Kavalier and Clay is a fictionalized version of the Simon and Schuster story, essentially: two Jewish comic artists in New York create a popular superhero and get screwed out of their rights by inexperience and necessity. Add into that the backdrop of losing your entire family in the concentration camps, fighting Nazis (sort of), exploring your sexuality, the formation of the comics code and all the nonsense that goes with it, and that's what you're in for. I enjoyed this thoroughly, and it blends fiction and fact beautifully, to the point where there were characters I had to double check to make sure I hadn't just missed them in the boom of the 1930s New York scene. I listened to this on audiobook, and David Colacci does an excellent job giving each character a distinct voice.
So that book was published in 2000. I would have been 18/19 then, just graduating high school. I had no direction to my life apart from, "college, I guess?" My first pick hadn't taken me because as a wee lass I was a nihilist (and undiagnosed depressive), convinced that something disastrous would happen, and none of my dreams would ever come true. I was living in my hometown, which did not help my mental health or future outlook, dating my high school boyfriend (a relationship doomed to fail), and not at all interested in the superhero genre. Up until that point, the only comics I ever bought were from Slave Labor Graphics. I would not have predicted that fifteen years or so into the future that I would be buying tights and capes comics regularly, seeing superhero movies in theaters (I seem to recall telling my husband that if you'd told me ten years previous that I'd be hyped to see a Thor movie, I would punch you in the face), or editing a series of novels and short stories in a superhero universe.
Keeping in fiction, let's touch on Howl (which I have been perennially unable to spell correctly, for no reason I can think of. I keep misplacing the apostrophe). 1986 puts me at 5 years old, and I don't remember much about being that small. I do know I liked fairy tales (and later portal fantasies, which I was surprised to find this was), and Sophie delights me just as much now as she would have when I was little. I adore the fact that she goes from a quiet nonentity to grouchy old busybody immediately upon being turned into an elderly woman. And no, in spite of the fact that I was deep into anime for a time, I haven't yet seen the Miyazaki version of the story. It is waiting for me when I get home.
Switching gears completely, how about an encyclopedia about Victorian England? I have a fair amount of knowledge on this era (by no means comprehensive), but you really don't know how much you don't KNOW until you read something like this. Just the different carriage types are enough to make you dizzy. And I honestly don't know how anyone in the Church of England hierarchy keeps anyone straight. The book comes with a glossary at the back which ranges from the obvious, "I don't know what I expected," definitions
to, "No, a little more explanation, please."
All in all, a good starting place if you're looking for some verisimilitude in your Victorian setting, but also not entirely exhaustive.
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