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My Begging Chart
Keiler Roberts mines the passing moments of family life to deliver an affecting and funny account of what it means to simultaneously exist as a mother, daughter, wife, and artist. Drawn in an unassuming yet charming staccato that mimics the awkward rhythm of life, no one’s foibles are left unspared, most often the author’s own.
When Roberts considers whether to dust the ceiling fan, it’s effectively relevant. She can get lost in the rewarding melodrama of playing with Barbie dolls with her daughter and will momentarily snap out of her depression. Her harmless fibs to get through the moment are brought up by her daughter a year or two later, yet without hesitation Roberts will request that her daughter’s imaginary friend not visit when she is around. Her MS diagnosis lingers in the background, never taking center stage.
In My Begging Chart, her most encompassing work yet, Roberts meditates on routine and stillness. The vignettes of her everyday life exude immense presence, making her comics thoroughly relatable and reflective of our all-too-human lives as they unfold with humour, sadness, and relieving joy. In transporting these stories onto paper, Roberts observes, and at times relishes, a fleeting present.
156 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2021
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842 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 114 reviews
January 10, 2022
One of my top ten comics of 2021, though I have five-starred most of her memoir comics. I know her a little, so that may be a little part of it, but I thin I understand and relate to these stories very well.
". . . isn't a walk more exciting if you don't know how it will turn out?"
Book launch via Zoom, check it out!
https://drawnandquarterly.com/event/2...
My Begging Chart is an episodic graphic memoir like all of her work. A life in comics, panel by panel, book by book. Slice of life, mundane, droll, amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes sadly reflective. The Evanston native teaches comics at the Chicago Art Institute and has been documenting her life with her artist husband Scott, her (delightful) daughter Xia, her dog Crooky, and her parents. She also has MS, which she doesn't exactly dwell on, but doesn't ignore, either, as she is overcome with fatigue, able to do less than she had been.
Early on Roberts seemed just deadpan, weirdly off-kilter to me, sort of ambivalent about having this daughter invade her world; then mood swings, struggles with depression that may be part of the MS that impacts her interactions with Xia. But Xia is the central star, always, sometimes the comedian girl to mom Keiler's deadpan delivery, and sometimes she is the straight girl. Mother-daughter Laurel and Hardy act.
In this book, the most developed portrait of her family life, she seems more comfortable with her life, and parenting in particular (though the hilarious back cover image is of Roberts answering questions from a new doctor: "Do you have children?" "No." "I mean, yes").
One advantage of having a daughter who is getting older is that you can engage in increasingly more complex Barbie-role-playing. But the sass back is also getting sharper!
Visiting the Chicago Art Institute they pass a woman commenting on a Manet exhibit with mostly flowers: "He must've liked flowers." As a Chicagoan, I love the Chicago touches.
Why "begging chart" as a title? Well, chalk that one up to "intriguing". But the last page shows Xia's "begging chart" (based on begging her mom for stuff) with a corresponding chart for how successful the begging is.
Just awesome!
Here's an actual, professional review/interview where you can see a couple images:
https://lit.newcity.com/2021/05/17/aw...
". . . isn't a walk more exciting if you don't know how it will turn out?"
Book launch via Zoom, check it out!
https://drawnandquarterly.com/event/2...
My Begging Chart is an episodic graphic memoir like all of her work. A life in comics, panel by panel, book by book. Slice of life, mundane, droll, amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes sadly reflective. The Evanston native teaches comics at the Chicago Art Institute and has been documenting her life with her artist husband Scott, her (delightful) daughter Xia, her dog Crooky, and her parents. She also has MS, which she doesn't exactly dwell on, but doesn't ignore, either, as she is overcome with fatigue, able to do less than she had been.
Early on Roberts seemed just deadpan, weirdly off-kilter to me, sort of ambivalent about having this daughter invade her world; then mood swings, struggles with depression that may be part of the MS that impacts her interactions with Xia. But Xia is the central star, always, sometimes the comedian girl to mom Keiler's deadpan delivery, and sometimes she is the straight girl. Mother-daughter Laurel and Hardy act.
In this book, the most developed portrait of her family life, she seems more comfortable with her life, and parenting in particular (though the hilarious back cover image is of Roberts answering questions from a new doctor: "Do you have children?" "No." "I mean, yes").
