Lower East Side Librarian

Hrm. I'm not really sure what to make of this book. It's a pretty good read with a reasonably compelling narrator, but plot doesn't quite gel. The ending left me mystified, and not in that cool dazed way where you contemplate what might happen next. Instead we're left with what essentially feels like a "to be continued," which I would have thought the author would be too classy for.

Anyway, Genna is a smart and solitary African- and Panamanian-American teenager growing up in early 21st century Brooklyn who gets transported back in time to more or less the same location, just before Christmas in 1862. She ends up working for a white doctor as nursemaid to his child and as a sort of nurse-in-training in his practice. (She wants to become a doctor, a psychiatrist specifically, a notion Dr. Brant thinks is absurd. Negroes' heads are small than white peoples', so they aren't capable of being as smart. Same with women vs. men.) She has two potential love interests, one from the present, and one from the future/past, who manages to find her in the 19th century.

When I selected this memoir by a Taiwanese adoptee raised by white parents in Michigan reunited with her birth family, I expected something a bit more critical than Lucky Girl turns out to be. I guess I thought the title would be more ironic than it is. I don't think the title is entirely unlayered, but the author does seem pretty happy with how her life turned out, rather than how it might have if she'd remained one of too many (seven?) daughters of a Chinese couple that kept at it in the hopes of eventually producing a healthy, non-deformed boy.

Per Mrs. Robinson (all titles are listed, which jarred me at first until I realized why that would have been a big deal), Rosa Parks was actually just tired that day. I mean, she was part of it and all, but the boycott wasn't planned until after her arrest. The "Women Who Started It" were the three hundred members of Montgomery's three Women's Political Council chapters. Unfortunately the book is really more about the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and Dr. King, than the women in the title.

93 (or 90)-year-old Jacob Jankowski's narrative takes us on the road with a depression era second or third rate circus, with which he served as veterinarian in his early 20s. The book was interesting and absorbing. I quite enjoyed it. Do you sense a however coming on? However, I'm not sure I really get why the back and forth between the circus and the nursing home.

It was funny to read this twenty-something memoir about a religious woman in NYC immediately after reading a twenty-something memoir about a stripper in the Midwest. Baker comes off naive, not so much for her religious beliefs but because her idea of adventure is lying to a campus recruiter about her major in order to get a free highlighter. It's kind of fascinating to see what kinds of things college age nondrinking sex abstainers do to amuse themselves (banana flavored foods party!!!).

Cody's writing is extremely clever, witty, and accessible. I was worried it was going to be too clever at first, but she calms down after the first couple of chapters. Not the over-the-top part, but the general feeling of it reminded me of Ayun Halliday's writing, so if you're an East Village Inky fan, you should like Candy Girl. The title pretty much says it all. Cody got it into her head, or heart really, to do some nude dancing and on-demand masturbating for a while in her mid-twenties. It happens.

I don't know if I've ever read a book that better or as unselfconsciously captures the intimacy and idiosyncrasies of a high school clique. (Note--when I say "clique" I do not mean to imply snobbery or exclusivity, merely the phenomenon where teens create their own family of close friends.) Wanda Lowell and Dora Nussbaum, editors of the school's literary magazine Galaxy which is at the heart of the group's identity, are best friends and the leaders of the clique. Wanda and Dora are called the Wandora Unit because of their intense friendship and solidarity, though sometimes the term is not a tribute. Until their senior year of high school they never disagreed about anything. The Galaxy crew have inside jokes, think they are the funniest and smartest people in the world, and they are doomed.