I had wanted to read Under the Banner of Heaven for quite a long time, and finally found a copy at my local used book store this year. I started and stopped reading several times, to pick up lighter, less gruesome novels, but I kept coming back to read this intense, true-crime novel, that is less about the horrible murder of a 24 year old mother and her 15 month old daughter (and it was violently and insanely horrible), as it is about a fundamentalist […]
This is more about me than the book.
In How to Build a Girl Caitlin Moran manages to write a story of teenaged angst that so closely resembles my own experiences that I though she had perhaps stolen my diary and just added a lot (like, a lot, a lot) more sex. Except I didn’t keep a diary in those days. (Now you would call it a journal, and be really precious about it). How to Build a Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan, a working-class girl in 90s England who hates […]
Do you cyborg?
Cyborgs are a common theme in SciFi, so Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, with short stories from authors from around the world is a welcome anthology for the genre. I picked it up, specifically to read Madeline Ashby’s contribution, “Come From Away” but I was definitely invested in reading more. Unfortunately, more doesn’t begin to describe Upgraded. In all, there are 26 stories, which, might honestly be over-egging the pudding a bit. When your theme is so narrow that every story pretty much has to begin […]
Just go read the damn book.
I just can’t say anything bad about Roxane Gay. I love The Butter (and The Toast), and I adored every essay in Bad Feminist. Reading Bad Feminist was like hanging out in my bedroom with my high school best friend. I felt warm, and safe, and happy all the way through. Gay writes from the heart and she isn’t afraid to look carefully at herself and admit some shit is hard for her to do. She’s honest and funny. And that’s it. That’s all you need […]
Perfect for family fights about politics.
As someone who has lived a good bit of her life in the Southern United States, I realized early on that I’m a bit of an outlier in my political leanings. Though I proudly claim to be a Democratic Socialist, I quite often get pushback from even my more progressive friends as to what that means. When I saw Answering Back by David Coates in my local used book store, I snatched it up, in hopes it would help me to be more clear about my […]
What is Art? Everyone’s favorite transvestite Turner Prize winner explains.
Grayson Perry has always been one of my favorite artists. I’ve admired his work, from his pre-Turner Prize days and felt a kinship to his interesting attempts to take ugly subject matter (poverty, drug addiction) and turn it into intimate and beautiful decoration on his masterful ceramic pottery. Who Are You?, his recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, (as well as a 4-part series on Channel 4) was one of the highlights of my last visit to London. Playing to the Gallery is a […]
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