Building Stories

Feb 21, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: merkins, graphic-novels, tortured-artists

Beautiful box. Beautiful books and newspapers and foldout strips. An epic of the everyday. The graphic novel response to Ulysses, with all the humour and ebullience removed. Like B.S. Johnson’s book-in-a-box The Unfortunates, each of the separate components can be read in either order, and like that fine novel, each deal in part with loss and devastation and loneliness (and devastating loneliness). The protagonist of this novel is a miserable neurotic woman with an artificial shank whose entire...more

19 likes · like · see review

Feb 25, 2013 Anthony Vacca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, comix, existential-action-figure-set

And so the ever-fierce battle for graphic novels to be taken seriously as a literary and artistic, uh, art form continues. And here we have Chris Ware making his bid with the massive and massively experimental, yet excruciatingly relatable, Building Stories.

So here’s the catch: you can call this bad boy a book, but it’s really a big effing box with 14 separate pieces inside, including pamphlets, bound books, newspaper foldouts, and even a cardboard game board. So what are you, the plucky and wil...more

28 likes · like · see review

Nov 09, 2012 Eddie Watkins rated it 3 of 5 stars

While I comport myself in a solid even-keeled way, topped by a serious face, inside I ride waves of turbulent emotions. My inner moods pendulum between absolute cosmic bleakness and star-hopping ecstasy, with an occasional glide through stretches of dull unspecified sadness. The rest is routine involvement in those things I enjoy doing, and so could be called happiness I suppose, though looking at me few would know.

The stretches of dull unspecified sadness are the least interesting to me, thoug...more While I comport myself in a solid even-keeled way, topped by a serious face, inside I ride waves of turbulent emotions. My inner moods pendulum between absolute cosmic bleakness and star-hopping ecstasy, with an occasional glide through stretches of dull unspecified sadness. The rest is routine involvement in those things I enjoy doing, and so could be called happiness I suppose, though looking at me few would know.

The stretches of dull unspecified sadness are the least interesting to me, though even they give evidence that I am at least feeling something. But still, while in this monotonous glide I constantly struggle to wrest myself from it because I do not find it interesting. The fact that I constantly struggle to wrest myself from it probably means that I am very rarely what I would call depressed, which is a state of collapsed deflated emotions and enervated will leaving no inner resource with which to escape from it. Depression, especially a mild unspecified depression, is not at all interesting. It is in fact defined by a lack of interest.

While reading Chris Ware’s Building Stories I struggled to determine the extent of the emotional spectrum being explored. This is difficult because the emotions explored through the visual elements seems larger than the spectrum explored through the characters themselves, but the characters are what carry the story, so there’s a disjunct between the visual and character elements. The characters, or really the character, as the woman with the prosthesis carries the book and is by far the most explored, spends the greater part of this collection of graphic novelties in a state of more or less shallow depression, while the visuals ebb and flow between rich sadness touched by bleakness and sadness-tinged joy. The main character no doubt experiences small joys throughout, and these are of course expressed through the visuals themselves, but still somehow the larger reaches of emotion expressed in the book go beyond the reaches of this character.

This is my one and only disappointment with this book: that the characters, especially the main character, were not more varied and, frankly, interesting, because the visual interest is essentially endless. But even as I say this I acknowledge that Ware’s focus on the almost numbingly mundane aspects of his characters’ lives was very much the point of this project. So where does this leave me? I still wish the main character was invested with a larger emotional spectrum – full on cosmic existential anguish rather than can’t-get-out-of-bed low-grade depression, and perhaps an irrational ecstasy or two – and a broader range of experience, so that her life grew to fill out the varied visual scope of the book. I also wish that the other tenants of the building were explored more, rather than being relegated to bit parts. But would this contradict Ware’s intentions? Probably. And maybe when I read it again more subtle variations, and maybe even escapes, from his theme will become apparent; but as it stands now I am left with a slight regret that this absolutely gorgeous and immersive box of varied visual objects is topped by a serious face that conceals little more than a mild depression that is not all that interesting.(less)

15 likes · like · see review

Noran Miss Pumkin I despise Mr. Ware, for he has made me cry with many of his works, and one story line just haunts me. Depression and loneliness. That man knows them a...more
Nov 09, 2012 10:11am

Ben Winch Watkins, I love how deeply you invest yourself in your reviews, and your turning-the-other-cheek giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt in these matters is t...more
updated Nov 09, 2012 05:06pm

Eddie Watkins I don't know much about Ware personally, but he seems like he's afflicted with an aspergers of sadness. It does get so monotonous that it loses its im...more
Nov 10, 2012 12:39pm

Oct 20, 2012 Seth Hahne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

[Note: this review looks much better on the site from which it comes. And has more pictures.]

Building Stories by Chris Ware

[There are an unexpected number of grocery shots in this book.]