One advantage of having a daughter who is getting older is that you can engage in increasingly more complex Barbie-role-playing. But the sass back is also getting sharper!
Visiting the Chicago Art Institute they pass a woman commenting on a Manet exhibit with mostly flowers: "He must've liked flowers." As a Chicagoan, I love the Chicago touches.
Why "begging chart" as a title? Well, chalk that one up to "intriguing". But the last page shows Xia's "begging chart" (based on begging her mom for stuff) with a corresponding chart for how successful the begging is.
Just awesome!
Here's an actual, professional review/interview where you can see a couple images:
https://lit.newcity.com/2021/05/17/aw...
Read
March 17, 2022Como en «Isolada», aquella extraña joya que giraba en torno de la extrañeza de lo cotidiano, Keiler Roberts vuelve a conseguir en «Mi tabla de súplicas» una colección de tiras que fluctúan entre lo cómico y lo grotesco, entre lo extraño y lo ordinario.
En las viñetas de esta autora encontramos, sobre todo, vida diaria. Roberts tiene un maravilloso ojo clínico para convertir en arte (un arte incómodo, raro, que se consume con una media sonrisa) nuestras miserias del día a día.
En este libro habla sobre la maternidad, la enfermedad, la salud mental, el matrimonio… y otros grandes asuntos de la literatura y de la vida, pero sin ningún interés por sublimarlos, centrándose solo en mostrarlos desde fuera para que podamos reflexionar sobre ellos.
No me canso de esta autora que pone al mundo ante un espejo. Quiero leer todo lo que publique.
En las viñetas de esta autora encontramos, sobre todo, vida diaria. Roberts tiene un maravilloso ojo clínico para convertir en arte (un arte incómodo, raro, que se consume con una media sonrisa) nuestras miserias del día a día.
En este libro habla sobre la maternidad, la enfermedad, la salud mental, el matrimonio… y otros grandes asuntos de la literatura y de la vida, pero sin ningún interés por sublimarlos, centrándose solo en mostrarlos desde fuera para que podamos reflexionar sobre ellos.
No me canso de esta autora que pone al mundo ante un espejo. Quiero leer todo lo que publique.
March 9, 2022
I just don't get the appeal of Keiler Roberts, and I'm done trying.
After reading Chlorine Gardens and Sunburning, I wasn't planning to seek out her work anymore. But I decided to make a project of reading all the graphic novels on NPR's and Publishers Weekly best of 2021 lists, and both of them included My Begging Chart so my compulsive nature demanded another go round with her. I read the first 40 pages cautiously optimistic that this was the book where I finally got it, why critics and several of my Goodreads friends like her strips so much.
But nope.
I hate read the rest of the book, resenting the pure tedium of sharing tiny moments of her days. Soooooooooooooo many strips about her daughter saying something Roberts finds cute or amusing. Many strips where Roberts talks to people she doesn't even bother to introduce. Many strips striving to get as close to being about nothing as humanly possible short of just leaving the page blank.
Maddening.
No more for me, thank you. Make me read Ziggy. Make me read B.C. or Garfield lasagna strips or even those godawful "Love Is . . . " panels with the little naked people. Just no more Keiler Roberts, please.
After reading Chlorine Gardens and Sunburning, I wasn't planning to seek out her work anymore. But I decided to make a project of reading all the graphic novels on NPR's and Publishers Weekly best of 2021 lists, and both of them included My Begging Chart so my compulsive nature demanded another go round with her. I read the first 40 pages cautiously optimistic that this was the book where I finally got it, why critics and several of my Goodreads friends like her strips so much.
But nope.
I hate read the rest of the book, resenting the pure tedium of sharing tiny moments of her days. Soooooooooooooo many strips about her daughter saying something Roberts finds cute or amusing. Many strips where Roberts talks to people she doesn't even bother to introduce. Many strips striving to get as close to being about nothing as humanly possible short of just leaving the page blank.
Maddening.
No more for me, thank you. Make me read Ziggy. Make me read B.C. or Garfield lasagna strips or even those godawful "Love Is . . . " panels with the little naked people. Just no more Keiler Roberts, please.
July 15, 2021
A very droll and deadpan slice of life graphic memoir from Keiler Roberts. At times she seems burdened by her daughter, at other times touched by intimate moments with her. While Roberts doesn't focus on the fact she has MS, it does enter her comics, especially when she's dealing with fatigue or depression.
