Tagged with books

I love zines. Dreaming them up, physically constructing them, and bringing them to the post office all snug in their packages makes me feel whole in a way not much else does. … The medium of zines reminds me of the point of the work: the deep and sincere need to be heard, the yearning for communion. I sign most of my zines "love, Katie" as though they're letters because they feel a lot like letters. I mean, I wouldn't bother saying something if I didn't think there was someone to say it to. … The connection people make with each other through writing and reading is as human as we get, and zinesters know this, they live it. I'm writing this now and you're reading it in another now, which means we're here together in a way; wherever we are, we're both crackling with the same kind of life. --Katie Haegele, Introduction, p.1

It's hard not to acknowledge that zines are best for their immediate, ephemeral qualities. That feeling that you've found something truly unique and special, from a seemingly unlikely source. For these reasons, putting zines in a mass—produced book is seemingly contradictory. …
Every day we are told that print is dying, but as our co-worker Chris says, "If print is dead, it's another reason to like zombies." –Joe Biel, p.6

Danny didn't know a soul who had taken the Prohibition bills seriously, even when they'd made it to the floor of the House. It seemed impossible, with all the other shifts going on in the country's fabric, that these prim, self-righteous "don't dos" had a chance. But one morning the whole country woke up to realize that not only did the idiots have a chance, they had a foothold. Gained while everyone else paid attention to what had seemed more important. p.72

"The preliminary suspicions that the molasses tank explosion was a terrorist act have been a boon for us. Simply put, this country is sick of terror."
"But the explosion wasn't a terrorist act."
"The rage remains." Finch chuckled. "No one is more surprised than us. We thought the rush to judgment over the molasses flood had killed us. Quite the opposite. People don't want truth, they want certainty." He shrugged. "Or the illusion of it." p.491

"I reckon we all invent our own Supreme Beings. It's the point of life. You invent your own religion complete with an afterlife, a Supreme Being if you want one and anything else you want, and then you pretty much get whatever you expect after you die. People who don't believe in anything or who don't bother to come up with their own belief system really don't go anywhere after they die. People who believe in some complex system of reincarnation and cycles of life get that. People who belong to organised religions get whatever that offers, although it usually isn't very good..." spoken by a friend of the narrator. p.409 (This was my afterlife philosophy when I was 13. It might still be if I thought about it.)