There is nothing like reading. A good book is a teacher, a friend, a tour guide, and an entertainer all in one. In our busybusy lives, it can be all too easy to forget the joys of reading. "I don't have time" becomes the excuse for everything we leave undone.
But just think back for a moment and remember the last truly wonderful book that you read. Wasn't that worth it? I think we all have more free time to read than we think we do. It's just a matter of setting aside that time and finding the right book for that moment.
This is my (incomplete) list of the books I have read lately that I have found just right for that moment in my life. Some of these I have read once, others I have enjoyed several times, but they all left me with that marvelous feeling that a good book gives.
Since I have most of these books, I've made a notation at the bottom of the review of each book that I do not own. If you would like to borrow any of these books, just let me know.
| Fiction | |
| Read this book... | because it is: |
| Bennett, Alan: The Clothes They Stood Up In | satisfying |
| Butler, Octavia: Kindred | wrenching and thought-provoking |
| -- : Parable of the Sower | wrenching and thought-provoking |
| Cooley, Martha: The Archivist | |
| Crace, Jim: The Gift of Stones | thought-provoking |
| Flagg, Fannie: Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man | funny |
| Franzen, Jonathan: The Corrections | |
| Goldberg, Myla: Bee Season | thought-provoking |
| Granger, Pip: Not All Tarts Are Apple | sweet |
| Keillor, Garrison, and Jenny Lind Nilsson: The Sandy Bottom Orchestra | funny and sweet |
| Oates, Joyce Carol: We Were the Mulvaneys | wrenching |
| Orczy, Emmuska: The Scarlet Pimpernel | satisfying |
| Ozeki, Ruth: All Over Creation | funny and wrenching |
| new -- : My Year of Meats | funny and thought-provoking |
| Sinclair, Jo: The Changelings | thought-provoking |
| Smith, Betty: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | beautiful |
| -- :Joy in the Morning | sweet |
| Nonfiction | |
| Read this book... | because it is: |
| Fong-Torres, Ben: The Rice Room | |
| McBride, James: The Color of Water | thought-provoking |
| new Riccardi, Victoria Abbott: Untangling My Chopsticks | beautiful and satisfying |
| Spiegelman, Art: Maus | wrenching and thought-provoking |
| Thompson, Craig: Blankets | beautiful |
Capsule reviews
Brand, Christianna: Nurse Matilda (funny)
Kurlansky, Mark: Salt: A World History
new Olson, Shannon: Children of God Go Bowling (funny)
Patchett, Ann: Bel Canto (beautiful)
Proulx, E. Annie: The Shipping News
Yamashita, Karen Tei: Tropic of Orange
On the way home for lunch one day I stopped at a small bookstore looking to find something pleasant to read while munching. I found this short book and it is every bit as delightful as I had hoped my find would be. A not-very-interesting middle-aged English couple come home from the opera one night to find that someone has robbed their flat, not just of the valuables but of everything, right down to the toilet paper roll and its holder. They have lived comfortably in this flat for thirty years, and now that it is completely bereft, they have a decision to make: try to rebuild, or start over? Their responses take them in new and interesting directions.
Classification: Since this book is so short it is easily readable in an afternoon (I finished it in an hour, during lunch), and if you haven't too much else to do that afternoon you will happily spend the rest of it chewing over the events in the story. It is an easy book to get lost in, but not so long that you will have trouble finding your way out again. I highly recommend it. It is a pleasure to read. When finished you sigh deeply and smile, and suppress an urge to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.
This is the second book of Butler's that I've read, after Parable of the Sower. If possible, it is even more terrifying. The story is standard-issue science fiction, with an ethnic-historical twist: a modern-day black woman is called back in time again and again to save the life of a white Southern plantation owner; if he dies without fathering a certain child -- her ancestor -- she will never come to exist. What this brief summary leaves out is the wrenching drama of the actual book. I can't even comprehend what kind of complex genius makes Butler able to describe slavery in such realistic, emotional detail. I have read the major slave narratives all students of American history have to read, and a decent amount of the analysis that has grown up around them, but somehow this book makes it more frightening, more understandable, and more believeable than any of those documents ever did. (One of my professors, Jennifer Spear, must have agreed, because it was she who recommended this book to our class.) It also delves deeply into the nature of human relationships, the complicated web that binds us together.
