2015 Reading Challenge [Closed] discussion

My sister and I went to a bookstore yesterday while she was visiting me here in New Haven (we went to Atticus, if you are curious), and she saw this book and bought it, having been meaning to read it.

I had just seen the title on some GoodReads thread about graphic novels, and noticed that it was published last year. Bingo!

While finding a graphic novel won't be hard for me (I own several, and have read many more), nor would memoirs (I'll likely read a couple anyway), finding a book published "this year" would be harder, as I don't typically pay any attention to publication dates, and am not very current on what's coming out. So, I curled up in a chair while my sister and wife worked on some knitting and tore my way through it.

It's relatively short (~200 pages), with many of the pages having copious illustrations – Chast is, after all, a cartoonist. She does hand-letter the vast majority of the work – except for where she includes typed notes or poems verbatim – which can make it harder to read; as readers, we're generally far more used to reading typed pages than anyone else's handwriting.

I had expected it to be significantly more sorrowful, but partly because I already knew what to expect (it is explicitly about Chast dealing with the last years of her parents' lives), and partly because her own relationship with them is so complex, the reader is given a certain amount of detachment from her own emotional state – perhaps for me, it's also the cartoon illustrations which lend an additional sense of distance.

In any event, the book is well worth reading, especially for anyone with aging parents, or who has dealt with – or put off in favor of something "more pleasant"! – the important questions that a family must begin asking as its members age.

I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this one.

Sounds like a possibility for Graphic novel week for me. I'll be interested in knowing what you think about it.

I read this as my graphic novel. I really loathed it. My mom's been in failing health the last couple of years and I worried that it would be too close to home. It wasn't. It was so far from my experience. I just kept wondering why she was making so many terrible decisions, why she was so angry and bitter, and where her family was in all this. Now, granted this is the story she's telling and it isn't 100 percent real life, but I was really angry at the end of this book.

And I agree I felt very distanced from forming a relationship with either the author or her parents because she kept the audience at a distance. So this book did not work for me.

I really thought it might be the medium as this was my first graphic novel so when John Lewis was on Daily Show this week promoting the second volume of his graphic novel memoir(March: book 1, and March: book 2), I jumped at the chance to buy the first volume. I didn't feel distanced from this material, at all. I'm glad I gave the medium another go.