Received a review copy from Drawn & Quarterly and NetGalley.
Received a review copy from Drawn & Quarterly and NetGalley.
June 13, 2021
It took me a while to get into this book; the art can be a bit wax-figure-ish and the humor is very dry (almost off-putting) directed at slice of life scenes. But by the end I was really into it. The art goes with the theme of general alienation, the debilitating effects of a chronic illness, and the general weirdness and exhaustion of being a parent. Roberts and her daughter are fun to spend time with, and this book has spurred me to find more of her work.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
September 3, 2021
My review for the Women's Review of Books: https://www.wcwonline.org/Women-s-Rev...
Paul Klee said that drawing is “taking a line for a walk.” Keiler Roberts’s comics in My Begging Chart, while short on what could be considered plot, have the meandering pace and unhurried attitude of a stroll on which the walker is less out to arrive at a destination and more inclined to let their attention wander along the way, lingering as it pleases on absurd little details.
Beginning with her self-published 2012 collection Powdered Milk, Keiler has used her candid, deadpan vignettes to bear calm, witty witness to how it can feel to be a wife, a mom, a daughter, and an artist. Here, her seventh collection of autobiographical comics continues the deceptively lowkey documentary style she’s come to be known for. We see her stopping in a bookstore and longing to be the owner’s friend, carving jack-o-lanterns with her family for Halloween, letting her daughter eat an ice cream cone in the car on the way to the dentist, and getting telephoned by her own mom while she’s in the bath.
As the “chart” part of the title suggests, there’s a carefully mapped dailiness to these illustrated narratives, which read like a diary with the spicy bits left purposefully out. Even such stories as the one where she tells her family about having been “shocked by lighting” in her youth when “I was trying to close the window upstairs and it hit the Boehnen’s house and traveled up our house to the window” (32) is deftly anti-climactic.
Roberts has an MFA in Painting from Northwestern University and teaches comics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her drawing style is choppy and unfussy, spare in both line and word. Periodically, she punctuates the longer (albeit still quite short) narrative panels with single full-pages of minimalist observation, as when she and her husband are walking with their daughter who exclaims, “Ooo, look! A grassy area with chairs!” where half the composition is, in fact, taken up by those chairs. Other times she pauses on standalone, wordless self-portraits: sitting on the kitchen floor and leaning against the fridge, lounging foot-to-foot with her daughter while scrolling through her phone.
Slow, prosaic, and deliberately casual, Keiler’s adeptness at carving the pie of her life into weirdly shaped, tasty little slices and serving it up is cumulatively impressive. In one four-panel story, she works on an art project, complaining about the adhesive and how it “made the picture transparent, like a grease spot,” ruminating, “I used the Trolls gluestick” only to have her daughter point out with exquisite comic timing, “That’s a sunscreen stick” (48).
With straightforward, scratchy lines and concisely rendered speech, Keiler shows herself repeatedly making little mistakes and grappling with banal disappointments. In a two-page story, she starts to bake a box of brownie bars, only to notice while they’re in the oven that they expired 18 months ago, necessitating that she dump the entire contents of the half-cooked pan down the sink. “This feels like a metaphor for the last year,” she notes (29), relatably engaging in the kind of private self-melodramatizing that most of us do.
Alongside her own peccadillos, she gently depicts those of other people, especially her daughter Xia and her husband Scott to whom she dedicates the book, not to mention their dog, Crooky, whose age-related decline—the orthopedic dog bed, the collecting of urine samples—she portrays with unsentimental affection and realism.
Roberts’s own illness, multiple sclerosis, hums as an undercurrent through each anecdote, but this is not a book about having MS. She doesn’t even mention the disease explicitly until page 42 at a walk-at-thon-style event “for people living with MS” where she not-quite-fibs to finagle a free T-shirt for Xia. Rather, the heartbeat that gives rhythm to each miniscule tale is the quietude and mundanity of what gets called the routine—a sequence of actions regularly followed, a fixed program. So when in one story, Xia comes to the basement while Roberts is trying to exercise and says, “I want to work out with you” and Roberts replies, “If I stop for even one second, I won’t have the motivation to keep going” (71), we know that part of the issue is that sticking to a fitness regimen can be hard in general, but particularly for somebody living with an autoimmune condition. Keiler captures the fatigue and absurdity of both caring for a child and experiencing an ongoing disease, using the minutiae to show the humor and the pain, but never in a cute or self-pitying way.