Classification: First, if you are at all interested in southern American slavery or slave networks, read this book. It is a revelation. Even if you don't consider yourself particularly interested, though, it's a spellbinding read. I recommend for this book much what I recommend for Parable of the Sower: you'll have to read this all at once, because it sucks you in too much to let you put it down. Read it in a well-lighted place, where you feel safe. And if you have a significant other, for heaven's sake make sure that person is next to you!
I do not own this book.
I bought this book for an English class I ended up dropping ("The Contemporary Novel"), but I kept the book because it sounded so intriguing. Ever since I read it I have been recommending it to everyone, including my summer geography instructor. It is set in Los Angeles in 2015, imagining that the worst consequences of human civilization have taken effect, and the worst impulses of humanity have prevailed. The heroine's parents have tried to raise her sheltered from the horrors of this new world, but she is a strong realist who as she grows older refuses to remain sheltered. When her parents' nightmares come true, she is left alone with no choice but to put into action whatever plans she has been formulating on her own. It's an amazing story.
My classification: This will make you think, and may also scare you. Don't read it at night, because even if you don't get scared it may confund your brain. Keep someone you trust around, and keep all the lights on, because this book really sucks you in.
Choreographer Bill T Jones liked this book enough to quote its line 'God is change' in a post-performance talk at UC Berkeley.
I approached this book with a light heart, thinking to myself that here goes the historian, nerdy as ever, buying a book about an archivist--just can't get away from the archives, can we? But after a few chapters, I realized that this was going to be much more than just a story about the archives. Instead, this book is about love, and uncertainty, and how the two are inextricably tied together in our lives. This book achieves what many writers desire but rarely achieve. It hits at the heart of what is most painful--and most frightening--about human relationships: our incomplete ability to find honesty and openness with one another, not just openness of ourselves toward others, but openness in our acceptance of those others and who they are.
The Archivist is an impressive work, all the more astonishing because this is a debut. Cooley skillfully weaves together history, poetry, and humanity in a way that is thoroughly convincing and never feels overdone. She is as gifted in serious intellectual territory as she is in describing the small details of everyday life: smells, tastes, the humidity of an East Coast summer. The book gets a little over my head at times, with discussions of religion and literature, but this in no way lessens its impact.
Classification: This is a very well-written book, serious and even disturbing, but just shy of heavy. Still, allow yourself some emotional space while reading it (Part Two in particular), and don't expect that it won't make you think, either.
I have always thought that someone should write a believeable story about early human life. I had no idea it had already been done, and breathtakingly. The Gift of Stones is set during the Stone Age, in a coastal village whose wealth and well-being come from the inhabitants' ability to shape stone into tools. One boy of this village, an orphan, is brutally wounded and disabled at a young age, thereby rendering him unfit for stonework. He wanders the coastline, tasting what the world outside his village has to offer, coming back to his community as a gifted storyteller with fantastic tales of what lies beyond.
Classification: The pace of this story is simultaneously slow and rapid, allowing room for the quirks of storytelling but still describing events of great urgency and adventure. It manages to be thoughtful and even gentle, but unflinching, in telling of both beauty and violence. This book is the greatest paean to the storyteller's art I have ever encountered, and may well be the most evocative story I have ever read. In reading it, I would allow ample time to finish it (it's not long) in one sitting, so you can fully immerse yourself in its world. It takes a little while to feel yourself move so far back in time, but the transition is natural and amazing.
When I read the first chapter of this book I thought it was just silly. The characters seemed stereotyped and the situations too contrived. But having nothing better to do, I kept going, and I am so glad I did. By the time I was halfway into the book, Daisy Fay and her family were my new best friends, and I just had to keep reading to find out what happened to them. A week after finishing the book, I still find myself thinking of them from time to time, and I've read several other books in the interim. The book is silly, but wonderfully so, and though the ending is just ridiculous you're so happy for Daisy you just don't care whether it's believable.
Classification: Daisy Fay is one of these books that is described, aptly, by those publishers' blurbs as "a delightful high-spirited romp." It made wonderful summer reading when I just wanted to get into a fun story and not think too much, but it has lasting charm..
I bought this book while writing my senior thesis, because it sounded interesting and because I thought Fong-Torres's recollections of life in a Chinatown restaurant family might yield some insights for my paper. After finding that his Chinatown was Oakland, not San Francisco, and that his father's restaurant career took place after my time period, I put the book on my "to-read" shelf and didn't look at it again until today, when I was eating dinner and wanted something to read. Now I've stayed up past my bedtime to finish it. I'd become disillusioned with Chinese American memoirs previously because they all started to sound the same, but this book is evidence that it's possible to treat the subject of growing up both Chinese and American in a fresh and very individual way while retaining that spirit of candid reflection that makes autobiographies so endearing and moving.
