The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, Book I

1995, 2007 Random House edition
Philip Pullman
The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, Book I
Original price $7.50, purchase price $2.80
Slightly worn paperback
B-

Had I graded this book when I first read it a dozen or so years ago, I might've given it a B or B+.  This time though I realized that, except for some nice touches here and there, Pullman doesn't have much style.  To take the most glaring example, the witches are invariably described as having "ragged elegance."  Also the plot depends a great deal on shock value, and that's gone on the third or fourth reading.  

What I'm left with is some interesting world-building, not just the witches and of course the armored bears, but also the morally ambiguous world of adults.  Enemies, as young Lyra learns, can both be wrong, even in the case of her charming but ruthless parents.  Lyra herself is disobedient and dishonest, but brave and good-hearted.

This reading, I had some questions about the daemons, the familiars/souls that all humans have.  Why, other than Jungian psychology, is a daemon usually the opposite sex of its human?  And why do the personalities sometimes coincide and sometimes not?  Lyra's daemon Pan is much more of a worrier than she is.  Does this represent the self-doubt that she seldom shows?

I won't address the "anti-Christian elements" till we get further into the trilogy, since they're minor until the last few chapters of this book.  (The Church is presented more as a political than a religious body.)  I will say though that oddly enough the book most reminded me of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), as children struggle with good and evil, and-- more so in Subtle Knife (1997) of course-- travel between worlds.

Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism

1995, updated from 1994 edition, from Vintage Books
Katha Pollitt
Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism
Bought new for $11.00
Worn paperback
A-

I only had to get as far as the preface to this edition and the more upbeat introduction to the hardcover edition to remember how much I loved Pollitt's writing.  She was my favorite contributor when I had a '90s subscription to The Nation, and the essays here (from roughly '86 to '93) are some of her best.  If anything, I agree with her more, particularly on her questioning of difference feminism, than I did two decades ago.  (The "Carol Gilligan's Island" joke is still great.) 

Pollitt is intelligent, witty, snarky when she has to be, compassionate, and, yes, as reasonable as Wollstonecraft could ask for.  I was really struck by the similarities to Susan J. Douglas this time, although media critic Douglas of course has a different focus.  The two women are roughly the same age (Pollitt born in late '49, Douglas within a year later) and have daughters of roughly the same age (Pollitt's in '87, Douglas's I think the next year) who in their early childhood were clever and feisty but fond of playing Wedding and Disney Princess.  (Both women see Ariel as an improvement over Sleeping Beauty.)  The writers' personalities seem similar as well, although Pollitt comes across as more concerned with issues of class and race.

Douglas doesn't address the 1993 Bobbitt case till her 2010 book, but one of Pollitt's essays here is on how ordinary women seemed to sympathize more with Lorena Bobbitt than feminist leaders did.  One thing Pollitt is very good at is putting controversial news stories in context, contrasting them with what else was covered, or ignored, at that time, as with the media treatment of the plaintiff in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial vs. not only how Smith was treated, but also against the coverage of the Central Park jogger's case.  If I had to pick a favorite essay, it's the one on Baby M, so much good common sense mixed with empathy.

But, really, I love it all, from "The Smurfette Principle" (tokenism in children's entertainment) to "That Survey" ("...they interviewed no college-educated single women, and thus have no idea how many want to marry, think they want to marry but only fall in love with Greek sponge divers, are contentedly cohabiting in nonmarital bliss, are gay, hate the very thought of marriage or just don't care one way or the other") to the more serious essays, like the ones on abortion.  I tried to think of a flaw, why this is a B+ rather than an A-, and just couldn't.  

I probably never will give out A's or A+s.  Unless Pollitt and Douglas collaborated?  Meantime, we'll see how Pollitt's Subject to Debate stacks up when we get to 2001.... 

The Butches of Madison County

1995, possibly first edition, from Laugh Lines Press
Ellen Orleans
The Butches of Madison County
Bought new for $7.95
Slightly worn paperback 
C+

I remember being bored by both the novel and the movie of Bridges of..., which this obviously is a lesbian parody of.  I didn't find this book hilarious, but I did enjoy the skewing and skewering of the "tragic romance" and pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness.  Notable for an early example of a man, the farmwife's husband, who lives more of his life online than in reality.

Bad TV: The Very Best of the Very Worst

1995, undated later edition, from Delta
Craig Nelson
Bad TV: The Very Best of the Very Worst
Bought new for $9.95
Very worn paperback
B-

This is in a way an update of Kevin Allman's TV Turkeys (1987), which Nelson lists in the Sources, but the approach is very different.  Allman has a few pages on each show, but Nelson covers many more programs, with capsules that are sometimes only a sentence or two.  He also rates every show from one to six TAMMIs (for Three Mile Island).  The book seems to go only up to '93, so the description for Misfits of Science, just like Allman's, doesn't mention Courteney Cox landed Friends in '94 and by the end of the first season it was #9 in the ratings.

