Rainy Day Reads

This was my pick for the challenge of reading a graphic novel this year. I’ve seen it on Youtube, specifically on Jean Bookishthoughts’ channel and I thought it sounded interesting.  It details the author’s life growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She tells of the demonstrations, the imprisonment of family members and friends and the fear of not only the war with Iraq, but the country’s own government.  The art is pretty cartoonish and all done in black and white. This lends a starkness to the story that for the most part suits it, but it does take a little getting used to. A few times I had trouble discerning between the different people, as the cartoony art style was quite basic and not very detailed.  The story was interesting, but a little confusing at times, simply because very complicated political matters had to be boiled down to a few sentences, and since I don’t know a lot about the history a...

This is a graphic novel and it's the first one I have read of it's kind since I stopped reading Donald Duck (does that count as graphic novels?). Brian K. Vaughan is the writer and Fiona Staples is the artist. I enjoyed both the story and the art, but I must say I don't think graphic novels are for me. I don't know why really. When I was reading it, I found it really hard to take the time to really look and appreciate the art and not just read the bubbles and rush through to the end. I guess I could practice that, but I am not sure I want to invest that much in it. As I said I really liked the story but it was just over too soon. And I guess that is sort of the point with graphic novels. They are really short, for the most part, and are made to be series. But at the cost of an actual novel hundreds of pages long, I can't be satisfied with the small chunk of story line in each graphic novel. That was my problems with graphic novels in general. As for this one s...