought the story was going to be all about solving her murder and Anya having a sincerely great new friend. However, the ghost is not quite as friendly and nice and altruistic as she made herself out to be and now Anya is dying to get rid of her.
This was a totally enjoyable ghost story-not too scary at all. My oddly favorite part may have been the visit to the microfilm room at the library and the incredibly accurate drawing of a microfilm reader and how to thread the film in to read old newspapers. Brought me right back to my very first library job days 
When I got to the end I saw that the publisher was First Second–I should have guessed it. I pretty much love any graphic novel they put out!
Archive for Graphic Novel
Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
Sidescrollers by Matthew Loux
Making great progress with the YALSA Best of the Best Reading Challenge! Another one of the Great Graphic Novels Top Ten list and again, a quick read. It seems like cheating! I have to say that I really liked this and for someone like me who likes graphic novels but will not invest a lot of time into finding ones I like, using the list is super handy.
This is about a bunch of recent high school grads who are buddies and play a lot of video games*, have crushes on girls, hate an obnoxious football guy, and are afraid of a cat. It was super funny and I liked the frienship between the guys. I loved the drawing style of their arms–looked like they were zipping around everywhere. And in this one day they do zip around a lot all to go to a show, get a girl, get back at a guy.
There were a couple of minor characters who two guys who play pranks and make mischief and not only acted like, but also were drawn to totally look like Jay (from Jay and Silent Bob.)
My favorite part may have been when one of the guys says, “hey you, get your damn hands off her!” which, as everyone should know, is from Back to the Future.
*just read in the Goodreads description “tranquil laziness.” Yes, that is apt.
I Love Him to Pieces (My Boyfriend is a Monster #1) by Evonne Tsang & Janina Gorreson
This comic is a pretty quick read-it’s quite short. I loved it! I’m unclear if this is a series (as the #1 would indicate) and if so are the other volumes about the same characters? On the one hand, I hope so because I really liked the main characters and secondary characters and would like to see more of them (it would almost seem a waste to have established their stories and then only use them in this short book), but on the other hand this ended very satisfactorily and there’s really no definite need for more.
The basic story is that Dicey and Jack are classmates and over the course of an assignment together they become close and attracted to each other. On their first real date Jack gets a call from his CDC scientist parents that an outbreak of a virus has hit their town. The virus is brain eating and spread by biting-so basically zombies. Now, I can’t stand the zombie ouvre (exceptions: Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead) because they are a)gross and b)scary and c)it pretty much seems like once zombie plagues hit it’s all over. Jack and Dicey team together and are pretty kick ass fighters.
Here are the things I liked and thought made this a totally standout book:
Dicey is an athlete and Jack is a nerd. Not only is Dicey a jock, but she is also the only female player on her school’s baseball team.
Dicey’s friendship and relationship with the guys on her team.
Jack’s friendship with the guys he plays D&D with.
Dicey’s happy family life with her dad and little brother (except the part about her mom being dead.)
The sound the zombies make is “GUH”. Which struck me as very funny.
What was so especially nice about all those things mentioned above is that they seemed very naturally and easily established. They weren’t big storylines-they just were. And I just thought it was a really nice story.
(OK, according to Goodreads My Boyfriend is a Monster is a series and there are four of them, and they are each individual stories.)
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld
On Sunday mornings I love listening to Weekend Edition (WeeSun), especially the puzzle with Will Shortz, and if we leave the radio on, we also enjoy On the Media with Brooke Gladstone very much. Last year her book was plugged quite a bit and I bought it for Paul for Christmas. Would you believe that with all the advertising for it I somehow didn’t realize it is in graphic novel format?? Paul read it fairly quickly and liked it (his review is here), but I was just prompted to read it now as part of the YALSA Best of the Best Reading Challenge. Until I opened the book I assumed it was an Alex Award winner, and didn’t realize it was Best of the Best because it was a Top Ten Great Graphic Novels title!
