Best historical & biographical novels according to redditors
We found 72 Reddit comments discussing the best historical & biographical novels. We ranked the 30 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 72 Reddit comments discussing the best historical & biographical novels. We ranked the 30 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Well here we are, the final episode! In lieu of my usual approach, I'm gonna do some overall final wrap up stuff:
Alright, with the administrative stuff out of the way, allow me to talk about the series as a whole a little bit before we depart.
Holo and Lawrence are by fair my favorite pairing (and two of my favorite characters individually as well) in all of anime, with no small part of that being how real their relationship feels. There is no rushing, no suddenly being in love with each other, it's just a slow and deliberate build in their feelings for each other. Watching them overcome trial after trial as they both contribute to each others happiness and open themselves up to another is a real joy to watch and read. I hope that some of you new watchers fell in love with these characters as I did.
The supporting cast is also wonderful, each with their own motivations and quirks that make them memorable as well as making their involvement in the story believable.
The setting and world is well fleshed out and has a lot going on behind the scenes, and I like how things move even without the main characters. Very few shows give the characters situations that spawned from events out of their direct control.
Future events and characters are very much worth reading the novels, and those of you craving more of our main duo will most certainly want to see how they continue from here. I honestly recommend reading all of them, but season 2 leaves off on novel 5. Go back and read 4 (as it wasn't covered in the anime), and then continue with 6.
TLDR; Thanks to everyone who watched, I do hope that any of you who stuck around for the rewatch enjoyed the show. Please support the Light Novels if you enjoyed the series. Hopefully I'll see some of you around here as well. I may not be as wise as Holo, but I'll try to remember you all!
I’m pretty sure I read a comic about this in The Big Book of Urban Legends as a kid, and that was published in 95. The story itself is probably much older.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Urban-Legends-Stories/dp/1563891654
There's a graphic novel by Garth Ennis (same guy who wrote Preacher and The Boys) about them I keep meaning to request from my library:
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Witches-Garth-Ennis/dp/1682473902
Blankets or Habibi
I quite liked Habibi by Craig Thompson, mostly because the setting was so different from usual: a post-apocalyptic, fantasy-flaired Middle East.
Well Craig Thompson also did Goodbye Chunky Rice, Carnet De Voyage and Habibi. As far as themes and plot go they don't have a lot of similarities (except maybe Chunky Rice) but the art is phenomenal in them and Habibi works with the Quran much like how Blankets spends a lot of time talking about Christianity.
As far as autobiographical comics go though, I'd suggest American Splendour (specifically "Our Cancer Year", "Cleveland" and "The Quitter"), A Contract With God, and Love And Rockets (try "Maggie the Mechanic", its not for everyone though, it has some scifi in this book but that kind of fades away as the series progresses to focus more on the characters and their relationships).
If you want something that experiments with the format of a comic book a lot you might want to look into Asterios Polyp, Cerebus (Jaka's Story and Church and State I & II are the highlights there) and the works of Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan is a good starting point). As I said though, these books, while some of the most brilliant comics there are, are very experimental and as such it helps to have some grounding in comics before you give them a try. I'd actually go so far as to call all three of these even better than Blankets though and I thought Blankets was great.
I'm reading Habibi by Craig Thompson. Stunningly beautiful if a bit tough to read, emotionally speaking. Very good... maybe even better than his breakthrough Blankets.
It's called "The Big Book of Urban Legends." Forgive my link, I'm on my phone.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1563891654/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
Ok, it's a bunch of ebooks, usually in these bundles you get about 15 of them and the bundles cost $15 so $1 each.
If it's stuff like comic books it's usually around 40 items for a normal price for those are like $4-8 each, in the case of books for the more fiction style of books maybe the normal price is usually like $10-20 each, in this case it was 20-25 books so I guess the normal price is $15-20 each and in the case of stuff like the OReilly books the normal price per book is more like $30 and such, in like the Unity asset packs some of those things have a normal price of $50 and so on.
So like for $1:
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Mythology-Explained-Legends-Goddesses/dp/1633538966 Kindle $12.49
https://www.amazon.com/How-Art-Can-Make-Happy/dp/1452153221 Kindle $9.99
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Why-How-Illustrate-Mysteries/dp/1452108226 Kindle $12.09
https://www.amazon.com/Underachievers-Manifesto-Accomplishing-Little-Feeling/dp/0811853683 Kindle $6.24
https://www.amazon.com/Crap-Dates-Disastrous-Encounters-Single/dp/1452114587 Kindle $4.99
https://www.amazon.com/K-Knifeball-Alphabet-Terrible-Advice/dp/1452103313 Kindle $6.00
I totally don't think ebooks are worth as much as physical books. A physical book takes much more distribution and work to generate and have a much nicer quality and accessibility though it do take up space. So in general I wouldn't buy ebooks at those prices but that's about $61.50 on Amazon to get those ebooks which Humble Bundle charged $1 for.
