The Secret to Superhuman Strength is a fascinating, light-hearted yet deeply intellectual exploration of a thousand topics, with a shared core - the pursuit of physical fitness, in its myriad forms, self improvement by way of physical activity, inner transformation through a focus on the body - the relationship between body and mind, between physical and psychological self. Not to mention the relationship between the Earth and those who inhabit it, between the universe and those who inhabit it, between the soul and those who contain it - okay, there's a lot going on here. This graphic memoir smoothly intertwines Alison Bechdel's personal experience with historical and cultural context. Bechdel's artistic style is evocative, expressive but simple, a little whimsical and fun at times, and at others deeply profound and emotional, all perfectly matching the philosophical-yet-flippant text.

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance review copy!

Thanks, NetGalley for the ARC. I didn't finish The Secret TO Superhuman Strength. It was cerebral like Are You My Mother, rather than intimate like Fun Home. There were moments in the first 50 pages, like young Alison's relationship with her masculinity, despite having little interest in team sports.

Of course the art is worth looking at, but it was mostly emotionally distant.

I started reading Bechdel's graphic memoirs only a year or two ago and I've been consuming them since. I think this is not her best work, but I was surprised to read many negative reviews. I think that the disparate themes here work- the tying of fitness, an endless search for being in tune body and mind and spirit (which is fraught and perhaps impossible to achieve consistently), and the transcendentalists and beat authors who sought the same. As a sometimes fitness fan, an off-and-on (slow) runner, an English lit fan and former scholar, and New Englander who loves cross-country skiing but never gets to do it in the Mid-Atlantic where I live... I felt like this book was written in part for me. Is it perfect? No. But it's fascinating to see how Bechdel's mind works, and to live through it as she engages with what it means to age, to grow, and to choose to pursue strength in every way. Four (and a half) stars of fun and challenge.

Alison Bechdel has been devoted to different fitness crazes throughout her life, including many sports. In this book she looks back on her fascination with fitness, how it developed, and how it is connected to her family history. Furthermore, her sports history is closely linked to the rest of her life - her worklife, her lovelife, and her sense of identity.

Intercut with her personal history she focuses on literary authors like Jack Kerouac, and their thoughts on physical fitness and spirituality (and Bechdel's thoughts on their thoughts).

The book is a moving emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey through her life. It's great.

Yet another marvelous book by Alison Bechdel. As her previous ones, it is a deeply personal memoir blended with very original rumination on philosophy, literature, aging, family, and so much more. It definitively isn’t a “light, fun exercise book” that she began to work on p, but it is for the best - and it shouldn’t be a surprise to any admirer of her style.

Thanks to the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Alison Bechdel is an auto buy writer for me. Her works, apart from being beautiful works of art, are also insightful, witty and moving, this book being no exception. This book's an exploration into the exercise boom, tracing its origins, and tries to explore how and when a large section of people( specifically in America) decided this was a good way to spend their disposable income. I see it as the third part in a loose trilogy, with Fun Home and Are you my mother being the first two parts. While Fun Home was about her relationship with her father and the effect he had on her, Are you my mother -obviously about her mother, through a psychoanalytic lens. This book also serves as a memoir of her artistic life, working on her graphic novels and the fabulous Dykes to watch out for, which I really appreciated- you get to see her process and meticulous work with those. Woven in are her thoughts on Meeting her deadlines while also dealing with her ailing mother and intimations of her own mortality.

I always feel a lot more intelligent after reading Bechdel's work and that's because of her specific way of structuring them, with works of literature providing inspiration, and a potted biography or two. Fun Home spoke of Proust, and Henry James, Are you my mother took in a whole range of psychoanalysts and parenting books, and this book is an absolute treasure trove.Bechdel places the origins of the links between nature and artistic inspiration at the feet of the Romantic poets, specifically during the conception of Lyrical Ballads, and (quite rightfully), makes sure Dorothy Wordsworth gets as much of the spotlight as the poets do. She traces a link from their writings to the views of the Transcendentalists, onwards to the Beats ( specifically Kerouac), with asides on the absolute explosion in athleisure, fitness equipment and camping gear.
In terms of the artwork, I love that in keeping with the outdoorsy theme, this book has several gorgeous full page landscapes( watercolours in some instances), a haunting chiaroscuro winter wonderland, and an absolutely stunning memorable grisaille 2 page landscape of Central Park. I also particularly loved a full page panel where Bechdel, in an insert, writes about Kerouac going on a hike with bare minimum equipment, (since hiking wasn't an activity undertaken by hobbyists and enthusiasts) juxtaposed against a full page illustration of a sporting goods store, with 8 different sorts of sleeping bags, primus stoves and assorted other hiking gear.

