Smashbomb

"As counterweight to the weird and eerie elements in many of the books I have selected I propose the sweet and kind Summer Book. Tove Jansson’s fictionalized memoir about the summers she spent as a girl with her grandmother on a tiny island in the archipelago off Finland’s south coast is a wonderful ode to the curiosity of childhood and the wisdom of old age. In a precise, lyrical language that never gives in to easy sentiments Jansson allows us to take part in the summer days with the girl and the grandmother as one is discovering nature for the first time and the other is contemplating its vulnerability. It is sunshine in the shape of a book — for the shadowy part of Jansson’s oeuvre one must look to her children stories about the Moomins."

Source

Kudos

ClareR (5950 KP) rated The Complete Persepolis in Books

Sep 24, 2019

The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi | 2003 | Biography, Comics & Graphic Novels

8.8

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

This was so good. Persepolis tells the story of the authors childhood in Iran, the troubles that the country went through, the war, violence, religious extremism, and political upheavals. It tells of what it was like to grow up amidst all of these things, and what it was like to be sent away on your own, as a young teenager, to be educated in a ‘free’ country (in this case, Austria). It’s not over-dramatised, it’s more of a ‘this is how it was’. The pictures add so much to the story as well. What started out as a book that my son was asked to read for school, turned into a book that I read when he wasn’t reading it - and I think I enjoyed it far more 🤷🏼‍♀️