The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A graphic novel actually won a Pulitzer, with good reason. You may be able to see/hear/read a lot of what the Spiegelmans endure in many other World War II memoirs, but "Maus" is told from the unique perspective of first-hand narration from Art's father, Vladek, and from a second-generation survivor struggling to understand what his parents went through in the war. Spiegelman effectively breaks up the headiness of the war history by switching the narration up between the war and present day conversation between father and son. This one really lived up to the hype.

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For a dreary Monday afternoon

I'm a life-long reader, meaning: reading books and all that it entails is the only thing I have ever done with my life with any real consistency. Everything else falls to the wayside. I've tried soccer, I've tried roller derby, I've tried horseback riding (that one is second ... but not a close second), running, basketball, journalism.

But I am always a reader. And when I think about the time, and space and relationships that have been devoured, for the sake of that next page, that next scene, that next author, that next book I have to have ... it's really quite pathetic, really.

26 years, countless hours melting into days and weeks and months. And all that it means to? Some 450 books. I read and all that it it amounts to is some 450 books that I have actually read.

Not much, is it?

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book could be summed up as a coming-of-age survival story, but it is so much more than that. In its own words: "The story of a man trying to figure out what he knows, teetering on the edge of yes or no, of risk or safety, whether it is worth it or not to go on, to carry on, into the breach of each successive moment."



At times it's laugh-out-loud funny, at times it made me cry, and throughout, it's beautiful, stream-of-conscious, poetic. It gets bit redundant at times -- the same plot loops said a few different ways throughout, but that's also kind of the point. Well worth the read.



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