Today's read of the week is brought to you by Blankets by Craig Thompson.

Blankets is an autobiographical graphic novel published in 2003 that recounts Thompson's childhood and adolescent years. Thematically, it focuses on Thompson's struggle with his religious identity in a devout Christian household and his experience with first love. The narrative is deeply personal and it shows in the way Thompson is able to describe events with such detail, as if he were experiencing these moments all over again for the first time. In a very romanticized way at least, but I'm a sucker for that sentimental, cheesy, overly-personal mush. The story's got a lot of heart to it, and that's what I love in a story. Even though Blankets' story is rather mundane, I think that's okay because real life can be mundane.



What's not mundane is the art, which is flipping amazing, hecking fantastic, holy hot frying fritters gosh darn beautiful. I think you know something's good when you just can't find the right words to put together to convey all the things you want to say. So instead you just come to the point where you end up frantically gesturing towards the whole thing and saying, "Look!" It's dynamic. It's expressive. It looks exactly like how it should feel.

I was reminded a lot of This One Summer, another coming-of-age type graphic novel that sits in my bookshelf back home, by Jillian and Mariko Tamiko. Both of them deal themes of adolescence and growing into sexuality. Plus, the art is also fantastic in the way it manages to capture those everyday-life moments, much like Thompson's art. Curious, I looked into it, and it turns out Craig Thompson's Blankets played an influential role in several of Jillian's and Mariko's works. It was really nice to then read Craig Thompson's review on This One Summer and how much he loved it.

In the end, I'm sad I pushed off reading Blankets, but so glad I finally got the chance to curl up in bed and read it in one go.