Charles Finch

I think I was a little bit scornful of graphic novels when their surge in popularity began five or six years ago. But it's a sin for a writer - for anybody, in a way - to despair of or balk at change, and this year I made a particular effort to keep au courant with the genre. And I was happy to discover how wrong I was about them. In particular I would recommend two books to anybody: Adrian Tomine's meditative, recursive Shortcomings and Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, set in Israel, which captures both how unsettled and banal life in a dangerous place must be.