Lower East Side Librarian

I delighted at the idea of this book, recommended to me by fellow Library Underground denizen Amy Mullin. I mean, who doesn't love a juicy tv child star memoir? What I didn't realize is that while Prairie Bitch, written by the actor who played the bad guy on Little House on the Prairie, does have some salacious details (What was up with Melissa Sue Anderson?!?), it's also a moving and funny account of the AIDS activist and incest survivor's life. Plus, she's huge in France.

Why is it I can never do my favorite books justice when it comes to reviews? I've been telling everyone to read this book about a young woman teaching ESL after having left Columbia University for St. Luke's psych ward for treatment for bipolar disorder. She somewhat inexplicably falls in love with one of her students, a Chinese dissident. The story is told half in Morningside Heights just post-Tiananmen and St. Luke's and half in Beijing at the turn of the 21st century. I loved reading it, but why? The writing is really good. Want some quotations...

I've really got to stop reading graphic novel comics (and tween novels) when more often than not my review starts with a disclaimer that it's not my genre. I was drawn to read the Batwoman story because the Twitterdome was full of "DC's first gay superhero" buzz. It's true that comics don't speak to me the way I think they should, but sometimes they really really do--like if they're written/drawn by Lynda Barry or Alison Bechdel, so I keep trying. However, lesbian though she may be, Batwoman Kate Kane is no dyke to watch out for, not that she isn't scary. She's a soldier manquée (DADT) with a vicious grudge. Speaking of DADT, I should mention here that Dan Choi served as a consultant for the book. You also might want to know that Rachel Maddow wrote the intro.

This is a graphic novel prequel to Briggs's Mercy Thompson series. Mercy is drawn with some powerful gams! It's helpful to get a visual on the other creatures in Mercy's universe, especially Stefan. His grungy/rock-y/punky style is described in Moon Called, but I didn't really buy it until I saw the drawing in the gallery at the end of Homecoming. I'm not sure I'm really down with Adam's and Bran's depictions, though. The story didn't grab me so much, but I'm already so sucked into the series that I couldn't resist reading it. It's pretty slim and goes down fast.

To me one of the most important things about this book is that it's from a small press, GemmaMedia. From their about page, "Gemma features cultural memoir from around the world, Irish fiction and fine journalism, the Open Door adult literacy series and current affairs publishing with diversity at the heart of the story." Dragon Chica is a pretty great book. It's not a memoir, but it reads like one. It tells the story of a Cambodian-Chinese refugee coming of age in Nebraska. She, her mother, her older sister Sourdi, younger twin sisters and younger brother move there to help their aunt and uncle run a Chinese restaurant.

Oh, Katie. I love your zines so much and the latest issue of White Elephants possibly even the most of all, because it's your most personal. Like much personal writing, zines can be full of complaints, insecurity, and calling people out on their evil ways, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's rather nice to read a mostly happy zine. The framework of WE4 is Katie's descriptions of her yard sale & flea market shopping, but as she asks near the end "Is this zine even about yard sales anymore?" It once was, and probably will be again, but for issue 4, something happens that eclipses Katie's joy over finding weird textbooks to repurpose into stationery, knickknacks with the previous owners' history attached or imagined, and vintage clothing items whose worth or potential can be ferreted out only by artisan shoppers such as herself. What Katie finds in this zine is love, revealing a little bit more about it with each section.