15 Authors

Excerpted from Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout Out 2010 (detail on that TK)

I was tagged by multiple people in the 15 authors game on Facebook. I didn’t get around to making my list there, and I also thought it would be good to publish it in a more archival environment than Fb. It’s supposed to be 15 authors who have influenced you or will always stay with you or whatever, and you’re not supposed to think about it for very long.

I don’t have it in me to contemplate and discuss 15 authors or books that Changed My Life. As committed and voracious a reader as I am, I’m not sure that I am especially influenced by any one writer. I have quite likely been molded by the books I read, but I think it’s the totality of them, rather than any one particular person or book.

So here are some books, authors, and series that I would want on my desert island Kindle (I must remember to pack my desert island power generator along, too). They are in the order I scrawled them in my notebook:

1. The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou by Kristin Hunter. This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, and it still is. 14-year-old Louretta Hawkins comes up in the African-American neighborhood of an unnamed northern city. Over a few tumultuous months she learns about love, poetry and the blues, loss, Black history, and her family’s history.
2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and subsequent volumes of her autobiographical series. While making this list I went in and out of remembering that the idea is to list authors, not titles, so it makes sense to pick prolific ones. Angelou has lived a fascinating life, interacting with colorful characters from her family, renowned artists, and notable leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
3. Salterton or Deptford trilogy by Robertson Davies. I guess I get to bring them both, plus Davies’ other books to my imaginary island. Davies is an unusual suspect on my list in that as a rule, I don’t read a lot of books by white guys, especially dead ones, but I love Davies' stories of academics, art collectors, gypsies, theater folk, and psychiatry.
4. Mirrors by James Lipton. I’ve read this dance world book probably a dozen times. It centers on young Carin Bradley, a diabetic ballerina trying to make it as a dancer in the big city. Her roommates’ and fellow dancers’ stories are completely engrossing.
5. Growing Up Underground by Jane Alpert or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. The former is a political memoir of a radical feminist and the latter a coming-of-age novel about a poor Irish girl growing up in the early twentieth century. When I rediscovered A Tree while working at Spring St. Books, I couldn’t put it down. I don’t want to go too heavy on the light stuff, since I’ll be on a desert island and need to think about longevity. I’ll need material that takes a while to get through since I’m accustomed to reading nearly 100 books a year. It could be even more than that if I’m on a desert island with no zines to catalog or library research classes to prepare and teach.
6. Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture by Abbie Hoffman. Hoffman’s autobiography is a really fun read about the Yippie’s early life and then his good times on the radical Lower East Side.
7. John R. Tunis or Marion Zimmer Bradley. Either one--Tunis writes YA sports novels, and MZB science fiction--would be of the possibly too quick read variety. I think I’ll end up going wtih Ms. Bradley because she wins the quantity contest. The Mists of Avalon alone would take longer to read than Tunis’s “Kid From Tompkinsville” trilogy.
8. Kim Harrison’s Hollows series. I’d love the luxury of reading these paranormal fiction books at a slow pace and in quick succession. I usually scarf them down because I get them from the library as they come out. I have to wait for my turn, and then they’re due quickly. I also forget what happens between volumes.
9. Yukio Mishima. I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of his novels, but would be more likely to get to the rest of them if I was on a desert island. I’ve found Mishima's prose to be rather poetic. Reading him at leisure would allow me to contemplate the layers of meaning.
10. Peony in Love by Lisa See. I’d get to take all of her books. I’m a fan of most of See’s historical novels, as well as her thrillers, but Peony is my favorite. It takes place mostly in the afterlife of a real figure from 17th century China.
11. Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience edited by Chandra Prasad. I’ve got to have at least one short story collection for the island, don’t I?, perhaps using stories as a palette cleanser between novels and memoirs. To my memory this is my favorite short story anthology, with very few, if any, duds. The only drawback is that it would make me want to read the longer works of many of the authors.
12. I Dreamed I was Assertive by Celia Perez and 14 other zines. I decided I could use one book slot for 15 zines/zine authors. They’re not going on an electronic device, though. Zines need to be read on paper. If you’re read any previous issues of my zine you know that Celia is one of my best friends and that IDIWA is one of my favorite zines.
