I don't read many graphic novels. I generally stopped reading when they stopped calling them comic books and adding collectible pogs, I was really bitter about that.
Aside from the pog thing, I don't relate as much to graghic novels. There are, after all, very few graphic novels about bookish women who don't want to be super heroes, but would rather sit in a bath reading Austen.
Except that's exactly what The Night Bookmobile is about. And it's lovely. It also has the closest vision of my heaven in a book.
Alexandra takes us through three points in her life where she boards the night bookmobile which has every book, periodical, letter, and even cereal box that she has ever read.
From the first experience as a young woman, she structures her life around reading and finding the elusive mobile library that has all that she has read. When finally she finds it through extreme means, she's happy but I'm left to wonder if the sacrifice was worth it. Are books more important than family,friends, or life itself? Probably not. Although if you found a library that could magnify the feeling of home and comfort that an old, loved book has into every book,would you ever be able to leave?
The author, Audrey Niffenegger,also wrote The Time Traveler's Wife and maintains a very similar voice in this. Slightly wistful,and bittersweet.
