Thursday, August 20, 2009

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Blankets is an autobiographical graphic novel and came pretty highly recommended. I can honestly see why. This is a beautifully drawn, painfully honest, sweet novel of growing up and falling in love for the first time.

Growing up in an Evangelical Christian family, Thompson depicts his childhood as somewhat scary (at least the dad was a little scary to me) and troubled. Constantly picked on and forced to share a bed with his little brother, Thompson turned to Christianity early on.

At church camp, he meets Riana and they soon fall in love. We witness their 2 weeks together at Riana's and see how heartbreaking first loves can be.

Thompson moves on to the city after finding out first loves don't last forever.

This is an incredibly sweet book and well worth reading.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Stupid American History by Leland Gregory

I'm assuming Mr. Gregory has his facts straight about the myths and stupidity of America. This little book is full of trivia that you just never knew. Such as when JFK was assassinated, it wasn't a federal felony to kill a president. You have to wonder why?!?!

When the Titanic hit the iceberg the night of April 14th, most of the travelers were watching....The Poseiden Adventure...about a ship capsizing. Irony, no?

This book covers the beginning of America to fairly current political history (even has some snarkiness towards Dubya). Very entertaining and full of tidbits to shock and awe your dinner guests.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose

I had a trip to New Orleans planned so I decided to go to the library and get some history books. I saw 1 Dead In Attic and remembered seeing Chris Rose on No Reservations talking to Anthony Bourdain. He was a slight mess and pretty emotional about Katrina and the aftermath, even years later. I got the book anyways.

This is basically a series of Rose's newspaper articles that he wrote, editorials pretty much. Very emotional, very raw and, sometimes, very upsetting. He left his wife and kids with family in Maryland and went back to their New Orleans home to report on the aftermath of Katrina. His home was relatively undamaged but Rose completely immersed himself in the misery that other people were living. He described everyone there as living with post traumatic stress disorder and he couldn't have been more right.

Rose completely opened himself up and became an "embedded journalist", as he called himself, and the war he saw took a huge toll on him, which is evident in his writing.

This is truly a good book to read to try and understand what was happening down there that the news didn't report to you. Made me cry more than once.