Reviews

Sophie Mercer is a social outcast from a broken home who has finally been sentenced to the school you go to when you've been kicked out of all the others: Hecate Hall. Well, where witches, shape shifters, and faeries go anyway. Raised by a human mother and yet to meet her warlock father, Sophie doesn't know a lot about witchery (history and powers), which is kind of a drag when she gets to Hecate (Hex) Hall, because the other kids are steeped in it and even know more about her father than she does. Assigned to the school pariah as a roommate, a pink loving vampire named Jenna, Sophie is not off to a good start at her new school.

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.

I borrowed this book from Columbia's Butler Library, which like Barnard's library and unlike NYPL, still stamps the due date in the book, so you can tell how many people have checked it out before you. I miss that, NYPL! The earliest stamp is Nov 15 1989, and as best as I can tell it's been checked out about 15 times, though I have no way of telling how many times it was renewed. In an academic library with semester long borrowing periods, there's a good chance someone hoarded it for a year or two. I did that with Comics Librarianship: a Handbook for like three years in the early days of the Barnard Library Zine Collection. But getting back to the book at hand (sorry!), how did I not join the Lynda Barry cult sooner?

I was really happy with the first say 4/5ths of this YA novel--until it turned into a teen romance. What's up with that? I've got too much work to do right now to right a better description or review. With a 14-year-old narrator, the book is listed as grade 7 and up, but I think it's perfectly suitable to older readers. It doesn't feel at all "tween."

Per my post on LCSH Watch 2009, Week 51, I discovered this book via its subject heading, FEMALE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS—FICTION. If I were assigning subject headings, I wouldn't necessarily have picked that one, though. I might have gone with one of the cataloger's other choices PROBLEM FAMILIES -- ENGLAND -- NOTTINGHAM -- FICTION, but more to the point, CHILDREN OF DRUG ADDICTS. Essentially, I would have been more loving to the book's protagonist, Kerrie-Ann (Kez) Hill, whom we follow from the age of five to eighteen. She does a lot of illegal things and more than her share of drugs, but I don't see her as a delinquent, and neither does author Nicola Monaghan.

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.

I read this book while in the process of packing up the apartment I lived in for the last ten years. I needed something that was...easy. Industrial Magic, like it's prequel went down easy. I still find narrator Paige Winterbourne a little middle-aged for a 23-year-old, but the story is damned absorbing.

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.