I love a list, LOVE them. When Bingo is unveiled I happily settle in and draft up what books I want to read for what squares, cross-referencing them with my other reading challenges to see which books might cross-pollinate, and finally devise a schedule to try to get a Blackout by the time Bingo wraps up. It worked perfectly last year as I snuck in just under the wire with my 25th review.
This year its been a slightly more bumpy road, two months in and I still don’t have a book picked out for every square, but I’ve also had to upend my initial Cannonballer Says choice because KimMIE”’s review of Quiet Girl in a Noisy World spoke to me and I immediately put it on my library hold list.
In some ways this is a very straightforward, slim, volume. Tung wrote and illustrated a collection of comics that tell the story of her life as an introvert, from being misunderstood as a child and shepherded away from her more solitary interests to her experiences making friends, being social, and marrying her husband. It all comes together pretty well, my only real complaint about the book – which is why it is getting a four-star rating from me – is that the book doesn’t structurally delineate from one comic to the next. They run together without any visual clues that the reader is now in another thought Tung is working through. It made for a slightly bumpy reading experience as there is no set length for Tung’s comics.
However, once I got settled in it was so nice to see a version of myself so clearly rendered on the page and have yet another reminder that I’m not alone in processing the world this way. Tung’s black and white comics – which look like beautiful watercolors at times – captured the truth in a way that many memoirs try to but fall short of. I agree with KimMIE” the only real problem with a book like this is that only introverts are likely to ever read it and that’s a real shame as it serves as a great primer for loving and working with your favorite introvert/social anxiety sufferer/ Myers Briggs INFJ (all three being me!).
Bingo Square: Cannonballer Says (Thanks, KimMIE”!)