Hostage by Guy Delisle

August 2, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the French. Drawn and Quarterly, 2017. 436 pgs. Library copy. In 1997, a French administrator for Médecins Sans Frontières (or, Doctors Without Borders) named Christophe Andre was kidnapped in the middle of the night from the organization’s base in Nazran and taken to Chechnya in Russia. Andre is held hostage for three months and tormented by the thoughts of escaping and fantasies of rescue. Delisle is best known for his graphic travelogues of places normally […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Comics, Crime, Europe, French, Nonfiction, Russia, Translated • Tags: Guy Delisle

Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden

June 26, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Drawn & Quarterly, 2016. 298 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq”, Glidden’s graphic memoir recounts her travels through the Middle East with two friends reporting on the plight of refugees from the Iraq War. Glidden is there to report on the reporters; she wants to learn what journalism is and how journalists operate in their quest to tell a particular story. “What is journalism? Is it exposing your reader to a history they might […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Comics, Middle East, Nonfiction • Tags: Sarah Glidden

Climate Changed by Philippe Squarzoni

March 18, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the French. Harry N. Abrams, 2014. 467 pgs. Library copy. When it comes to comics and graphic novels, I tend to be drawn to those on the nonfiction shelf. I find the format tends to make darker or complex topics more accessible and personalized than a long nonfiction tome. So I was intrigued by Squarzoni’s comic, which is subtitled “a personal journey through the science”, when I was browsing the library’s comics section. This book grew […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Chunkster, Comics, Europe, France, French, Nonfiction, Translated

Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie

February 26, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Drawn and Quarterly, 2007. 105 pgs. Library copy. Nineteen-year-old Aya lives in working-class city of Yopougon (also known as Yop City) of the Ivory Coast in 1978. Aya’s father works for Solibra, a beer company, and is determined to establish a match between the young son of his boss and his daughter. As a studious young woman determined to become a doctor, Aya is neither interested in this match nor in the cousin of one […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Africa, Comics, Fiction, French, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Clément Oubrerie, Marguerite Abouet

The Exile by Diana Gabaldon and Hoang Nguyen

February 24, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Del Ray, 2010. 224 pgs. Library copy. This graphic novel covers the first third of Gabaldon’s Outlander novel from the point of view of her male protagonist, Jamie Fraser. Jamie returns from France with a bounty hanging over his head, and he plans to hide out from both the British Redcoats and his uncles from the Clan Mackenzie, particularly his Uncle Dougal who worries Jamie will be named his brother and laird’s heir. Meeting Claire Beauchump usurps these plans, and Jamie […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Comics, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Diana Gabaldon, Hoang Nguyen

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me by Harvey Pekar and J.T. Waldman

February 23, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Hill and Wang, 2012. 176 pgs. Library copy.  Over the course of an afternoon in Ohio, Pekar interweaves the history of Judaism from Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac on the alter for God to expressions of the Jewish faith in 2011 with his own personal history as a Jew and a critic of Israel. Panels are devoted to depicting both histories — the personal and the publicly shared — as well as the time Pekar and Waldman spend […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Comics, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Nonfiction, North America, Religion, United States • Tags: Harvey Pekar, J.T. Waldman, Joyce Brabner

A Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori (Volume Seven)

February 22, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the Japanese by William Flanagan. Yen Press, 2015. 191 pgs. Library copy. On his journey from present-day Mongola to India, the British wannabe anthropologist Mr. Smith stays for a period of time with a wealthy trader and his beautiful, young wife named Anis. As a Muslim woman, Anis is required to remain hidden from Mr. Smith and other male, non-family visitors to the home. Therefore, she often passes her days in complete solitude save for the […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Comics, Fiction, Japanese, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Kaoru Mori

Bookstack for #ComicsFebruary

February 5, 2016 by Christina

I know, I know. I’m supposed to only be reading the books I own until the end of March. But everyone started posting pictures of the books they plan to read for #ComicsFebruary and I got bookstack envy. So off to the library I went. I tend to be drawn to nonfiction when it comes to comics so the majority of the titles I picked up are from that section of the library. The one exception is Diana Gabaldon’s The Exile, […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Comics

Trinity by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

May 1, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Hill and Wang, 2012. 160 pgs. Library copy. Fetter-Vorm’s graphic novel provides a short introduction the history of the world’s first atomic bomb(s), which was developed by the United States during the Second World War and dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The bomb was developed in total secrecy – the Manhattan Project was later used as a case study for the CIA – in several locations across […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Comics, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

Fatherland by Nina Bunjevac

April 23, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Liveright Publishing, 2015. 160 pgs. Library copy. In 1975, Bunjevac’s mother, Sally, flees to her birthplace of Yugoslavia with toddler Nina and Nina’s older sister, Sarah, in order to escape her abusive marriage. Her husband, Peter, assumes that demanding Sally leave their eldest child, Petey, behind with him will force Bunjevac’s mother to return with the girls, but Nina ends up staying in Yugoslavia until her father and two of his friends accidentally blow themselves up. Only […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Balkans, Comics, Europe, Nonfiction • Tags: Nina Bunjevac

An Iranian Metamorphosis by Mana Neyestani

April 20, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Translated from the French by Ghazal Mosadeq. Uncivilized Books, 2014. Originally published 2012. 160 pgs. Library copy. A cartoonist for a newspaper geared towards children in Iran, Neyestani drew a cartoon featuring a cockroach speaking an Azeri word – which is used to mean “what?” in Iranian Persian – in 2006 and ended up in one of Iran’s notorious secret jails. Such a sentence seems surprisingly harsh, but the Iranian government charged Neyestani with working against the […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Comics, French, Middle East, Nonfiction, Translated • Tags: Mana Neyestani

Vietnamerica by G.B. Tran

April 10, 2015 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Villard, 2011. 288 pgs. Library copy. As the only member of his family born in the United States, Tran grew up largely indifferent to the experience of his immigrant family in Vietnam and how they came to the United States following the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Tran decides to return to Vietnam in April 2008 with his parents after much prodding on the part of the his mother and a decisive edict from his stereotypically […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Asia, Comics, Nonfiction, Vietnam • Tags: G.B. Tran