I don't love graphic novels...so I read some to try and figure out why

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. It's just Martin and I'm not really into reading graphic novels, but I'm going to try a few of them over the next two weeks.

[00:00:10]Tonight, the Wonder reading marathon competition, created and hosted by one of my best friends, Lizzie, of Lizz's Literary Life, kicks off, and one of the categories is a way to earn points just for graphic novels. I often leave it up to my team, but this year I thought why not join in the fun and try to find graphic novels that I would actually enjoy, including ones that I had been meaning to read for a long time. Namely, every time I think about picking up a graphic novel, I think about it and then I don't do it.

[00:00:35]So I appreciated the graphic novel section at my university's library. I only chose things over 300 pages because my team plans to feast the whole time. This is a very specific game mechanic. If you don't know, don't worry. The thing is, we try to read longer books, so that's why I chose this one. I also tried to largely stay away from things that I already knew I probably would n't like. I'm not the biggest fan of graphic memoirs, so I tried to avoid them. Maybe there will be one or more of them, but we'll see. The point is, I'm going to read as many of these as I can in this blog and see if I can accidentally find a graphic novel that I actually like. My first opportunity to use a graphic novel for positive points came last night when the second theme of the day was announced, and that theme was the absence of repeating letters in a title. So I ended up reading Speak, the graphic novel version, because it's an adaptation of the book, not the book I read, and that will actually play a key role in my review of this graphic novel. This is a story about a young girl. She's entering her freshman year of high school, and she's an outcast at her school because last summer she called the police while she was at a party and it ruined everyone's party. So everyone is really mad at her, but she called them because something deeply traumatic happened to her at the party and she did n't really tell anyone about it. And so she keeps this trauma inside herself, not sharing it with anyone else, and it gets smaller and smaller, just going through a very severe depressive episode. And we see her struggle throughout her first year of school, as she struggles to make friends, as she struggles to express herself and all that stuff. And I really think it was a great story with a really beautiful message. I would happily go back and read the original now, but I'll give this book two and a half stars.

[00:02:15]I have a very complicated relationship with graphic novel adaptations, as they often rely on the reader having already read the original material before, and are really for people who already enjoyed the original book.

[00:02:29]Sometimes they fail to attract new readers. And I think that at least for the first half of this book, I had a very hard time understanding what was happening, why the decisions were made. I think some decisions were made based on how the original book was written, rather than how it would best be conveyed in a graphic novel format. And it seems to me that when it comes to graphic novel adaptations, people wanted to stick very closely to the original source material.

[00:02:54]But the truth is that if the story is to be better presented in a different way, then some of these details will have to be given up. I ca n't know for sure because I haven't read the original, but the sections in which it was found seemed to me more conducive to the original format than to this format. But then again, I don't know. The thing is, as someone who hasn't read the original, it was hard for me to get into it. I think it's a fascinating story.

[00:03:19]Again, I'm interested in the original, but for a graphic novel adaptation, based on the fact that I haven't read the original, I'm giving it two and a half stars for its independence in storytelling. However, the art is wonderful. My team received our first mercenary challenge last night. And because of that, I was first assigned to read Bloom, and I had wanted to read this graphic novel for so long. I did n't know anything about him except what he looked like. I knew people liked it, but I didn't have a chance to read it. And that was my moment.

[00:03:49]Unfortunately, I had to read it at the speed of light. And I say this especially sadly because one of my favorite things about this book was the art style. I feel like I could stare at some of these images for a while. I give this book three and a half stars. Everything that seemed to be missing from the way images tell stories and speak was here. It's like the art style worked so well for me to convey the story. I knew exactly what was happening, even in the wordless moments, which I think is magical, because when these are panels that are just art, I sometimes have a big problem with them. But that was actually one of the most magical things about this book. In this book, we follow two characters.

[00:04:26]Someone wants to leave the city and start their own life, but they're stuck working at the family bakery. So he's looking for a new person to work with.

[00:04:32]Hector shows up, going to work at the bakery, and they spend the summer working together while Hector learns all the ins and outs. And the amount of baking depicted in the pictures in this book is incredible.

