Herding Cats
by Sarah Andersen
Humour, Nonfiction, Autobiography, Graphic Novels
Buy now on Amazon
[[I was given a free copy of this book in return for my honest review.]]
The world is absolutely @%#$&% and sometimes it might feel like there’s no saving it.
For me personally it was such a rough year that I had to stop blogging about books and I slowly stopped reading the further we got into the year. It wasn’t because I didn’t love the books or that I didn’t want to do these things, but the outside world was so overwhelming that it felt flat out impossible to focus on my creative endeavours.
That is what Herding Cats is about and that’s the overall theme. When it feels like the entire world has gone mad, how do you function as a person? How do you give the time to your creativity that you want to when you want to take care of yourself? And how do you talk yourself into stepping inside these public spaces when the discourse has become so toxic that you can get death threats simply for putting yourself and your art out there?
Herding Cats doesn’t have any easy answers to these issues, but that’s not what it’s trying to do.
Instead, it’s a support. The further I read into Herding Cats, the more I felt I was looking into a mirror and my reflection was telling me that it was okay, that there were other people going through the same thing as me, and who had the same or similar idiosyncrasies. (Actually forget the reflection talking to me thing, that’s terrifying.)
I’m getting lost in my own analogies, so let me break this down very simply. You can read Herding Cats as a disconnected collection of cartoons that are relatable and humourous, or you can (over) read a bit deeper and take away a few things from it. Such as:
Things might suck, but at least we’ve got each other.
We’ve created a No Man’s Land between us, breaking down into our factions, and sometimes we need to walk out into that wasteland and shout: “Guys, what the %@&#?!”
It’s okay to need a break.
It’s okay to take care of yourself, but there are crappy people out there, and we can’t let it stop us from doing the things that we love entirely. Don’t let someone suck the love out of what you love.
It’s not a neutral book in the least, but there’s an irreverence and a relatability to the comics in Herding Cats that will resonate with a large amount of people.
I have been a huge fan of Sarah Scribbles for years now. Sarah Scribbles has been one of my favourite comics to follow and echoing my feelings about her previous works, I cannot recommend Herding Cats enough.10/10
When the world’s too much, try Herding Cats.