Given the sequential nature of comics, the form itself feels harmonious with Roberts’ concentration on the quotidian and the silliness perpetually lurking therein. The phone calls from her mother strike a balance between a familiar interruption—“What am I getting you in the middle of?” she asks Roberts, who is painting—and unexpectedly fresh lyricism—“It sounds like a bunch of goats walking with bells around their necks,” she says upon hearing Roberts cleaning her brush in a glass jar (45).
At its worst, routine becomes dully habitual, even boring—a formula so established as to be mechanical. But at its best, routine is a sort of choreography—a dance or theatrical number rehearsed to perfection and able to be repeated to a high quality of execution. Roberts’s subtle biographical humor shines not just in each standalone mini-story but accrues thoughtfully across the book as a whole. The very first vignette focuses on Xia’s imaginary friend, a unicorn named Marigold, and how Roberts finds imaginary friends frankly annoying, even though she admits to having imagined Robin from Batman as her own such friend during her childhood. Many comics later, she drops in a full-page image in which Robin appears at her bedside while she’s resting and depressed to remind her that, “Life has meaning” (83). And she manages to create a frisson of Chekovian gun-in-the-first-act satisfaction when, on page 76, she shows herself silently vacuuming the filthy ceiling fan about which on page 11 she mused, “I wonder how many more times I will take naps in here before it starts to bother me.”
Reflective and honest but never wallowing, Roberts judiciously aims her occasionally barbed humor at herself as often as she uses it to skewer anyone else. The story in which she sits watching her father, writing in her journal, “Dad’s eating chili at 8:25 am with coffee and chips. He’s on a very low chair and looks funny sitting at the counter,” and he asks “What are you writing?” prompting her to reply “Nothing,” delivers an endearing take on her parent while simultaneously raising questions about the ethics and obligations of artists who mine their real lives for material.
More of a prolonged emotional atmosphere or an illustrated vibe than a wholly connected linear narrative, My Begging Chart bittersweetly shows, among other things, that maybe “the only way not to feel bad about the state of the world is to have your own personal disaster” (74).
“When we get home I’m going to have an ice cream,” Xia says as she walks hand-in-hand with Roberts in the book’s final story. “You mean ‘if’ we get home,” Roberts replies, prompting Xia to say, “We’re like two blocks away! Why wouldn’t we get home?” to which Roberts answers, “I just don’t think we should make any assumptions. Besides, isn’t a walk more exciting if you don’t know how it’ll turn out?” (153).
Page upon page serves as a reminder of what chronic means: continuing or occurring again and again for a long time. But with enough curiosity and dry amusement at this ludicrous nature of everyday life, Roberts proves again and again that we can still be surprised, even if only by the excitement of the ordinary.
Paul Klee said that drawing is “taking a line for a walk.” Keiler Roberts’s comics in My Begging Chart, while short on what could be considered plot, have the meandering pace and unhurried attitude of a stroll on which the walker is less out to arrive at a destination and more inclined to let their attention wander along the way, lingering as it pleases on absurd little details.
Beginning with her self-published 2012 collection Powdered Milk, Keiler has used her candid, deadpan vignettes to bear calm, witty witness to how it can feel to be a wife, a mom, a daughter, and an artist. Here, her seventh collection of autobiographical comics continues the deceptively lowkey documentary style she’s come to be known for. We see her stopping in a bookstore and longing to be the owner’s friend, carving jack-o-lanterns with her family for Halloween, letting her daughter eat an ice cream cone in the car on the way to the dentist, and getting telephoned by her own mom while she’s in the bath.
As the “chart” part of the title suggests, there’s a carefully mapped dailiness to these illustrated narratives, which read like a diary with the spicy bits left purposefully out. Even such stories as the one where she tells her family about having been “shocked by lighting” in her youth when “I was trying to close the window upstairs and it hit the Boehnen’s house and traveled up our house to the window” (32) is deftly anti-climactic.
