The Complete Persepolis

Wow. It's really original of Marjane Satrapi to choose to write her memoir as a graphic novel. It really worked. I'm glad I liked it so much, because it's my first 'real' graphic novel. I read the first Buffy Season 8 ones earlier this year, but that was an easy way to get started since I'm such a huge Buffy fan. I consider Persepolis the real deal.

So, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's memoir about growing up in revolutionary Iran - war, revolution, repression, persecution... what can these do to a willful teenager? I thought it was fascinating on so many levels. The coming-of-age storyline is one I usually like. I didn't know anything (and I mean anything) about Iran and learned so much. I want to read more about this interesting country.

I didn't know details of the fundamentalist repression either. I just can't imagine it, to be living like a 'normal' teenager and for everything to be taken away. All her dreams - of being free, of going to university, of going to the US - everything was taken away. I suppose that's when we find out what we're really made of but still.

It was strange to read about all the horrors in comic strip format. I somehow thought it would be lighter, even though that doesn't really make sense since I knew it would be about Iran. We're so used to graphic descriptions in books and we're so used to violent films and even cartoons, but we know that they're not real. It's strange when you look at the pictures, in the same format as Superman, and know that they are real. Does that make any sense? The simplicity reinforces the message, I know, but it was still weird to me.

I thought her story was beautiful and inspirational. To survive so much and to tell the world about it in such a meaningful way is amazing. I could empathise with her when she moved to Vienna - I know what it's like to be on your own when you're too young to be on your own, to be foreign, to miss that understanding from others of the same background.

And I loved the art. I loved that it wad black and white and simple. The emotions kind of jumped out at you. The hopeless romantic in me loved the page about how she and Reza are total opposites but they complete each other. Still makes me smile when I think about it.

This is certainly going to be on my list of favorites this year. If you haven't yet, you should definitely get this one.

Challenges: A-Z, 999, Countdown, Graphic Novels, In Their Shoes, Lost in Translation, My Year of Reading Dangerously, New Authors, Well-Seasoned Reader, World Citizen, Dewey Decimal

Life As We Knew It

I can't believe I finally read this book by Susan Beth Pfeffer! Everyone's been talking about it and it's been on my list forever. I'm home sick with a stomach flu this week and was looking around for something that would grab my attention and there it was!

Life As We Knew It is about Miranda and her family as they try to cope with life after the moon gets knocked out of its orbit and ends up closer to Earth. This of course affects tides and weather so suddenly the world sees a lot of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. Add to that the general problems of no electricity, gas shortages, food shortages and isolation and life gets pretty tough.

From day to day, teenage Miranda's life turns upside down. There is no more school and friends and socialising at the mall. Instead, she needs to learn to take care of herself and of others and to do things like do laundry by hand.

The book is pretty grim of course, but the way Miranda and her family handled the situations thrown at them was uplifting, I thought. And since the changes in life and weather were not (in this case) caused by man's selfishness but by natural occurence underestimated by scientists, they really were sudden - just to say that what I took out of it was pretty much 'enjoy life while you can'. Here's a passage that touched me:

Maybe because I don't know anymore if there is a future, I'm grateful for the good things that have happened to me this year. I never knew I could love as deeply as I do. I never knew I could be so willing to sacrifice things for other people. I never knew how wonderful a taste of pineapple juice could be, or the warmth of a woodstove, or the sound of Horton [the cat] purring, or the feel of clean clothes against freshly scrubbed skin.

I'm not pretending to know how Miranda felt, but the passage touched me at this point in time because our heating had been broken for almost a month and temperatures were around zero. I never really thought about heating as a luxury until then. And now that it's been working again for a week, I barely remember what the cold felt like and I'm taking it for granted again.

I think we can all benefit from thinking about all the things that we do have on a daily basis, the simple things. My friend Amy recently told me about something she heard on Oprah about writing down 5 things you're grateful each night before you go to sleep. Might be an interesting thought.

Now, I do want to point out that just because in this book the climate change was caused by nature, we can lead ourselves to the same point anyway. Read The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd for more on that.

By the way, at the end of my copy a companion book called The Dead and the Gone is mentioned - about the same events but in NYC. Has anyone read it?

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Countdown challenge, New Authors, Young Adult

Little House in the Big Woods

Charming little book! Even if I never watched the tv show... I'm actually surprised that I learned a couple of things about life back then as well. Bonus!