Back in March 2011, during that year's Tournament of Books, I was introduced to what might be best described as a concept book. Nox is Anne Carson's literary project to unearth the identity of her recently-departed, long-estranged brother. Instead of pages of text bound between a front and back cover, Nox is a box containing a robust accordio...more

18 likes · like · see review

Dec 27, 2012 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, comics

Building Stories is a sprawling, obtuse, non-linear mess of a book, if it can even be called a book or any sort of unified narrative. It centers mostly around the life of a perfectly average woman who, like most of Ware's characters, spends most of her life being miserable. If you haven't heard of it or seen it, it's a set of 14 "distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers and pamphlets" that hails from the author of Jimmy Corrigan (probably the best comic book I've ever read),...more Building Stories is a sprawling, obtuse, non-linear mess of a book, if it can even be called a book or any sort of unified narrative. It centers mostly around the life of a perfectly average woman who, like most of Ware's characters, spends most of her life being miserable. If you haven't heard of it or seen it, it's a set of 14 "distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers and pamphlets" that hails from the author of Jimmy Corrigan (probably the best comic book I've ever read), who happens to be on the forefront of an emerging genre of literary graphic novels. It's pretty big and ambitious and attempts to encompass the lives of people trying to live in a sometimes very miserable world. It's very depressing at times, which is in keeping with Ware's earlier works, but it seems to me it also has a more fully developed emotional maturity than anything he's written (drawn?) before. We see the characters in every aspect of their lives, the good and the bad is all in here. It's an understated and all-encompassing look at the human spirit and representative of just how powerful comics can be.

This is not to say that this is without flaws. It's expensive and bulky and some of the pieces are physically hard to read (the newspaper for example). I think that certain pieces (Branford the Bee bits) don't entirely fit with the tone of the rest of the work and seem like they were just included to bulk up the rest of the set. This wont really fit on your bookshelf and I feel Ware asks a lot of the reader. It's not unusual to see 30 very small meticulously detailed panels on a single pages, and it does take a bit to learn how to read Ware's comics. Its certainly something worth learning how to do, it just doesn't do his potential readership any favors, and it's a shame that this book will probably remain far too obscure and unwieldy to ever gain a wide readership (how would you even put something like this into circulation in a library?). It certainly deserves it.

If some day in the future Ware is remembered as one of the great graphic artists this will probably be considered his magnum opus. It's life-affirming and medium-affirming (this is also a big fuck-you from Ware to the people who say print is dead) and it's also very moving. If I had to decide I would probably say I prefer Jimmy Corrigan, but this is undoubtedly a better, more mature work. You should probably read it. (less)

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 10, 2012 David Schaafsma rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-books-ever, best-graphic-lit-ever, books-loved-2012

I just finished this brilliant, brilliant "book" (that comes in a game [and that is relevant, the idea of play, of reading and play] box) larger than a Monopoly box, with various sizes and colors and shapes and a building board... Check it out, I think it is one of the most important events in the history of graphic literature, an instant classic. .. but it is not all play... He is not writing about superheroes in this graphic novel, he is writing about ordinary people, and loneliness, and simpl...more I just finished this brilliant, brilliant "book" (that comes in a game [and that is relevant, the idea of play, of reading and play] box) larger than a Monopoly box, with various sizes and colors and shapes and a building board... Check it out, I think it is one of the most important events in the history of graphic literature, an instant classic. .. but it is not all play... He is not writing about superheroes in this graphic novel, he is writing about ordinary people, and loneliness, and simple things. I went to a talk he gave at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, here in our village of Oak Park, IL, the nearest west suburb (and yes, neigbor-name-dropper, Ware lives 3-4 blocks from me in Oak Park), and he said part of the impetus for the book came from something his wonderful storyteller Grandma suggested he do: to tell the stories of everyday people just doing what they do every day, washing dishes, folding clothes, nothing spectacular... and that is just what he does, no Hollywood, no flash.... and yet in his elevating these lives to art in this spectacular, carefully and lovingly rendered ways (he spends 100 hours a page from start to finish, so don't expect a sequel any time soon). As with Jimmy Corrigan, this is a story of interlocking, building sad stories, but they are not ALL sad...
So we live in a time (here goes Dave culturally pontificating!) when we are interested in the lives of the sexy and rich and famous, where writing a song like "Eleanor Rigby" seems out of place, where America's "This is for all the Lonely People" seems sort of quaint.... or important, given the time of bashing and blaming of the poor for their own poverty.

So Building Stories: a fairly simple mundane title, and concept, that the people who live in a building live lives that can be framed as stories... and they "build" on each other and through each other, in some ways, as people interact with each other... and then, maybe especially in an old building, the building itself becomes a character, sort of omnisciently commenting on the lives lived within him/her...That concept isn't spectacular, maybe, but it is powerful in its simplicity and honors his Grandma's wish for simple and straightforward, though the reading of the texts is anything but simple if you like chronology, shared experience of a book group all reading the same thing at the same time... can't do that, folks. Can't. Obviously. And while Ware seems "controlling" in the meticulousness and precision of his art, he does NOT want to control the way you read what he has written, he makes it impossible for him to control the way you see the story, it is your choice. And some of the mundane, everyday objects he honors are the things he and so many of us readers love, the different shaped books of childhood, comic books, pamphlets, journals, magazines, some hard cover, perfect bound and stitched, some paper...This could be done digitally, as in just dropping the pieces at a site and letting you play, and probably will, but the old-fashioned part of Ware loves/mourns the passing of the visceral feel and smell of books in paper, in all shapes and sizes...

