Lower East Side Librarian

I don't get it. Oftentimes when a book is a huge success there's an easily discernible reason. I'll admit The DaVinci Code was a real page turner, and Oprah nailed most of her book club selections back in the day. But The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just isn't all that. It's compelling, sure, but standard thriller fare. Possibly a little more interesting for its Swedishness, but really it's just another guy written guy book where a smart middle aged guy ends up a hero with the money and the girl half his age. He throws in some statistics about violence against women and some strong female characters, yet one of the rape scenes was just a little too rapey for my feminist taste.

I remember being kind of cool to this Judy Blume book as a kid, but I might have been too old for it the first time I read it. Reading it now I have a greater appreciation for its portrait of a 10-year-old Jewish girl from New Jersey in post-World War II America. Sally is kind of dumb or naive, which is probably another reason I wasn't crazy about her as a kid, but as an adult I'm not quite as bothered. What really appeals to me is how Blume portrays the future writer, not by having her write a bunch in her diary, but by sharing her imaginative inner life. Blume identifies this as her most autobiographical work, which makes total sense to me.

I've read the book's prequel Rivington Street but hadn't revisited Union Square since I bought it in a used bookstore in Guatemala in 2001. RS is a historical novel, but US reads more like a fictional history. It's full of educational examinations of Jewish life in the 1920s-40s, covering issues like Palestine, Zionism, World War II, communism, and labor politics, but also tells the stories through the lenses of art, fashion, and psychiatry. Tax used oral histories for her research, and the voices sound authentic. To me the most interesting and informative bits are the characters internal and external struggles with the party line and the multi-faceted views on the conflicting Zionist movements. The author does a good job of revealing multiple truths in these contentious topics, but you still have an idea where she's at personally. The sometimes disastrous relationship between the Communist Party and American labor, not to mention the difficulties it creates between father and daughter is sometimes painful to read, but fascinating stuff!

I don't usually read books in translation, cuz I'm weird like that, but since Lisa Von Drasek recommended it highly and gave me a free copy I figured I could give it a shot. I couldn't stand the last German tween book I started (I can't remember what it was called, just that Siu Loong is a big fan), but luckily The Princess Plot didn't drag or insult my intelligence. There were times where I thought it took the characters forever to get what was obviously going on, but maybe that's a tween thing, rather than a generalization it's fair to make about German YA lit based on two samples, only one of which I read through! Anyway, the 14-year-old princess in question is in hiding from her uncle's regency government after the death of her father. A lookalike, our protagonist, is brought in to replace her. The nation of Scandia has some complex problems, and I appreciated the author's nuanced portrait of the rebel leader. Although I did at some points find the characters a little immature, the plot and themes are fairly sophisticated.

Just when I'm getting jaded about zines, reading and cataloging 50 of them a week, it's nice to discover a new favorite zinester. I don't understand why Thara Harris isn't more of a zine superstar, not that "superstar" is really a concept that should be associated with zines. But you know what I mean, there are some zinesters that become widely known in our small community for producing well-made, thoughtful, creative, and visually appealing works. Ms. Harris, from West Virginia is one of those writer/artists. Or maybe she does have a rep, and I just didn't know about it for whatever reason? I can't really tell because she doesn't have that much of a web presence.