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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3199 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

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So, what are you reading?

I'm on Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar. The writing is smooth and the character is great, though still hoping it will be more than just entertaining.

I just finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I have to say it is nearly perfect as a book, for me. It's the perfect mix of literary, philosophical, enough action to keep moving, enough sex to be fun without becoming grating or disgusting. The length is perfect, it doesn't drag beyond the material, and at no point was I reading just to get the book over with, but it's a sufficient length to explore a lot of ideas and really dig into the characters. It's obviously political, but not overbearing. It's about a time and a place but it is timeless, it neither holds your hand explaining things nor requires so much background that you need a history degree to get it.

I'm probably going to go back to Tolstoy for a few hundred more pages. Get at least to the start of the second war.

REQUEST: What are great graphic novels I should read? I've read and enjoyed Watchmen and V for Vendetta in the past, and read Tezuka's Buddha last year and found it to be as such a book goes very fun. I read some manga as a tween, but never got really into it, kinda feel like it's something I should explore, now that I live in a world where I could get that from a library or get it off LibGen.

I've read and enjoyed Watchmen and V for Vendetta in the past

I recently re-read Moore's From Hell (a fictionalised account of the Jack the Ripper murders) and think it's superior to both (if admittedly a lot slower), so check that out next. As noted by @fishtwanger below, try to find the edition with all the notes in the back. The notes offer interesting insights into Moore's creative process and demonstrates just what an exhaustively researched work From Hell is.

  • With the exception of his earlier Optic Nerve comics (which are "promising" rather than "good"), I cannot recommend anything by Adrian Tomine highly enough. Marvellously funny and sad slice-of-life stories about modern America, which often provide a penetrating insight into the Asian-American experience. Particularly recommend Shortcomings.
  • Charles Burns's Black Hole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_(comics)) is so absorbing that I read it in one sitting. A wholly unique blend of 70s nostalgia, teen angst and Cronenbergian body horror.
  • Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)) is a fascinating memoir about growing up in Iran after the Ayatollah came to power (later adapted into an animated film by Satrapi herself, also well worth checking out).
  • Blankets by Craig Thompson. Read it years ago and can't remember it in detail, but remember thoroughly enjoying it. A memoir about the author's first love as an adolescent, while wrestling with his repressive Christian faith.
  • The Sculptor by Scott McCloud. An engaging story about the sacrifices artists make in pursuit of their muse (kind of like a comic book Whiplash). Moving and powerful.
  • Hyperbole and a Half. Not strictly a graphic novel: these originated as blog posts by Allie Brosh posted on the eponymous blog, in which Brosh recounts amusing anecdotes about her life interspersed with impossibly crude, Rage Comic-esque illustrations rendered in an MS Paint knockoff (one such illustration was actually memed to death in the early 2010s). The best of these posts were compiled into a paperback collection in 2013; I'm not exaggerating when I say this book made me laugh so hard that I was often struggling to breathe. In spite of the presentation, the book contains a two-parter about Brosh's struggles with clinical depression which is moving and profound. Brosh later followed it up with Solutions and Other Problems in 2020, which is worth checking out even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of the previous volume.

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