So you read this in the way you want to, randomly picking up pieces and poring over the meticulous artwork and taking one of three primary routes, as they focus on each of three women from three different floors of a Victorian Chicago building (though one moves out to Oak Park, as Ware himself did, so you get spectacular--yes, I said it again and will stand by it!--renditions of all the cool architecture here, the Frank Lloyd Wright home and his other designed homes... There is precedent for this kind of conception of a book and it fits with contemporary theories of multiplicity, ways of reading that approach it as subjective, personal, interpretation as open, always.. I read a heartwarming part last that at the Unity Temple seemed for him to be an even greater impulse for the book, he--an awkward, reclusive, shy guy--getting married and having a kid, the greatest event in his life...so as I read it, I thought: THIS is the center of the book, the simplest joys of parenthood, the mundane details of those routines... including reading

What precedent is there for a box of stuff? Sorrentino (who wrote a novel he said could be read any way you wanted), Pessoa (who put slips of paper over the years in a box and said it was a novel), digital storytelling with link after link of ways to read, so he isn't inventing this approach, but he is doing it as well as one can imagine in a product you can hold in your hands, hour after hour. More examples could be listed here...

Brilliant. Jimmy Corrigan was sad, devastatingly so, and was right, two sad generations of miserably abusive people, and brilliant, but my GN students didn't love it, there wasn't enough place for love and happiness...but in this book you do have the misery--we do most of us live desperate, lonely lives, and this is a book about women, primarily, who live largely alone and unhappy, and much of it due to men, maybe--and you also have simple joys (think: Grandma, parent Ware, who he says never imagined being a parent, and now can't imagine not being one...) and beauty.. and the simple *achieve* of the thing. This is what I always though about Beckett, that he may despair the twentieth century of the Holocaust, of Hiroshima, but he admires the simple lonely person: "I can't go on, I'll go on." Ware is not Beckett, he's Beckett with a kid he drops off and picks up every day and is astonished this kid makes him so happy, and yet he honors most of our sad, lonely, we-most-of-us-die-alone lives.... (less)

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 19, 2013 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

Modern Life Scrupulously Portrayed
I've been reading Chris Ware since first seeing his work in Raw Comics when he was still in school. I'm pretty sure I have every comic he's ever done, at least the main titles. His development as a writer and artist is considerable, but most importantly, his output seems as prodigious as ever.
I was shocked and pleased to see the size of his latest assemblage. He went through a phase of small books, beautifully bound, for a very long time, but before that, his e...more Modern Life Scrupulously Portrayed
I've been reading Chris Ware since first seeing his work in Raw Comics when he was still in school. I'm pretty sure I have every comic he's ever done, at least the main titles. His development as a writer and artist is considerable, but most importantly, his output seems as prodigious as ever.
I was shocked and pleased to see the size of his latest assemblage. He went through a phase of small books, beautifully bound, for a very long time, but before that, his earlier work was all over the place in size and format. He excels at devising challenging ways of guiding your eyes across a page, and in this work, he seems to have purposefully created non-sequential, yet related scenes fit together that can be read out of order or in order to the same effect. This one is a large box made of heavy binder's board wrapped with his precise drawings. Once opened, you see a confusing pile of different kinds of collected comics, of all different sizes and bindings.
I'm pretty sure he intended the reader to drift through these individual pieces in whatever order you please. I chose a long, simply stapled booklet to start, one of the smaller pieces. It was without words from start to finish.
After I read through it, I thought it was one of the most wonderful comics I've ever read. He's moved from whiny self loathing to simply showing us the joy of kids and life lived simply. I showed it to my wife and watched her read it, and noticed that I have been well trained by Ware on how to read his stuff through the years. Where I look closely, and let his impeccable timing slow my responses to the wordless scenes I see, she skimmed very quickly, barely noticing anything, getting the gist and ignoring the poetry and beauty of his art.
It's obvious to me that the full depth of experiencing a Chris Ware work is not for everyone.
After carefully reading the rest of the many pieces, I could hardly believe the staggering amount of work he put into this particular collection. It was also nice to see him use a female character as his narrative focus, rather than a man, as he always has in the past. I could hardly believe he could go for so long without resorting to his characteristic nostalgia, but seemed to instead show us the world of our present with the same almost accusatory precision. Many times he draws iPhone screens or Facebook screens, which actually benefit from being handdrawn in his precise style.
It's a monumental achievement of literature, one I can't recommend highly enough. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 27, 2013 Dianah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: t-o-b-2013, favorites, literature, unowned

How to describe this strange yet wonderful box of loveliness? Building stories is odd, sweet, sad, beautiful and quixotic; yet that barely scratches the surface. Made up of what I can only guess are “chapters” in varied formats, with no true end or beginning, its sprawling size is a bit overwhelming straight out of the box. Yet the melancholy story of the tenants of an old building is fascinating despite (or, maybe because of) the fact that it’s a cartoon. It is an intimate look at the human con...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 30, 2012 Gary Anderson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Where do we start? What do we do next? How do we make sense out of all this? With Chris Ware’s Building Stories, as with life, the answer seems to be, “Just keep going. It will all come together, probably.”

