This second set of conversations between RE/Search publisher V. Vale and zine creators is a deft continuation of the first one. He gets a decent variety of zinesters, young to middle-aged, female, male, queer, straight, working and middle class, and focus on mail art, politics, and the weird. He's not quite as good at finding a race balance or more personal perzine authors, but I think it's okay to cut him some slack.
Somehow Elaine's annual zine got buried in my ever-expanding to-read pile, and I only just rediscovered it. Elaine is a school librarian now in school to become a school administrator--probably a vice principal. She discusses her personal politics that might make it hard for her to get a job as the head of a school, namely that she finds certain state statutes (regarding political indoctrination, e.g., de-facto mandatory pledging of allegiance to the flag) problematic to enforce. That passage reminded me of Ms. Finney from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit. Remember her?
Blue, a poor girl from a family of psychics meets up with a bunch of boys from a fancy private school that are trying to use ley lines to find a dead Welsh king. There's a lot going on in this story--a murder mystery, doomed romance, the hunt for the king, family drama, class issues, child abuse, and a bunch of magic. It's actually a bit too much, at least for my little brain.
An Irish woman in her mid-twenties spends a year (and a bit) working at an Orlando hotel and taking in the local attractions. She's a huge space program fan, and her description of the Kennedy Space Center made me want to visit. Her love of Disney isn't quite as compelling, to me, anyway. It's cute, though.
Twins Ysabel and Justin feel like a bomb has been dropped on their family when they learn that their father is transgender.
After how much I enjoyed Brigg's last Alpha and Omega novel, I was disappointed that this one was more like the first full-length novel in the series, in that the author seemed to be more in love with the idea of the dynamic of the relationship than in telling a story.
I anticipated this final entry to the Newsflesh trilogy with perhaps greater excitement than I did Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay, though that may be that my desire was fanned by NYPL's dragging its ass on getting copies.
I read this dude-penned book because my dad recommended it and because the next book in the series includes an encounter with Jennifer Miller, a favorite performer of mine and the person who conducted my wedding ceremony.
You may recall that I was disappointed with the first full-length installment in Briggs's Alpha and Omega series. Well, PtL the second novel was up to the high standard Briggs set with her Mercy Thompson books.
I kind of don't know what to say about this book that isn't in the title. Rudahl did a good job selected what from Living My Life to include and her drawings are dandy.
Like many zine folk I was irritated by Microcosm's use of the term "bookette" in association with zines, but when I got the WNHP Greatest Hits compilation, I was like yeah, this little thing is pretty much a "bookette." It's an adorable half-legal sized, 80 page paperback that weighs 4 ounces. The volume brings together sixteen of Andria's favorite essays, one poem and one comic from the first eight issues of her literary comp zine We'll Never Have Paris, "narrative nonfiction 'for all things never meant to be.'"
This first installment in the Soup Lover's Mystery series introduces us to Lucky Jamieson, who has just returned to Vermont in the wake of her parents' death in a car accident. She has just taken charge of their restaurant and is already in danger of losing it, due to her cook being charged with murder and a subsequent falling off of business, and also some money woes that go unresolved, presumably to be revisited later in the series.
My biggest problem with this book is that the eponymous character isn't actually named Digit; she's called digit, rather than her real name, Farrah. Digit/Farrah is a high school math genius hiding her ability from her seemingly shallow friends, hoping to live a normal life until she meets her destiny at MIT. But destiny can't wait.
So Yale-bound Allee isn't as Yale-bound as she'd like to be because her family is too rich for financial aid and too poor for the Ivy League...until she gets discovered in a model search at a mall. Before hitting the Miami casting scene Allee, who is of Jewish and Cuban distraction, is nerdy and not at all interested in fashion.
A long-time best-friendship between a teenage boy and a girl is tested when the latter comes out and their school makes a stink about her wanting to wear a tux to the prom with a girl as her date.
After a summer of subsisting on the literary equivalent of carbs (i.e., genre fiction), I started the school year off with Jeanette Wintersen then dipped close to chick flick territory, followed that with an international memoir and then feminist essay collections back-to-back. Not that I don't love my vampires and young adults, but it's satisfying to get back to spending some time in the minds of smart grown-up humans for a change. It helps that Jennifer Baumgardner is so damned likable in F'em.
From an interview with Ani DiFranco
Also from Ani (everyone calls her Ani, right?)
Disclosure: I'm friends or friendly with about half of the contributors to this book, for which I also wrote a chapter. I think I'd have loved it even if that weren't the case, but then again it couldn't have not been the case because the world of feminist archivists isn't as big as you might imagine--or hope!
I loved reading DeWoskin's two novels, and I also love memoirs, especially about being caught between two cultures, so I was jazzed to finally get around to Foreign Babes. Usually that's a set up for disappointment, but although I didn't find FB quite as dramatic as her fiction, I still read it with great interest.
At first I was put off by Howrey's clever self-conscious self-mockery, but I was patient (because I'm a sucker for dance stories) and rightly rewarded with a mature story of sibling love and rivalry in a chick-littish wrapper where the heroine SPOILER doesn't end up with a man.
When I left [my dying friend] Wendy's I walked across the park. The path I took when I was a student, when none of what has happened had happened.