December 21, 2008

John's Initial Choices

(Cross-posted at The Book Mine Set)

In 2008 I completed several challenges (The 1st Canadian Book Challenge, The Obscure Challenge, The Short Story Challenge, The Russian Reading Challenge, and The Shakespeare Reading Challenge). While I had fun with each, I wasn't exactly challenged. It's not to imply the requirements were too few, but basically I picked books I'd be reading anyway. I've always read Canadian, Shakespeare, and from the other categories listed above, so even had I not joined the challenges, my reading choices and habits wouldn't have looked any different. Next year, however, I'm truly going to be challenged. I'm joining the Graphic Novels Challenge. I've read only one book in my life that could even come close to being called a graphic novel: an anthology of works by Edward Gorey entitled Amphigorey. Nor was I really into comics as a kid. Joining this challenge should really broaden my horizons.

But not too much. Because it's my first foray into this genre, I'm working towards the bare minimum (6 books) and picking from what are probably obvious choices:

1. Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
2. Seth's It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken
3. Chester Brown's Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
4. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis Boxed Set
5. Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira: Book 1
6. Joe Sacco's Palestine

This list could change depending on availability. I'm none too keen on buying books and I'll be looking to borrow, borrow, borrow if at all possible. Plus, the Spiegelman and Satrapi books could technically count as 2 each, so I haven't quite decided how to use them yet. Wish me luck!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Welcome! I think you will love Maus and Persepolis. They are definitely required reading!

Alea said...

Persepolis is so great and I'd definitely count it as two! I'm a fan of Edward Gorey too!

Beth F said...

I love Gorey, I guess I really have read a graphic novel before!

Glad to have another newbie!

jessi said...

I loved Persepolis and Maus, and I'm also reading Palestine. :)