Building Stories is a challenging, rewarding reading experience. I can’t say book; I can’t say graphic novel; I can’t say comic. None of those words quite fit Building Stories. Chris Ware’s newest work is the story of woman’s life, and it comes in what looks like a game box, similar to Monopol...more

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 24, 2013 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

A plot synopsis really doesn't do Building Stories justice. Chris Ware is telling a pretty simple story here - tracking the lives of a small collection of Chicago apartment dwellers over a 10 year period or so, with occasional flights of fancy in which the building itself is a character. Oh, and there's also a side story involving a bee named Branford. If you've read Ware's most well known comic, Jimmy Corrigan, you'll notice a lot of similarities: most prominently the trademark art style - intr...more A plot synopsis really doesn't do Building Stories justice. Chris Ware is telling a pretty simple story here - tracking the lives of a small collection of Chicago apartment dwellers over a 10 year period or so, with occasional flights of fancy in which the building itself is a character. Oh, and there's also a side story involving a bee named Branford. If you've read Ware's most well known comic, Jimmy Corrigan, you'll notice a lot of similarities: most prominently the trademark art style - intricately detailed with mathematical precision - that the author is amazingly able to use to convey more poignant moments then just about any book you'll ever read. The characters in this are so well-realized, and will stick with me for a while.

But, to be honest, if this was a straightforward graphic novel, it probably wouldn't have wowed me as much as it did. The format of Building Stories is the real star. Ware made an audacious choice here - in an increasingly digital world, this comic comes in a large box, split into 15 sections in all different formats (news paper, small hardcover books, pamphlets, posters) that can be read in any order. In a way, it's fitting that this story of people and the apartments they live in is required to be read in one's own home.

What really put this over the top for me is that Ware can still achieve the emotional highs and lows he's looking for the reader to experience without exerting control on the order the person reads the story in. My experience with Building Stories will be totally different than yours if you choose to read it - each item focuses on one or more of the characters across different time periods, and makes sense on its own - but as you read each one the richness of what you're reading becomes greater and greater. By the time I read the last piece, I had lived with these characters and this building for what seemed like years - and everything clicked into place.

Proof positive that Chris Ware is a complete genius - anyone with even a passing interest in the comics medium owes it to the themselves to check this out.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 11, 2013 Dominick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

It's hard to know what to say about this. On the one hand, it's a fascinating experiment: fourteen comics pieces, in various formats (including fold-out game board) and sizes (right up to newspaper size for two of the pieces), with no designated reading order. Therefore, readers to some extent "build" the story themselves by selecting the reading order. Ware probably has no equal when it comes to innovative page design. Many ways you might imagine a page being constructed or the panels being seq...more It's hard to know what to say about this. On the one hand, it's a fascinating experiment: fourteen comics pieces, in various formats (including fold-out game board) and sizes (right up to newspaper size for two of the pieces), with no designated reading order. Therefore, readers to some extent "build" the story themselves by selecting the reading order. Ware probably has no equal when it comes to innovative page design. Many ways you might imagine a page being constructed or the panels being sequenced--and several you wouldn't--occur here. Some strips are silent, others heavy with text. Even the lettering is used graphically as well as simply to provide text. Some strips have no narrative voice, others have a first-person narrator--including a couple narrated by the building several characters live in in several of the stories (shades of Sally Brown's talking school house; indeed, despite their differences, Schulz and Ware have much in common). There's much here that's humourous, albeit blackly so, much that's closely-observed realism and insightful characterization, even some that's moving (though when the death of a cat is a work's emotional high point, that probably says something). Formally, there's no question Ware's brilliant, and content-wise, he does have a keen insight into human nature.

That said ... man, what is going on here? The central conceit might seem to be that the work tracks the lives of several folk who live in the same rooming house, except the bulk of the narrative focuses on only one of them, and several of the stories are not set in the building. Two of the pieces are about Brandon, the Best Bee in the World (who also turns up in passing in a couple of the more realistic narratives)--a highly stylized, biologically completely unrealistic apian figure whose story seems to be a sort of weird parody of human angst--of what the rest of the book is about, therefore. What are we to make of this? One other piece suggests Brandon's a fictional character written by someone else (the main character perhaps? she has pretensions to be an artist and writer. Or just a children's book read by her daughter?), but he also seems "real" in the world of the book, and the style of his pieces is identical to the style of the others. What's with the two panels, in one story, of SF, a scene from the future? Why do only minor characters have names?

Furthermore, much as Ware's a genius at design, pages are all too often, frankly, just too damn hard to read, either because the images and text are too small (have a magnifying glass handy. No, really) or because how to follow the sequence is not clear (sometimes there are arrows to guide the reader's eyes, but other times there are not, with no obvious consistency to when they do or do not appear). This may be deliberate, since one of the conceits of the narrative is how various elements of one's life--the internal and external, the present and the past, the lived and the remembered--overlap and interpenetrate, and this aspect of the design helps reinforce that fluidity--so does the piecemeal construction, for that matter. However, its deliberateness does not make such pages any easier to read. And frankly, sometimes I have to wonder whether it's worth the effort.

The main protagonist is a nameless woman missing half her left leg (ooh! symbolism! an emotional cripple who is also physically crippled!), who we track through so many of the pieces I'm really not sure why we have pieces devoted to other characters. We see her at various ages, from childhood through middle age, and follow her through numerous traumas of one kind or other, because, good God, this is one miserable woman. Tom Lehrer once said, "If you can't communicate, the least you can do is to shut up." This woman has a multi-thousand-word inner monologue/narration and lives a life in which pretty much nobody understands or gets her, from her point of view, anwyay; maybe they realize what a miserable specimen she is and just stay away. I'm sure that most people feel just as misunderstood and alienated, and I'm sure it's all very accurate and true to life, but it ceases to be interesting after a while--especially when what she does is mostly bitch and whine. I laughed when at one point she's trying to pick a book to read on a plane and wonders why all books have to be about murder and such melodramatic stuff rather than being about real life. Well ... because you're boring?