Classification: This is a very quick read, but has a lot of poignant sadness to it, especially toward the end, so keep that in mind while reading. It's an especially beautiful work if Chinese American issues resonate with you, but you don't have to actually be Chinese American to get something out of this book. If you're at all interested in the history of the 1960s and 70s in the Bay Area, or in the history of rock and roll, this book provides a fascinating firsthand account into both of those experiences. Or, even if you just like personal histories, this will appeal to you.
I just finished this book, a complex and time-consuming work chronicling the lives of the five members of one modern Midwestern family. Although the roughly five and a half hundred pages cannot be rushed, they are incredibly rewarding. Some of my other favorite books are well loved because they are so timeless, but this one is astutely relevant. Franzen is brilliant. His book brings me a much greater sympathy for the world and the people around me, and also for myself.
My classification: Like I said, this is slow going, but it's also easy to put down and pick up again. I don't mean this as an insult. It does well with time to digest, because it comes at you with all the complexities of life itself and sometimes you just need to pause. I read about half of it last week and then just left it for a while, and came back to it again a few days ago. Unlike many of the books I recommend, I don't think there's a big problem in reading this book in a busy place or with other people around. In fact it might be nice to have someone around with whom you can share your thoughts. If you find the first few pages jarringly contemporary (they're not weird contemporary, just, well, they've got a style, let's say), don't worry, by the time you start to know the characters the narrative form becomes familiar. Read this book if you want something you can really sink your teeth into.
This is an amazing book, in both plot and language. On the surface it is a simple coming-of-age story of a young social and familial misfit named Eliza, who suddenly enjoys the attention of all those around her when she wins the district spelling bee. Eventually, the events set in motion by her success lead to deeper and more surprising discoveries, with consequences not just for Eliza but also the other members of her family. Each person struggles in his or her own way to find the essential meaning of life and proof of the existence of God (this is my interpretation; the book is both all about and not at all about religion). Partly because of the spelling bees, language is very much a central character in this book. There is some mind-blowing imagery; how could there not be when the characters are attempting to glimpse eternity?
Classification: This novel covers a lot of ground, ranging from the complete mundaneness of school life, to the incomprehensible beauty of true perfection. There's a lot more of the school stuff at the beginning, and it's very funny and apt and enjoyable. Later on it gets very deep and if you want to really take in what you're reading, you have to slow the pace and read where no one will bother you. In the end the book takes a longer time than it would seem, but it's very worthwhile.
This is the adult book I have been looking for ever since I "outgrew" children's books (haven't, but they're a little less satisfying when I can read two in an hour). The book is set in London, in 1953, and it tells the story of a seven-year-old named Rosie and the colorful residents of her neighborhood: her guardians, who own a café, her alcoholic mother, the fortune-teller who lives next door, and many others. It's an adventure story that holds its own with any others, with the fun addition of being told from a child's point of view.
Granger is a good storyteller, and her tale is rich with wonderful details. I bought the book because I spied the words "tart" and "apple" on a crowded shelf, and it certainly doesn't disappoint in terms of food. I craved fish and chips for days afterward. The sketchy-neighborhood setting really comes to life, and the characters are all enjoyable. The book is engrossing and mind-transporting in the way of our childhood favorites: Dahl, CS Lewis, and now JK Rowling.
My classification: Read and enjoy--I'll bet you haven't read a book like this in a while!
This is a children's book, but an intelligent and completely engaging one written by radio personality Keillor and his wife Nilsson. I very much sympathize with the main character, Rachel, who loves classical music and has interesting, intellectual, artistic parents in a small Midwestern town where most people aren't interested in (or don't know about) such things.
Classification: This is a totally delightful read. The people are funny and likeable and very real, especially Rachel. It's a splendid book to read in the summer, but even during other times of year it will make you feel like it's summer again. If you like classical music, you especially need to read this book, it's just full of it and will make you want to sing or play or whatever you do. This is not a 'stupid book,' but you won't have to think too much, and best of all it has a happy ending that will leave you feeling like you've just found out from looking into his eyes that your crush likes you too.
