When I was a kid, call it childish racial prejudice or merely prescience, I steered clear of Paterson's Asian-focused books. In the case of Rebels, it was probably just as well I waited. The book is of very fine but dense prose, and of exactly the voice you would imagine telling you a based-on-the-true-story story of 19th century China: exceedingly formal and a touch mythic. This would have done me in as a younger reader, even if I had gotten through the foreign names. I would have tossed the book aside as boring and perhaps never have picked it up again.

My introduction to Peter Pan was like most kids': the Disney animated film. I also saw a stage production by our local Civic Theatre's youth troupe. I was totally enamoured of Princess Tigerlily, and what I saw was enough for me. But it's very comforting and exciting to know now that there is much more to Peter Pan than what you get from the cartoon or even the stage version of the story.

This is a graphic novel that actually seems to be getting at least a fraction of the great press it deserves, but not enough good things can be said about it. In a similar vein to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is the autobiographical tale of a girl's childhood in Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at the peak of Iran's 20th century turmoil. The book shows vignettes of Marji's school and home life and her family's history, meanwhile keenly illustrating the danger and disillusionment of an oppressed people's transition from one tyrranical government to another.

The illustrations are beautiful: elegant and expressive and altogether gorgeous to look at. Likewise, the characterization of Marji never wavers in its strength and clarity; Marji's idealism, humor, imagination, and stubborness ring through on every page. The historical and social aspects of the book are sufficient to make this a worthwhile read, but the humanization of an affair and a nation most Americans remember only for its extremists, through Marji and her family's story, clinches the book's must-read status. Perpetually touching, frequently funny, and always cognizant of Iran's pain and pride, Persepolis will not lose relevance in the foreseeable future.

This was not an easy book to read — difficult language, complex sentence structure, small print — but it was interesting enough to make me stick to it. And so I was rewarded by its sharp humor and a lot to think about.

The plot follows Martin Arrowsmith's career in medicine, starting with his teenaged apprenticeship and stretching into middle-aged stagnancy. He is not a particularly likeable character, but nor could the opposite be true. Lewis has created a man — no more, no less. Martin is prickly, flawed, irritating, and yet ultimately sympathetic.

Humanity, Lewis argues, condemns (nearly) everyone to mediocrity. All human endeavours — though it is medicine he focuses on — are susceptible to corruption by greed, politics, compassion, and lack of it. Science is only as perfect, pure, and precise as the people studying it. Which is to say, as a rule, not very.

Martin is not exceptional in his acceptance that mediocrity has been his past and will probably comprise his future as well; what makes him exceptional is that this acceptance does not stop him from dedicating his life to his passion. It is his curmudgeonly perseverance, and the ultimate conclusion that our failures do not make us a Failure, that won me over.