Hi! My name is Penny and as usual I'm here to talk about some bookish things
specifically today I wanted to talk about the top 5 graphic-type works that
I read this year. So as I said in my previous videos, I read 250 books this
year so I am splitting my top books up into different genres and I decided to
put all the graphic ones together. That's manga, graphic novels, comics, other
kind of graphicy things. These are always really quick reads
and I will say for a long time I really struggled to find graphic works. I was
really looking for some graphic novels that I would enjoy and I couldn't find
any. But I really think that last year I locked down what kind of things I like
and this year I've done a lot better at reading those things that I like. So
let's get into this top 5. Number 5 was the Tea Dragon Society by Katie
O'Neil. This is just a really adorable little story with beautiful art about this
young girl who finds this tea dragon and returns it to its owners and discovers
this tea dragon society, where they raise these little dragons that grow tea
leaves on the backs. It's just cute. There's not a lot of story. There's a
couple of really cute characters and some cute moments. Not much happens but
it's just so adorable that it made me really happy and I enjoyed reading it. I
don't actually have this right now because I did buy it for my sister for a
gift and I didn't want to take it away from her just to film a video so it's at
her house where it belongs. Then number 4 is Everyone's an aliebn when ur a
aliebn too by Jomny Sun. This is just a really cute little graphic book. The
pictures are very big. There's very few words on all the pages. Again this is one
I borrowed from the library so I don't have this one here either but I would
love to own this book because it's another one where I just think that it kind of
warms your heart and makes you really happy. Although it does also kind of deal
with existential dread and other more serious issues. We basically follow this
cute little alien guy as he comes down to earth to try and learn about humans
but he gets a bit confused and ends up just talking to all
of other animals and trees and stuff and doesn't really learn that much about
humans... well he kind of does. It's really funny, kind of like that absurdist kind of
humour where it's so ridiculous. But also he's asking questions about
humanity and the answers I just so relatable that somehow it really impacts
your emotions or at least that was my experience and I've seen a lot of other
people have that experience too. So this is a graphic work I definitely recommend.
Then for number three in this list wait I'm gonna pick up the wrong thing
Then for number three in this list I have Death Note. So I this year I
actually read the whole of the Death Note series and I will say I think the
series goes up and down over the 13 volumes. I want to say there's 13 volumes?
I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly? But some of the books are not
as good as others. But the very first plot arc at least, I absolutely loved and
the concept I just loved. So we've got this guy named Light Yagumi and he
finds this Death Note which was dropped by this Shinigami. So this
is the Shinigami here. Ryuk, ryuk? I can never say his name. But anyway
he is like a death demon and he has this notebook where when you write someone's
name in it that person will die. There's a lot more rules around how that works.
You can specify when they die and how they die and there's a lot of rules
around the ownership of it. Basically this turns out to be a very
psychological thriller. There's a lot of logic games between this guy who is trying to
use the Death Note in order to stop crime and make the world a better place,
or at least that's his logic, is killing off all the criminals using this
notebook. But not everybody agrees that that's the best approach and there's
another guy called L who is trying to investigate and
find out who it is that's killing all the criminals. And they end up in this
battle of wits against each other. This story goes into such unexpected
directions and I think that's what made it such an enjoyable read. Also I just
really love the Shinigami. I think like this one's cute, they're all really cute. I
just I love them all. I want a whole separate series just about the Shinigami
and what's going on with them. They're so cute!
The cutest death gods in the world!
Then number two is another one I got
from the library. My library is really good for getting graphic novels in. But I
read the I Hate Fairyland series by Skottie Young. And especially the first
volume I just thought it was such a great combination of being like super
cute and also really gruesome and gory. So we
follow this young girl named Gert who gets pulled through into fairyland and
she has to complete a quest in order to go back home. Unfortunately, Gert's not
very good at questing and so 30-something years later she's still
stuck in fairyland trying to solve this quest. And she's just killing everybody,
ruining everything. She's so angry and it's just amazing. I really love that
kind of combination of cute and gory and I thought the art style was just really
beautiful. The colors are really vibrant. And there's really strange translations of
more typical fairy tale type creatures. So I think if you like stuff that's
really cute, I'm just gonna keep saying it cute and gory. If you like that then
you should read I Hate Fairyland. It's really funny. It's really cute. And it's
really badass. So then the number one graphic book that I read in 2019 would
have to be the Descender series. This is not the Descender series. This is the
Ascender series, well the first volume of it, which is like a spin-off series. I
also read this in 2019 so it does also count. I also included this series in my
top science fiction books of the year because the series is just so great. We
basically have this world where humans are spread across the galaxy (the
universe?) There's lots of humans on different planets and suddenly these
giant robots turn up and just kill a lot of people and in retaliation the humans
the cull a whole bunch of robots off even though they rely on
robots for their way of life. And so then we've got this war between robots and
humans. And primarily we follow this young robot boy who's like a companion
robot. He's got this cute little robot dog and he's trying to find out what's
happened to his human mother and brother. Then in this spinoff series we're
following the daughter of 2 main characters from the first series. And I
just found the experience of reading these to be so emotional even though a
lot of the characters are robots. I just I fell in love with so many of the
robots and I just wanted everybody to get a happy ending, which of course they
didn't but that made me feel even more feelings. And as I said in my last video
I just think this does a really good job of looking at what the relationship
between humans and robots could be, and what it should be, while at the same time
taking you on a really emotional ride. So I think if you like science fiction
then you should definitely read this graphic novel series. The art is also
pretty cool, sometimes it's a little bit rough, but there are also some pages that
are just really epic and I really really recommend the series so much. So those
were my top graphic works that I read in 2019. Do let me know if you've read
any of these books. What did you think about them? Do you like them? Or are there
any other graphic works that you would recommend to me based on the fact that
those are the ones that I liked the best this year? Otherwise thank you so much
for watching. I hope that you're having a really wonderful day and I will see you
next time :)