McBride's remembrances of growing up in a family of twelve children would be interesting enough, but
his story is complicated (and made more interesting) by the issue of race: his father is dead, his
mother appears to be white, and all the kids are black. While he was growing up, James often asked his mother about
her background, but she bluntly refused to answer all questions. From the introduction:
As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from--where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she'd say, 'God made me.' When I asked if she was white, she'd say, 'I'm light-skinned,' and changed the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers--yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story--the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942--and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past.In finally hearing the story of his mother's life, James begins at last to understand the complex events and decisions that make him who he is.
Classification: I picked up this book in the interests of having something to do while I ate my lunch. I have a midterm to study for tomorrow, yet I had to keep reading all afternoon until I finished this book. This is a warning! Do not read this unless you have time to get sucked in! That said, this is a wonderful book, replete with all the kindnesses and cruelties human beings can show toward one another, but presented plainly and without embellishment. It is a testament to the strength of human character and an inspiration to those of us who are sometimes deluded into thinking our lives are tough. And it will certainly make you think about race in a way you have not before. Great work.
Lauren says: 'One of my favorites... humorous and touching.'
This book is so sad, even when it's happy. The narrator, Judd, the youngest Mulvaney, draws us in from the beginning with his wistful telling of a blissful childhood.
There are hints from the beginning, from Judd, from others, that this loveliness won't last, but when the break finally comes, it's so dreadful.
By this time the Mulvaneys are like your own family or like your own dear friends, people you know, and it hurts so much to watch them suffer.
When the end comes at last, you've been through a terrible ordeal, but it's cathartic.
Classification: As I say, reading this book is painful. Partway through I had to write this journal entry just to vent my emotions, and then I had to put the book down for two days, I was so upset. Then I went back and finished it in one sitting.
Read it because it is such a tremendous emotional journey, but give yourself space for the reading.
Reviewed 31 July 2006.
They seek him here
They seek him there
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere
Is he from Heaven, or from Hell?
That demned, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel!
Ever since my sister saw the movie and walked around quoting these lines (or the movie's version of them) in a dandified English accent, she has wanted to read the book, which we both did this summer. This novel looks frighteningly like a very boring old thing but was not really written all that long ago, and contains all the elements necessary to a thoroughly enjoyable read: swashbuckling adventure, dramatic intrigue, a very siighhhhhh romance with a really dashing hero! A wonderful old-fashioned story.
Classification: If you're feeling very intellectual, feminist, or politically correct, don't read this book. But otherwise, read away and enjoy!
EXCITING! You can also read the full text of the book online, here.
I'd heard a lot about Ruth Ozeki, so when I spotted a hardback copy of All Over Creation at a discount bookstore, I thought I'd better pick it up. Right when I started reading it, right in the first couple of pages, I understood why Ozeki has received so much acclaim. Those first two pages are genius. (Read them here.) She begins with a lovely, lyrical description of earth and sun and tiny sprouting seed, then crushes it abruptly and transitions brilliantly into introducing her main character, Yumi Fuller. Child of a white Christian potato farmer and his Japanese wife, Yumi is always a bit of a misfit in her Idaho town: unable to figure out how to pronounce her proper name, the other residents of their town simply call her "Yummy." When she reaches adolescence, she runs away from home, stirred by the tumultuous emotional atmosphere of the Seventies and a painful first love. The main events of the novel take place after Yumi has grown, when she reluctantly returns to Idaho with her three children to pay a visit to her now aged and senile parents. At the same time, other developments are occurring in parallel: Yumi's former best friend and neighbor, Cass Quinn, now has to come to grips with Yumi's return and what her own life has been since Yumi left, and a motley neo-hippie activist group called the Seeds of Resistance makes its way to the Fullers' farm to find the man they consider their spiritual guru--Yumi's father, Lloyd Fuller.
Ozeki sets herself a broad and difficult task in her book, attempting to weave themes of love, family, and aging together with larger statements about agribusiness, responsibility, and tolerance. Unfortunately, she is only partially successful. After its marvelous start, the book begins to disappoint slightly. Scenes that should be poignant and touching end up a bit heavy-handed (though one incredible line of interaction between Yumi and her father brought me to tears), and some of the plot development seems forced, still believable but just a little too neat. It's as if she had great handfuls of amazing threads, but instead of weaving them skillfully together to form one whole, she just tied them all into a big knot and pushed the loose ends in. Sure, it's a complicated knot, but even the best knot can't hold a candle to a beautifully woven tapestry.
