I talked with Mykl Roventine about books on the Social Media Boombox podcast. Lots of good book nerd talk.
Learn more about my book about reading books, 137 Books in One Year, and buy a copy.
Category Archives: Books
Getting Into Graphic Novels
I spent an hour talking books last week with Mykl Roventine for the Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis-St. Paul podcast. One of the topics that came up was trends in my 2015 reading and I think graphic novels were a huge trend.
I read a lot of graphic novels.
It’s an interesting medium that really takes some time to find your footing as a reader. I tend to read too fast because there are so few words. While graphic novels are quick reads, if you go too fast you tend to miss a lot.
So a few thoughts on the trend of graphic novels, at least within my reading from the last year:
Comic Books
It starts with comic books. Certainly not all graphic novels are comic books, but they get lumped together (for good reason), so deal with it.
I think comic books are a weird industry. They have an exceptionally high barrier to entry. It’s really hard for newbies to figure out how to get into comics.
But one approach I’ve discovered is to forget the weekly one-off comics and wait for the trade paperbacks. This is when they gather up half a dozen comics and print them in one book. You get the benefit of a longer story arc and don’t have to hunt down each individual comic. And many libraries will stock these.
In 2015 I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Serenity: Leaves on the Wind and Princeless.
Historic Graphic Novels
Lately there seems to be a mini-trend of historic graphic novels. I don’t know if this is some attempt to get those pesky kids interested in books again, as if graphic novels are some kind of gateway drug. I don’t think it works that way.
But graphic novels about history are pretty cool. It’s a gateway drug to history. See March Book One and Two by John Lewis, Harlem Hellfighters and the Boxers/Saints two-part set by Gene Luen Yang as examples.
Graphic Memoirs
Then there’s this oddly new trend of memoir in graphic novel form. I don’t know if it started with Blankets by Craig Thompson, but that’s certainly an early one that got a lot of attention. El Deafo and Honor Girl are more recent ones. All three are sort of coming of age stories, dealing with a fundamental faith, deafness and same sex attraction respectively.
I think the genre can be an engaging way to tell the deeply personal story that is memoir.
Straight Up Graphic Novels
Finally, there are a lot of just interesting stories told in a graphic format. It really frees up the narrative structure and allows for some interesting things, without being too literary and weird.
Gene Luen Yang is perhaps my favorite. His American-Born Chinese is just a mind-bending riff on race in America. It would definitely benefit from multiple readings.
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson is another favorite. It’s got a reluctant super-villain, quirky humor and an original story. Good stuff.
Top 5 Nonfiction of 2015
Another year of big reading and I’ve got some favorite nonfiction to share.
- Kid President’s Guide to Being Awesome by Robby Novak and Brad Montague
He’s good in videos and he’s good in book form. - Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
I generally don’t like poetry, but this was great. An honest and challenging look at racism. - Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Chuang
This memoir has such a fresh voice and gives a great perspective. - Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving & Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans
So many echoes of my own journey here. - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This book has been on a lot of lists this year and rightly so. It’s a challenging book and needs multiple reads. Perhaps if I’d done that it’d be higher on the list.
If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.
Top 10 Fiction of 2015
After another big year of reading I present my favorite fiction reads for 2015.
- The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Garbrielle Zevin
A story about a dad who runs a bookstore. What could be better? - Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
I read this with my daughter and really enjoyed the unique perspective of the main character. - How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
This book confronts racism with a mutli-perspective approach that was just great. The audiobook with a huge cast was great. - Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
A graphic novel FTW. I really like the unique and fun storytelling approach in this one. - Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Another story with a really unique voice. - Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick
This YA novel hits so many of my buttons—a unique voice, homelessness, Jesus. - A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren
Here’s this year’s post-apocalyptic story. I loved the emphasis on women and confrontation with religion. - All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
The issues of Black Lives Matter in a book. - The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
What a fun time travel yarn. - Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata
I haven’t read many international adoption stories and this one really dove into the complexities with honesty.
I usually do a list of 15 nonfiction reads, but this year I had too many 4 out of 5 star reads—books that were good, but not amazing enough to add to the list. So we’ll stick with 10.
If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.
2015 Racial & Gender Diversity in My Reading
Last year I started tracking diversity in the books I read. It wasn’t exactly good news.
It became apparent that race and gender diversity only happen when you’re intentional about it.
I tracked both the gender and race this year. I base gender simply on the author, counting a book if any contributor is a woman. For race I count a book if a contributor or main character is a person of color.