Roberts has an MFA in Painting from Northwestern University and teaches comics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her drawing style is choppy and unfussy, spare in both line and word. Periodically, she punctuates the longer (albeit still quite short) narrative panels with single full-pages of minimalist observation, as when she and her husband are walking with their daughter who exclaims, “Ooo, look! A grassy area with chairs!” where half the composition is, in fact, taken up by those chairs. Other times she pauses on standalone, wordless self-portraits: sitting on the kitchen floor and leaning against the fridge, lounging foot-to-foot with her daughter while scrolling through her phone.
Slow, prosaic, and deliberately casual, Keiler’s adeptness at carving the pie of her life into weirdly shaped, tasty little slices and serving it up is cumulatively impressive. In one four-panel story, she works on an art project, complaining about the adhesive and how it “made the picture transparent, like a grease spot,” ruminating, “I used the Trolls gluestick” only to have her daughter point out with exquisite comic timing, “That’s a sunscreen stick” (48).
With straightforward, scratchy lines and concisely rendered speech, Keiler shows herself repeatedly making little mistakes and grappling with banal disappointments. In a two-page story, she starts to bake a box of brownie bars, only to notice while they’re in the oven that they expired 18 months ago, necessitating that she dump the entire contents of the half-cooked pan down the sink. “This feels like a metaphor for the last year,” she notes (29), relatably engaging in the kind of private self-melodramatizing that most of us do.
Alongside her own peccadillos, she gently depicts those of other people, especially her daughter Xia and her husband Scott to whom she dedicates the book, not to mention their dog, Crooky, whose age-related decline—the orthopedic dog bed, the collecting of urine samples—she portrays with unsentimental affection and realism.
Roberts’s own illness, multiple sclerosis, hums as an undercurrent through each anecdote, but this is not a book about having MS. She doesn’t even mention the disease explicitly until page 42 at a walk-at-thon-style event “for people living with MS” where she not-quite-fibs to finagle a free T-shirt for Xia. Rather, the heartbeat that gives rhythm to each miniscule tale is the quietude and mundanity of what gets called the routine—a sequence of actions regularly followed, a fixed program. So when in one story, Xia comes to the basement while Roberts is trying to exercise and says, “I want to work out with you” and Roberts replies, “If I stop for even one second, I won’t have the motivation to keep going” (71), we know that part of the issue is that sticking to a fitness regimen can be hard in general, but particularly for somebody living with an autoimmune condition. Keiler captures the fatigue and absurdity of both caring for a child and experiencing an ongoing disease, using the minutiae to show the humor and the pain, but never in a cute or self-pitying way.
Given the sequential nature of comics, the form itself feels harmonious with Roberts’ concentration on the quotidian and the silliness perpetually lurking therein. The phone calls from her mother strike a balance between a familiar interruption—“What am I getting you in the middle of?” she asks Roberts, who is painting—and unexpectedly fresh lyricism—“It sounds like a bunch of goats walking with bells around their necks,” she says upon hearing Roberts cleaning her brush in a glass jar (45).
At its worst, routine becomes dully habitual, even boring—a formula so established as to be mechanical. But at its best, routine is a sort of choreography—a dance or theatrical number rehearsed to perfection and able to be repeated to a high quality of execution. Roberts’s subtle biographical humor shines not just in each standalone mini-story but accrues thoughtfully across the book as a whole. The very first vignette focuses on Xia’s imaginary friend, a unicorn named Marigold, and how Roberts finds imaginary friends frankly annoying, even though she admits to having imagined Robin from Batman as her own such friend during her childhood. Many comics later, she drops in a full-page image in which Robin appears at her bedside while she’s resting and depressed to remind her that, “Life has meaning” (83). And she manages to create a frisson of Chekovian gun-in-the-first-act satisfaction when, on page 76, she shows herself silently vacuuming the filthy ceiling fan about which on page 11 she mused, “I wonder how many more times I will take naps in here before it starts to bother me.”
Reflective and honest but never wallowing, Roberts judiciously aims her occasionally barbed humor at herself as often as she uses it to skewer anyone else. The story in which she sits watching her father, writing in her journal, “Dad’s eating chili at 8:25 am with coffee and chips. He’s on a very low chair and looks funny sitting at the counter,” and he asks “What are you writing?” prompting her to reply “Nothing,” delivers an endearing take on her parent while simultaneously raising questions about the ethics and obligations of artists who mine their real lives for material.