Are our obsessions with eating right and fitness all merely signs that we're trying to delay the inevitable? Bechdel wiseLy does not attempt to answer this and shoehorn some greater meaning or purpose to any of it. We're all just trying to make our way, and great art can help us find some meaning and some comfort.

Please give Alison Bechdel all the MacArthur Genius Grants possible, the world needs a lot more of her beautiful, insightful works of art!

Part memoir and part history of America's work out fads, Bechdel covers a lot of ground in her signature, wry way.

A beautiful recounting of a person's experience in their body and the way the world perceives it. Bechdel is always such a joy to read, and her artwork always brings a special humanity to the stories.

I’ve read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and a couple of her comic strips, Dykes to Watch Out For. Unfortunately, this latest one from her doesn’t hit the mark. While exercise is an important topic for a baby boomer or any of us, the book’s plot seems to wander all over the place, but not connect. There’s a bit of historical information which is interesting, but doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the narrative. I wouldn’t recommend this to friends and am disappointed in her latest work.

A bit of a rambly autobiography tracing Bechdel's life through her interest in exercise and fitness (and Buddhism), paralleled throughout with details of other authors with an interest in the outdoors. I enjoyed it, as I usually enjoy Bechdel's work, though it was a bit unfocused at time and really works better if you know something about the authors she linked herself to. (I am, by choice, unfamiliar with Kerouac.)

I was so entirely, utterly, painstakingly bored by this. It doesn't need to exist, especially in graphic format (so many images are just Bechdel doing exercise). Just re-read Fun Home instead.

I was really looking forward to this book and it delivered. Fun Home is one of my favorite memoirs of all time and this book hit very close in a total different way but similarly. A great book after a long week, the energy of Alison Bechdel, her dynamic storytelling re: panelling and her ability to merge the most unlikely stuff really resonated with me. I adored this book as somone who hardly cares about exercise but is aware it's a necessity. Bechdel ropes in the transcendentalists, Kerouac, yet another book about fitness from a white lady!, and more through her constant search for meaning in exercise, around exercise, through exercise. In some ways, is about what exercise can be a stand for and that was something luminous and deeply felt. The humour in this book is, frankly, a balm and a gift, but it is the more sober/quiet parts of it that really made me think. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing to review this book!

To be honest, this one had me at “Author of Fun Home” ... The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel’s upcoming graphic memoir, centers on the author’s relationship to exercise and the transcendent state that’s accessible through a unique combination of discipline and exertion. And it’s also about Margaret Fuller, Jack Kerouac, the enlightenment path, and the artist’s connection with nature, exploration of self / other, and the occasional busted ankle. And it’s amazing! It definitely went in some directions that I wasn’t expecting (and I did enjoy the parts about fitness “fads” and practices the most ... a little more than the transcendental tangents ...) but overall I found this book incredibly rewarding even when the going wasn’t easy. Kind of like a great hike! Oh, I see what she did there.

I found The Secret to Superhuman Strength to be more similar to Bechdel's Are You My My Mother? than to Fun Home. While there is a narrative here, she entwines it thoroughly with philosophy, literature, and spiritual dogma. This isn't just a book about exercise: at times, it's dense and a little taxing. But overall, I enjoyed Bechdel's reflections on her lifetime of exercise and her journey to attain superhuman strength. A good read, especially for those who want more from their graphic novels.

I was fascinated to go along with Alison Bechdel on her journey into the question of strength, both physical and emotional, and how those two twine together.

As always her wonderful drawings really bring the story to life, from her childhood obsession with strength to all the different ways in which she has pushed herself through life.

An enlightening as well as enjoyable story.

