Sorry I've been away all week, but I just haven't been able to find the time or energy to do much else beyond what I absolutely had to do at work and at home. I know Alias Grace has been in my "Currently Reading" sidebar for quite a while now, but I haven't actually been reading it. I love Atwood, but I just couldn't get started on this book. I know I will in the near future, but right now I needed something else. So, even though I've been absent from the blog, I have been reading. I read Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman for the Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge. It's a graphic novel in two parts, which deals with one family's ordeal living through the Holocaust. I have had very little experience with graphic novels, so I wasn't sure what to expect. This book is actually based on the true story of the author's family, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman who both ended up in Auschwitz during WWII. Unlike most of the rest of their family, including their oldest son, they survived the war and emigrated to the U.S. afterwards. The book is very well-done and documents a well-known yet little understood event in history. I don't know how anyone can ever truly come to grips with what happened to so many people under the Nazis. In fact, in addition to the story of what happened to Art's family, the book is also about his difficult relationship with his father. Obviously the living hell that his parents endured changed them irrevocably. Art didn't always understand why his father was the way he was. So, writing this book served to help heal their strained relationship, as well.As I said, I haven't had much experience with graphic novels. In the beginning, I was a little distracted by the drawings. But, after the first third of the book, I got into a rhythm, which allowed me to read and look at the drawings without being distracted. The book actually went very quickly. I'm glad I read it, and I'd be willing to read more graphic novels in the future.
Hopefully, I'll get back in my reading groove having finished this one. I'm feeling a lot better. It's just been a busy couple of weeks. In addition to moving my son into college, I'm teaching a class in the evenings in addition to my full-time day job as librarian in a community college. It's a new class so I've had to build the course from scratch. I think I'll enjoy it after I get everything planned out. I appreciate all the nice comments from you guys over the last week or so, as well. I'm already adjusting to the empty nest, and my youngest is adjusting to college life just fine.