[00:04:44]For example, there will be a few pages that depict the process of baking bread or something like that, and you feel like you're there, like it's happening, like it's reality. There are also a few artistic decisions that really helped me understand the movement of the pictures. Simple things that people might think are stupid, but that have really, really been helpful to me. I also find this story so cute. The reason it gets three and a half stars instead of, say, four is because I feel like the biggest conflict in this book happened too quickly and then was resolved too easily. I wish they hadn't tried to force so much plot into the end of this book, because I could just watch these characters baking bread forever. I really liked the drawing style. The way the story was told to me is my best example of how art can be used to tell stories. I just think the plot could have been a little more detailed. And I realize that this is already a huge book with so many illustrations that it must have taken forever to create it. It's over 350 pages long, but if you removed some of that main conflict at the end, or tweaked it a bit, it might help. So, three and a half stars.

[00:05:51]I had a lot of fun with this book. Then I got to "In Limbo". Although I don't like graphic memoirs, I picked up a few just because, for example, take a look at this book. How can you refuse this book? She looks great. I read it back in the day when a standalone book was a gambling topic. I'm giving it three stars, which I think means it was really solid.

[00:06:13]Maybe she's not particularly for me, which I can assume for a graphic memoir.

[00:06:18]The illustrations in it are really cool, and the story was coherent. We follow this author as a teenager, the daughter of immigrants, with mental health issues, difficulties with friendships, and more. What I liked the most was the drawing style. I think it's really cool and a bit unique in a way. There were sections that seemed more photorealistic, and then our characters were superimposed on top of them. Here's an example of this: this subway scene seems much more photorealistic, and then we add our characters there. There's a certain vibe to it, especially in the touristy parts, which have become really interesting and cool. I don't know if it's something specific to the drawing style, or the layering of the art, or something, but it's something I kept noticing throughout the piece: there were moments that seemed much more photorealistic, and then suddenly we were adding our cartoon characters in there, which I thought was cool. So I liked the drawing in this book.

[00:07:11]The story was normal. I mean, as far as memoirs in general, I have a problem with graphic memoirs or anything. I think it's difficult to make memoirs incredibly engaging, relatable, and interesting because you're working with the realities of your life. It's just not quite my genre. But overall, I think the art of this piece is really cool and I enjoyed reading it and I helped my team get some points, so we'll take it. Usually when I read graphic memoirs, they cover at least a few years of a person's life, if not all the way to the end, like the present day, where they are now. And that's one of the things that I find so interesting about the first experience, because it involves about a 40- day class trip to Europe, and that's it. This is a snapshot of the experience of this trip and the emotional development our author went through during this one experience, which I think is somewhat magical because it's easy to see the impact of events over years and years and years of your life.

[00:08:11]But I also think it's very important to relax and realize the impact of specific events and moments. And this book did just that.

[00:08:21]However, I still give it three stars because while I thought the idea was cool and the execution was good, I still don't think it's exactly what I need. Well, I can have a fun time reading, but I'm not going to think about it again. And it didn't make much of an impression on me while reading.

[00:08:39]Honestly, I think the most notable thing about it is that the action only takes place over the course of about 40 days, rather than years and years and years of the author's life. So, not bad. And if you like graphic novels, you're not familiar with this book yet, and you like graphic memoirs, and you're intrigued by the idea of ​​reading them in such a short amount of time, I would definitely recommend this book. Especially if you like the atmosphere of European travel in books, because this one has just that.

[00:09:05]It's simply about the awkwardness of adolescence, when you find yourself, travel the world, and experience things you never even knew existed. So, three stars. And I read this book when the topic of the day was about gambling, which was based on real events, because it's a graphic memoir.

[00:09:24]The author even added photos from his real school trips at the end.

[00:09:30]So that was cool. I really tried to only read graphic novels when I needed them for some mercenary challenge like Bloom, or when they fit the theme of the day so I could get as many points as possible. So the next one I read was " Looking for You"–a journey through American loneliness. This day the theme of the day was " Last letter, first letter". So the last letter in the title of the last book I read had to be the first letter of the title of the graphic novel. And right before that, I read "Accidentally Yours" by Christina Loren, which ends in " S". This one starts with "C", so it's a good fit. And I give this book three and a half stars. As for a graphic novel, I really, really liked this one because it's about loneliness and the different ways we experience loneliness. It's specifically focused on the United States, but there are definitely some global concepts of loneliness, some just very human concepts that are being talked about here. It goes through different feelings through which you can emphasize or experience your loneliness. It relies heavily on psychology, which is obviously one of the reasons I liked it so much. And loneliness versus solitude is something I've actually thought about a lot. I am a person who loves my time alone, very much. This is one of the reasons why I've been able to read so much, because I want to spend a lot of time alone, and reading is one of the things I do during this time. But alone time isn't always a time when you feel lonely. Likewise, not every time you are around other people is a time when you don't feel lonely. And I think this book beautifully captured all the different aspects of loneliness, whether it's when you're physically separated from people and people aren't around, or when there are people around but you don't feel connected to them.

