Ramsey, whose zine List I've long been a fan of, moves from Chicago to Philadelphia and documents her first year there in one-week chunks. I've read a fair amount of daily comics, which I also like, but I appreciate how an artist giving herself a week allows her more space and the opportunity to be more selective about what she chooses to illustrate and share.
Cover image from author's website.
Kim says this will be the final issue of her zine, which makes me sad. I've been exchanging zines and letters with her for a while now--a year or a little bit longer? I wasn't sure how I felt about her and her defensively titled zine, at first, but she came to be one of my favorite pen pals, and her ultimate zine is also one of my favorites.
Cover image from One Minute Zine Reviews.
I've now read the material in this book three times, once as a series of blog posts, the second time in manuscript and now as a gen-u-ine book. Three times, and each time I was dazzled by Laura's honesty, insight, generosity, kindness, love, snark and beautiful writing.
The title pretty much tells you what it's about, the non-LC subject headings give you a few more clues:
Crossett, Laura--Confessions.
Pregnant women--Mental Health.
Christian biography--United States.
Pregnancy, Unplanned--United States. [Extra fun: search your favorite library catalog for "unplanned pregnanc*" and see what subject headings your results yield.]
Wayward spinsters--Iowa--Iowa City.
Intrauterine contraceptives--FAIL.
(Disclaimer: I am friends with Laura, and I helped with the subject headings.)
If you've been paying any attention at all, you know that I'm a huge Celia Perez fan. In fact I reviewed last year's issue of The Shortest Day here, most glowingly.
This novel about 19-year-old corps de ballet dancer Hannah Ward reminded me a little of the nun memoir Through the Narrow Gate because it was about the protagonist's struggle with the sacrifices required to please her god, in this case the artistic director of the "Manhattan Ballet."
I didn't sleep for even a minute on my cross-country flight, which left JFK at 9pm and landed at SFO more than six hours later at midnight and change. Most of the time I was too busy reading Frost Burned, the latest entry in the Mercy Thompson series. (Note to Loud Melissa: you really need to get started on these, now that you've caught up with The Hollows!)
Davidia, who doesn't speak for most of her Mississippi childhood after being beaten by her drunk of a mom, develops an insane crush on the BMOC at her school about ten years into her silence. Being a psychologically mute school weirdo without a single friend, that doesn't go particularly well for her.
Marci Cruz has an abusive father, a mother who is blinded by love for her husband, and wants to be a boy so she can love girls. The story can be hard to read sometimes because Eddie Cruz really is a champion cabrón (there's a ton of Spanish in the book), but seeing 11-year-old Marci and her seven-year-old sister Corin fight back is satisfying.
Like with First Spring Grass Fire, you wonder of Someday, Someday, Maybe how much of the story of a young aspiring actor in NYC written by a former young aspiring actor in NYC is autobiographical. While reading it I was thinking that it's possible that fictionalizing one's life might make it easier to tell the emotional truth.
I grasp onto the nearby silver pole, steadying myself as the train lurches along, my hand slipping on the smooth surface, vying for a safe position along with half a dozen other hands. Today, everything about New York leaves me feeling like I'm competing for space, and just barely hanging on.
With Caroline Paul laid up after an accident and a new girlfriend on the scene, one of her cats goes missing. The cat comes back, but perhaps being bored from lying around the house, or maybe because she's just like that, Paul wants to know where the cat, Tibby, went and who took care of him while he was gone.