Top Five Books I Own But Haven't Read

I've talked before about how I managed to acquire multiple collections of other people's comics collections so that I think maybe a quarter of my current collection at best are ones that I actually purchased. Some were given to me, others were willed to me, and some I just found on the side of the road. It's a great -- if inconsistent -- way to enlarge my collection, but there are two consequences of that which might not be immediately apparent. First, many of the books were ones that I wouldn't actually have chosen in the first place. They were bought by other people with their own distinct interests, and while I might like 90% of what they have, I probably won't like every last item. At least not enough that I would prioritize reading them relative to anything else in my collection. The second consequence is that even if I wanted to read every book, getting a few thousand of them all at once means it's going to take a while to get through them. Particularly if I continue purchasing my own comics which I do have an inherently greater interest in.

All of which is to say that there are a good number of books in my collection that I haven't read. Among them are books that might be considered part of a comics canon -- those books that "everybody" who reads comics should be familiar with. Now I've read many of those so-called canon books to be sure -- Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis, and so on -- but there are also a number of books that I've acquired but have not read yet. Titles sitting less than ten feet from where I'm typing this out that are considered "essential" reading for fans of the comics medium, but I haven't been able to prioritize yet for whatever reason. Here are my top five...

1. Fun Home -- This is one that I'd been hearing about for years. I even heard Alison Bechdel speak back in 2012 where she talked about how she made Fun Home but I never picked up a copy until maybe two or three years ago. I even got it via the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so it's signed and sketch-marked by Bechdel... but for no reason I can discen (I've read and enjoyed Bechdel's other work!) I've never sat down to read the darn thing.
2. Gender Queer -- Maia Kobabe's memoir garnered a fair amount of praise when it was first published in 2019 but last year, it really started catching some mainstream attention when Moms for Liberty began running a very vocal campaign to get it banned. I happened to be contacted by a public library who required some experts to "re-evaluate" one of the books in their collection because of a patron complaint. I assumed it would be Gender Queer so I bought a copy, only to find out shortly after that the book in question was Maus. So I haven't gotten around back to Gender Queer yet.
3. Cerebus -- For as much as Dave Sim's early work was lauded, I think he's since managed to trash just about every semblance of whatever reputation he built up. One of the collections of comics I received had around 50-75 of the original pamphlet issues at the very tail end of the series, and at some point I picked up the first 'phone book' volume at a Half-Price Books. But I've never read any of it. This has definitely been a prioritization issue because, again, as much as Sim was initially lauded, his bullshit particularly over the last decade has diminished whatever significance he had, and I'm not overly eager to dive into his work.
4. Stuck Rubber Baby -- I'd long heard this was a powerful and ground-breaking work in terms of how Howard Cruse depicted his life in the 1960s so when the 25th anniversary edition came out in 2020, I made a point to grab a copy. I even sat down to read it. Multiple times. Over the course of a couple months. I've only ever gotten maybe a third of the way through it though because I do not feel engaged with it at all, and it comes across to me as dreadfully tedious. One of the reasons I had to sit down multiple times was because I would literally fall asleep reading it. I eventually put it back on my shelf -- the bookmark where I left off is still in it, but I'd likely have to start over if I ever try picking it up again.
5. Bacchus -- This one is totally unfair of me, I know, but for some reason, I lump Eddie Campbell in with the likes of Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Seth. And while I think all of these gentlemen are talented and I can appreciate what they do on a technical level, I find that I never actually like their work. So when a friend of mine passed away in 2022 and willed to me his collection that included many of Campbell's works, I find I'm less than eager to dive into them. From what I've read and heard (including from Campbell's own mouth when I met him briefly several years ago) his approach is not like any of those other artists I mentioned, but it's still some weird connection in my head that I can't quite shake.

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