This highly engaging narrative of Stalin's Russia manages to turn one of the most complex periods of 20th Century history into a fascinating character study. Whilst it's a little hard to not get dizzy with all the names of Stalin's various hangers-on (a temporary job if ever there was one!), Sebag Montefiore grounds this volatile tale of power and war in Stalin's fascinatingly contradictory personality. The self-proclaimed 'man of steel' is presented here as both shrewdly intelligent and devastatingly paranoid; a man of pragmatism, selfishness, and bucolic savagery, and someone that historians still struggle to form a solid understanding of nearly a century after his rise to power.
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Iain Banks' debut novel has been on my 'to read' list for many years. I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot - if 'enjoy' is the right word to use to describe a book about a young man who spends his days on a Scottish island torturing animals, watching punk bands at the local pub, and reminiscing about the three children he once killed. Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience, with some truly odd character interplay, surprisingly poetic language, and a payoff that will twist your entire perception of the novel.
The Faceless Ghost by Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio
Hearn's 19th century translations of traditional Japanese ghost stories
have been given the graphic novel treatment in this short retelling of six
or so macabre tales. Some of these selected stories are more 'ghostly'
than others, however, Sean Michael Wilson has done very well to take
these archetypal pieces of folklore and transfer them into an
essentially visual form. Graphic novels don't usually pay high dividends
to the kind of narration on which such stories are usually reliant, so I
think some kudos are in order for Wilson and illustrator Michiru
Morikawa finding success in grafting these narratives onto such an accessible mode of
communication.
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Lightman's unique novella was recommended to me by a friend from work, and I found it so different and enlightening that I was able to read it all in one go. Einstein's Dreams is a difficult book to categorise - I guess I would say it was science fiction, but that would probably give you the wrong idea. If I had to describe it I would say that, if we could firstly hypothesise that a multiverse of realities exist, it's a theoretical work that outlines the possibly infinite nature of time itself. That sounds like nonsense, doesn't it? It's not, I swear! Trust me, I just don't know how else to explain it.
Rat Queens (Volumes 1-3) by Kurtis J.
Another one that was recommended to me by a friend, Image Comics' Rat Queens is a satirical fantasy genre adventure that wins big points for exploring gender politics and feminism in a really fun way. I absolutely fell in love with Weibe's dialogue and characterisation, and while it's a shame that the aesthetic changes between graphic novels, it was a completely necessary shift since original artist Roc Upchurch was arrested on charges of domestic abuse (something that runs so contrary to the spirit of the text!)
Persepolis by Marjan Satrapi
Marjan Satrapi's modern classic is equal parts lived-in history and personal autobiography, and does a great job of making the ideas and events of Iran's Islamic Revolution accessible to foreigners like myself. Satrapi's voice rings true and loud as she describes her coming-of-age in tumultuous 1980s Iran and cosmopolitan France. A truly fantastic autobiographical graphic novel.
Kampung Boy by Lat
This
autobiographical and irreverently cartoonish comic throws a nostalgic eye over
life in 1960s rural Malaysia, tapping into universal themes of growing
up, tradition vs. modernity, and the joys of childhood. There's
something about the mischievous twinkle of Lat's breezy misadventures
that encourages viewer identification; and although we might not be
young Muslims growing up in the Malay jungle, it's still somehow something that feels wholly familiar! Kampung Boy is a
hugely popular South-East Asian text and, even though I'm a few thousand kilometres away
and in a completely different kind of society, I still found it easy to see
why it has lasted the test of time.
Timeline by Peter Goes
In this picture book, Peter Goes creates these beautiful, vibrant double-page spreads of different eras of history. Each opening uses infographic-styled presentation to collect together a few interesting facts with a visual historical narrative. Admittedly, it's a little Eurocentric, but it's also very nice to look at.
By This You Shall Know Him by Jesse Jacobs
I've decided that I love Jesse Jacobs. His newest graphic novel, Safari Honeymoon, is a wonderfully bizarre man vs. nature story, and this earlier tome considers similar themes in depicting creation and origins of life. His style here is similar to the work he has done for Adventure Time, only much more strange and envelope-pushing - if such a thing can be! By This You Shall Know Him portrays the creation of life on Earth as a petty game of one-upmanship, playfulness, and greed staged by godlike-beings seeking the approval of a enigmatic super-entity. Oddly compelling!