Here are the results for 2015:
- 54% POC books
- 56% female authors.
Here’s how diverse my reading has been since 2001:
And here are the actual numbers:
If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.
2015 Reading List
Lots of good reading this year. Another year of ridiculous numbers—149 this year.
One of the benefits of reading is an increased sense of empathy. You can understand someone different from you a lot better if you can see from their perspective. If there was one theme this year, it was understanding different perspectives.
Some of the various perspectives that could use some understanding this year cropped up again and again in my books this year. Themes such as racism, disability, transgender and Islam.
I also read a lot of graphic novels.
And I’m continuing to pursue diversity of race and gender in my reading. I’ll post about that separately. I’ll also post my best fiction and nonfiction lists for the year.
For a more visual look, you can check out my Year in Books from Goodreads.
If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.
You can also check out my previous reading lists: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 and 2001. Continue reading 2015 Reading List
Reading & Loving It
I read 164 books in 2015 and tracked them all in a spreadsheet. Here’s what I learned.
Now that’s a headline I can get behind.
This is an awesome article from Vox by a librarian who read a whole bunch in 2015, tracked it and learned some lessons.
Sounds a lot like me, right?
I read more than a hundred books each year and have cataloged them for years. I’ve even examined the racial and gender diversity in my reading, just like the author. Good stuff.
The author even has this awesome spreadsheet for all the books she read this year. Pretty freakin’ great.
The article has some great lines:
- Reading is amazing; it shouldn’t be a chore, and when it became one, I stopped doing it.
- There will never ever be enough time to read every worthwhile book.
- Deliberately seeking out new literary voices expands my perspective and pushes me out of my comfort zone. Ultimately, I hear more stories, and my life is richer for it.
It’s good to see I’m not the only book nerd cataloging all my books to glory in the joy of reading.
Summer Book Club With Lexi
This summer my daughter Lexi and I had a book club. My wife would pick a book for us to read (which avoided fights about what to read), we’d both read it, then go to a coffeeshop to talk about it.
It worked out pretty good, though I’m surprised we only got through four books. That’s probably more my fault, since I was reading so much I’d have to work our book club book into the queue.
Here are the books we read:
- The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
- Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Lexi’s favorite: Wonder
My favorite: Counting by 7s
Lexi wants to keep doing the book club throughout the school year, so it must have been a success.
Diversity in Fantasy Books
I read a lot, obviously, and sci-fi is one of my favorite genres. But I like a very specific kind of sci-fi—generally realistic space adventures—and I’m not a big fan of fantasy.
There are always a few standout hits—Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, A Wrinkle in Time—but in general I don’t like fantasy. I think part of the problem is no clear delineation of the stakes. When you use magic, suddenly anything is possible. Can that tiny guy beat the big guy? I don’t know. The drama is undermined because the rules of magic are unclear. With realistic space adventures at least they have to pretend to scientifically explain some new technology.
Sidebar: This is one of my frustrations with the Transformers movies (among many). There’s no sense of which robot is stronger. Optimus Prime is always able to pull out some new reserve or strength to fight back, even if he just had his arm chopped off (why didn’t you use that move to keep your arm?). It’s always used as a dramatic climax, but it actually undermines the tension. Continue reading Diversity in Fantasy Books
2015 Diversity in Reading Update
I talked about pursuing diverse books last month, looking at my track record for both gender and racial diversity. It’s hard work. Diversity doesn’t just happen.
So far this year I haven’t been consciously picking diverse books (choosing a book because it’s written by a woman or a person of color as opposed to a white guy), but I have been lining up more diverse books in the lists of what I want to read.
Basically I want to read more diverse books without going so far the other way that I refuse to read something written by a white guy.
Here’s where I’m at so far:
- 17 of 24 female authors
- 11 of 24 POC characters or authors
Not bad. The slant to women authors is probably more coincidental. I honestly thought there would be more people of color so far, but this is more proof of how you have to work for it. Most of the POC reads have been books I intentionally sought out. Only one was an “accident” (a book featuring a main character of color that I didn’t know about ahead of time).
It’s also clear just how hard it is to find good diversity in books. I’ve been searching and I continue to search for more sources and recommendations. I’m thankful for organizations like We Need Diverse Books that move beyond the rallying cry and offer resources and solutions. I’m especially looking for good chapter books to read to my kids.
Favorite book so far? Probably the Parable of the Sower/Talents series by Octavia Butler. Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson is a close second.