Library Loot (January 21)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post—feel free to steal the button—and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries! Want to share your loot? Eva has the Mr. Linky this week!

I’ve somehow managed to go to the library three times in the last two weeks: twice to return my interlibrary loan books and then one more time because they called me the day after my second visit to say a book I’d requested had just come in. Of course I took out more books every time! Here then is my loot:

On my first trip, I grabbed Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima and Barefoot Gen: The Day After by Keiji Nakazawa. I feel slightly apprehensive about these two, since they may be really hard to read. Has anyone else read them?

On my second trip, I grabbed Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection – 1987-1991 by Scott McCloud because my friend Michael had highly recommended it to me. What I’d forgotten is that this collection starts at issue 11; luckily Michael then lent me Zot!: Book 1, which contains issues 1-10. While looking for another McCloud book (which was supposedly in the library, although I didn’t find it this time around), I came across The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels by Danny Fingeroth and Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know by Paul Gravett. I’m hoping these two will both introduce me to new graphic novels and teach me a few things about how to get more out of reading them.

Finally, on my most recent trip to the library, I picked up The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs (which I’d requested based on Vanessa’s review) and found the McCloud book I’d been looking for: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.