100 Books Like Goodnight Punpun, Vol. 1

This is one of those graphic novels where the drawing style completely matches the harrowing events of being a comfort woman (cw rape) for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Maybe I’m biased as a Korean-American who gets emotional watching Asian elders suffering before my eyes, but every five pages, I have to stop and take a deep breath.

I learned so much in this book than what we were ever taught in the American education system. It’s a gift to have the story of a real former comfort woman told like this. I’ll treasure this book forever.

Everyone I love who’s seen my shelf knows how much I love this picture book. I adore the simple ink drawings; it’s all I need to understand to story.

I never expected a 32-page book to break me like this. It makes me want to hug my cat Marlie and never let go (to her annoyance). To me, it explained life and death so perfectly—when one goes away, another comes into our lives.

My god, the cover picked me up so quickly, and the story is just as beautiful as that painting. I think about everyone I’ve known as a child, what they might have been going through in their lives, and how they evolved as adults, just like me.

To hear about a friend who took their own life and realize that what you have seen over a decade ago had something to do with it is so gut-wrenching. It makes me want to back and hug every sad kid I was friends with. Huge trigger warnings for rape and suicide.

This is less of a book about mental illnesses and human atrocities, but it still makes me want to chew my own heart and spit it out like bubblegum. Igarashi’s work leans heavily on the concept of living in a universe while in turn, having universe live inside of all of us.

I am in constant awe of all the drawings on every page, and every concept (i.e., the waves on a shore carrying messages and memories from the open ocean) makes me look at the world in a different light. 

This 90s manga series is one of the first proper murder mystery manga. While it’s aged a bit and not a honkaku that readers can solve, it borrows a bit from some famous Japanese honkaku novels and might be a good introduction to Japanese murder mystery fiction. Despite the homages, this is distinctively its own story.

As is commonly done in Japanese mysteries, most involve a seemingly impossible murder in a remote location with a long list of shady suspects. While teenage detective Kindaichi Hajime tries to solve the case, more murders happen. The stories are creative, and the solutions are, too—this series often has more macabre moments but is often sympathetic to the killers.

Akira is a must-read manga masterpiece, a deep analysis of government corruption, political upheaval, criminality, and decay of society. Apart from the breathtaking art, what caught my attention was the complex story and the nihilistic, harsh, and hopeless world Akira shows. There are virtually no good characters in this story and it fits the apocalyptic, decadent reality they face and live. Expect a lot of psychic abilities and motorcycles, along with gritty, graphic violence.

A homeless high school girl is taken in by a mysterious family, whose members are possessed by the 13 animals of the Zodiac. As she lives with the family, she slowly uncovers hidden wounds, which she heals with her generous spirit. Eventually, she falls in love with one of the two brothers her age, but which one will it be? Usually, with love triangles like this, I can figure out almost immediately who will end up together, but this one took me a while, which made the story all the more interesting.  

The Pigman was the first YA novel I ever read that’s told in two separate voices. Each chapter alternates between two high school sophomores: John Conlan and Lorraine Jenson. The two meet Angelo Pignati, a lonely widower, due to making a random prank phone call asking for a monetary donation to the “L. and J. Fund.” John and Lorraine nickname Mr. Pignati the “Pigman” because of his deceased wife’s collection of ceramic pigs. Their prank call soon leads to friendship, which horrifically ends in tragedy inadvertently caused by John and Lorraine, thus inspiring both to choose to deal with their grief by writing “a memorial epic” of their friend.

I love the writing style of alternating two character voices, which inspired me to write my own first novel in two voices. The dialogue in The Pigman is filled with dark humor and sarcasm, which for me, brings even more shock… show more.

How much do I love this hilarious, terrifying, completely bonkers carny show of a novel? Written and illustrated by Barry, a cartoonist, it opens with a suicide note by Roberta, a misfit teen with a busted-up face who’s left behind a rageful diaristic manifesto describing child abuse, theft, revenge, murder, and a cast of characters out of a circus nightmare.

I got whiplash, veering from stomach-cramping laughter to anxious dread, heartbreak, and complete wonder at the strange, freakish beauty of her prose, like finding chunks of gold in the trash. When I finished, I thought, WTF did I just read, and HOW TF did she do it? I really don’t know. But every few years, I re-read it to try and find out.

This author is the queen of modern family storytelling. When a scandalous photo is snapped of an underage girl at a party Nina’s son attended and then shared publicly, it sets off a powder keg in her affluent community. It was interesting seeing the way money could corrupt a family and a mother who fought against that instinct to do what was right. Nina is divided between loyalty to her husband and son and standing up for a girl who was assaulted. When the truth comes out, it is a life-changing moment that changes everything.