If I'm a little harsh on this book, it's only because I so, so loved the first hundred pages that I was sure I was going to laugh and cry my way through until the triumphant end, when I could put it down and say with deep satisfaction that this was the best book I'd ever read (except for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which retains that title). There is so much humor and heart and just plain life in this book, so many moments that made me smile or laugh or otherwise touched my heart. I truly wish I could say the ending was as good as the beginning, but I really didn't think it was. It's still a wonderful book, though--as I said, Ozeki had a lot of threads to try and fit together--and it made me think and feel lots of incredible things. Despite its failings, it's a keeper, and I recommend it.
Reviewed 22 February 2005.
I loved this, Ozeki's debut novel, even more than her second book (see above), and that is saying a lot. My Year of Meats follows documentarian Jane Takagi-Little during her "year of meats," in which she travels around the United States interviewing and filming American families for a Japanese television program intended to promote consumption of meat in Japanese households. Along the way, she meets cattle ranchers and vegetarian lesbians, a new musician boyfriend, and a sleazy Japanese TV exec, and she uncovers the dark side of all-American meat.
In this book, Ozeki introduces many of the themes she will later revisit in All Over Creation -- the environmental and health consequences of contemporary food production, the complicated relationship between parents and children, the farms and people of middle America -- but she handles them better here, probably because she's not trying to do quite as much in her first as in her second novel. Still, the book is thought-provoking and emotionally moving, and Ozeki's caustic tone is enjoyable.
Classification: The book is both funny and moving, so be prepared for both. It made me want organic vegetables, it made Jason want hamburgers, so no predictions on how it will affect your stomach!
Reviewed 5 September 2006.
In 1986, after quitting a soul-sucking job in advertising, Victoria Abbott left New York to move to Kyoto. She had never seen the city and spoke very little Japanese, but her good luck and few personal contacts brought her to a prestigious school of kaiseki, an obscure, ritualized formal meal preceding a tea ceremony. This book is the chronicle of Riccardi's sojoun in Japan, what she learned and experienced and how it has changed her life.
Unlike other living-in-a-foreign-country books I've read, Riccardi manages to avoid romanticizing the culture of her host country. In fact, many of the most amusing anecdotes in her book have to do with the unromantic smashing of her sentimental visions of Japan. She describes her time there in great detail -- even including recipes -- but her tone of respect and appreciation sounds much more like real cultural understanding than the flowery gushings of so many other travel writers.
Classification: Truly, this book was beautifully and thoughtfully made. As a meticulous work of craftsmanship, it is not unlike the meals Riccardi describes: it reads slowly, but its images linger; it avoids excess, but you are left wholly satisfied. Like all good travel writing, it is very transportative. I read it over several days, and each time I sat down it was like a little journey overseas.
Reviewed 5 September 2006.
The Changelings is a very powerful, richly written book about fighting back against prejudice. In a general sense, the story focuses on a white (primarily Jewish) community which is determined to repel the entry of black residents into their neighborhood. On a more focused level, the novel concerns two twelve-year-old girls, one white and one black, as they attempt to make sense of the world around them. The normal difficulties of growing up and trying to find their place in the world are painfully intertwined with the larger racial struggle, and Judith and Clara deal with both in a courageous and moving way, rejecting their parents' way of life while accepting their parents as people.
One of the biggest reasons I liked this book was that none of the characters in it, particularly the main characters, came across
as ordinary or stereotypical. Judith and Clara are tough tomboys, gang leaders, smokers and fighters. And
while the others around them are not such unusual figures--a sensitive invalid, a rebellious son, a dreamy and
hopeful single woman, etc--they are always believeable; no one is idealized or sentimentalized. I am amazed that this book, written in the fifties, is still so relevant and
electrifying.
Classification: The book is electrifying, but not all the way through; I have to admit
that for the first seventy or so pages I was a little bored and I thought this was just going to be a so-so book.
The definitely dated typesetting and cover do not help at all (I believe there's only one edition, so there's no
escape for you!). It is not a long book, but it seems long because it is so complex and because the beginning is so
slow and the print so unappealingly old-looking. Mainly, I would not recommend reading this right before going to
sleep, although it is a nice evening read (maybe early evening?). First, if you are sleepy, the slow-moving first
part will be extra dull. And then, the ending is not conducive to restfulness, which is why I am now up at two-fifteen am writing this review! Another thing: I always find that I would rather be alone to read books that really
move me, so if that's also the case for you, make sure no one else is around.
Once you start to get to know the characters, once you get past the development, things really start moving and you
will be entirely engrossed. A very, very powerful work.