More of a prolonged emotional atmosphere or an illustrated vibe than a wholly connected linear narrative, My Begging Chart bittersweetly shows, among other things, that maybe “the only way not to feel bad about the state of the world is to have your own personal disaster” (74).
“When we get home I’m going to have an ice cream,” Xia says as she walks hand-in-hand with Roberts in the book’s final story. “You mean ‘if’ we get home,” Roberts replies, prompting Xia to say, “We’re like two blocks away! Why wouldn’t we get home?” to which Roberts answers, “I just don’t think we should make any assumptions. Besides, isn’t a walk more exciting if you don’t know how it’ll turn out?” (153).
Page upon page serves as a reminder of what chronic means: continuing or occurring again and again for a long time. But with enough curiosity and dry amusement at this ludicrous nature of everyday life, Roberts proves again and again that we can still be surprised, even if only by the excitement of the ordinary.
January 11, 2023
Keiler has been on my to-read list for quite some time. I enjoyed Sunburning (her 2020 book), but this one I think was an improvement in every way. The book is basically a day-to-day in her life with her kid. It's honestly very funny.
February 19, 2022
Uno de los libros más bonitos que he leído nunca.
March 26, 2024
There are some regular moments here, punctuated by some brilliant thoughts. It's very very dry deadpan humor.
Read
November 8, 2022Just perfect, every time.
January 18, 2022
Not so much a graphic novel as a collection of one page comics chronicling the author's life. Presumably meant to be either poignant or relatable or interesting but not really hitting those buttons for simply being much too plain.
The art is black and white outlines. The stories are very quotidian. The kid is cute, the spouse kinda funny. Both orbit the protagonist/author as she is living/struggling with a debilitating condition. It's one of those day in a life sort of books. It's also kind of like reading a stranger's diary in a way i.e. not very interesting or compelling to anyone outside of their immediate circle. The description implied it might be humorous...not really. There's some, of the observational variety, but very mild.
Much too plain in both art and writing to enjoy. But it does read very quickly.
The art is black and white outlines. The stories are very quotidian. The kid is cute, the spouse kinda funny. Both orbit the protagonist/author as she is living/struggling with a debilitating condition. It's one of those day in a life sort of books. It's also kind of like reading a stranger's diary in a way i.e. not very interesting or compelling to anyone outside of their immediate circle. The description implied it might be humorous...not really. There's some, of the observational variety, but very mild.
Much too plain in both art and writing to enjoy. But it does read very quickly.
April 25, 2022
My Begging Chart offers intermittently amusing glimpses of Keiler Roberts' everyday life. Towards the end, it becomes clear that this is somewhat of a "living with MS" read, but that's never explicitly stated. There's really not a clear through-line at all. Individual comics aren't separated, so it's hard to tell sometimes where one situation stops and the next begins. Roberts also illustrates herself looking basically the same as any other female character.
Complaints aside, there are some amusing moments. Occasionally thought-provoking. Easy to pick up and set down. Vaguely recommended.
Complaints aside, there are some amusing moments. Occasionally thought-provoking. Easy to pick up and set down. Vaguely recommended.
April 30, 2023
More like 2.5 stars: I liked some aspects of it, but not all of it. I got some insight about her illness, which is valuable, but I found the story and events somewhat boring. Also I didn’t find the drawings very appealing to my eyes; most women looked almost the same.
(I am relatively new into reading graphic novels, so perhaps my expectations aren’t well-aligned.)
(I am relatively new into reading graphic novels, so perhaps my expectations aren’t well-aligned.)
September 15, 2021
Wish I could give this six stars (maybe this is indicative that I'm using the star system wrong? I just give a lot of five stars. I'm a people pleaser? I don't want the artist to find I gave it four stars???)!
I have loved every single comic collection from Keiler Roberts that I have ever read and this is no exception. I feel like maybe I'm noticing Keiler's MS more than before, but it's still not the main subject of the comics. The comics are simply about Keiler, her daughter, her husband, her dog, her parents, like everyday life stuff. Slice of life and realistic are probably my favorite genres in all media. I'm boring?
I absolutely love her dry, depressive style humor. I laughed at almost every page! If you like comics that are clever and funny and sad and sweet and really connect with you, definitely read this collection of hers (and everything else she has written, too).
