Okay, I was super-stressed and considered removing the stressor from my life. Instead of working on the conference presentation I've been worrying about I borrowed the fourth in the Mercedes Thompson series from the library when I returned the third. A friend talked me down from my panic, but I already had the book, so I figured I may as well snarf it up. I also wrote the first part of my presentation.
The only vacationy thing I’ve done on my staycation is this pleasure read. The third in the Mercedes Thompson series has Mercy doing more brave, rash things and getting herself into and out of some bad situations, with a little help from her wolfy friends. As in Sookie Stackhouse’s world, the fae are kind of dicks.
If you’re wondering what in the world prompted me to read this book, it’s because I have a newly single friend who hasn’t dated in a really long time and who can be a little...impulsive, and I wanted to get her to read it with me. I actually don’t have a huge problem with the book or its premise. If what you want is to get married, then this book might really help. Is it the height of feminist (not to mention queer or polyamorous) enlightenment to put so much importance on getting hitched? Not necessarily, but I do understand the desire to have a partner and be in a committed relationship. I’ll freely admit that that desire is strong in me.
This is such a Rivington Street readalike that it’s hard not to compare the two. Both begin in Russia around the turn of the 20th century and move to the Lower East Side after a pogrom. Both are about young Jewish female union workers and both have lesbian characters, and both depict the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
“You sound like a capitalist, all excited about machinery,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid that [linotype] will put printers out of work?”
“I was, but now I understand that the more books and pamphlets there are, the more men will read.” He dropped his voice. “And with this machine, we can make up our own pamphlets when the boss is out and melt the evidence before he comes back.” He leaned back in the sunlight, very pleased with himself.
The Williamsburg Bridge was its own sin. Its construction, Lena told me, made hundreds of people homeless when their buildings were torn down. A little like pogrom of progress, burning anything in its path, making Jews take to the roads with everything they owned on their backs, or move in with their relatives and landslayt, crowding more than we were ever crowded in Kishinev.
Sookie has long since lost her innocence, but in each book of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, she becomes more resigned and sometimes in harmony with the the motivations and mores of the supernatural company she keeps. Vamps are hot, but they’re also a little...bloodthirsty, not to mention unfeeling. Sookie is neither of those things, but she’s getting more accustomed to vamp justice.
I tried to read this at ALA and then on zine tour, but my concentrate sucked, and I gave up. I’d pick it up again, but honestly, while the book is full of colorful quotations, it’s chaotic and hard to read. I’ve got enough chaos in my life right now, so I’m not going to force my way through. I do want to share the awesome quotations, though...
I read Katie's galley in order to blurb it. I'm not supposed to review it yet, but here's the blurb:
"As someone who hates to spend time or money acquiring stuff, I am the last person you would expect to love a book about shopping. But this rummage sale-focused book is interesting even to an unenthusiastic consumer because Katie's expression of her inner life while she finds her treasures is highly compelling. She shares her joy over finding weird textbooks to repurpose into stationery, knickknacks with the previous owners' history attached (or imagined), and vintage clothing whose worth can be ferreted out only by artisan shoppers such as herself. In the process she reveals just enough about herself to make you fall in love with her."
To my memory I’d never read a SVH book before, nor really desired to. While on zine tour my concentration was quite poor, so I took Celia up on her offer to lend me the first in the SVH series. It was about all I could take--both reading concentration wise and SVH wise. I can’t entirely decide if it’s good-bad or bad-bad, but my lack of interest in number two leads me to believe it’s the latter.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Todd yelled. “We’re going to stage a sit-in right on the football field.”
I picked this up from a leave one/take one shelf at a cafe in Alabama, and was super excited about it, forgetting that V.C. Andrews® books are no longer written by V.C. Andrews. I normally don’t trash books here, but this installment of the “V.C. Andrews” Shooting Stars miniseries is just awful. It has V.C. Andrews themes of religious repression, incest, artistically gifted young girls, and first lusts. It seems like it’s aimed at a younger audience than Flowers in the Attic and the non-® V.C. Andrews admittedly trashy books were. The 1st person narrator, about to graduate from high school, refers to her parents as Mommy and Daddy throughout. I assume the author (or computer) won’t be insulted if he/she/it reads this review, because clearly this is one of those things that you laugh at while you’re writing it. That’s not to say that some people won’t enjoy reading it, with the same guilty pleasure as one watches the worst reality television.
I can’t remember how I found this book--review in Bust? It seems like a Bust type of book--but I know I was interested because the author was a zinester in the 90s. (Mystery date : one gal's guide to good stuff Zines P4755m) It reads like a long magazine article on the history of women’s office support work: typing, stenography, secretaryship, written in a personal tone, through a feminist lens, and with enough endnotes to convince you of its authority. It is accompanied by lots of sidebars and historical photos and ads and a lengthy index (♥).
re: 19th century typewriter, “There was also a question of etiquette, which deemed handwriting more polite than mechanical type. ‘I do not think it necessary . . . to have your letters to me taken to the printers’ and set up like a handbill. I will be able to read your handwriting, and I am deeply chagrined to think you thought such a course necessary,’ read the handwritten reply to a typed missive sent by an early adopter in the insurance industry.” p.17-18
re: feminism and working class, “In fact, what the Miss America protestors should have thrown into the Freedom Trash Can was a coffee pot, because when it came to gender politics in the office, the battle was fought over coffee--and who should make it.” p.200 (citing a Fortune article “Beyond the Liberated Secretary.”