It's been a year and a half since my last love-letter to Katie's zine making. The poignant 17 Strangers came to me in a donation of 100+ zines, but would have stood out, even among 1,000. The seventeen anecdotes read like flash fiction, those short short stories that take your breath away with a jab or a caress.
Twenty five Muslim women, most of them pretty observant, many of them converts, share their love stories. To a heathen like me the mystery of these women's lives isn't Islam; it's their devotion to it. Maybe I was expecting some secular Muslim contributions, but that was probably dumb. Anyway, the women's tales are heartfelt and straightforward. Surprises include the two chapters written by lesbians and the matter-of-fact and reasonable sounding appeal of polygyny.
I've been meaning to write a review of Ker-bloom! zine by artnoose since about December, when I finished cataloging about 75 issues of the unusually reliable and long-running quarterly letterpress zine artnoose has been lovingly producing since 1996.
photo from Parcell Press
I've long been a List fan, but I don't think I've ever gotten around to reviewing it before. Ramsey's perzine is in the form of lists: her own, found, and contributed. In #13, subtitled "Moving On," she applies her oblique storytelling to her break-up with her long-term boyfriend. The lists reveal her vulnerability, and that she is lonely but not beaten, also committed to veganism and straightedge, but not preachy about it. The lists aren't the full story, with a talented artist like Ramsey. There are lots of full-page drawings to illustrate the various lists.
The first time I read an issue of Low Hug, I was relatively new to zines and didn't fully appreciate it. Now that I am old to zines, I have gained the proper appreciation for A.j. Michel and friends' well-written essays on popular culture, alternative music and as A.j. puts it in #9, castoff items or "cultural detritus." These folks are deeply nerdy, in the best possible way, as demonstrated by this statement about moving, also in #9, "This is one of the ultimate signs I'm a lifer when it comes to zines: I'm not worried about employment or having a regular place to stay, but how to get mail."
I don't usually care for novels without likable protagonists, but I found Hooked to be compelling and enjoyable even though the narrator, Thea Galehouse, is pretty apathetic and presumably depressed. Her parents are self-absorbed and helpless, and Thea's boyfriend doesn't seem to have much special about him other than his potent sperm. The characters I like best are Carmen of the yarn shop and Thea's best friend Vanessa.
As I mentioned in my previous review, I was saved from the unimaginable discomfort of having nothing to read on the 8-hour overnight bus ride home from Pittsburgh. My savior was Kelly McElroy, who as I tweeted via BarnLib has a reading life I'm jealous of--serving on ALA/GLBT round table's gay bibliography posse and being in a celebrity memoir book club. She gave me first A Year Straight and the next day Jennifer Baumgardner's new book. (Kelly must be a mad-fast reader, something I think would be more of a blessing than a curse, unless you had, like Kelly, and endless supply of gay books to read.) Azzoni's confessions are a pretty quick read, so maybe Kelly is neither blessed nor cursed by speedreading.