I read Looking For Alaska last year and really enjoyed it, and while Paper Towns isn't quite as indie-zeitgeist-epic as Green's first book, it's still a really entertaining coming-of-age character study with its fair share of memorable moments. I also love the way that Green organically builds some genuinely interesting and esoteric areas of knowledge into his stories (in this case the 'paper towns' of the title) - hopefully imbuing and/or reinforcing a love of learning for a whole new generation of literati.
101 Answers for New Teachers by Annette Breaux
A fantastic and occupation-affirming book that definitely shouldn't just be read by new teachers. Breaux's pragmatic, proactive approach to teaching really spoke to me. I don't want that to come across as cheesy as it probably sounds, it's just that I read all of Breaux's hard-won anecdotes and found myself stopping over and over again to make notes, or think more in-depth about her ideas, or just take a break to reflect on how much I agreed with her. There are so many teachers out there, old and new, who would get so much out of this book.
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
I picked up Gene Luen Yang's one-shot graphic novel thinking that it would be an amusing memoir of one boy's journey to adulthood as a cultural-hyphenate in '90s America. It would be disingenuous to say that this book is not this, but it's also so much more - concurrently telling three thematically-linked stories; the aforementioned coming-of-age teen drama, the traditional Chinese tale of the Monkey god (AKA Journey to the West), and a satirical sitcom-esque comedy about a grossly outdated stereotypical 'Chinaman' (the repugnantly named 'Chin-Kee') who visits his all-American cousin. Luen Yang deftly interweaves genres to touch on themes of identity and self-acceptance in moving fashion, whilst also simultaneously pushing the bar on exploration of racial stereotyping. The 'Chin Kee' section of the graphic novel is something that some people will find a little hard to read, even when you consider that it's coming from an authentically Chinese voice, but if you do decide to read this book then I recommend you stick with this section as the pay off is quite significant.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark's early '60s novella is probably better known now (marginally) as the inspiration for the 1970s film for which Maggie Smith won her first Oscar. I'm a big fan of this film and find its subtext concerning elitism and fascism quite beguiling in its subversive audacity. The book is perhaps even more direct about this theme, so I appreciated it a lot. In a nutshell, the titular Miss Jean Brodie is a middle-aged English teacher at a conservative 1930s Scottish girls' school. She is infamous around the school for her tutelage of the 'Brodie set', a small group of girls hand-picked and groomed by Miss Brodie to basically be her own personal fanclub. It draws neat parallels between scholastic trends towards elitism and the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain and Germany prior to WWII, however, more daringly (and unfortunately still relevant today), it's the commentary that Spark passes on those who propagate educational elitism that sticks with the reader. It's this element that remains most indelibly memorable about this wonderful little piece of wit and satire. An underrated 20th Century classic.
Showa by Shigeru Mizuki
I'm about to teach the WWII Conflict Study Conflict in the Pacific for HSC Modern History for the second time and as part of my preliminary reading I decided to dive into Mizuki's famous graphic novel series on Japan's Showa period (1926-1989). So far I've only read the first volume (there are four) but, despite its length, it just about flew by as Mizuki retains reader engagement by alternating between vignettes on Japanese historical events and his own childhood as a cheeky rascal growing up in urban Japan. Mizuki also casts an unflinchingly critical eye over Japan's romance with militarism during this era, making this manga a must-read for any history buff looking for a valuable perspective on the rise of Tojo's fascist WWII regime.
Multiple Warheads by Brandon Graham
I found this on a 'best non-superhero graphic novels' list here. It turned out to be quite something else; a post-apocalyptic, anarchic, Mao-punk road trip through the ruined, alien-infested wastelands of futuristic northern Asia. It's hard to describe the plot of Graham's dystopian opus because so much of his creative energy is spent on other aspects of storytelling - world-building, esoteric visions of post-human existence, invented lexicons, tangential arthouse film-style characterisation, and staggeringly grand illustrations that test the reader's frame of reference. I digested this in little bits so that I didn't get too over- or underwhelmed, and by the time I finished I found myself wanting to read more of Brandon Graham's stuff.
Pyongyang by Guy Delisle
Guy Delisle is a journalist and animator whose work takes him all over the world, most interestingly to the places that few visit. Pyongyang, his graphic novel of the time he spent working in North Korea, affords readers the chance to see the world's most secretive nation from the inside. The level of access that Delisle was allowed is moderately restricted at best, however, even with such strictures placed upon him, this memoir is still nothing short of fascinating for anyone curious about what life in North Korea is really like.
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