Lower East Side Librarian

Don't tell anyone, but I snatched I Saw You from the NYC Zine Fest fundraiser. Julia deliberately left it behind when she split, and, well, I was grabbing my zines from the merch table, and, uh… I justify my action with the knowledge that I will give the book away, perhaps to someone else who was at the benefit. Julia, claiming she was only a comics drawer and no writer, gave a great performance of two well-written essays at the zine reading, so I was curious what her work was like. She actually only has a couple of comics in this anthology of illustrated newspaper and online missed connections ads, but they're perfectly charming, as is her introduction, and I assume the clever idea to have the (alpha by first name ♥) bios all be personal ad style. For example:

Greg Means
www.tugboatpress.com
You: most beautiful woman in the world
Me: great personality

In answer to a question I raised in my review of the previous book in the Blue Bloods series, the vamps do seem to get some in this volume, though the nookying does go undescribed. As one interpretation of the title implies, Revelations reveals stuff. Some secrets get told and you get a better idea of who the big bad is, but really, there's not much going on. Oh, except a lot of people die. Still and all, the series seems to be getting to that place where each book is a lead in to the next, not as solid a standalone story as it could be.

Bringing together the two 12-year-old oddballs at Summer Science Camp, Ashley and Tiana is about the relationship between a middle class punk Jewish girl from Greenwich Village and a working class African-American hip hopper from the Bronx. (Is "hip hopper" correct? Should I have said "hip hop fan"? "Hip hop aficionado"?)

The Dog Collar Murders is the third in a mystery series with Pam Nilsen, political lesbian, as the unofficial detective. It's really weird for me to start in the middle of a series, so I'm not sure where I heard of this. Perhaps in the "also by Seal Press" section in the back of Skin, or maybe even referenced in an essay in that book about the "Barnard Sex Scandal." Wilson's book is about murders that take place during and after a sexuality conference in Seattle in 1988 or so (six years after the event that rocked Barnard and feminists all over the U.S.). The book, which is kind of niche, was published by Seal Press, which was "founded in 1976 as a small DIY publisher to provide a forum for women writers and feminist issues."