Shelf 38: Are you my mother?

Today, I finished reading Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel, which belongs to Shelf 38.

Shelf 38 is the only shelf in this collection that contains graphic novels, so this is the only graphic novel I'll read this year that counts toward the 70 shelves.

I remember liking Fun Home. Not loving it, but liking it. And I thought this would be more of that, but focused on Bechdel's mother. No. Not unless I'm grievously misremembering Fun Home. There's a list of books that Bechdel refers to, and it feels more like reading an academic paper with all the citations and references, mostly to Virginia Woolf and a bunch of psychoanalysts.

Which brings me to the other problem with the book. You know that friend you have (everyone has one) whose beliefs/interests/worldviews just don't mesh with your own, whether they do the homeopathy thing, or thing organic foods are inherently better than non-organic foods, or they follow a "fringe" religion? Reading this book is like reading a book that friend wrote about that one weird topic you don't follow with them. I don't prescribe to psychoanalysis or dream interpretation or any of that, but I do believe that it can work on the people who do, because, for example, they've read "The number 18 represents life because..." so then if they dream about the number 18, it could have that association for them.

At any rate, I'm glad I finished the book, and I'm disappointed that I didn't pick up the X-Men book instead.