Lower East Side Librarian

New! Favorite! Book! Ms. Barry covers some similar turf as she does in The Good Times Are Killing Me, but O!H!D! covers a broader spectrum of her "autobiofictionalography," plus it's illustrated. In color--over 200 pages. I'm impressed Sasquatch Books was able to put this out for $24.95 in '02. Barry did some zen painting exercise where the artist explores her demons, and this is the result. She shares 17 of hers with us, mostly about her childhood and adolescence, but a few take place in grown up life.

I borrowed this book from Columbia's Butler Library, which like Barnard's library and unlike NYPL, still stamps the due date in the book, so you can tell how many people have checked it out before you. I miss that, NYPL! The earliest stamp is Nov 15 1989, and as best as I can tell it's been checked out about 15 times, though I have no way of telling how many times it was renewed. In an academic library with semester long borrowing periods, there's a good chance someone hoarded it for a year or two. I did that with Comics Librarianship: a Handbook for like three years in the early days of the Barnard Library Zine Collection. But getting back to the book at hand (sorry!), how did I not join the Lynda Barry cult sooner?

Comix with footnotes--hubba hubba! But of course one's enjoyment is tempered by the fact that the facts presented about the prison industry are infuriating.

I was really happy with the first say 4/5ths of this YA novel--until it turned into a teen romance. What's up with that? I've got too much work to do right now to right a better description or review. With a 14-year-old narrator, the book is listed as grade 7 and up, but I think it's perfectly suitable to older readers. It doesn't feel at all "tween."

Coincidentally, like the last book I read, this one is by an author who left (escaped from?) an insular community in England and then returned to it. The Killing Jar took place in crime-ridden Nottingham, and Disobedience in Orthodox Jewish Hendon. I say "coincidentally" because I found Disobedience browsing in my new branch of the NYPL, Hamilton Fish. Moving is traumatic; I'm going to miss Tompkins Square.

Moving was not traumatic for Ronit Krushka, who left the Orthodox community over which her father presided as Rabbi.

Per my post on LCSH Watch 2009, Week 51, I discovered this book via its subject heading, FEMALE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS—FICTION. If I were assigning subject headings, I wouldn't necessarily have picked that one, though. I might have gone with one of the cataloger's other choices PROBLEM FAMILIES -- ENGLAND -- NOTTINGHAM -- FICTION, but more to the point, CHILDREN OF DRUG ADDICTS. Essentially, I would have been more loving to the book's protagonist, Kerrie-Ann (Kez) Hill, whom we follow from the age of five to eighteen. She does a lot of illegal things and more than her share of drugs, but I don't see her as a delinquent, and neither does author Nicola Monaghan.