This was really impressive and great. Perhaps because I have listened to On the Media so much I felt like I could really hear Brooke’s voice coming through on every page. I loved the drawing style and how she was inserted into all the pictures. And the information? Well, it was amazing. I wish all my history texts in school had been just like this. She covers so much history, politics, and history of the media and what it is and how society interacts with it and how it works and reflects society and influences politics and everything else–it’s really fascinating! Unfortunately it also left me feeling completely distrustful of the government and politics and the general public.
Definitely recommended.
Wandering Son, Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako
Though I’ve read and enjoyed many graphic novels, manga is not something I’ve read before. I read this as part of both the YALSA Best of the Best Reading Challenge (#5, 1/5 of the way there!), as well as something for the Out of Our Comfort Zones podcast series I do with another contributor for The Hub. I’ll put up a link when it’s done, but for now here are my initial responses to this book.
It pains me to admit this, but I had a really hard time with the manga format. It shouldn’t be that hard for me to just read in another direction, should it? But I had to deliberately think on every single page, “Which box do I read next?” and sometimes I read the bottom panel in both directions and then figured it out. Or read all the boxes and then let it sift into my brain all at once. Which is clearly not the smoothest way to read a story or the way the author expects her story to be told. I also had a tremendous difficulty keeping people’s names straight. Fortunately I consistently knew who the two main characters were, but to be honest I really had no idea who any of the other characters were. Based on the fascinating afterword about the translation and the use of Japanese honorifics, I can only assume that many references to gender went flying over my head since I was never really sure which was the boy’s and which was the girl’s name.
Despite all that, I thought it was a lovely story. A young adolescent boy and girl are friends and they each wish they were the other sex. This volume seemed to focus more on the boy wanting to be a girl and getting to wear some girls’ clothing. It seemed very sensitive and nice, but again I’m sorry to say that I think I may have totally missed some of the drama that was experienced. And I couldn’t tell if their classmates were teasing them or not.
It’s rare for me to struggle so with a story and I really feel like it’s a big failure on my part. I noticed the library had volume 2 in, so I think I’ll try that and see if I do a little better with more practice.
Thor the Mighty Avenger (Vol. 1) by Roger Langridge
I really liked this, though I was a little confused when, after the first three issues, the rest of the book was two issues of a clearly old fashioned Thor. I couldn’t figure out their inclusion, though afterward the back of the book said they were original Thor stories. I definitely liked this newer Thor, especially when his friends show up and take him out for a bit of fun. Oh, and I was also confused about what Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde is doing in the story.
This is volume one and it and volume 2 are on the Top 10 GGN list. I suppose I can’t technically check it off until I get my hands on volume 2….
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites by Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson
I read this for our Hub post Outside Our COmfort Zones. Definitely outside my comfort zone-I found the gory bits really unsettling, especially because they involved animals. That said, I liked the stories and found it all very Buffy-like.
Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci
A sequel to Plain Janes. This time all the Janes have matters of the heart to contend with. But what I really liked best is what I liked in the other story, too–that the Janes have banded together to make public art. In their town the mean police chief sees them as troublemakers and vandals, but the Janes are determined to continue to bring art and beauty into everyday life. This time one of them makes the bold step of applying for a grant to make the art happen in a legal way.
Level Up by Gene Luen Yang
Man, this was another great graphic novel by Gene Yang. Dennis is an Asian American whose parents have very high doctor expectations for him. He would prefer to be a master video gamer, and is in fact, awesome at video games. (By the way, this is yet another graphic novel that Paul and I enjoyed reading together. Here’s his much more thorough and timely and well remembered review.) As he struggles with expectations and his sense of self four angels appear to help him out.
The art complements the story and together with the words this is a beautiful story dealing with some very serious themes. This is my favorite type of graphic novel, and I’d pair it with Same Difference in terms of my favorites.
Same Difference by Derek Kirk Kim
This was a new-to-me graphic novel, that actually came out a while ago to huge acclaim. In fact, self published and then won an Eisner award and then got picked up by First Second (I think that’s the story.) Anyway, it was an absolute treasure. Only criticism? I want more! Here’s Paul’s much more thorough review of it. You should just read his review because a) It’s very thorough in both summary and response b)I’m trying to plow through my posts and don’t want to take the time to write something lengthy c)We both felt the same way about it!