I have loved every single comic collection from Keiler Roberts that I have ever read and this is no exception. I feel like maybe I'm noticing Keiler's MS more than before, but it's still not the main subject of the comics. The comics are simply about Keiler, her daughter, her husband, her dog, her parents, like everyday life stuff. Slice of life and realistic are probably my favorite genres in all media. I'm boring?
I absolutely love her dry, depressive style humor. I laughed at almost every page! If you like comics that are clever and funny and sad and sweet and really connect with you, definitely read this collection of hers (and everything else she has written, too).
May 22, 2021
Really loved the quiet resonance of Keiler Robert's My Begging Chart. The main conflicts are daily tasks--vacuuming the dust off the fan--while deeper things hover in the background. Roberts' sickness, depression, the state of the world. The dramas of the everyday take up the A-plot, while the larger issues loom, never forgotten but mentioned in passing. Covid-19 appears quietly: Keiler and her daughter begin wearing masks on their walks. It's a rlly masterful, funny, sweet and sharp series of journal comics.
June 28, 2021
Keiler Robert’s sketches quiet scenes from her life, mostly spent at home. She depicts many sweet moments with her young daughter, Xia. Roberts produces a few humorous zingers, but overall the feeling is wooden and spaced out. Expect a lot of scenes of the author, fatigued by MS, resting.
The clunky drawings add to the flat affect. And the predominant home life setting can feel claustrophobic at times.
The clunky drawings add to the flat affect. And the predominant home life setting can feel claustrophobic at times.
July 19, 2021
This book will feel familiar to those who have read Roberts' other books. Pretty much just a collection of snapshots of family life, some funny, some quiet and reflective but never too dark or cynical.
August 26, 2021
With humor as dry as the current drought, Roberts illustrates the boredom, ambivalence, frustration and joy of parenting a sharp kid who plays the perfect sidekick to mom's struggle to get through it all. A charming and funny picture of a particular family's life.
January 26, 2022
I DNFed this about a third of the way in. This was supposed to be "funny" moments related to being a mother, but the "jokes" were extremely lame. The artwork was super crude and bad. There were no segments separating anything so it was a mishmash of collided bullshit compiled into a book. Most of if not all of it didn't make a lick of sense. Why the fuck is this called "My Begging Chart"?????
March 5, 2022
i love keiler roberts's works so i was really looking forward to read this one!!!
just like the rest of her works, this also captures her everyday life - like a visual diary of some sorts of family and reality.
i just love how honest and raw everything is but wished its more on a funnier side which is why i fell in love with her stories in the first place. this one felt more towards the mundane but definitely could be relatable to some.
i feel that it might take awhile for readers to get used to her style but im glad that i was able to engage & enjoy ✨
just like the rest of her works, this also captures her everyday life - like a visual diary of some sorts of family and reality.
i just love how honest and raw everything is but wished its more on a funnier side which is why i fell in love with her stories in the first place. this one felt more towards the mundane but definitely could be relatable to some.
i feel that it might take awhile for readers to get used to her style but im glad that i was able to engage & enjoy ✨
June 28, 2023
There's a panel in which the husband is sitting on the sofa and asks out-loud "Is this music supposed to be relaxing?"
Meanwhile I was blasting Yves Tumor while reading this on my own sofa.
Touche, Roberts.
Meanwhile I was blasting Yves Tumor while reading this on my own sofa.
Touche, Roberts.
July 13, 2021
Excellent autobio comics from Roberts, maybe her best work yet, sad, funny, poignant and full of the mundane wonders of everyday life.
November 2, 2021
The comics are more serious and often contained to a page.
It was thoughtful and while it took a bit to hook me, she engaged me in her life and struggles.
It was thoughtful and while it took a bit to hook me, she engaged me in her life and struggles.
December 23, 2021
not my cup of 🍵
March 20, 2022
More hilarious than it has any business being.
June 27, 2022
Chronically ill babies make some noise!!!
August 1, 2022
a collection of relatable honest life moments
September 13, 2023
I’m working my way through Roberts work just for pure enjoyment. These slice-of-life pieces are funny and real and just generally engaging.
October 17, 2023
She makes me want to draw again
August 28, 2024
De ella quería leer The joy of quitting pero este llegó a Libby antes así que...
Es autobiográfico, tenemos diversos sucesos de su día a día contados espamodicamente
Es autobiográfico, tenemos diversos sucesos de su día a día contados espamodicamente
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