It's all very rich and complex and would no doubt reward repeated reading. Indeed, given how it's constructed, it seems to demand rereading, if only to try to make sense of it. However, I doubt I'll be wading through it again any time soon. In that, at least, it seems to measure up to the high art/high lit model towards which it pretty clearly aspires: it must be great literature because reading it is rewarding, but it's also a goddamn chore.

Odd side note: actually includes a cum shot, which seems weird for Ware.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 22, 2013 Marty rated it 5 of 5 stars

while reading this I felt like i was a fly in the corner of the room witnessing a gorgeously detailed and compassionately framed study on modern-day private life. i learned what it was like to be a parent, to be lonely, to be depressed, to see the joy in floral arrangements, and to be enchanted by the imaginary rollercoaster life of a bee.

i saw the profane and the profound and when the story was over i wanted it to start all over again.

1 like · like · see review

May 22, 2013 Sabahat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very odd. Made me impatient at times but then again I feel that about a lot of books. I know I'd like to go back to some of the bits and pieces again. It captures the rhythm of everyday life in a story presented to us in an endless loop whose beginning and end it is hard to determine much like the book's physical structure itself. I do like it but i don't know, the small panels and the odd booklets get hard to deal with after a while. I sometimes wished the physical book itself was less unwieldy...more

1 like · like · see review

May 19, 2013 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow.

I just saw this book on the New York Times Best Sellers List and put it on hold at my library. That was a few weeks back and I thought nothing of it.

I go to the library to pick up my books and my librarian hands me what appears to be a board game box. To say I was confused is an understatement.

I take home my "book" after many questionable stares and start to unpack this box.

The book is about building stories. But what the author did was take 14 different vehicles to deliver the story from d...more

like · see review

Feb 22, 2013 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars

The positive: I enjoy Chris Ware's artwork style. I also appreciate his typography talents, and his use of some very beautiful cursive style lettering (I like the cursive capitals he uses in some of the text passages). I liked the architectural style of the exploded view of the apartment building- it reminded me of lego assembly instructions, and you could see sort of the mapping of the rooms of each floor.
Also the fruit (in tidy rows and very uniform) pictures are great. More of that, please!

T...more The positive: I enjoy Chris Ware's artwork style. I also appreciate his typography talents, and his use of some very beautiful cursive style lettering (I like the cursive capitals he uses in some of the text passages). I liked the architectural style of the exploded view of the apartment building- it reminded me of lego assembly instructions, and you could see sort of the mapping of the rooms of each floor.
Also the fruit (in tidy rows and very uniform) pictures are great. More of that, please!

The negative: I can't stand his storylines. He's known for depressive characters, and the main one running through most of the storylines in this collection is a self-absorbed, frequently depressed, and aimless person. I couldn't stand her. She has 1.5 legs, and you see her progressing through several stages of her life, and the apartment building she lives in. You also have some narrative about other residents' histories (the landlady, the neighbors downstairs, a bee nearby), which are nice diversions from the woman on the third floor.

The main character's history felt so "vanilla" (maybe "prosaic" is the appropriate word) that I wasn't very interested.

I enjoyed the bit where she gave flowers to the neighbor in the building, free of charge. (she did something for someone OTHER than herself!) And the interesting way he shows the couple on the second floor arguing about lack of money.

Back to the book review:
The extremely negative: despite being known for graphic novel and comic-book style artwork, these are not storylines or dialogues for children. I was reading this out loud to a person and heavily edited the dialogue. The fonts are frequently too small, that the person I was reading to couldn't see the pictures since I had my face up close trying to read the text out loud.

The R-rated (or X-rated) content is a waste of art talent to focus so much ink on. I know from Ware's previous work (Jimmy Corrigan and his Acme Novelty Library) that he tends to draw a lot of this stuff, so I wasn't surprised. Can we please focus on something else than the "down there" of the body? News flash: many humans in the rest of the world are NOT always fixated on sex. We have interests beyond the self.

Many of the characters seem to be constantly worried about being ALONE. There are a lot of people in this world who are OK with singledom; these people manage to have self-confidence, friends, and do not necessarily need to have sexual fulfillment, and yet are much better adjusted and contented than the depicted characters. (And no, they're not monks or nuns. Can you imagine!? I'm thinking of Edward Gorey, another well recognized illustrator.)

More fruit please.
Less Depressive, loneliness and TMI. Am glad I didn't spend the money on this collection. (less)

like · see review

Feb 13, 2013 Keith rated it 3 of 5 stars

I remember my high school art teacher telling me a story once about when Bob Dylan met the Beatles for the first time at a party. According to my art teacher, Dylan saw the Four from across a room and sneered, "You guys have so much power, and you could do anything....and you choose to make this."

And in no way, obviously, could anything Chris Ware does be worthy of such vitriol. It's too smart, too intricate, too multi-faceted -- a monument to what craft, focus, and workmanship can create. And w...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 07, 2013 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: EVERYONE

Recommended to Amy by: Harvard Square Bookstore

Shelves: fiction, graphic-novel

This work. BLEW. ME. AWAY. I read a lot; I'm tough to impress. This is easily one of the best things I've read in the past five years. It's part book, part immersive performance art. You decide where the story starts and its chronology but no matter how you pick it all still makes sense.

