I started this book wondering why I was reading a graphic novel about physical fitness -- as someone who doesn't particularly enjoy either of those things, as a general rule. But even before the end of the first chapter, Bechdel's unique talent for pairing her cartoons with dry observations about herself and the world around her had sucked me in.

Every chapter spans a decade, beginning with her childhood and ending with the events up through to late 2020. The Secret to Superhuman Strength turns out to only be about physical fitness at face value. Rather, every page turn taught me to see the interplay between the values Bechdel found in fitness, and the way those values fit into the other aspects of her life. The stamina and determination she found in things like running and karate? They're the same skills that she's used to write comic strips and books longer than I've been alive.

Even if this book doesn't have me running out to buy a bike, or flinging myself down the ski slopes, it's helped me see how so many "life lessons" can be universally applicable, even if they're about something I don't personally identify with. Through the lens of her fitness journey, we watch Bechdel struggle with relationships - both familial and romantic - and eventually learn how to write a book about her roving fitness fixations. There truly is something to be found in this for everyone, even - and maybe especially - people who don't typically read graphic novels about half a century's worth of workout trends.

This book is so special. Don't let the title fool you, while this does explore a variety of athletic ventures, it also explores how the soul and mind work together with your body. It's just a lovely reminder for me that I have to take care of my body AND my mind and how that will look different as time goes on.

I LOVE Bechdel's work, so this was an easy choice to pick up. It lacks the depth of her other work (hard to top Fun Home!), but her illustrations are amusing and evocative, and her thoughtfulness is a treasure, especially in a time of pandemic.

This is my first Alison Bechdel book--I own Fun Home, but have never gotten around to reading it, although I loved the musical. It's a philosophical, self-reflective and self-depreciating look at Bechdel's relationship with her body, her health (mental, physical, and emotional), exercise, and the feeling of transcendence. These are huge topics, and she covers her entire life up to very recently (the last few pages talk about her struggling to finish the memoir during quarantine).

However, the book never feels overstuffed, or unfocused. Bechdel also connects her personal experience to history, following a few poets, philosophers, and writers that she felt some kind of personal connection to, as they also thought and talked about transcendence, nature, their own troubled relationships, etc. These writers include Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Margaret Fuller, and Jack Kerouac. Despite not particularly being fans of or knowing a lot about any of these people, I enjoyed all of these connections. I did find it funny that there was such a focus on Eastern philosophy, but many of the people talked about were white.

The book is broken up into sections that follow a decade, of Bechdel's life (the 1980s, when Bechdel was in her 20s, etc). It was fascinating to see reflections both of her personal history, and of where the world was at the moment. For example, the book would cover some of Bechdel's relationships and the writing of Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, but also discuss the development of running shoes and active wear over the years, or the connection between the AIDS crisis and a focus on a different physique for men—lack of body hair, and use of steroids used more widely after first being prescribed to HIV-positive men.

Even if you have no particular interest in exercise and books about it, this graphic memoir is about so much more. She is incredibly honest about her problems with suppressing her emotions, throwing herself into her work, refusing to rely on others, and pushing herself too hard to the point of injury or illness. I also enjoyed the art style, full of funny little details, and the soft pastels used for the coloring.

Another entertaining. Interesting book by Alison Bechdel Her graphic novels share different aspects of her life.Here she shares her obsession with exercise in different forms At the same time she reveals her life her family and what she was discovering about herself. #netgalley#hmh

4 stars

The winning combination of Bechdel's art and narrative style are at the forefront of this work.

Here, Bechdel uses exercise as a marker for both the stages of her life and the trends of the ages, and I thoroughly enjoyed (and laughed at many times) the way she connects this often humorous backdrop and the central issues of her life (deaths, personal struggles, relationships, and more). This feels like both a fresh perspective and a highly relatable one, and I think the format will work for a variety of readers.

