The more I read Lynda Barry, the more I wonder what kind of a crazy childhood she must have had. Boys and Girls is comics depicting painfully familiar incidents from childhood, adolescence, and also adult life. A section on finding your perfect love mate cracked me up, especially the Success Begins at Home quiz...
I think Marisa Meltzer is brave for writing this book. There are probably a lot of women out there that know its primary sources as well as she does and who will think she left out x or misinterpreted y. I am not one of those women, though. I have expertise in the zine side of riot grrrl, but know very little about the bands, so I was psyched to read this short, personable history with a certain amount of memoir thrown in.
A lonely girl who moves a lot and has a wacky mom meets a lonely boy with a distant dad and a missing twin. But refreshingly, this isn't a teen romance novel. There is some romantic tension and jealousy, but really this book is about the friendship between the two of them.
I read this book when I stayed overnight with friend house in Boston. (Thanks again for the Bloody Marys Jake and Lisa!) Basically it's just photos of signs and things that have been improved with a FUCK sticker. You can get the idea from Fuck This Website.
I could probably write a 2,000 word review of this book, since it's on a topic so close to my heart, but I'll spare you. I made way too many margin notes anyway! As I said in regard to her article Why Zines Matter in American Periodicals, Piepmeier handles the zines vs. blogs argument and the materiality of zines with great finesse. She has truly changed the way I look at—and describe—zines, which is a big deal since I catalog and teach the suckers.
Alzheimer's Disease is horrible and scary and horrible. It's I think a little less horrible and scary and horrible as depicted in this novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. The narrator is an extremely intelligent and even-tempered Harvard professor with early onset Alzheimer's. While reading the page turner in about a day, I was often moved to tears. The originality of the premise—the telling of the story from the point of view of the patient—and the convincingness with which Genova depicts it are unmistakable. However, do you see a however coming?
It's likely I never would have heard of, much less read this book if I hadn't gone to high school with one of its authors. We went to the same high school, but lived in different universes. However, it seems that even Liz Welch's closest friends didn't have much more of an idea of what was going on in her life than I did.
The first non paranormal fiction novel I've read finished in ages--and it's magic realism! Daughters of the Stone, by a Puerto Rican YA librarian from the Bronx (That's hot!), tells of five generations of gifted women.
