Joe Sacco spent two months in the occupied territories in 1991–1992 interviewing people and gathering stories. like Persepolis this book shows how powerful graphic novels can be with historical and political subjects. Palestine is a direct chronicle of his time there, a comic of him making the comic basically. it seems like the best way for this work to be presented as, unlike Persepolis, his is an outsider experience. that distinction is important as people occasionally turn the tables and question him about what the good is of them talking to him and other journalists, has media attention done anything for them? in Sacco’s 2001 foreword he acknowledges, “While Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded, no major outstanding issues … have been resolved.” as i read, i felt the stories become more and more heartbreaking, but i think it may just be the weight of these experiences multiplied across huge numbers of people—it’s impossible to see any of them as isolated incidents.

the detail in the art is impressive, and there is a great introduction by Edward Said. i had browsed this several times in bookstores, and i’m glad i finally read it all.

one of those used books that has been sitting on my shelf forever, pulled it out finally and loved the way the words tumbled out. even when the subject doesn’t appeal exactly or the allusions and images are too deeply symbolic for uneducated reading (i.e., not in a class), the language is beautiful, images stirring, and rhythm tight.

it’s been a little while since i read any short stories (for me, at least). this is a great collection set mostly in boston/new england or india. my favorite was the first one, “A Temporary Matter,” where a couple reveal secrets during nightly planned power outages. they are all pretty excellent though.

amazing memoir of growing up in iran during the islamic revolution—i was unfamiliar with iran’s history and this gives a good overview from the perspective of being a girl from a resistant family, growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. the drawings are stark black and white, there is a lot of humor amid the painful parts. i really loved this.

well. another book i meant to read several years ago. this gave me a better perspective on The Intuitionist—i appreciate more the ways that book is put together well now.

supposedly Valencia is fiction, but it reads more like an online diary. and i don’t know how much of it is really fictionalized as it’s about Tea’s life as a “social dyke” in san francisco. it’s entertaining, pretty funny for the most part; even when she is all sad and brokenhearted, she is still making cracks. but when the thread running through a book is “all the girls i dated in a year,” it just gets a little boring to me. i felt like the narrative could have been smoothed over a little more so each chapter wasn’t as broken off from the others.

this is a really smart novel, exploring race in a parallel time where elevator inspectors have great influence. i like a lot of technical aspects of the story, like the implied setting of new york city and the indeterminate time period; but i felt like i should have enjoyed it more than i did. maybe it was just the staggered flashbacks in the middle of the most exciting part of the book that frustrated me—they are entirely relevant where they come in, but messed with the momentum. also Whitehead’s writing style seems almost too clever at times, borderline “funny,” but he is obviously not trying to be funny.

i might have just gotten distracted though. there are a lot of truly excellent insights in this book.