Book Notes on Pop-Up Book of Death by Chad Helder

Paperback, 124 pagesFrom Queer Mojo (a Rebel Satori Imprint)December 2010ISBN: 9781608640263 I have gotten to know Chad Helder in the past year through an interview and correspondence.  He was a guest blogger back in October as well.  If you have missed either of these or want to know more you can check them out here: […]

Book Notes on Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman

Paperback, 204 pagesPublished by Lethe PressISBN: 9781590210536 Steve Berman’s young adult novel opens with all of the elements for a clichéd teen horror movie: alienated goths, check; nearly Halloween, check; and an ouija board, check. But he promptly destroys a reader’s expectations and gives me one of the best YA novels I have read to date. […]

Book Notes on Advanced Elvis Course by C.A. Conrad

Paperback, 112 pages Published by Soft Skull Press, June 1, 2009 ISBN: 9781593762438 This book defies even the broadest of categorizations. I want to call it poetry or flash fiction, but it is more. Each piece could be called an anecdote and although many are entertaining, they are not trivial. Story, by poem, by list, […]

Book Notes on Loving Mountains Loving Men by Jeff Mann

Paperback, 248 pages From Ohio University Press November 2005 ISBN: 9780821416501 What is queer culture? Is it Pride parades with the flotilla of Dykes on Bikes, drag queens, leather daddies and dance music? Is queer culture the collective body of bars, organizations, events and arts in large metropolitan centers? Queer is most often hitched to […]

Book Notes on A Report from Winter by Wayne Courtois

Paperback, 280 pages From Lethe PressJuly 2009 ISBN: 9781590212356 Memoir moves at a different pace than fiction. Characters and plotlines push the narrative forward, usually toward an actual or emotional climax. A standard novel has a rise and fall. I am sure many of us remember the plot diagram from an English class in our […]

Book Notes on Blind Date with Cavafy by Steve Fellner

Steve Fellner’s poems are funny. Some poems I laughed out loud at, nodding my head in agreement with his observations about human nature. Other poems caused me to curl my lips at their wry invective. Fellner’s poems are smart and they know it. Fellner’s work can intimidate because they require the reader to know a […]

Is Your Blog Eating Your Blog?

The past two weeks have kept me moving. Graduate school applications, academic resumes, writing statements, Form A and Form B burned up a good amount of time and energy. Between working full-time and panicking about my academic future, I haven’t felt up to doing much writing…Excluding the essays and letters that I’ve been agonizing over, […]

Book Notes on American Romances by Rebecca Brown

Paperback, 162 pages From City Lights Publisher June 2009 ISBN: 9780872864986 The first thing I noticed about American Romances was the blurb on the back covers by Thurston Moore, guitarist for Sonic Youth. So when I opened the book and saw quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work, I was surprised. For me, there was no connection […]

Book Notes on Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess

Paperback, 80 pagesPublished by Rosemetal Press, October 2008ISBN: 9780978984854 Reading Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess is akin to remembering your dream. The pieces of the story are fragmentary. There is a struggle to weave a narrative thread between them and more often than not, the dream can be interpreted any number of ways depending on […]

Book Notes on Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz

Paperback, 288 pagesPublished by Vintage, May 1991ISBN: 9780679732273 One of the perks of interviewing LGBTQ authors is that they love books as much as I do. Even better, they love books that I didn’t know existed. When asked about favorite books, author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore said that Wojnarowicz’s work was “the first book that ever […]