    1. Booby Trap by Olivia Lane. I’ve only read one issue of Booby Trap, a 90s zine out of Harlem, but I feel like it’s a great exemplar of the genre. There are illustrations, comics, clip art, stories about sexuality, NYC riot grrrl politics, and a response to a bad review in Maximum RocknRoll.
    2. Clutch by Clutch McBastard. Since Clutch (aka Greig or Greg), who for a long time was the zine librarian at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, has done a bunch of splits with Nicole J. Georges, this is a twofer selection. The two of them draw daily comics. Nicole’s are snarly good fun, and Greg’s are often surprisingly poignant for something so simple.
    3. Katie Haegele. Katie is probably my favorite zinester who started zineing this century. Her first zine, Word Math, came out in 2004. Her La-La Theory or a Zine About Language series zines is simultaneously personal and educational, and her poetry zines should be delectable to even the biggest litzine-phobe.
    4. You Know Better by Isabel Sparkle. Isabel (not her real name) is a great person to have at a zine reading, being someone with an easy and genuine laugh who gives easy and genuine support to the reader. Her own zines are tightly crafted and should be read multiple times to get all the meaning out of them. Plus they’re funny. Ms. Sparkle’s equally warm and supportive mother attends most of Isabel’s readings, as well.
    5. Retail Whore by Katherine Raz tells of drinking, drugging, college-age big-box-work-friends debauchery. It could come off as immature and self-indulgent, but it doesn’t because it’s remarkably well-written.
    6. Kelli Callis? Alex Wrekk? Kate Haas? I’d like to bring all of these ladies’ zines to the island with me, as well as Kate herself. I’ve never met Kate in person, but I’m pretty sure she’d be a good person to have on an island. At the very least our taste in books is similar enough that I could count on her to enhance my own library’s 15 authors, but different enough that there wouldn’t be too much overlap. It would be fun to read all of Alex’s zines all together, in chronological order. The girl is a split zine slut, so I’d also get a taste of lots of different writers’ work. I thought of Kelli after Katherine Raz because she’s got a similar down and dirty, fun and clever style and life.
    7. Truckface by L. Barry. LB’s zines are thick numbers with messy (in a good way) illustrations that are somehow exhilarating to behold. The latest few have been about the rigors of teaching in the Chicago public school system.
    8. Kisha Hope, especially A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life, which manages to relate Kisha’s miserable childhood in such a way that you are awed, and feel lucky to have known her, at least through her zine.
    9. Marissa Falco. I have long been a fan of Marissa’s Red Hooded Sweatshirt for its great storytelling and adorable illustrations, and was pleased as all get out to later discover her earlier zines and minicomics. Marissa is everywhere in mid to late 90s zines, contributing drawings it seems like to nearly everyone she traded with.
    10. The East Village Inky by Ayun Halliday. I’m selecting this zine not only for its longevity (Ayun is up to issue 44), but also because it’s funny and cute and well-written with adorable illustrations.
    11. Morgenmuffel by Isy. I’ve only read two of the 19 issues of Morgenmuffel, which documents, mostly in comics, the Korean-German anarchist ex-pat in the UK’s activist projects and protest travels. She also writes up radical histories and translates funny German words.
    12. On Being Jealous of Invertebrates by Jess S. This is a dumb pick for a desert island, since the four issues are very short and have few words. I’m strangely touched by Jess’s one panel minicomics story of heartbreak. Maybe it would inspire me to draw my own adventures.
    13. Doris by Cindy Crabb. Just because it’s one of the more popular zines out there, doesn’t mean it’s bad. Zines are not generally lowest common denominator popularity contests, thank dog. Cindy’s stick figure illustrated political memoirs make you think of someone fragile, even though it’s clear that the author is plenty strong. My heart goes out to her in every single issue.
    14. Lower East Side Librarian by me. You wouldn’t think I was an egomaniac if I brought a photo album with me to the island, so why not my zines? I’d like to keep myself company with myself.
13. Truman Capote, who I discovered at the Tompkins Square branch of NYPL, when I was browsing the stacks, looking for something new-to-me to read. I’d read A Christmas Memory at some point in my life, which did nothing form me, but The Grass Harp Including a Tree of Night and Other Stories rocked my world.
14. The Diary of Anne Frank. This seems like a natural for someone tucked away from the world. Have you read it lately? It’s been a few years for me, but I remember it standing up really well.
15. A blank book. Yup, it’s me me me again, but I would want a place to collect my thoughts if I was off somewhere alone having a lot of them.

Note: I made this list on the subway, without consulting my bookshelf or any of my reading logs, so there are great books I neglected to include.

Note: ZOMG Thank you, Marissa Falco for the drawing!!!