Member Reviews

Thanks to Net Galley for the copy of this book. Not a bad book, just not the book for me at this moment. There was a lot of good information and I really enjoyed the illustrations

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I don’t read a lot of graphic novels so it took me a few pages to get into they style and graphics of “Gasoline Dreams.” I found the facts interesting to read, the art work was dreary and set the mood for the topic. All in all this graphic novel was an informative and important read.

**I received an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review of this book.

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This was a wonderful use of the graphic novel medium and a book I would gladly share. The words and images combine to form a very effective text.

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in my opinion, the writing is very cloudy and hard to read, making it frustrating and confusing to understand where to read. also the type of drawing is not my favorite, but the idea is a great one.

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Well researched review of our oil dependent society with descriptions of what the solutions might be to global warming. Since I am not a movie buff some of the comparisons to well known movies could have been left out but overall I enjoyed the book and feel it makes very valid statements about our petrochemical dependent society..

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Thank you to Fordham University Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Gasoline Dreams by Simon Orpana is an innovative blend of graphic novel and academic research. Gasoline Dreams is about people's reliance on petroleum and how our culture depends on it to survive. According to the description, this book "explores and challenges the ways fossil fuels have shaped our identities, relationships, and our ability to imagine sustainable, equitable futures." This book will appeal to fans of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and its slightly more academic sequel, which mixed images with academic prose and concepts.

Overall, Gasoline Dreams is innovative, because its content is purely academic, but none of the pages are fully text. Instead, the author uses black and white images and graphics in the style of a traditional graphic novel to tell the "story," illustrate metaphors, and explain more difficult academic concepts. I took off 2 stars, because I found the book difficult to understand at points. Although I consider myself an educated person, there were section where I did not know what the author was talking about, and the images did not help. For example, the section on A Quiet Place and Stranger Things was difficult for me to relate to the book's topic of "petroculture." If you're intrigued by the description, or if you're a fan of academic graphic novels, you can check out this book, which is available now!

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Ahhhhhhhhh. I’m torn with how to proceed in reviewing this. On one hand I thought the information given was so good. It was interesting, terrifying, and relevant. It was well researched. It had an urgency to it. It was a labour of love. The imagery was also really lovely. The illustration style fit well with the comic. But I had a hard time following sometimes because the pages felt over busy. It may have been the blurriness because it is an ARC but between blurry pages and over crowding there were many pages I felt I was missing the images or the message.

I still recommend people have a look at it. It has a lot of great information.

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I wasn't able to finish this book. I got three chapters in trying to give it a chance but found the writing to preachy and the artwork too gloomy. Which is understandable with it in part being about global warming, but the bright colorful cover made me think that this book would be a little different than the daily rhetoric about global warming I hear about. Especially when living in the Pacific Northwest I don't need to hear about how wildfires are the norm. I live that norm everyday myself.

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This is an interesting sociological take on a fossil fuel society among other hot political topics. Because of the type of book it is, people will love or hate it but it's creative and will get conversations started.

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