Nelson, like other writers on bad media (or BAD as some of them like to capitalize it) sometimes has a case of the cutes, but overall I found his style pleasant.  The book is less dated than I expected, partly because it's mostly looking back two to forty years.  But check out this intro for the chapter on "The News, Sports, Newslike, and Pseudosports Nominees:  "If this book had been published ten years ago, this category wouldn't exist.  Until very recently there was a mere handful of BAD sports and news programming...."  Within five years, reality TV would change the whole game.

Lily Tomlin's front-cover review says, "As with the Bible, everybody should own at least one copy of Bad TV-- It's such a funny book."  No, I don't know if she's saying the Bible is funny.  This book isn't hilarious, but it's mildly amusing.  I don't agree with the ratings system entirely-- is David Lynch's On the Air (1992) really the worst show ever?-- but it's hard to argue with The Brady Bunch Variety Hour (also shown on the front cover) as the worst in its category.

The book also contains the worst movies you're likely to see broadcast on TV, with Frankenhooker (1990) winning that category.

My Struggle

1995, first edition, from Boxtree
Paul Merton
My Struggle
Bought new for £7.99
Hardcover in good condition, with signatures from the Comedy Store Players of Spring 1996
B-

Comedian Merton was one of my favorite performers on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, so when I went to London to see live impro(visation) with the Comedy Store Players, I brought along this recently purchased book.  I hoped to get his autograph, but the techie who took it backstage for me afterwards got every Player to sign: Paul, Josie Lawrence, Richard Vranch, Neil Mullarkey, Lee Simpson, and Jim Sweeney.  The show was good, too.

As for the book itself, I think it starts out very well, with Merton adopting a persona of a show-biz vet (also named Paul Merton) who's nearly three decades older than his real self.  (Merton was about 38 at the time.)  The part about his ancestors being in show business, including how his father "attempted to enlist [in WW I] but was turned down on the medical grounds that he had sawdust in his blood," is very funny, as is the career of Baby Paul.  Things become less interesting and less funny as Merton grows up.  And while it might be amusing to have him kill one wife, if done creatively, four is a bit much.

I didn't find out until a few years after first reading, the title is a translation of Mein Kampf.  

On that odd note, let me once again thank all of you've read at least some of this blog.  I don't have dazzling stats, but they've been gradually increasing this summer.


And I've now completed another one hundred books.  At the last count, three months ago, I had

1 F
4 F+s
2 D-s
5 D's
12 D+s
22 C-s
43 C's
146 C+s
246 B-s
164 B's
48 B+s
7 A-s

I've added only one each of D+ and C-.  There are four new C's but 24 C+s.  Nearly half of the new posts-- 48-- got B-.  Nineteen B's, two B+s, and, yes, a new A- came along.

Oz Story Magazine, No. 1

1995, first edition, from Hungry Tiger Press
David Maxine as Editor-in-Chief, Eric Shanower as Art Director
Oz Story Magazine, No. 1
Bought new for $14.95
Worn paperback
C+

Despite the title, this annual, which ran through 2000, is in the format of a tall paperback book of over 125 pages.  It includes contributions from Oz historians Baum, Thompson, and Cosgrove, as well as artwork by Denslow and Neill, although it also has more modern contributions, not just from Shanower of course but a not-bad comic page called The Pathetic Losers of Oz.  Overall, the pieces are uneven, with Baum's almost-50-pages-in-this-format Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea, a boys' adventure story, mostly forgettable (except for the unfortunate repeated use of the N-word).  I most enjoyed the reproductions of the comic strip The Wonderland of Oz by Sprouse, with new text by Shanower.

The decade tags represent when these works were originally published, which in some cases is in this issue.

A Ghost in the Closet

1995, undated second edition, from Cleis
Mabel Maney
A Ghost in the Closet
Bought newish for $14.95
Slightly worn paperback
B

OK, this is my favorite of the series.  Not only do we have gay-male suggestiveness as well as lesbian, but the convoluted plot involving poodles, spies, astronauts, an insane asylum, and yes, a closet and a "ghost," is more intricate and interesting than anything in the first two books.  Romance is of course still important, with "newlyweds" Midge & Velma working on their relationship, and Cherry finally choosing between Nancy and Jackie.  Frank Hardly gets a boyfriend, too.

Even though this was the third book, I actually found some of the jokes improved by repetition, like how housekeeper Hannah is always described as being "like a mother to Nancy since the death of her real mother twenty-two years ago."  And the clip-art-like pictures seem more random than ever, including a bugler, gladiators, skiers and bobsledders (it's still July), an abacus, and a suit of armor.

Maney went on to write a couple "Jane Bond" books, but I was disappointed in the first one and didn't continue.  We'll see what I think of Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy when we get up to 2001....

Watermelon

1995, 2002 "first edition" (?)*, from Avon
Marian Keyes
Watermelon
Bought new for $14.99
Paperback in great condition
B-

So about five years ago, I was traveling in Northern Scotland and the hostel I was staying at had a terrible dryer and a good book collection.  I stayed up most of the night, waiting for my clothes to dry, and reading this novel.  When I got back to the States, I couldn't remember the name of the book or the author, but I must've run across one or the other at some point.  And I went on to get a few of the other "Walsh sisters" books out of the library, but only bought one, Angels (2002).  Then on a trip to Canada I found two more in a used bookstore.  So last week I went out and bought Watermelon.

