This book made me cry for democracy. In both the transitive and intransitive senses.
Since I first began tracking my reading after getting all of my books catalogued in a database a little over five years ago, I have treated comics and graphic novels almost as bastard stepchildren, not counting them fully in my ‘Books Read’ statistics. I did, however, note whenever I read such ‘books’, and indeed they are sometimes weighty tomes in their own right, whether we’re discussing Watchmen or the lamentable Kingdom Come. As well, as I said the last time I passed the sur-fictive milestone of 500 Books (not really), I have read plenty of short and very short non-comic books that may tend to inflate the book count. But: No matter. I continue to distinguish my ‘Books Read’ by giving precedence to the non-comics I complete, both because I feel it important to maintain the same statistical methodologies I started with (in which regard, see the problems I had to face when changing underlying data slicing for music listened to), and also because I like it this way. I also have begun tracking total pages read, though I rarely (if ever) report this statistic—one reason being that I do not have the data for the earliest books read, thus causing the very type of data distortion I seek to avoid by changing methodologies now.
Ahem. All this is mere prologue to announcing that the 600th book I’ve read of all types since beginning the count back in June of 2015 is Voting Is Your Super Power!, a truly wonderful compilation from that fantastic comics compiler, Craig Yoe. In this small volume (just over a hundred pages) are found reprints of several ‘citizenship’ comics made for one purpose or another, all with the same message: Voting is important! Along with some wrenching panels from cartoonists as different as Herblock and Winsor McCay, and an introduction by Julie Newmar [!], this book left this reader with tears of pride for the best parts of patriotism. Plus, the comics are great.
I have not forgotten that I owe y’all an analysis and a list of the last hundred books I read up to #500 (using the non-comics counting method, the EBITA—that is, Everything But Illustrated Tomes Analysis). And I’m getting to that just as soon as I finish a little side project. Of course, the comic book collection I just read doesn’t have an official ‘Book Read’ number, but the next book I finished (and the most recent) was The DAW Science Fiction Reader, which was book #528 read—meaning I’m on a blistering pace and better get that analysis finished, eh? See you soon!