Raise your hand if you’ve read Persepolis 1. None of you?!?!? Please do yourself a favor, X this window and get thee to your local library and/or independent bookstore. Except for you, Lindsey Woho, of course. And perhaps Betsy. Or my mom.

Anyway. This book is, indeed, a sequel. In the same vein as Craig Thompson’s Blankets or to an extend, Art Speigelman’s Maus and Maus II, this is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir. The first volume is the growing up – little Marjane learns to survive in an increasingly totalitarian Iran, wearing her veil to elementary school but coming home to a pair of revolutionary parents. This book picks up with a teenaged Marjane, and due to the increasing violence in her hometown of Tehran, she is no longer living in Iran, but at a boarding school in Austria.

While Persepolis 1 was more about the changing Iranian culture around Marjane, this volume was more about her coming of age. Marjane is living on her own, in a country far from her parents. Things don’t go as planned. Roommates leave, landladies are crazy, and boys lead her down mistaken paths. She returns to Tehran a woman, but hasn’t yet challenged all her demons. Marjane has many of the same issues any young woman faces – should I marry my boyfriend? should I get another degree? – but with Iran under increasingly sexist control, she has to learn to play the system as well.

Buy This Book For: your mom (my mom loved it!), your sexy-intellectual girlfriend, your sister who just enrolled in her first Women’s Studies course. You can buy a paperback version that binds both volumes together. Or bonus! Give it to your favorite foreign film buff, along with the Academy Award nominated film!

BookSlut interview | Amazon Link

This book has earned a very special place in my heart, because yes, this was the first graphic novel I ever read. My mother brought it home for me when I was still a teenager, and the whole “Graphic Novel” thing was just catching on in libraries and bookstores. It was (and still is) a fat, fat book. I’m sure I avoided it for awhile, but I remember opening it in my living room one summer afternoon and closing it that same day.

It’s definitely one of those turn-last-page-then-hug-book-to-chest-and-sigh kind of reads.

The plot is not terribly complex or involved. It’s a coming of age story. A memoir, actually. Craig grows up in a cold home, in a cold state. He finds a safe haven in God, and in drawing, but social success eludes him. Until a disappointing trip to church camp leads him to Raina, the girl who turns it all upside down.

Open this one if you’re in the mood for some love, some pain, some beautiful drawings.

Craig’s blog | Review on Powells | Amazon Link

Okay, so I *might* have alluded to the notion that I hate “my childhood sucked” type memoirs. Then why on earth did I pick up this book, and, more operatively, why was I so surprised by the story I found? Maybe it was the book cover, or a Hook-The-Reader type description somewhere, but I thought this was going to be a memoir about a kid who literally grew up in a bar. I mean, what kind of parent brings their kid into a bar? However, this is not the story I found, and I found myself pleasantly surprised.

J.R. Moehringer grew up in Long Island. He didn’t know his father, but he could hear him on the radio, broadcasting from The City. And who needs a dad when you have beer-swilling, bar-inhabiting uncles and their gaggles of children? J.R. looked to Uncle Charlie in particular, a man who worked at Dickens, the quintessential, Cheers-esque hometown bar of his family and every person he met in Manhasset. This is the bar of yore which J.R. titles his book, and despite name changes and other monstrosities, the bar is the one constant in J.R.’s tumultuous life. He tags along to Dickens with his sunburnt uncles, takes his first drink there, recovers from heartbreak with scotch after scotch. Eventually, J.R. comes to treat the bar as he treats his family member: near to him, dear to him, but sometimes its best just to stay the hell away from them. I found J.R.’s relationship with this inanimate character to be romantic and touching. And the rest of his life story is okay too 🙂

Buy this for: Your nephew who couldn’t possibly be 21 yet but holy crap there he is, your dad who occasionally calls for a ride home from his favorite drinking establishment, or your favorite might-as-well-be-your dad Uncle.

J.R. Moehringer Online | NPR Interview | Amazon Link