lower east side librarian

Excitement and Adventure is such a librarian zine! It's basically a fanzine about prohibition era gangsters, which Lacey researched with abandon at the Minnesota Historical Society.

I don't usually read zines by men, not because I'm biased, although I am, but because most of my zine reading is for the Zine Collection at Barnard, which is comprised mostly of zines by women, with a few by people of other genders writing about femme identity. The author of Travesty is a cisgendered male who likes to wear women's clothes.

I meant to write about the last issue Kate sent me, too. Since I never got around to it with #18, I'd better just get to #19 right away. I will start by saying LOVE Miranda. It's one of my favorite zines.

I ended up with a second copy of this reluctant New Yorker's guide to New York City and so had to decide whether the second one would go to the Barnard zine stacks or come home with me. I've decided I need it on hand for all future house guests. In addition to providing excellent food, entertainment, art, and cultural recommendations, Amanda writes cute essays about helping tourists take better photographs and subway incidents (maybe a little less cute, but still somehow cuddly).

I don't review every zine I read on here, but I do try to get a few lines out about my favorites. Her Blues is one of those zines that like good poetry, art, etc. captures an experience in such a way that it resonates completely with something that you thought was yours only, and reading it you feel less like a freak, less alone.

Where have I been all of Ker-bloom!'s life? artnoose has been making this handset letterpress zine every other month since 1996. I finally got around to reading it when I received several copies in a zine donation at Barnard.

Here's a cover scan from issue 55 and Kelly Wooten's review of it in Library Journal:

As regular readers of my zine know, Celia Perez is one of my best friends and favorite zine writers. Therefore it shouldn't surprise you that hers is one of the rare zines I'm including in my reading log. Since I read so many zines for work, it's just not practical for me to review all of them here, so I just write up my very favorites, and I don't even get around to them half the time.

Anyway, this issue of I Dreamed I Was Assertive is one of those zines that make me wish I was a better writer. I'm kind of ashamed that my messy old zines were next to Celia's on our table at the NYC Zine Fest! Oops, I'm making this about me, so I'll get back to IDIWA…

When people ask me whether people are still making zines today, I often tell them about Katie Haegele's wonderful literary zines. The one that prompted me to write this post, Word Math, is a collection of found poems, created from thrifted manuals, spam, and craigslist personals. The last is what particularly slayed me. You can listen to Katie reading it.

This is A.j. Michel's log of her year's reading (books, comics, and zines), listening, and television and movie watching. I've thought of trying to chronicle more than just my reading, but have been too daunted. A.j., who I believe is a card-carrying but non-practicing librarian, is geekarifically organized and precise, and she provides a fair use statement to justify her inclusion of the occasional zine excerpt.

I recommend this zine to anyone looking for things to read, listen to, and watch, but it's especially appropriate if you have a serious comics jones and like your science fiction okay. Since I'm seriously challenged when it comes to music, I can't be trusted to characterize her taste, but I think indie would cover it, though perhaps too broadly.

If you love books and/or zines and/or fashion analysis and/or fancy binding and/or letter press and/or library search results and/or math theory and/or French films and literature and/or Red Pandas and/or original illustrations and/or cookie recipes and/or whatever other crazy things are competing to get out of book artist Emily K. Larned's head and fingers, then you will find something to go gaga over in her zine series Parfait.

I must warn you that the following review is as gushy a thing as I have ever written. If the idea of my blasé self losing control like that makes you uncomfortable, do not read on!