Recommended for fans and newcomers alike -

In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel recounts her life through six decades of fitness fads. It's a fun and engaging way to approach her life story, but even more, Bechdel explores how various exercise methods served as a way for her to explore her mind-body connection and her place in the universe. It's a wonderful balance of humor, history, and philosophical musings, and I think it's one of the greatest examples of why Bechdel won a MacArthur Genius Grant. You can always look to her work for a fresh perspective that goes much deeper than you expect.

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Surprisingly this was my first Alison Bechdel but it certainly won’t be the last. Non-fiction graphic novels or graphic memoirs are something that I’m looking to read more of this year and this was a good one to start with.

Bechdel’s artwork style was perfect for me and it’s one of the main things that I enjoyed about the book. The soft colouring with the cartoonish illustration style was calming yet expressive when it needed to be and really fit the tone.

The “plot” itself, though obviously based on Bechdel’s own experiences, was what let this down for me. I enjoyed learning about her life, relationships, mental health and fitness experiences but the literary references throughout put me at a distance. There were references to Margaret Fuller, William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge that really paralleled the author’s story and because I’ve read some Wordsworth, I found that this fit quite well. However Jack Kerouac is referenced throughout and as I’ve never read any of his work, this held me at a distance.

Overall this is an emotional exploration of an author’s relationship to her body and exercise. I loved how current it was, particularly by the end where she discusses writing the book. I would recommend this but I think you would enjoy it more if you are familiar with Kerouac!

3 out of 5 stars!

O LIVRO

The Secret to Superhuman Strength de Alison Bechdel é um livro de memórias, em formato novela gráfica em que a autora explora a sua relação com o exercício físico, interseccionando-a com os diferentes momentos da sua vida (da infância à vida adulta) e da história dos EUA.

Paralelamente, reflecte sobre as diferentes modas associadas à prática do exercício físico, inclusive utilizando como referências alguns movimentos literários e filosóficos e os seus representantes.

A publicação está prevista para 27 de Abril e eu tive acesso à obra graças ao NetGalley.

A AUTORA

Alison Bechdel é uma cartonista bastante consolidada, em especial depois do seu primeiro livro de memórias - Fun Home (2006) - que tinha como elemento central a sua relação com o pai. Seguir-se-ia Are You My Mother? (2012) que trata da sua relação com a mãe.

Ícone cultural nos EUA, é particularmente conhecida pelo TESTE BECHDEL, que é uma medida que avalia a representação das mulheres na ficção.

O teste pretende avaliar se a obra apresenta pelo menos duas mulheres que conversam sobre algo que não seja um homem. A exigência de que as duas mulheres tenham nome às vezes é acrescentada.

A autora faz parte da comunidade LGBT, incluindo essa parte da sua identidade como elemento fulcral das suas obras.

RESUMO DA HISTÓRIA

Alison Bechdel em The Secret to Superhuman Strength, percorre a sua vida numa perspectiva de desenvolvimento pessoal.

Porque, no fundo, a prática do exercício físico é precisamente uma manifestação dessa vontade de vivermos o nosso melhor eu. E pelo meio, alguma auto-compaixão e aceitação.

EM SUMA

The Secret to Superhuman Strength é um livro para os nossos tempos, em que o individualismo predomina e como retrato cultural, é excelente.

Mas na realidade, é pela identificação com as lutas interiores de Alison, que nos sentimos empenhados em acompanhar as suas dificuldades pela vida e esperar que esta encontre a paz interior que tanto procura.

An interesting read from a well known author. Some very funny moments but not I book connected with.

What a treat! Every once in a while, I wonder when Alison Bechdel will have a new book come out, so I was delighted to read this. It’s just as expertly drawn and written as her other works. I love how the chapters are broken up by decades, and using her latest fitness routine as a way to examine her life. A very deep, moving work.

An absolute treasure!

<i>Thanks to NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I was just meh on this book. I have enjoyed Alison's other works so I jumped at this one, but for whatever reason, it just didn't connect with me.