Laura Ingalls Wilder describes growing up in one of the first pioneer families in Wisconsin in the late 1800s. She didn't actually write the books until the 1930s and they're all autobiographical. I think that's amazing.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on 7 February 1867 so I'm using this book for the Celebrate the Author challenge. Visit Wikipedia ro read more about her life.

Even more amazing is the fact that this is a children's book and it describes so many details of life in the 1860s - including how Ma churned butter and how Pa made bullets. It's a great book for kids to read - childhood today is so very different, after all.

There's plenty for adults too, though. What really struck me was how hard everyone had to work all the time and how they didn't let anything go to waste. Nothing was wasted. Wow, compared to today? I wonder what those people would say if they saw today's world...

Anyway, I loved this book and will certainly be getting the next ones in the series.

Challenges: 1st in a series, 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Casual Classics, Celebrate the Author, Decades 2009, In Their Shoes, New Authors, What's in a Name

The Good Women of China

January 26 was the start of the Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year because it's start is linked to the moon. I thought this would be a perfect choice for the January holiday for the Every Month is a Holiday challenge.

The book I read was Xinran's The Good Women of China. Now, I would NEVER have heard of Xinran if it's hadn't been for Joy and the A-Z Challenge that she hosted last year. X authors are hard to find! I decided to do this challenge again this year (this time hosted by ...) and so was in a fix once more. I am so incredibly glad that I picked up Xinran's book when I saw it in a secondhand bookstore. I really think that my life is richer because I read this one.

The Good Women of China is non-fiction. Xinran is a Chinese journalist who had a radio show about Chinese women and their lives. Women could call in or leave messages and had the opportunity to tell their stories. Xinran gathered these stories and her experiences getting them and meeting the women involved and put it all in a book.

What she created is very powerful. Women in China had to live through so much - not only the traditional society aspect of things but also the political side of things. Women were married off by either their parents or by the revolution. They were used, abused and thrown out. They lost their children, they lost the loves of their lives, they ended up alone or with husbands they didn't care for. Survival was the main goal and everything else got buried in the process.

But these women's stories show that some things can't be buried, not really. The emotions in this book are so powerful that I couldn't tear myself away from the stories. Who knew that a non-fiction book about women in China could be such a page turner?

I think that this one sentence sums up how the Cultural Revolution affected people:

"Humanity and wisdom were banished to places which did not know there was anywhere in this world where women could say 'no' and men could read newspapers."

Reading this made me sad for the people of China and very interested in reading more about their country, including about the Cultural Revolution. If you've read anything interesting on these subjects, please let me know!

Challenges: 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Countdown Challenge, Dewey Decimal System Challenge, Every Month is a Holiday, New Authors, Well-Seasoned Reader, World Citizen Challenge

My first graphic novels!

I finished my first graphic novels this weekend - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Long Way Home by Joss Whedon and No Future for You by Brian K. Vaughn and Joss Whedon. They're Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, only in comic format.

I am a HUGE fan of Buffy and of Joss Whedon. I've seen the series numerous times - in fact we're re-watching it again and are on season 4. When the season 8 comics stared to come out I was excited, but somehow I put off getting them until some later unspecified date. As some of you know, I didn't really consider comics and graphic novels as something I'd like - and certainly not as something like a book!

Thanks to Nymeth I'm overcoming the stereotypical information that lives in my head. :-)

I LOVED these two books. I loved the storylines, I loved the artwork, I loved the experience of adding something visual to my reading. I won't go into the story because of spoilers, but if you like Buffy then it's definitely worth getting this. I have my Season 6 of Angel one lined up too and I can't wait!

Having said that, it did take me a while to get used to the comic format - I had trouble telling some of the characters apart and I didn't know what order to read the dialogue in. I got used to it though and I think I have it now. I hope, at least!

The only negative thing I have to say is that they went by too fast! I can't wait for the next installments!

Challenges: Graphic Novels, My Year of Reading Dangerously, 1st in a series, Countdown Challenge

Animal Farm

George Orwell's classical political fable is so well-known that I'm surprised I hadn't read it before now. I've certainly had it long enough, it seems that I bought it secondhand in a currency that doesn't exist anymore, Belgian Francs.