Here in Sweden were I live education is gratis and you even get a small amount of money to help get by for up to six years of university studies. Then again our taxes are very close to half of GDP and on work income the total taxation is about 3/4 of the income when you've paid all taxes including stuff like VAT and energy and so on. Our system allow people to get pretty useless degrees and our flat salaries and the political ideology make people demand a higher salary just because they have spent equal number of years at university or equal hours at the job not because what they produce was in demand and deserved that payment. So that's a bad system in that it doesn't produce what the market value and lower the production of usable goods and services and waste resources vs something more efficient but it could be solved by offering poor people a loan which they pay back once they have gotten a better job or whatever instead of just not educating them at all.
As an Indian or American citizen rather than a Swedish one a university degree would had cost money here too though. And the school you went to would unlikely had the same reputation as the finest American ones and not necessarily held the same quality. But for those living here their education is paid for by others taxes (which is about twice as large share of the GDP as in America.)
When it comes to fiction, this is a really good three part comic about Katanga (and Congo):
https://www.amazon.com/Katanga-1-Diamonds-Fabien-Nury-ebook/dp/B07CZ25N61/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=katanga+comic&qid=1564588925&s=gateway&sr=8-2
Recently taken an interest and Africa and really enjoyed it.
This is a graphic novel, but Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return deals heavily with this issue. Persepolis should be required reading, of course. In the same vein, stories from the same author's book, Embroideries, should also meet your criteria.
Longer shots:
Have you tried Amazon?
Spice and Wolf 19 - https://smile.amazon.com/Spice-Wolf-Vol-light-novel/dp/1975300122
Wolf & Parchment 1 - https://smile.amazon.com/Wolf-Parchment-Theory-Spice-light/dp/0316473456/
Yep! This one
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Urban-Legends-Stories/dp/1563891654
Snopes actually use illustrations from it for some of their earlier articles.
This is out on the topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Middle-Earth-Botany-Sub-Creation/dp/1606352652
Jeffrey Brown writes some like that. They're mainly autobiographical graphic novels. I remember "Unlikely" being like what you're looking for.
The Big Book of Urban Legends?
A lot of the old British comic strips were about WW2. Some are now available in TPB.
[Darkie's Mob] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkies-Mob-Secret-War-Darkie/dp/1848564422)
[Johnny Red] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Johnny-Red-Falcons-First-Flight/dp/1848560338/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396980942&sr=1-3&keywords=johnny+red)
[Major Eazy] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Major-Eazy-Heart-Iron-1/dp/1848564414/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396980990&sr=1-1&keywords=MajoR+Eazy)
All from the 70's / 80s so maybe a bit dated. There's also a lot of the old "Commando" one-shots republished in TPB collections.
More recently Garth Ennis has done [Battler Britton] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battler-Britton-Garth-Ennis/dp/1845765605/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981093&sr=1-1&keywords=battler+Britton) and several volumes of [Battlefields] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battlefields-Tankies-Dynamite-Carlos-Esquerra/dp/1606900757/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981143&sr=1-7&keywords=garth+ennis+battlefields)
Don't know if that helps at all.
That thicc B reminds me of Brian Blomerths B that he uses in his signature.
Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day https://www.amazon.com/dp/194486024X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1j6IDb5XB1MHS
In addition to these great recomendations, I really liked Habibi a lot.
Also, Nimona was just released in print and it's amazing. The first three chapters are still up online.
It's not quite what you asked for, but since there's so many great graphic novels already suggested, here are some other webcomics I like:
Paranatural
Bad Machinery
Gunnerkrigg Court
Adventures of Jonas
I really liked this one. It starts off a little rough, as the author is in highschool, and grows up with him. This is one of those things I read through and then immediately started over and read it again.
Octopus Pie
I like Octopus Pie because the protaganist is really relatable. She's in her midtwenties and doesn't really know what she's doing with her life.
But you said yourself that the author rejects the term. The point about prose novels starting out serial is valid and totally solid though.
I think you might be surprised by the quality of some graphic novels though. Habibi, Tardi's 'It Was the War of the Trenches' & 'Goddamn This War!' , Fun Home, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, This One Summer
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
Do you mean this? https://www.amazon.com/Habibi-Pantheon-Graphic-Library-Thompson/dp/0375424148/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1538804647&sr=1-1&keywords=Habibi
Parchment Vol 1 is actually available for pre-order on Amazon.ca right now. I'm guessing that if you order all of it at once, including the pre-order, you'll still only get charged for shipping once by Amazon (this has happened to me before with pre-ordering books there in the same order as books I'm buying immediately, I don't get charged twice for shipping even though I'd be functionally getting two shipments). If you can afford the over $100 it'll set you back for all of it, I say it's a good idea.
The Big Book of Urban Legends: 200 True Stories, Too Good to be True! ?
