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Book Review of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
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God help me, but I'm addicted to lists. So when I saw a goodreads friend had a shelf of 'Guardian 1000' top novels, I had to know what it was. So far I've been able to resist the temptation to make my own shelf at goodreads to keep track of it, but I did download the list from the Guardian website and import it into a spreadsheet. The list doesn't quite ping my O/C tracking instinct enough, though, because among the books I noticed a misspelled author's name, an entry for the 'book' "The Chronicles of Narnia," and even worse, an entry for the 'book' by Terry Pratchett "The Discworld Series."

Guardian, please.

If your compartmentalization is that sloppy, you don't deserve my O/C efforts. You gotta give if you wanna get back.

Anyway, the list reminded me that I read this book, and loved it, and what the heck, I'll say it's a novel. Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan comics in an alternate Chicago paper actually inspired me to create a webcomic for a while. So I guess it's fair to say Jimmy Corrigan affected me quite a bit.

Without getting overly analytical, and losing the forest for the trees, I want to point out that having Jimmy Corrigan be the only character to have facial features was profoundly effective. This book captures that feeling of modern disconnection from other humans like no other book I've ever read. It's a beautiful sad feeling.