Book Review: Girls To The Front

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
By Sara Marcus

In Girls To The Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, author Sara Marcus captures the moment in time, the early 90s, with such a level of intimacy that you feel like you right there on the front lines. She writes about the evolution of the Riot Grrls with passion and a wealth of research. For anyone who missed the Riot Grrrl Revolution this is a must read; a very important book.

2010 Best Books Lists

Can’t believe it’s that time of year again. The time when all the year-end best of lists start coming out. Here’s the first I’ve come across:

• Huffington Post‘s best books of 2010

• The Largehearted Boy blog is compiling more best books lists

• The Millons Year in Reading feature that asks writers to pick their favorite books of the year

• NPR lists the best outsider fiction of the year

• Indie booksellers pick the best books of the year

• Slate‘s 2010 book picks

• Largeheartedboy blog’s 2010 best books

Bonus:

Paste Magazine picks the best albums of the year

50 Essential Manga

I’ve always wanted to get into Manga, but had no idea how to dive in. So this list of 50 Essential Manga Books might help me start my manga library.

Book Review: Numb

Just Finished:

Numb: A Novel
by Sean Ferrell

I was touched by Numb. Initially, I was drawn to its subject: pain and after reading it, I was reminded me of the fact that to feel pain is to be human; that it’s what we all have in common. The book follows a character named Numb. Named that way because he turns up at a circus with no memories of who he is or where he came from and without the ability to feel pain. In Numb’s efforts to find an identity without pain, which is what the book asserts is necessary to the process, Numb doesn’t seem to have the ability to worry about the people (who can feel pain) that he leaves in his wake. The novel is at its best in the passages with Ferrell’s ruminations on pain. I wish he had stayed there throughout the novel and had forgone delving into fame’s place in the human experience, but ultimately for a person who’s spent a life healing wounds of the past, it was nice to be reminded that I’m human after all.

Buy it here: Numb: A Novel by Sean Ferrell

Cool Book Alert: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

In My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, Edited By Kate Bernheimer, fiction authors pick their favorite fairytale and reimagine it. Authors include: Michael Cunningham, Francine Prose, Aimee Bender, and Neil Gaiman, among others. It comes out September 28.

Young Adults: A post for you

What’s the cut-off age for when you cease being a young adult and entire into a bonafide adult? As I ponder that, here’s some items for you if you consider yourself a young adult:

• 5 young adult books you read as a tween and deserve another go as an adult
• PBS.org writes about what life is like for a tween
• And can’t resist this doodle diary

In Honor of Prop 8’s demise…

Here’s 20 Cassic Works in Gay Literature…

So many books

I’ve been a little, um, off the radar, this month. It’s summer time and I find that all I want to do is sit down with a good book. So I can’t seem to get enough of web articles about books. I’m not kidding. Here’s the many, many random web articles on books that caught my eye. Tell me what your reading?

• Don’t know about you, but I could use a good book for these dark times (oil still leaking anyone?)
• The 2010 longlist for the Booker Prize is out
• A good list from a random book blogger: her favorite books of the last 10 years
• An excerpt from Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• An excerpt of Gary Shteyngart’s book Super Sad True Love Story
• NY Times Review of Anthony Doerr’s “Memory Wall”
• The AV Club reviews “Fortune’s Fool” by Fred Goodman
• January Magazine reviews “Here’s Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math” by Alex Bellos
• NPR asks a librarian to pick books that are under the radar
• And NPR’s guilty pleasure is reading this old Judy Blume book

More Summer Reads and best of 2010 Albums (so far)

I don’t know what it is about me lately, but I’m all about books this summer. When life seems a little tried and pointless, I find myself seeking out meaning in books. So here’s yet another list of good summer reads and, just for the hell of it, here’s another list of the best albums of 2010 so far from Spin Magazine.

Also:

• Summer’s book trend: Cancer stories
• And I found this article written by Maureen Gibbon about the reviews she got for her book, Thief: A Novel, very interesting.

New Releases of the week updated FINALLY!

Whoa, I just realized that I haven’t updated the Amazon links page in a month! That stinks, so I got to it. The following book and more can be found here!

Here’s an interview with  a new book released tomorrow (July 15) by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield, about his new book released tomorrow (July 15), the 80s memoir Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut. And here Sheffield lists his favorite books about music.