A $50 box of longing, mortality, and regret, to quote Kevin Guilfoile's apt commentary in the Tournament of Books. It's a heavily visual collection of 14 pieces that make up this work which mostly shows us the life of a lonely, insecure, perpetually unsatisfied, slightly overweight woman. Other main characters are the unhappy married couple living below her, the unhappy elderly woman who owns the titular building they all live in, and bizarrely, a bee who just doesn't fit in.

I lack the patience/interest to spend a lot of time examining the artwork in the panels of graphic novels; I want to speed on ahead to the next chunk of text. I must have a bias for words. Thus my favorite graphic novel I've read (not that I've read all that many) is Persepolis, in which I think the artwork plays a much smaller second fiddle to the star turn of the text. In Building Stories, the visuals demand at least equal consideration, maybe greater.

I think I disagree with most when I say I did not find splitting the story into 14 pieces of varying size, from pamphlet to newspaper to novella, to be a charming feature. I would have preferred a single, standard sized bound book. What a hidebound traditionalist I turn out to be. ( )

Thoroughly depressing, but quite brilliant graphic novel, produced as a collection of small books, newspapers, folded strips of paper, etc. There are no instructions on how to read all of this (I did it from small to large). A slices of life story with a triple pun on the title; the building itself is a character. Includes the story of Branford bee, the greatest bee in the world, and an edition of the Bee times with "God save the queen" in the header. I think the only other graphic novels I had read were Art Spiegleman's Maus I and II, but now I am intrigued... ( )

I received this "book" as a Santathing gift this Christmas. I really enjoyed piecing this story together. It comes in a big box with various artifacts inside that contain parts of the graphic novel. They come in all shapes and sizes, and have no reading order, so it really feels like you are a detective trying to put the events of the main character's life in order. The main character herself is a very ordinary person, which I think is kind of the point. How many huge, beautiful, and exhaustive graphic novels zero in on the inner life of an ordinary housewife like this? Not very many from my reading experience. I loved the minute details in the art work, especially those that feature cross-sections of her apartment building. From this graphic novel, I got the feeling of opening up a doll house and peering into the lives inside. Thank you to whoever bought me this book! ( )

I read this for a class on narratives in the 21st century (that do weird things with time/memory).

I really enjoyed this! Building Stories was a fascinating read & I had so much fun piecing together the different parts and wondering if/how they fit into the bigger story (and whether they were even real). ( )

A pleasure to manhandle! I wonder sometimes what poetry will look like in the 21st century, or what economy means to future authors and artists, or how anyone could portray America in the twenty-teens as anything other than a complete logjam. These are kind of grandiose things to think about at work but as someone who lives in fear of the "new" they're necessary questions to ask. So while a some people think this collection is possibly too depressing (and on one level I'd agree- as character studies these can run kind of shallow) I was personally really excited by "Building Stories" because it shows what print culture can still do and how it can command and keep our attention. I don't use the word "zeitgeist" often (if ever) but this collection really gets the "zeitgeist" of the USA c. 2012 in a way that is poetic, economic and hopeful (at least if reading comics for hours and hours gives you hope.) ( )