Sassyfrass Circus #5
It's hard to write a competent review for this minicomic perzine. I really just want to show you all of the comics so you can see for yourself how brilliant they are. But that would be obnoxious.
reviewdate:
Apr 22 2012
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Thousand Lives: the Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown, A
A Thousand Lives came highly recommended by someone whose taste I trust, so I'm sorry to report I felt "meh" about it. Jonestown is a fascinating (if horrifying) topic, and I learned some things I didn't know about the ministry (that it was 70% Black and that it was friends with San Francisco politicians Harvey Milk and George Moscone).
reviewdate:
Apr 22 2012
isn:
978-1-4165-9639-4
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Punk Like Me
One of the greatest things about this punk rock lesbian bildungsroman is that it takes place on Staten Island, and also the East Village of the 1980s (?). The narrator Nina Boyd is a working class high school junior who is an athlete and aspiring member of the armed forces, in addition to being a dedicated reader of Love and Rockets and a Rocky Horror Picture Show-goer whose mecca is CBGB. Too bad she doesn't make it into CBs in high school due to curfews strictly enforced by her parents.
reviewdate:
Apr 14 2012
isn:
1-933110-40-6
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N.S.
A friend sent me the unpublished manuscript of her collected writings about her unexpected pregnancy--making the decision she did, her relationship with the baby's father, pro-choice Christian spirituality, and lots of other great stuff. I look forward to the book being published so I can go into more detail about it. For now I'll just say that L is an excellent writer and while reading her book-to-be, I kept thinking of all the people I wanted to share it with.
reviewdate:
Apr 10 2012
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Syndicate Product, #19.0 Detritus: Fragments and Scraps
Detritus: Fragments and Scraps, issue 19.0 of A.j. Michel's Syndicate Product series is a sweet ¼ size zine comprised of A.j's unpublished, unfinished and other hanging works. She's been organizing and clearing out her stuff lately (including donating a bunch of her zine and minicomic collection to Barnard), and publishing her this-and-that in one volume seems to be a great way to file the pieces under "done."
reviewdate:
Apr 8 2012
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Lower East Side Librarian & Friends Menstruate
Thanks to funny, smart, sad, and happy essays, photographs, comics, a crossword puzzle, a collage, a flow chart and a bibliography from 20 librarians and archivists, I've got a new zine...
Roseanne: My Life as a Woman
You know you're a book geek/librarian/dork when you're constantly distracted from a text with the thought, "Did anyone proofread this thing?" You get the feeling that the editors at Harper & Row threw up their hands at some point and didn't give a fuck about getting the name Alfred E. Neuman right or fixing a mistaken "know" for "now," and didn't have the fortitude for copy editing either, since the narrative frequently bounces off the rail (billiards reference). Aside from my criticism of how the book was produced (seriously, I wouldn't have released a book in that condition if I were a publisher, but I guess since Roseanne was big money in 1989 they didn't care), I did enjoy reading it.
Quotations:
I think men like to pretend that they are not wholly dependent on women. Women like to pretend that they are dependent on men. And there you have it, folks, the Rosie Barr view of the BATTLE OF THE SEXES.
I always insisted on being the teacher when we played school, the mother when we played house, and the star of every neighborhood play. I didn't feel then (or now) that hogging the glory is a disservice. I can do it better than anyone and, being a perfectionist, I always make sure to do everything myself.
What we need is a Woman, a mother for President, and I'm going to run someday, and my campaign motto will be "Let's vote for Rosie, and put some new blood in the White House--every twenty-eight days."
We admitted that we were powerless over being female and that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a power deep within ourselves could restore us to sanity.
reviewdate:
Apr 7 2012
isn:
0-06-015957-x
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IHOP Papers, the
Our heroine is an alcoholic lesbian virgin who moves to San Francisco to be with her Philosophy of Nonviolence professor and the professor's two lovers, also Nonviolence alumni. 19-year-old Francesca is a cutter, who also has crushes on her sponsor, another waitress, and a soap opera character. All the relationships are incestuous and manipulative--just so you know what you're getting into with this novel.
Quotations:
"Guess what," I told Andy, "I just quit my job."
"Did you make a real big scene when you quit?" he asked wide-eyed.
"I wish."
I think a serious, "How am I living up to my anarchist potential?" assessment is necessary when I quit a job in the future."
reviewdate:
Apr 2 2012
isn:
978-0-78671-794-1
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Perfect Blood, a
Books in the Hollows series are always compelling. In this latest entry, though, I felt like someone had told the author that she needed to work on the romance angle, so there's a half-hearted, poorly executed push-pull between our heroine, the witch demon and the elf who has been her nemesis since the first book, if I remember correctly. I do like that Rachel's love interests are always flawed, in a way that can't be brushed aside.
reviewdate:
Mar 29 2012
isn:
978-0061957895