"Walking Dead Vol. 1" by Robert Kirkman is a black and white graphic novel about--what else?--the zombie apocalypse and how a group of survivors are dealing with it. It was pretty good, nothing to make it really stand out from the all the rest, other than the fact that it had more sex and sentimentality in it.
"Long Past Stopping" by Oran Canfield is a memoir about his strange, unorthodox childhood and how it shaped his strange, unorthodox adulthood. I wanted to read this one because Oran is the son of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books, Jack Canfield, and I'd heard that Oran talked about how his father had abandoned him and pretty much been an absentee father. This surprised me, since Jack is such a well known self-help guru. In reality, Oran doesn't make his father out to be that bad--sure, he was pretty absent from his life while he was growing up, but he seemed to always be there financially when Oran needed it as an adult and really did try to help him through his many trips to rehab. Oran didn't seem to hate his father nearly as much as the reviews made it seem like he did. It was an interesting and well written bio and I enjoyed it. He alternated the chapters between his childhood (he was in a circus as a professional juggler!) and his adulthood rehab stints, which was a format that worked well. It reminded me a bit of Nic Sheff's "Tweak", only Canfield comes across as much more likeable.
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