[00:11:16]Obviously, you can see it even through the cover of the book, where we have this whole apartment building full of people, and yet we have all these people alone in their apartments going through life, potentially feeling lonely throughout the day. So I think it was really great and I enjoyed the conversations.

[00:11:35]Three and a half stars. I'm here with two final comments on this video. I read these two books in the last 48 hours of a reading marathon because all along I had been planning to buy a stack of graphic novels that matched the different clues on the bingo board. Whenever one of these clues appeared as the clue of the day, I would read the graphic novel I had for it. And anything that wasn't called for or didn't fit the prompt of the day, I planned to read at the last minute. So, I read these two books in the last 48 hours of a reading marathon, focusing especially on the last 24 hours when we learned the last clue of the day.

[00:12:14]So I will read in turn. The first book I finished was Harmony Becker's Himoari House, which I give two and a half stars. There are some things that I really liked, but there are some that I didn't like, including how my brain works, especially when reading graphic novels, which this video taught me a lot about, specific things that I have a hard time finding in graphic novels. In this video, we follow our main character as she travels and lives in Japan for a year, staying in this shared house, the Heawati house, with a bunch of people she's never met before, who are all visiting Japan for different reasons. And we just watch them, exploring their lives, why they came to Japan, what their experiences are in this new country with this unfamiliar language, and how they develop connections with each other in this house, which is really wonderful. And actually, that's one of the things that I enjoyed was watching how their relationship with each other develops over time and how their relationship with the culture develops over time.

[00:13:11]The hardest part for me about this was some of the jumping around in timeline and perspective, because even though it's our main character, there were sometimes sections from the perspective of other people in the house. And it annoyed me because it was inconsistent, and I felt like I was randomly entering the head of a person I had no context for and knew nothing about. It was hard to feel grounded. Throughout these chapters, I was trying to understand what was going on in the mind of the person I was reading from. And then we switched back, and I thought, " Okay," and I lost control again.

[00:13:44]So, there were some things I liked, but these jumps in timeline and perspective really messed with my brain and made the reading not very clear or consistent. And the last one I got to was this one, "Summer," a book about summer on the beach, specifically in a beach house. Our main character goes there every summer for years and years and years. She even has one friend who she only sees when she is around. So we follow their adventures one particular summer, especially the summer when she is in a difficult situation with her mother and her relationship with her. I gave this work three stars. It was a pretty good time. I liked the illustrations. I liked the atmosphere. It felt very summery here, and on the last day of Wonderthon, it was the perfect feeling to convey. But nothing would have helped me truly convince myself of this work. Therefore three stars.

[00:14:34]So, these are all the graphic novels I've read. Of these, my two favorites were Bloom and Looking for You.

[00:14:40]I gave each of them three and a half stars.

[00:14:43]Looking at my most popular posts, you can't see a clear theme. I think I liked Bloom because the story was incredibly simple and we just watched them bake things in the illustrations and it was fascinating. And I really, really like the drawing style. And then I liked Looking for You because psychology and she discussed things throughout the book that I think about a lot. None of these works are graphic memoirs. So that's what unites them. Although CQ had a few stories or anecdotes from its author's life. They focused mostly on the human experience in general. It wasn't exactly a graphic memoir. And in both cases, I also found the timeline easy to follow. I think this is an important factor.

[00:15:29]The gaps and chapters somehow seem strange to me in graphic novel form.

[00:15:33]For example, I had a lot of problems with them in specific books. So I learned something about myself. I had a good time. I got points for my team. So it's a win for everyone.

[00:15:44]If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up and leave a comment below if you're a big graphic novel reader.

[00:15:49]Based on all my ratings, reviews, and opinions in this video, I would love to get your best recommendation for a graphic novel that I might enjoy. And if you're not a graphic novel reader, share with me why. What are your problems with graphic novels?

[00:16:01]And subscribe to receive more content about books and student lifestyle. And until next time, bye, people.

[00:16:06]See you later.