Kiss Number 8 is a graphic novel that will not be coming out until March of next year, but really deserves a lot of press beforehand. Like Check, Please! Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu (previously reviewed here and currently out) Colleen AF Venable does not shy away from some tough issues. However, unlike Ukazu there is less humor. Warning: to best show you this book there are a lot of spoilers below. Therefore, I will say here, this is a great book, but will not be […]
This book wasn’t written for me, and I feel fine
Roger Ebert used to talk about how important emotional response was to him as a critic, often more important than the technical and artistic merits. Even the most technically and artistically exquisite film could be a hollow and unsatisfying experience if he didn’t connect emotionally, and the opposite could also be true: sometimes, without any other explanation, a seeming piece of trash could be surprisingly fun simply because it connected to something ineffable inside him. So when the whole “Brie Larson commits white genocide against […]
First love, gender, and other complicated things
Sometimes, a random internet search leads you to some awesome places. One night two weeks ago, I was in the library. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to read, so I did a search for Southern Lesbian fiction. There were no new Rita Mae Brown books (that weren’t fox or cat related) and most of titles the query returned, the library didn’t have. (I know, shocking that a fairly conservation, Northern NJ, small-town library wasn’t overflowing with Southern Lesbian lit, right?) However, they did […]
Please read this review if you are a medical professional.
I have read a lot of this genre – medical memoirs. According to Google, I have read literally almost all of them. I have noticed a pattern, and a problem, and I’m going to use this review space to make a request. 80% of these books follow a formula: author becomes a doctor, a bunch of funny/strange anecdotes from patient interactions or unusual cases. Some do it better than others, but if you stitched them all together into one huge book you’d probably barely notice the seams. […]