Maus
The author-illustrator traces his father's imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp through a series of disarming and unusual cartoons arranged to tell the story as a novel.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
16mentions
16people
2011–2025years
44% recommend56% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- A bit of trivia: Garbage Pail Kids were created by Art Spiegelman, who later won the Special Pulitzer for his fantastic graphic novel "Maus" about his family's experience during the Holocaust.
- There are comics to suit every literary taste. Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, is an examination of the medium in the form of a comic. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is a dual memoir of holocaust survival and the creation of the book itself. Both are widely translated and available in public libraries.
You could use the Eisner Awards as a source of recommendations. Read the blurbs and preview pages of the winners and nominees, and select the book or series that appeals to you the most. For example, Ballad for Sophie was a recent highlight for me, and was nominated for four Eisner Awards.
- Some of my favourites this year:
On The Clock by Emily Guendelsberger - Gave me a glimpse into how it is to work at Amazon, McDonalds and Convergys. Though the subject is not the most positive. her style of writing is quite funny, and the combination worked well.
Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. He drops you into the middle of his universe without explaining it all at once, and he's very eager about explaining all the new technology he's dreamed up. He also makes sure the books are written so that they could all have been a standalone title. Depending on what you've read before, things he mentions will often remain a "mystery" until you find the answer later in the series, or in one of the standalone short stories.
Maus av Art Spiegelman - Graphical novel about being a Jewish WW2 concentration camp prisoner. Highly recommended.
Flowers for Algernon by David Keyes. From 1959, I liked it a lot. About a mentally handicapped man who receives a surgery that gradually turns him into the smartest man alive. Lots of focus on how empathy, humility and respect has to go alongside pure knowledge. And also that mentally handicapped are people too.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl - Sci-fi from the 70s. Quite good. A comet is discovered, full of million-year old ships pre-programmed for roundtrip flights to unknown destinations.
Next year I'd like to look more into Haruki Murakami's books. The one I've read was slow to get started, but I liked it a lot in the end. It had some things in common with regular sci-fi, but he seems to lean more towards the dreamy/odd/artsy side of things than what I'm used to.
- Reading 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman had a similar impact on me.
- If you liked this, you should read Art Spiegelman's Maus.
- Here's some books I would like to see on a coffee table.
1. An illustrated book of bad arguments
2. Maus by Art Spiegelman
3. Amano: The Complete Prints of Yoshitaka Amano
4. Chinese Calligraphy: 50 Characters to Inspire Peace and Calm
5. My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles by Gardner
6. The Illustrated Story of Art: The Great Art Movements and the Paintings that Inspired them
7. The Design of Everyday Things
