Tagged with books

Library literotica--I had no idea! I discovered this book when I was invited to appear on a panel with the author and looked her up, as most any librarian would. I immediately checked NYPL and was pleased to see Mid-Manhattan had three copies of the micropublished book. The whole story of how the book got published is fascinating, but I'll leave it to you to get into it. To me the craziest thing about the book is that Weist began it as part of a sculptural installation project for Cooper Union, where she got her BA. It's a little slim at 141 pages, but it's good. Weist is a good writer. It's kind of unfair, really. She's an outrageously articulate speaker, an inspired artist, skilled techie (digital archivist), and super young.

The semi-autobiographical story is that of artist librarian Audrey Reed's sexual and bibliographic adventures in Rochester, Minnesota, where she goes to escape sexual, romantic and other demons in NYC. It's an erotic romance novel with enough true-to-life library details to make it doubly pornful to people of my persuasion. As erotica/romance the strongest elements aren't the plot or even highly believable character development, for me the compelling parts are the library details and deft language.

Last year I read and enjoyed Nguyen's childhood memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner, so I was way psyched to learn that she had a novel out. In some ways, this story of two sisters takes place where the memoir left off, although with a different cast of characters. The women, born in the US to Vietnamese immigrant parents about a year apart, are in their late twenties and facing what some call the Saturn Return. The older one, Van, is having marriage woes, and the younger Linny has boyfriend problems and also a (related) job crisis to deal with. Plus with their mother is long dead, and their father is only semi-capable of taking care of himself, good Asian girls are expected to pick up the slack.

Coincidentally, like the last book I read, this one is by an author who left (escaped from?) an insular community in England and then returned to it. The Killing Jar took place in crime-ridden Nottingham, and Disobedience in Orthodox Jewish Hendon. I say "coincidentally" because I found Disobedience browsing in my new branch of the NYPL, Hamilton Fish. Moving is traumatic; I'm going to miss Tompkins Square.

Moving was not traumatic for Ronit Krushka, who left the Orthodox community over which her father presided as Rabbi.

I was a little creeped out by Harris's dedication, "For all those readers who want every last sip of Sookie." I wonder if she really thinks of her fans as vampires? Let me be clear that I like Sookie, but I'm not a fanatic about it. What I am a fanatic about is reading. I like to be thorough, so when I learned of this collection of short stories that complements or fills in the Sookie Stackhouse series, I requested it from the library right away.