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Urban-Legends-Stories/dp/1563891654
Oh I know of this. There's a mention of it in the Big Book of Urban Legends.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Urban-Legends-Stories/dp/1563891654
Okay, so this one does not pertain to the philosophical and social issues, but this is still a stellar read in terms of the reality behind super powered people. I recommend it to anyone with an analytic mind who enjoys science fiction. I always watch scifi and read comics while speculating what the scientific basis could be for the fantastic things we see in these genres, and this book was gold to me when I received it as a gift in the seventh grade. In fact, I'm buying another copy now since I lost my old one.
One of my favorite graphic novels is Blankets by Craig Thompson. It's a coming-of-age story. It's just really beautiful in a way that I can't describe; it resonated with me strongly. Habibi is excellent as well--same author, different [darker] story. That one's super interesting because he ties in a lot of Islamic art and references. Please check out the reviews; I'm not good at writing my own :-.
I also have these novels, but haven't had a the chance to read them yet.
Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero by Larry Tye
It's Superman! by Tom De Haven
I think this was the book.http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743487257?pc_redir=1405441125&robot_redir=1
What did you think it was a cameo of? It's not Spice and Wolf.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316473456/ref=mp_s_a_1_1
It doesn't seem like many people are paying attention to 1337_n00b's clarification comment, so I guess I'll write about it a bit.
For a while I'd buy little self-published books, particularly after visiting some shops in Montreal and enjoying their local work. I would try to hit a couple good comic stores every time I visit a new city, which lead to some good stuff and a lot of bad stuff.
What killed it for me was having a friend bring me some local comics back from Dublin. They were just terrible, worse than most webcomics you decide not to read after being interested in their banner ads. They left such a bad taste in my mouth that I was discouraged from exploring local stuff anymore.
The last closest book I picked up to an indie was Justin Madson's Breathers. I don't know if it counts though, since it was a webcomic first, and it got a pile of publicity for years before the trade was released. At least it's self-published? It was pretty good, but I can think of five more popular books that cost less and are better off the top of my head.
Oh his art is really good.
I have no idea though how he is going to keep up with that tattoo, redrawing it every scene :o
​
Regarding super powers / ability... You know, there's a book that made see these things very differently after reading it. "The Science of X-Men" was very interesting to me to consider different points of the subject.
It's not just "magic" and "fantasy" explain everything. There could be something more behind it all, also there's a documentary about american obsession with super heroes, but I forgot how it's called.
Agatha H. and the Airship City by Phil & Kaja Foglio, or any of their "Girl Genius" Graphic Novels.
Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion by Jay Lake
The Short story "Zeppelin City" by Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick.
The Clockwork Century series by Cherie Priest, set during the American Civil War as opposed to Victorian London: Boneshaker, Dreadnought , Ganymede, and Clementine.
I'm not calling you a liar, buuuut...
Seriously, the "fiancé fucked a black stripper, baby came out black" is an urban myth just as old as "The Hook" or "The Choking Doberman." It's been covered in a few collections of urban myths, including this one, which I own. The fact that it's "one of your dad's friends" makes the story that much more dubious.
Comic book co-written by Ellis Amdur and Neal Stephenson.
I was going to post this, but it's been translated into English.
Habibi by Craig Thompson (and Blankets, for that matter). A visually stunning story of 2 child slaves attempting to reconnect and survive, set in an approximately modern, unnamed 3rd world country. Very much an exploration of sex and love.
The Invisibles by Grant Morrison. Incredibly strange story of a group of 90's counter-culture anarchists looking to overthrow the literal dark forces that are attempting to control the world. Something of a "What if every conspiracy theory was true?" It sounds right up your alley, as it explores class, race, gender, and sexuality through the group's unique perspective. It has a little bit of a slow roll, but begs to be picked up after around 100 pages. I've linked the omnibus, which is a bit unwieldy, so you may prefer to collect it by volumes.
Black Hole by Charles Burns. A physically deforming STD begins to infect high school students in a suburban town. This book is an uneasy, beautiful reflection of high school cruelty.
Epileptic by David B. A sad autobiography of growing up with an epileptic brother who does not get the medical attention he needs. The book is translated from French and takes place in small town France. David B. pulls no punches, this story is honest and heart-breaking, interesting not only for the stark look at a misunderstood disorder, but for the brutal confrontation with David's childhood.
I'll also second Asterios Polyp and Transmetropolitan.
I happen to be writing a graphic novel about this event. Part 1 is available for free download on Amazon until tomorrow night: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NGZQMBG
Would love to know what you think. (Though we don't get to the events of the Apology until part 3...)
http://www.amazon.com/Superman-High-Flying-History-Americas-Enduring/dp/1400068665
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Boys-Adventures-Shuster-ebook/dp/B009E7QC2A
http://www.amazon.com/Superman-Unauthorized-Biography-Glen-Weldon/dp/1118341848/ref=pd_cp_b_1
Alan Moore's foray into prose work.
Nope. It's literally the FRONT COVER OF THE BOOK. It's also a new series. I spoiled nothing.
https://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Parchment-Theory-Spice-light/dp/0316473456
That's like spoiling Jurassic Park because it has a dinosaur on it.