Awards season is barreling along now. And here are the nominees for the LA Times Book Prizes, which added a graphic novel category several years back. It’s a prestigious literary prize, and the winners over the years—Duncan the Wonder Dog, Finder, Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life among them—have definitely lived up to the billing. This year’s five books chosen include what I would almost call the usual suspects for 2014:
- Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir, Bloomsbury
- Jaime Hernandez, The Love Bunglers, Fantagraphics
- Mana Neyestani, An Iranian Metamorphosis, Uncivilized Books
- Olivier Schrauwen, Arsène Schrauwen, Fantagraphics
- Mariko Tamaki (Author), Jillian Tamaki (Illustrator), This One Summer, First Second
The Chast and Tamaki books were THE graphic novels of 2014, and The Love Bunglers is a masterpiece. Arsene Schrauwen was much admired and deserves all the attention it gets. The Neyestani book doesn’t quite have the same profile, but it’s gotten a lot of recent ink and it’s also a pretty damn fine book.
In other words, good picks.