It's short, a novella, and reads quickly and easily. But the ideas in it stay much longer. The story is about an animal revolution - the animals of Manor Farm revolt against the human owners and turn it into Animal Farm, running it themselves. It's a commentary on power and what it can do to those with even the best intentions - and this political side to it certainly made me think. But the part that really stuck in my mind wasn't about politics but about nature:

"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals."

This sentiment, the original reason behing the animals' revolution, is very important today, as more and more of us start thinking about what we are doing to the planet and to other beings.

Animal Farm is considered a classic and it's easy to see why this is so. Although written in 1945, there is nothing dated about it, the ideas in it still apply. Isn't that a good reason to read it? It's also a novella so a perfect choice for the Novella Challenge. :-)

I'm giving it 5 stars and look forward to reading for of George Orwells's work. I recently heard that his lesser known works are also fantastic.

Girls Under Pressure

I finished Jacqueline Wilson's book Girls Under Pressure in no time - but to be fair it's for the teenage demographic and not very long!

I liked it! It's about a girl named Ellie who overhears someone calling her fat and decides that she needs to lose weight - now. It's a really good way of talking about eating disorders, I think. I'm nowhere near being a teenager, but I got the feeling that it all sounded natural enough and I believe that the books are quite popular with early teenage girls.

Even though it's not meant for my age group, I could relate because I haven't conquered the eating/food issues that started going wonky in my head so many years ago. I've never had a serious eating disorder, but my relationship with food is anything but healthy and I've always been overweight. I'm glad I read this book now because it reminded me of some of the basics that should be part of my attitude towards food. And since I'm striving to be a healthier person, finally, going back to basics is a good thing.

I don't really have any teenage girls in my environment, but if I did they'd be getting some presents from me! I'm giving it 5 stars simply because I really enjoyed it!

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I wasn't sure I'd enjoy Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter, it sounded too much like a modern Princess Daisy story and I loved Princess Daisy when I was a kid, I wasn't sure I'd like anyone messing with the idea. But as it turned out, my fears were unfounded, the conncection only superficial - I really enjoyed both the story and the writing and would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to get completely engrossed in a storyline.

Norah Henry gives birth to twins: a healthy baby boy and a girl with Down's Syndrome. Her husband Henry takes the decision to tell Norah that the girl died at birth and in fact secretly entrusts her care to a nurse. This happens at the very beginning of the story and the rest of the book deals with how an unspoken secret influences the lives of everyone involved.

It made me think about two things. One of them is that we can never really know any other person, an idea that I'm just now getting used to. No matter how close we are to someone, we can never truly know and understand what is going on in their minds. And no one can ever fully know us either. I find this kind of a lonely thought, but also liberating in the sense that it allows me to understand human relationships better and act on them from a different point of view.

It also made me think of disability and society's and my own attitudes towards it. This wasn't at the forefront of the story, but it was certainly there, in a book that starts out in the 1960s. I haven't had much contact with disability, so I can't presume to understand it and I'm sure that this shows. This book has made me think about things a bit differently and I hope to learn more about these issues in the future.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a 5-star book for me - it's lengthy and yet I got through it in no time, I kept wanting to go back for more. And I'm still thinking about the characters, even though I've already started reading something else!

Also reviewed at:
Melody's Reading Corner

The Year 1000

Robert Lacey's and Danny Danziger's book is actually called The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium. I love books like this. I love to read about what how people lived at other points of history. I find it comforting that people were always the same - those living in the year 1000 were not very different from us, it's just our environments that differ.

The book is full of interesting trivia, as well as 'proper' early European history. It is structured by month and each chapter highlights what would have been important to people at that point of the year. What I really enjoy about learning about early history is how much of what we celebrate now, of how we structure our lives, is based on what people did back then. The holidays we celebrate are based on old pagan dates, some of our traditions, such as Midsummer celebrations, date back to old rituals. Being pagan, I always look out for references to old Gods and was happy to find some here too.

I liked reading this book around Ostara and the Equinox, when I could think about the symbolism that we now associate with Easter - the bunnies, the eggs, the color yellow, all signs of fertility, of life beginning again. Spring is here! Well not here, it's actually snowing here, but in theory Spring is here!

The only minus isn't even the book's fault - it's only about England and I'd like to read more about the rest of Europe. But life looked the same in most places so until I find more books on this subject I'll have to project what I already know to other parts of the world. ;-)

Definitely 5 stars - I hope some of you out there read this, it's a short book packed with fascinating information and I think it's always useful to know something of what came before us.