From the Punked Out Files of the Queer Zine Archive Project: a Zine of hte 2014 Summer QZAP Zinesters-in-Residence Program
reviewdate:
Feb 2 2015
Reviews
Sword of Aldones
reviewdate:
Feb 2 2015
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West of the Jordan
reviewdate:
Jan 29 2015
isn:
978-080708359-8
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This World We Live In
Quotations:
I tried to remember how people found things out before the Internet existed. They had to have questions, after all, and they couldn't always ask their parents. Or teachers. Or librarians.
Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the internet.
reviewdate:
Jan 28 2015
isn:
9780547813394
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Dancing Through It
reviewdate:
Jan 25 2015
isn:
9780670026494
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free:
Moon at Nine
reviewdate:
Jan 20 2015
isn:
9781927485576
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Cup of Water Under My Bed, a
Hernández recounts childhood, coming-of-age, coming out, and coming to terms with her family. Like other child-of-immigrants stories, this one is about a child set up to leave her family behind.
reviewdate:
Jan 18 2015
isn:
978-0-8070-1448-6
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Young Elites, the
reviewdate:
Jan 16 2015
isn:
9780698171725
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In the Age of Love and Chocolate
When you love the first book of a trilogy, but by the last you're meh.
Quotations:
(Aside: How much of this book--nay, my life--have I spent "trying not to cry"? When I think of the wasted effort!)
reviewdate:
Jan 12 2015
isn:
978-0-374-38075-5
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Far From You
When we meet Sophie Winters she's in rehab against her will and has survived a life-threatening car accident, addiction to painkillers related to the life-threatening car accident, and the murder of her best friend.
reviewdate:
Jan 15 2014
isn:
978-142318462-1
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Station Eleven
It took me a little while to get into this post-pandemic novel, but once I was in it, I was uncomfortably in the lonely world where only .6% of the population survives a flu outbreak. I'm still not getting a flu shot, btw.
reviewdate:
Jan 8 2015
isn:
978-0-385-35331-1
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Accordions, Animals, & Anarchy: A to Z in Words & Pictures
My sweet friend debbie's NaNoWriMo project was to finish projects like this wonderful abecedary zine. She draws animals to illustrate some of her favorite things.
reviewdate:
Jan 4 2015
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Mockingjay
Quotations:
In the hospital, I find my mother, the only one I trust to care for them. It takes her a minute to place the three, given their current condition, but already she wears a look of consternation. And I know it's not a result of seeing abused bodies, because they were daily fair in District 12, but the realization that this sort of thing goes on in 13 as well.
reviewdate:
Jan 4 2015
isn:
978-0-545-78829-8
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Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions
I'm interested in the topic and would probably read a full-length work on most of the authors' lives in extreme religions, but the short essay doesn't work. The cover is pretty, and a lot of the writing is good. And there are some good quotes. I like how Naomi J. Williams characterizes her parents' disgust with "church-hoppers," as "ecclesiastically promiscuous."
reviewdate:
Jan 1 2015
isn:
978-158005-442-3
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All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion, the
Fannie Flagg novels always go down easy and are southern charming as all get-out. All-Girl centers on a 60-year-old woman who finds out she's not southern, at least not in the southern way of knowing who your people are a few generations back. It's also about Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). Unless you're a real crankypants, you should be moved by protagonist Sookie Poole's evolution, the WASPs accomplishments, or both. I sniffled quite a bit reading about the titular event while riding a New Jersey transit train home from Jewish Christmas.
reviewdate:
Dec 25 2013
isn:
978-0-8129-9463-6
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Teatime for the Firefly
The publisher is Harlequin MIRA, but it didn't occur to me when I originally read a review of this book that it was a romance. I'm still not sure if that was the intent, because, finding the protagonist and her love interest annoying, I put the book down 200 or so pages in. The MIRA imprint is meant to encompass literary and genres aside from romance, for women.
reviewdate:
Dec 23 2013
isn:
978-0-7783-1547-6
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Relish: My Life in the Kitchen
I'm not much of a foodie, but I do love graphic memoirs, so I was happy to receive Knisley's book from my homie C-Dog as a solstice (or whatever) gift. I found myself envying how Knisley's love of food and cooking shored up her relationships with parents and friends. As you may know, I also have a soft spot for anything period related, so I loved this passage:
A woman's body craved protein and iron.
< copyrighted image I can't reproduce >
I grew into my mother's cravings - the demands of my inherited body chemistry.
< copyrighted image where Lucy says, "Once a month I need spinach." and "Like a were-rabbit." >
reviewdate:
Dec 21 2013
isn:
978-1-59643-623-7
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Behind the Mountains
Danticat tells a story similar to her own, but set about twenty years later and with plenty of other elements to differentiate it from a fictionalized memoir, about a Haitian girl, Celiane, moving to the US and reuniting her family.
reviewdate:
Dec 19 2013
isn:
0-439-37299-2
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Bone Season
In an alternate history clairvoyance is unnatural and a crime. Clairvoyants have to hide their power or risk being consigned to The Tower. It turns out there's something even worse than The Tower, an alternate government in Oxford, run by Rephaim, which Wikipedia and other sources define as giant spirits from the netherworld.
reviewdate:
Dec 17 2013
isn:
978-1-62040-140-8
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Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy
She was already the daughter of a celebrity; an alumni connection could help only so much more. Why on earth hire an independent consultant, too? But then, there were Anne's clients: the parents who left nothing to chance. They refused to play with a deck that wasn't stacked. They'd raise a child unvaccinated before they'd consider letting him apply to college unaided.
Anne helps privileged (and one unprivileged) students get into college, mostly by working with them on their applications essays, but also a little bit by handling their families.
reviewdate:
Dec 11 2013
isn:
978-0-06-224061-3