Do Graphic Novels Count As Books?
How Your Answer to This Question Reflects Something Deeper
This year I’m going to read more books than ever before. My current record is 53 which wasn’t easy but it was surprisingly more attainable than I realized when I started that year. This year I’m setting my eyes on 60. But in order to get there, I have to embrace the “yes” side of an important question I have brought to several people in my circle…
Are graphic novels books?
For context, I don’t really read fiction books. I dominantly read nonfiction. That’s how I’ve always been. In fact, the list of books I have read is HEAVILY nonfiction. All of my academic interests have been philosophical, social, and theological and my reading interests have aligned accordingly.
The only fiction content I really read is in the form of graphic novels.
Here’s my particular struggle. Sure, graphic novels have text. There’s dialogue, both inner and conversational. But it is dominantly a visual art. This makes the page count completely deceiving. A graphic novel could have 450 pages but if you reduced it just to its text you might be reading between 150–200 pages. As a person who is prone to perfectionism and comparison, I don’t feel right adding graphic novels to my list of books I have…