“The pursuit of fitness has been a vehicle for something else... the feeling of my mind and body becoming one.” This quote stuck out to me and it is a good way to describe how this “fun exercise book” became so much more. Starting out, it seems like Bechdel is recounting different ways that she has used exercise to escape. And if I had stopped when I originally got bored I wold have missed out on a deeper message of transcendence and connection to nature and self. Using the stories of several transcendental literary figures (Emerson, Thoreau, etc) and of Jack Kerouac, the author weaves a narrative the combines actions that occurred throughout her lifetime that connects nature and (wo)man with enlightenment. A nice read which also touches upon her other books and how they impacted her sense of self in this journey.

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Alison Bechdel for gifting me an aARC of “The Secret to Superhuman Strength” via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s a fact that I love Alison Bechdel’s profound memoir comics, and this one is no exception. The Secret to Superhuman strength beautifully intertwined exercise, a feeling of wholeness with one’s body, complexities of mental health, and humankind’s everlasting connectedness with nature into a memoir of a woman growing into herself as she ages. In her quest to discover “the secret to superhuman strength”, Bechdel walks the reader through her life and her relationship to fitness and her body.

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.

I mainly know Alison Bechdel's life and works through two things: the eponymous test and the musical. That's just a small slice of her biography, as "The Secret To Superhuman Strength" describes her life through exercise programs, bicycles, relationships, and even an attempt at explaining her newfound fame through that 7 minute interval training infographic.

I'm a fan of "Fun Home" so I was really intrigued by Alison Bechdel's latest graphic novel. It follows her love of exercise throughout her life and how she's always strived to be the most capable and strongest of athletes. I enjoyed the setup of each decade of her life and which exercise she was addicted to at the time. It also describes what other obstacles she was facing (the death of her father, lots of breakups, etc.). The graphics and color illustrations are wonderful. The only complaint I had was that the book went off onto tangents about people like Margaret Fuller and Jack Kerouac - to be honest, it kind of went over my head why these subjects were even included. I understood that Bechdel was trying to compare her quest for enlightenment with these types of people, but I felt like it just drew my attention away from Bechdels' own story. I think it would have been easier to follow and to relate to her struggle if this aspect had been removed. Either way, Bechdel is obviously supremely talented and her bold honesty makes this book still worth reading.

Alison Bechdel offers us a new deeply personal and vulnerable look at her life, this time through the prism of her lifelong engagement with fitness. From passing fads to more long-term preoccupations, she demonstrates a most interesting self awareness that only seems to appears in hindsight. Her frank portraits of her life make for compelling reading, and are a fascinating look at how the larger culture evolved in the US during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. She also offers a through line from 19th transcendentalists, to Jack Kerouac, to herself that deepens the theme of exercise as a way to achieve spiritual pursuits.

As I have read most if not all of Alison Bechdel’s writing I thought I knew everything about her life. Not so. Combining anecdotes about exercise from her own life with stories about famous writers and artists of the past Bechdel has created something really special. This book, although it is marketed to be about excercise is really about the connection between all people.

Bechdel constantly referenced Buddhist theories that I had no prior knowledge of. Even if you don’t understand all of the concepts this is an excellent read and definitely something I am going to go back to once I have looked up the things I didn’t understand.

As always the art was phenomenal and I enjoyed learning more about Bechdel’s fascinating life.

I was provided a free advance reader copy from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in exchange for my honest review on Net Galley. The opinions shared in this review are my own.

I was a little disappointed. I’ve enjoyed her work a long time but I felt like this was kind of flat. She didn’t really look that deep into herself and her interests—why was this white woman so fascinated with practices from other cultures? Why did she only profile white people, including ones who were also fixated on practices from other cultures? It really felt superficial.

I’m a huge fan of both Fun Home and Are You My Mother, so I was very excited to read 5his latest graphic novel by Bechdel. Unfortunately I just didn’t find it as compelling as her other works. To be fair, this is a me problem, not an author problem. I just wasn’t interested in Bechdels quest for strength and while I know there was a lot going on under the surface and that exercise is like this extended metaphor, I just couldn’t get below surface on this one.