This is one of those books that makes you marvel at the possibilities of the graphic medium, and of books in general. Often, when I read graphic novels, they feel like short stories, and not simply because you can read one in an evening. But this one feels like a novel, a really well-written novel, with character development and motifs and memories and so many great layers of complexity. It is visually stunning, and so much of the mood/emotion is conveyed simply by the images and colors and line quality. This book does many things that a great novel does, and several things that a purely verbal novel cannot do. And I say BOOK over and over again because you cannot possibly have an experience like this in a digital format.

Wow, what a book! Mohr pulls off two equally intriguing story lines: How did a boy named Rhonda end up in a mental hospital talking to a psychiatrist fifteen years ago? And will he finally be able to move beyond his past in the here and now? The boy Rhonda seems so full of innocence and resilience (and coping mechanisms), and the grown Rhonda brings some innocence and much chagrin but you find yourself rooting for him anyway. The sessions with the psychiatrist who he calls Angel-Hair resemble Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness, like Benjy in The Sound and the Fury. I'm not gonna lie and tell you this book isn't heartbreaking. But it's also beautiful and unforgettable.

This book is sort of a literary "Big Lebowski," only with a couch, not a rug, as the root of the quest to bring meaning to slackers' lives.

WARNING! This book is fun to read! FUN! Premise: Child prodigy cartographer who's never left Montana is awarded a prestigious Smithsonian prize, but they don't know that he's only 12. Without telling his parents, he decides to hop trains from Montana to Washington DC to accept his fellowship. Adventure ensues. Obviously. The sidebars and illustrations complement the text impeccably.

This is a book about aesthetic theory. It's about the globalization of culture. It's about why we love what we love and hate what we hate. It's about the history of schmaltz as a musical genre. It's about the art of the ironic punkrock cover song. It's about the Quebecois status as an outsider in Canadian society. It's about immigrant influence on styles of American music. AND it's a book about Celine Dion, and it's fucking brilliant. Read it

If you were telling the story of your life, where would you begin? With your first breath, your first memory, your first love, your first loss? With the story of your family or your people? Each chapter in I, The Divine is a new beginning, each chapter a puzzle piece in the life of Sarah Nour El-Din. The effect is kalaidescopic -- you see hues and shapes and stories that you recognize, but never in the same place twice. By the end, Alameddine forces you to step back and marvel at what a beautiful object you hold in your hands.

Hailed by Howard Zinn, A People's History of Science attempts to correct the heroic intellectual view of history by recognizing science as a "collective social activity" that was developed, for the most part, in the daily activities of working people. Conner illuminates the roles of African slaves in bringing agricultural knowledge to America, of Native Americans and peasant healers in the development of medicine and pharmacology, of sailors in honing the fields of navigation and mathematics, of eyeglass-makers in creating the telescope and the microscope, and of artisans and craftsmen in performing the trial and error experiments that formed the backbone of the Scientific Revolution. The prose is clear, the arguments are thought-provoking, and while I occasionally found myself wanting a bit more depth, this book held my fascination for 500 pages.

Perhaps a little self-indulgent for those of us in our 20s and 30s, Magill uses pop references (from VH1 to the Daily Show to Dave Eggers and the Onion) and philosophy's usual suspects to argue that the wide-spread ironically bitter attitude afflicting so many of us today is not an indicator of detachment, but a defense mechanism to protect personal integrity in a screwed-up world.