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New York, 1:09 PM
Mon Dec 21
22 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/15/09
I would add Hooked by Carolyn Smart to this list. Smart is a Canadian poet and her latest book (just released last spring I think) is amazing. I saw her read earlier in the fall, and her poems about women consumed and, ultimately destroyed by their passions is amazing. She writes about real women (Zelda Fitzgerald, Myra Hindley, Jane Auer Bowles and five others) and gives them incredible voices.
I would also recommend Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. It totally blew my mind. It's a novel written in verse that reimagines the Greek myth of Geryon. Oh my God, the language is gorgeous, the emotions are so tangible and the setting is everywhere and nowhere at once. Amazing.
12/15/09
Also to add to the list, Maile Meloy's Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it (which just got some nice attention in the new york times book review) was amazing, and I can't push Antonya Nelson enough- her short stories are incredible.
12/14/09
12/14/09
Also, other gn's by women:
The War at Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks, who also did the great Zombies Calling.
Air, by G. Willow Wilson
There's Julia Wertz who does Fart Party, Lynda Barry, Colleen Doran, Colleen Coover (she does AWESOME girl friendly porn comics, stuff for Marvel, and Banana Sunday which has monkeys!)
And other books that are just great with awesome female characters:
Scott Pilgrim
Lenore
Strangers in Paradise (this is well known as one the best stories about two women ever, and realistically drawn!)
Fables
Lucifer (Elaine Belloc is my favorite little half angel ever)
Promethea
Wet Moon (Ross Campbell is sooo awesome, and draws the most diverse female characters anywhere)
And lots, lots, lots more.
12/14/09
They are very, very odd.
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I also thought that the main character was so very interesting, I mean, the whole affair was just so very businesslike to her. Very fascinating.
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But the ending just blew me away!
You said that you have read other books by the author, are they as good and layered?
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She is teh awesomesauce to me. I love all her books, and this is an annual re-read for me.
Also, second Jacqueline Carey, who is mentioned below. I love all her books, too.
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My two cents is The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich. I'd known of her for years but finally got around to reading this one. It is simply the most beautiful book I've ever read. It's like beautiful food fed to you in small morsels, all of it nourishing to your soul. Now I regret going 28 years without Erdrich. Just read it.
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12/14/09
that being said, her descriptions of her experiences with OCD when she was younger were the first time i'd heard someone talk about it so candidly, and the first time i realized i had it, too. so i guess it did have a great effect on me in some way.
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But! I haven't been able to find any other similar graphic novels in my local bookstores. I'm thinking Ariel Schrag and Michelle Tea here. I mean, I could order from Amazon but there's something fun about going to the bookstore, flipping through the book and then bringing it home.
More importantly, anything by Lorrie Moore. Anything she has put on a page. She's phenomenal. So is Miranda July's book, No One Belongs Here More Than You.
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Tana French wrote two really kickass police mysteries - In The Woods and The Likeness. They had me totally captivated; I felt like I was taken somewhere else whenever I opened the pages.
Cherie Priest wrote some great gothic ghost story trilogy with a great female main character, and she's started a steampunk trilogy (off the top of my head, I can't think of any other steampunk books I've read by a female author).
Gillian Flynn wrote two creepy mysteries - Sharp Objects and Dark Places. I really enjoyed these because her main characters aren't shiny, happy women.
Carol Goodman wrote 6 books starting in 2002, all about women who investigate mysteries from the past. They all follow a similar pattern, but the settings and characters are all very different.
Susanna Clarke wrote the beautiful Victorian fantasy book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
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12/14/09
That said, out of the three I did read, I was kind of underwhelmed by two of them. With Veronica, I just had an overwhelming sense of numbness while reading it. Everyone just seemed so emotionally anesthetized. I loved the prose, but I had a hard time connecting to the characters. Maybe that was the point, to illustrate a deeply atomized world where most people existed almost entirely on the surface.
The other one, Rent Girl, I liked because of the drawings, and some of the writing - particularly the whole equivalence of "I love to give women pleasure" with Sting's 90s music - was great, but on the whole, I find Michelle Tea to be very mediocre. it hurts me to say that, as she's a queer feminist punk riot grrrl type, and I tend to love women like her, but much of her writing reads like a bad teen-girl perzine.
And now I feel like such a mean hater. :( I did love Fun Home a whole, whole bunch, though!
12/14/09
But she manages to come across as authentic despite the disingenuous touches somehow.
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Sittnefeld's "Man of My Dreams" was similarly good...I think Hannah ("Dreams'" heroine) is a version of Lee that's grown up and with a little perspective; both were immediately relateable (for me, anyway).
I know Tom Perrotta is a man, but I think "Little Children" was the last book I read that stayed with me for a long time afterward.
12/14/09