Our newest selection and we’re switching up genres and styles!
The new babble book club selection is a double feature of graphic novels — It’s a Good Life, if You Don’t Weaken by Seth and Fun Home: A family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Our final discussion date will be Friday August 9 at 2:00 p.m. EST in the babble book lounge.
While I suppose “graphic novel” may not be an exact genre, these two books are great ambassadors for graphic novels and also allow readers to either choose both to read or one or the other.
Why both?
Well the answer is simple: graphic novels aren’t so heavy on the words as traditional novels, but pack a lot of punch in style and themes. The format and themes occuring within each novel will be a great basis for discussion in how each story is presented, the wide ranging styles of design and why graphic novels are a great format for storytelling.
It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken by Canadian cartoonist Seth is an autobiographical journey through the towns of Ontario and the figures that encompass the author’s life as he searches for the fictional cartoon artist Kalo. Number 52 on the “100 Best Comics of the 20th Century” list by The Comics Journal, It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken is a great introductory foray into the world of graphic novels.
Fun Home: A family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is a heartbreaking yet humourous story about family dynamics, closeted sexuality and great books. Illustrated in a gothic inspiration, this memoir has earned a cult status for its well crafted and uniquely complex characters — a dispondent, third generation funeral director and high school englisher teacher father for example — and strikingly honest portrayal of the revealations of self and the hidden lives of family members.
Want to “join” the babble book club?
Please do! It’s easy and free, because all you need to do is register as a rabble.ca user!
The babble book club doesn’t have official members — any rabble users or new friends who want to join in the discussion are welcome.
First, here are some tips to become a rabble.ca user:
1. Go to our log-in/registration page and fill out the subsequent information. Don’t worry, providing us with your email will not automatically set you up for emails from rabble.ca nor will we give your email to anyone else — it is just for security reasons. Also, feel free to use a pseudonym as your username, most people do!
2. Once you sign up, become familiar with our babble policy and check out our FAQ babble page for tips and tricks on how to post in babble. A babble quirk? You have to refresh your page in order to see new posts on that thread. A bit time consuming, but we’re working on it!
3. Look around and get familiar with babble by exploring all the different threads on the discussion board, including the babble book lounge where our discussion thread is set up for the graphic novel double feautre. Babble offers a lot of different topics with a lot of different users and is a great place to discuss current affairs, gardening, writing and hockey, among other things!
Second, here are the nitty gritty details of how the conversation works:
1. Our final discussion for the graphic novels double features happens in the babble book lounge on the previously established babble thread Friday August 9 at 2 p.m. EST for one hour in real time. Real time means there will be more members of the book club present and the conversation will have a quicker flow. Our moderator (username: Kaitlin McNabb) will kick off our conversation with a hello!
2. Even though we have a final discussion date, everyone is encouraged to discuss their thoughts on the books during their reading process. The advantage of having an online book club is it is flexible and available all the time! Since this part of the conversation is not in real time, comments might not be responded to immediately, but eventually.
3. During our final discussion everyone is encouraged to post their questions and comments with respect to other babblers on the thread. We want to create lots of discussion on these books and find out whatever everyone thinks about these selections!
And that’s it! Pretty simple, really.
Both these graphic novels are widely available in local libraries (remember: branches can loan books to other branches too!), independent bookstores and used bookstores given they are a few years old! If you need some help finding a book just ask here in the comments section or on our babble thread for this discussion, and we’ll be happy to help!
Please pick up a copy and read along with us!
Join the babble book club Facebook group for added fun and meet some of the people in the club!
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Nick Seebruch, editor