I'm reading Anne Sexton's biography right now and I find myself frequently thinking: I wonder what it would have been like to watch new forms come to life (imagist poetry, confessional poetry, the existentialist...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 27, 2013 Chris Norton rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-design, comics

I did like the concept for this package a lot, it just let me down with the actual content and execution. I feel like a lot of these stories could be a direct retelling of real life with no decisions made by the author on what the details should be included/excluded and/or what the best beginning/endpoints should be- which is the job of the author.

The stories don't really build off each other and for the most part meander in depression. Most of the stories seem to be leading up towards a final p...more

like · see review

Jan 20, 2013 Sean Farrell rated it 5 of 5 stars

The unique presentation had me more than a little curious to get into this one, and I found it worked wonderfully for the material. Very well drawn, and with recurring themes and symbolism that are alternately beautiful and sad. This is decidedly not an uplifting work, with the harshness of life and the world around us seeming to be an even more universal theme throughout than the building around which the stories revolve. Luckily for me I suppose, the piece I randomly read last, while possibly...more

like · see review

Jan 07, 2013 Andi rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book really is two experiences in one.
On the "format" side, you've got a beautiful, unique experience: lots of different, tactile documents telling the story, all stored in a big heavy box. The images are sharp, spare, and beautiful. As an architectural historian, I particularly liked the sections and projections of the building. The format of the book is a potent commentary on technology and rebuttal to the digitization of everything. I usually read books on my ipad or iphone these days. I...more

like · see review

Jan 04, 2013 Go Flash Go! rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel, favorites

I'll first mention that my experience with graphic novels is extremely limited. (I've read all of "The Walking Dead" novels, and I just finished the first "Game of Thrones" graphic novel.) So, I'm perhaps not the ideal target audience for a work of art such as this, but when I read so many glowing pre-publication reviews last week, I was immensely intrigued. The $30 price was, honestly, a bit daunting, but holding this collection in my hands, it feels like a bargain.

There are fourteen distinct "...more

like · see review

Dec 10, 2012 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have a hard time reading graphic novels. I blame the fact that I learned to read at an early age, which made me skip right over the whole picture book genre and jump directly into chapter books.

So reading this was a challenge. Even more of a challenge? The pieces that make up Building Stories are not ORDERED in any way! For someone like me, who needs to be given directions, and likes well-defined beginnings and endings, this was mind-boggling! I didn't even know how to start reading this when...more

2 likes · like · see review

Dec 09, 2012 Mark Russell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

Building Stories, as fans of Ware might suspect, is a trans-generational tale of quiet desperation in which the realities of everyday life are hopelessly outmatched by the characters' ability to neuroticize them. As you might also suspect, it is heartbreaking and brilliant. Building Stories embraces Schopenhauer's maxim that life merely alternates between frustration with your inability to get what you want, and boredom with your Williams Sonoma furniture.

Ware handles the banality of everyday l...more Building Stories, as fans of Ware might suspect, is a trans-generational tale of quiet desperation in which the realities of everyday life are hopelessly outmatched by the characters' ability to neuroticize them. As you might also suspect, it is heartbreaking and brilliant. Building Stories embraces Schopenhauer's maxim that life merely alternates between frustration with your inability to get what you want, and boredom with your Williams Sonoma furniture.

Ware handles the banality of everyday life deftly and with great insight, leading us through the routines of buying groceries, dealing with cats, and relationships which, if not failing, are certainly sinking into the toxic bedrock of passive aggression. Though plot is virtually non-existent, and the characters' lives quotidian, this always comes across as authentic rather than mundane.

What is unusual about this book is that it's broken up into a dozen or so sub-books of various size and length and there is no discernible order in which to read them. The effect is that the reader gets the story in mosaic, with constant jumps in time and character, which ultimately fit together to tell the story of a building and its inhabitants over a long stretch of time. It also means that no two readers (or to be mathematically accurate, a small percentage of readers) will read the same book. Which I suppose is what Ware is getting at: though the routines and tediums of domestic existence are more or less the same, we all experience them from slightly different angles and experience different disappointments.

If I have one complaint about Building Stories, it's that I would have liked more of an ensemble piece. It tells its story from the perspective of several different characters, including the old woman who owns the building, "Branford," a bee whose faith in God is tested when he becomes trapped in the basement, and (to great effect) the building itself. The book is at its strongest when it is telling the story from a varied parallax, though it focuses primarily on one character, a one-legged woman (or one-and-a-half legs, as she insists) who abandons her professed dream to become an artist in order to settle in as a suburban housewife. There's nothing wrong with her character. Her story is just as rewarding as the others', I just grew to miss the little arias from the other perspectives.

(less)

like · see review

Dec 04, 2012 Ryandake rated it 5 of 5 stars

somewhere toward the "end" of Building Stories, our protag is hunting hurriedly for something to read on a trip, and rejecting classic after classic, asks in annoyance: "Why does every 'great book' have to always be about criminals or perverts?"

it's a good punch line to a long, complicated, messy story largely about one woman's very quotidian life. and the best parts of any great story are always about those quotidian, Mrs. Dalloway moments, when the most ordinary thing opens up to the infinite....more somewhere toward the "end" of Building Stories, our protag is hunting hurriedly for something to read on a trip, and rejecting classic after classic, asks in annoyance: "Why does every 'great book' have to always be about criminals or perverts?"

it's a good punch line to a long, complicated, messy story largely about one woman's very quotidian life. and the best parts of any great story are always about those quotidian, Mrs. Dalloway moments, when the most ordinary thing opens up to the infinite.

