Skip to main content

Wednesday reading experience #37

Read a graphic novel. If you are not already a fan of comic strips and/or comic books, you might be surprised to find just how sophisticated they can be.

Graphic novels tell a story in graphic form, using the images and minimal text style of comics to convey what a regular novel does in words alone. The term is used about stories too long to publish in one single edition of a comics magazine, and describes both works originally published in book form and works originally published in episodic form in comics magazines and later collected into book form.

There is some debate as to the exact definition of a graphic novel, but for the purpose of this blog post let’s define a graphic novel as a book containg a single long story or a collection of shorts stories with a common theme or setting, told in graphic form.

I can personally recommend:

By Neil Gaiman and various artists:
  • The Sandman series
  • The Books of Magic
  • The Death series (spin-off from Sandman)
  • Stardust (also a traditional novel and a movie)
  • Coraline (children's book. Also a movie)
  • The Daughter of Owls
  • The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch
  • Harlequin Valentine

By others:
  • Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
  • When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
  • The Lucky Luke books by Morris & Goscinny
  • The Astérix books by Goscinny and Uderzo
  • Some of the Tintin books by Hergé. While some of the books are racist and offensive in other ways, others are just pure fun.

Comments

Dorte H said…
I like many comic books, but one of my favourites is Raymond Briggs, When the Wind Blows (1986). It is about the consequences of atomic war, and it is funny, sad and full of tarblack humour. Besides, it conveys a wonderful sense of atmosphere.
Anonymous said…
Hal Foster's Prince Valiant comic strip is being republished and I got my hands on a copy - outstanding! More volumes are to follow, we are told.


(Note to Bibliophile: The Amazon link is for your information only. Please delete as necessary.)


http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Valiant-Vol-1-1937-1938/dp/1606991418/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253118417&sr=8-1
Bibliophile said…
Dorte, did you see the movie? Very moving and downright scary.

Anon, I clean forgot about Prince Valiant. I loved those stories when I was a kid.
Dorte H said…
Yes I did, but many years ago. First of all I remember the very sad ending.
Geetali said…
I loved Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis". It depicts her childhood in Iran during and after the revolution. It is a candid and somewhat sardonic look at Iranian society. Strongly recommended, if you're interested in that region and its culture.
Bibliophile said…
Thanks, Gallimaufry. That's another good one I forgot about. I loved the film.

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and