This book was really lovely. I don’t think Allison Bechdel’s two previous auto-biographical graphic novels, Fun Home and Are You My Mother, and this newest installment - The Secret to Super Human Strength - are being marketed as a trilogy, but they can certainly be read that way. And, I think these works have a lot to offer as a group. There will be many familiar scenes for fans of her prior work.

If FH and AYMM explore the relationships with her parents, then TSTSHS is about the relationship(s) to the self. Bechdel largely uses her physical body and her experiences with different exercise and physical activities as a way of locating the “self” here. This approach is not new, as Bechdel shows us how the Transcendentalists, the Romantics, the Beats, the Bloomsbury group and other thinkers have grappled with the mind/body relationship and the self. It may all sound rather heavy and academic described this way, but I have found the kind of visual and graphical referencing really clever. We don’t just get a footnote to Coleridge, but we see him hiking in the Lake District. And, we see how that image has impacted the author, and lived with the author.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Fun Home and Are You My Mother. All three work really well together, and could be read in any order. This is also great as a stand-alone piece.

Read if you: Are a fan of graphic memoirs and Alison Bechdel in particular.

I have read Fun Home and was looking forward to this one. While I thought the artwork was of her high caliber, the actual narrative seemed to drag. If you aren't familiar with her life story, you might get lost at some small points (her father's "secret" and the panels dealing with Fun Home's musical adaptation and success).

I was a bit puzzled with the all-black crowd characters--these were in profile and had no expression or distinguishing personalities, in contrast with the white crowd members, who all had individual expressions. It just made me a bit uncomfortable and was quite noticeable. Perhaps it was done to create contrasting colors. Anyway--it just stood out to me.

Librarians/booksellers: Purchase if Bechdel's memoirs are popular.

Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honet review.

This book was just so excellently written and profound, there’s not much more to say other than that. Except maybe that when I started reading I had to put the book down and go exercise (lol). I definitely recommend this read if you are looking for a unique memoir and are interested in seeing exercise as a form of meditative practice.

Alison Bechdel’s latest is - in theory - about her lifelong love of exercise. In theory. And it is about that. In part. But it’s mostly this rambly, vague, wishy-washy, truncated autobio with many pointless literary diversions that turns The Secret to Superhuman Strength, at nearly 250 laborious pages, into a test of the strength of the reader’s attention in making the superhuman effort to make it to the end. I hoped this was going to be another Fun Home rather than another Are You My Mother? but, in actuality, it turned out to be the latter unfortunately so I didn’t like this one very much.

The literary diversions include the Romantic poets Sammy Tee Coleridge, Billy and Dotty Wordsworth (as no one called them), the Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and alcoholic hippy and demented type-writist Jack Kerouac. Why? ‘Cos they was artists what liked the outdoors, like Alison Bechdel. So is she comparing herself to them as literary equals or summink?! Yeesh, you give someone a Macarthur Fellowship “Genius” Grant and suddenly they thinks they a genius! Either that anyway or this is all FILLER. Fuller filler.

Bechdel only slightly rehashes material from her two previous memoirs about her pa and ma, before filling us in on her experiences doing skiing, running, swimming, karate, yoga, cycling, and so on. She liked fitness clothes from a young age as well as Jack Lalanne and Charles Atlas. Ok… ? There’s some mild addiction issues and a relationship or two that hit the rocks as Bechdel hit the workahol, but, lordy lordy I was boredy!

When I read the blurb to this one I thought that it was a flimsy concept that was going to be tough to work well and Bechdel proved my initial impression right. Parts of it were occasionally interesting like the look behind the scenes at her creative process and, as irrelevant as I felt they were, the literary factoids on Margaret Fuller were enlightening as I knew nothing about her before this. I related to Bechdel’s experience getting back into running and its effects and the art throughout isn’t bad.

Still, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, unlike real exercise, is a lot of effort for very little in return. Often dull, rarely engaging, and very forgettable, all this book shows is that Bechdel’s out of material and things to say. Exercise = good. Agreed. And… ?

Superhuman shrug.

This is a nice collection of cartoons.

I have seen Alison's work before and enjoyed it although it is hard to see on the netgalley app or kindle which was a shame as some of the content was probably lost. This isnt the authors fault though .

Thank you for an arc