Building Stories certainly has those moments.

the story of Building Stories rambles between past and present, dreamt and actual futures, imaginings and daydreams and some odd digressions into the life of bees. as a story its impact is not linear, i think, but cumulative--more a quilt than a filmstrip. this makes for a nice reflection of how people actually live their lives, i think--not relentlessly forward, but wandering in and out of the present, thought disappearing into an eddy of the past, dreams taking us down currents that don't actually exist.

i suspect but do not know that the pieces of the work (it's divided into fourteen pieces, each printed separately, in different formats and foldings and on different materials--must have given the printer kittens) can be read in any order they present themselves, which is an interesting choice. piffle on standard narrative! it's a great experiment, and i think it works.

i'm not well-versed enough in comic art to comment much on the visual style or the panel transitions or the subtle use of [fill in the blank with the appropriate arty term]. but the reader will find some panels, or arrangements of drawings, or what's not said in the space between, some highly emotional gut-punches.

don't plan to take it on a plane with you--in fact you'll want to reserve the entirety of the couch space to lay it out. my one quibble with the work is that for quite a few of the pieces, you'll also need a magnifying glass to read the type if you're over 20.

but it's worth the space and the effort, and i look forward to re-reading it after my eyes recover.(less)

like · see review

Nov 26, 2012 Craig Werner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, graphic-novels

Stylistically and structurally, Building Stories is a tour-de-force. There are about a dozen different segments to the "book"--each a graphic novel in a different format: newspaper, golden book, "comics" in various shapes and sizes. Like numerous graphic novels of the last couple of decades, the layout forces readers to make decisions about sequence and the relation of text and image. The multiplicity of forms reenforces that part of the aesthetic. Far as I could tell there's no preordained sequ...more

like · see review

Oct 10, 2012 Victoria Haf rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics-que-amo

Este libro es perfecto y además es de los libros que necesitas tener entre tus manos para leer, de los que es imposible conseguir de manera digital: el libro en realidad es una caja llena de trípticos, libretas, y libros encuadernados de manera diferente y todos en diferente formato: desde pequeñas tiras de cartulina dobladas en acordeón, hasta hojas enormes, más grandes que un periódico.

Es una historia sobre la vida, como no hay un orden de lectura, vas leyendo el pedazo que más te llama la ate...more Este libro es perfecto y además es de los libros que necesitas tener entre tus manos para leer, de los que es imposible conseguir de manera digital: el libro en realidad es una caja llena de trípticos, libretas, y libros encuadernados de manera diferente y todos en diferente formato: desde pequeñas tiras de cartulina dobladas en acordeón, hasta hojas enormes, más grandes que un periódico.

Es una historia sobre la vida, como no hay un orden de lectura, vas leyendo el pedazo que más te llama la atención y cuando terminas todo, te das cuenta que quieres releer algunos para entender mejor y cuando acabas de releer te das cuenta que es no sientes un final, podrías seguir releyendo pedacitos por siempre; además hay varios personajes que vuelven a este libro más cíclico, por ejemplo, el personaje principal lo conocemos desde que es pequeña hasta que ya tiene una hija bastante grande y con esto también medio podemos suponer la historia de la madre de la madre o de la hija (no hay nombres por eso suena tan enrredoso) jajaja o sea conoces la historia de ser mujer, de la maternidad y por eso sabes que las historias que hay antes o después, las que no están escritas en el libro, también son así… creo que no puedo explicarlo claramente.
La única historia que no me gustó tanto fue la de la abeja, pero al mismo tiempo sentí que podía ser una analogía de el esposo del personaje principal, del cual no sabemos nunca muchísimo más que trabaja para mantener a su familia y es un buen esposo.
La mejor parte de todo es lo convincentemente real que es el personaje principal,creo que nunca había leído a un personaje femenino tan real (¡y fue escrito por un hombre!) mi situación no es para nada como la de ella y sin embargo, me identificaba con sus pensamientos, mientras leía pensaba "yo también he pensado esto, me he preguntado esto" y es un personaje muy complejo porque no es para nada lo que te esperarías leer (es una mujer gorda, triste y con un muñón) y todo esto afecta su manera de pensar, el ser mujer y tener dilemas por como se ve, por como se ven los demás, por como la juzgan, por lo que se espera que sea, lo que ella espera ser y no es, todas las presiones sociales a las que está sometida…

este libro habla sobre la diferencia entre lo que decimos y lo que sentimos, las contradicciones que cometemos, como nos hacemos menos cuando estamos deprimidos, como creemos que no merecemos cosas buenas, como una persona depresiva actúa cuando le llega la felicidad; perder las metas, replantearse la vida, la soledad jajaja ¡no sé! muchísimas cosas, simplemente la vida.

