Graphic novels, picture books for grown-ups

Since long ago discovering Maus, then more recently the work of Alison Bechdel, I've been interested in the graphic novel as an exciting art form. Not so much the retelling of classic works with illustrations, though the first graphic volume of Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, is brilliant, do look at it, but original works.

I'm hoping to get my book group to venture into them, so I'm doing a bit of research into what's good, what's available, and passing on my thoughts to the group leader.

Here are the three best so far, already recommended Bechdel and Maus's Spiegelman, and they're all great. The writer/illustrators all get the real point of this genre. Not just a story with pictures added, but a drama where the graphics act out the meaning of the script and add new dimensions to it. The way good actors take on and enlarge their script, or Hilary Hahn interpreting violin music. Check her on YouTube, one of the best musicians ever.

Maira Kalman gives us a wild careering ride through the mind of a brilliant artist, who takes in all the threads of life and imagination, every emotion you can have, in her The Principles of Uncertainty, the title already a riff on Heisenberg . And Bintel Brief is a new look at that famous phenomenon of the early twentieth century, the reader letters to the editor of the Forward, the Yiddish newspaper of the Lower East Side of New York.

You don't have to be a New Yorker to love her take on the letters and the shade of their editor. Then there's Notes on a Thesis, and you don't have to be a graduate student to follow the struggles of a young woman getting her Ph.D despite family, friends, even her own adviser and fellow students. The illustrations are a constant subtext.

So there's where I am now. Still reading books without pix, Guns of August, Night Circus, The Other Einstein, with dear old Less than Angels, favorite Pym. I love Catherine Oliphant, like dropping in on a friend.

But do try graphic novels, and if you already do would you please share your recommendations? I'd love to hear.