This is Ying's favorite book, and mine too. It's a big thing to say about one novel, but I do believe this one contains all the beauty, compassion, wisdom, love. and truth of the world within its pages, as much as one book can anyway. I suppose some would say the Bible does this as well, but without trying to say which is better, I must point out that this one is not full of 'begat's. It is a beautiful book, tragic and nostalgic and very very funny, just like real life. If you want to know what it is about, the bare facts tell very little: It is the coming-of-age story of a girl named Francie, set in the poor sections of Brooklyn around 1910. I wish there were some more effective way of telling people to read this. It is a rare treasure, truly.
Classification: This is good reading anytime, because it does not contain too much of any one kind of feeling or writing. It might take a while because it is not a short book, but--and I hope I can say this without sounding lonely--it will truly be a friend to you while you read.
I think it is with good reason that this novel is far lesser known than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; this one is shorter and doesn't hold as much of life's meaning in it. On the other hand, it is just as well and truly written, and in some ways it spoke to me more than the other one did, probably because its setting is more similar to my own life. The two main characters, Annie and Carl, are eighteen and twenty respectively, and the events of the novel take place on a college campus or in the town surrounding it. Annie and Carl have just gotten married against their parents' wishes and are finding out that marriage and all it entails are a lot more difficult than they thought it would be. I'm not so sure about Carl, but I liked Annie's character a lot and really sympathized with her. She is naive and inexperienced, but also intelligent, optimistic and tremendously strong.
Classification: Like many other good books, this one sucked me in and prevented me from studying (I literally told myself in the middle of each chapter that this would be the last, and at the end of each I just had to keep going), although not right away: I started the book last night and was able to put it down after a few chapters, but once I started reading today there was no hope for me at all. It is loving and inspiring and uplifting, and for these reasons is probably excellent for reading right before you need to start doing anything (cooking, studying, going to a party) since it will give you the energy to do it. But I don't think you should read it while other people might want to talk to you. There isn't much room for sociability in the reading. Also, it will effectively quash any interest you might have in getting married if you're still in college, at least for the time being. :)
If you haven't already heard about Maus, the two-volume work is what we would generally call a graphic novel, or long comic book, about the author's father's experiences during the Holocaust. This was enough to get me to want to read it, but it doesn't do justice to what an astoundingly original work this is. One thing that always bothers me about the more well-known horrors of history is that we keep hearing about them, and thus become numbed to their significance. We read The Diary of Anne Frank in eighth grade, watched the movie, and visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. And for most of us that completed our education in Nazi atrocities, which serve ever after to symbolize in our minds the worst of human nature. We are shocked and horrified, but we can't afford to re-experience that strength of emotion all the time, so we put such horrors out of our minds while we go about the rest of our lives. Maus brought all that stupefied shock back to me in a whole new way. The graphic format puts a whole new slant on the Holocaust and somehow, through its black-and-white cartoon images, makes it all seem much more real than it ever did. Perhaps because the author is also learning this story from someone else, he channels the same emotions we have into his telling of the story, which makes it that much more complex and stunning to us the readers.
I think everyone should read Maus, not just because it is so beautiful (and horrible), but also just to remind us how incredibly fortunate we are to be able to live every day as we do.
Classification: This is such an absorbing book it becomes a short read, though there's a huge amount of human emotion packed into these pages. Find a place where you can read undisturbed by other people who are just doing their usual thing, because it's hard to deal with the ordinary world when you're reading about babies being killed and people betraying their friends. But don't be entirely alone; Maus holds the potential to deeply depress you, and you might want to have close at hand some means to draw you out of the book every now and then when it gets to be too much.
I don't own this yet!
By the way, you may also want to check out Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated while you're at it. It's a wonderful book in its own right (I read it a while ago but never had the chance to write a review about it, and now someone else has my copy) and also contains some very powerful perspectives on the Holocaust.
Blankets is comic artist Thompson's memoir of his Wisconsin childhood. It is filled with all the angst and wonder of growing up, and it is just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. When I find a really moving memoir it's amazing enough, but to discover one that's not only powerfully told but powerfully drawn, well, it's just a treasure. I keep trying to get people to read this, but for some reason most of my friends just don't seem to understand graphic novels. Why, people, why??
Classification: You can read this quickly (more pictures equals fewer words, though the book is well over an inch thick), or you can take your time and savor each drawing. It'll suck you in.
Reviewed 31 July 2006 (but read well before that date).