Es chistoso porque mientras leía como iban cambiando las preocupaciones de esta mujer mientras va creciendo me di cuenta que lo básico siempre está, o sea, a pesar de que primero se preocupaba por tener novio y luego por ser sólo madre y no tener una profesión (problemas diferentes) lo hacía desde la misma voz, era la misma persona triste y pienso "¿así seré yo? ¿esta voz que tengo estará conmigo siempre?" no sé, creo que pensé en mi mamá y como siempre la he visto tan segura y pensar que tiene una voz en su cabeza que la hace insegura de las cosas (es una estupidez nunca haber pensado en eso pero es verdad) nunca había pensado en mi mamá como alguien con dudas, que podría deprimirse, sentirse insegura por el sexo, sentirse fea, sufrir por amor y recordar amores viejos… me hizo pensar que seguramente es así, que estos monólogos que tenemos los tendremos toda la vida y todos los tienen, es normal pero nunca lo había pensado de mi mamá, este libro te hace reflexionar mucho sobre ser mujer, aunque diría que cualquier hombre puede leerlo y sentirlo aunque a veces se traten problemas exclusivamente femeninos.

También hay otros personajes, y aunque no se traten de manera tan profunda, son muy interesantes y muy diferentes. De hecho el libro se llama building stories porque el escenario principal es un edificio, y conocemos la historia de las personas que viven actualmente en él, también escuchamos la voz del edificio.

No sé, lo acabo de terminar y quiero releer varias partes todavía, pero me ha gustado mucho y aunque fue bastante caro y me sentí culpable por comprarlo, diría que valió la pena.(less)

like · see review

Oct 08, 2012 Tugcenin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

It comes in a large rectangular cardboard box, assorted as 14 various sized booklets, pamphlets, magazines.

There is no particular order to read them in. They contain a story of the lives of residents in a three-story Chicago apartment, and they give each reader the opportunity of experiencing a different and personalized book with the same material.

As in his previous works, this one also offers very powerful and emotional stories. They follow around the four inhabitants, who are somehow connect...more It comes in a large rectangular cardboard box, assorted as 14 various sized booklets, pamphlets, magazines.

There is no particular order to read them in. They contain a story of the lives of residents in a three-story Chicago apartment, and they give each reader the opportunity of experiencing a different and personalized book with the same material.

As in his previous works, this one also offers very powerful and emotional stories. They follow around the four inhabitants, who are somehow connected to each other, while they try to find the meaning of their lives.

There’s the one-legged thirty-something woman, who is also the central character, living on the top floor, frustrated with her husband, gaining weight, and wondering what happened to her dreams. Then an old landlady, a spinster, living on the ground floor, still walking alone down memory lane. A youngish couple, living on the middle floor, having relationship problems. And, the only male view, Branford, The Best Bee In The World, who is literally a bee. These characters are structured in an easy to relate to way, which makes this great book really anyone’s story.

The feeling of loneliness haunts the reader through out the pages, but also the connection between the characters imply that it is impossible to be ultimately alone. Ware suggests in a way that people everywhere are connected.

The art is not just limited to the story or the presentation of the book. The actual graphics are unique, detailed, and beyond the standards of conventional graphic novels. In the different sized material, you can easily tell Chris Ware is very comfortable with his work both at large and small scales. And with the use of different narrative techniques in the same novel, he presents a new way of writing.

There are of course pitfalls. The no-particular-order reading is a bit of a risky gambit. The insights of the protagonist could be read too early, or too late… which would make parts of the story either incomprehensible or just slow down the drive.

But still this great novel. With the knowledge of one’s starting point can be another’s ending, it makes you want to reread it all. It is like a keepsake box, full of unforgettable memories.

Also posted in www.newsforshoppers.com (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 21, 2013 Tatiana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comic-or-graphic-novel

A pretty perfect book-reading experience for a weekend home sick, except for the hovering melancholy of the subject matter, so maybe pick a weekend home sick when you're not emotionally low as well.

I'm not the biggest fan of the physical pieces, I do like them being separate and in no particular order but jesus the larger pieces were a bit unwieldy. So I do feel a bit like it's for show, and I hate things done for show, but...

And this is a big but. Two things. 1. it's an experience, like reading...more

like · see review

Dec 28, 2012 Melissa Rochelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012, connected-stories

I kept seeing this book on "best books" lists, but I wasn't sure about it. When I finally read the short little blurb about it on PW Best Books list, I thought...OK, I want to read it. However, it isn't a book I would want to check out from a library (I mean, as a librarian I might even hesitate to purchase it for the collection because of the many pieces within). So I put it on my Christmas list...and Santa Jesse came through :)

Fantastic book. I'm not a big fan of graphic novels...another reaso...more

like · see review

Feb 18, 2013 John Seven rated it 2 of 5 stars

The problem with Building Stories is that while Ware is still a skilled and intelligent cartoonist, in context of his own work it doesn't really represent any kind of move forward. It's really more of the same, with razzle dazzle in the form of packaging. The characters are moribund and whiny, endlessly going on their gloomy, bitter monologues to the point where the whole venture becomes tiresome. Part of this is due to the fact that Ware relies less on his visuals and presentation to tell a sto...more

1 like · like · see review

title link	preview: Building Stories
avg rating	preview: Building Stories Goodreads rating: 4.21 (1785 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573235-building-stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336846329l/13573235.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13573235-building-stories?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Building Stories by Chris Ware[/url]

Building Stories

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (1)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Chris Ware

Books by Chris Ware

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Building Stories

Quotes from Building Stories