And yet, I can't say I'm a huge fan.  At least one critic has compared Keyes to Maeve Binchy, in that they're both Irishwomen who write "chick-lit," but Keyes is a lot more crude and flippant than Binchy.  Also, she doesn't write about little Irish villages in the '40s and '50s.  As near as I can tell, Keyes sticks mostly to Dublin, London, and NYC.  And instead of showing a whole community, from the postman to the pubowner, Keyes centres her stories on friends and family.  In the case of the Walsh books, it's a quirky set of parents and five daughters.

In this, the first of the series, oldest sister (and title character) Claire is 29, while youngest sister Helen is 18.  Despite the cover (on this edition) of a pregnant woman in a white dress, this novel is set in the first five months after Claire gives birth to her daughter (eventually named Kate), the same day her husband leaves her for another woman.  She recalls wearing green during the pregnancy and looking like, yes, a watermelon.  

She goes "home" to her parents in Dublin, and with their support gets through this unusual period of adjustment.  Helen is still living at home, as is next-youngest Anna.  The family is very scene-stealing, especially bitchy but insightful Helen.  Anna is spacy and not around much physically or mentally, but the parents are a hoot.

Claire also meets a "younger man," 24-year-old Adam.  While still mourning her husband James, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Adam.  But he's got a secret of his own (a baby by an ex-girlfriend).  Of course you know she's going to end up with Adam, even when it seems like they'll just have a one-night stand, since James wants her back.  

Or does he?  I was set to give this book a B, despite the gratuituous insults of lesbians and Italians.  But I just didn't feel like either of Claire's love interests were presented consistently.  Yes, I understand that she sees them, James especially, with fresh eyes, but I didn't feel like there were enough hints to take James from The Perfect Husband to (pardon her French) an arsehole.  Also, Claire is a bit of a Mary Sue in that characters keep saying how smart she is, when there's nothing to support this in the text.  She makes stupid choices about men and when she says she loves books, it turns out she means trashy novels.  (Hey, I love me some trash, too, but I don't use that to prove my intelligence.  Even my reading classic literature is not necessarily proof of that.)

Add to that things like Claire being a size queen (like her sisters, as we'll see later) who claims to hate cunnilingus (yet loves it when James kisses her "everywhere"), and she isn't a feminist, except when she suddenly realises her self respect matters and she won't change herself just to make sure Kate's daddy is around (even though he ignores the baby when he visits), I felt a bit whip-lashed by the inconsistent characterisation.  I think Keyes improves in that regard later, not that there aren't still flaws.  But when I was reading Anybody out There for the first time last week, it seemed like I enjoyed it more than Watermelon this week.

Still, for all the flaws here, there was enough that appealed to me five years ago that I returned to the series.  Next up, Rachel's Holiday (1997)....


*To further muddy the issue, there's an author's note in the back:  "I'm thrilled to be published in the U.S.," implying that this was the first time, yet I just bought the book "new" a week ago.  She thanks her (presumably American) editor for her "meticulous, sensitive editing," although there are a bunch of typos, and I kept wondering why these Irishwomen were calling their mother "mum" instead of "mam."  I'm curious to see what the Canadian editions say.

The Glass Cat of Oz

1995, first edition, from Emerald City Press
David Hulan
Illustrated by George O'Connor
The Glass Cat of Oz 
Purchase price unknown
Slightly worn paperback
C+

Almost a century after L. Frank Baum started publishing children's books, there was a flurry of what the ad in the back calls "Exciting Oz Stories from a New Generation of Authors and Artists."  I haven't read much of it and own even less.  (Oz Story Magazine will be coming along later in '95.)  This entry is pretty good, as Hulan not only revisits some of Baum's characters, but gets a bit meta as modern Oz fan Barry and his karate-chopping twin sister Becky travel to Oz and try to prove themselves worthy of staying.  The Kleins (Jews in Oz? well, why not?) are more memorable than Tom and Twink of The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949), although it is jarring at times to have '90s (or maybe it's '80s, see below) preteens commenting on Oz traditions, from girls wearing skirts to the etiquette of males and females sharing a tent.  Also, in the illustrations, Barry wears his baseball-cap backward.  (I wanted Cher from Clueless to comment.)

One of the plot threads is that Betsy Bobbin is going to celebrate her 75th anniversary in Oz.  And at one point Barry guesses that Trot arrived around 1914.  We know that Betsy got there shortly before Trot, in 1914's book Tik-Tok of Oz.  So this is roughly 1988?  Maybe Hulan thought that 75th sounded better than 80th, and after all we don't know which anniversary Dorothy was celebrating in Thompson's Ozoplaning, so I'll cut him some slack on that.  

Betsy wants the people (and dragon) she met on her first adventure to come to her party, so the title character visits Oogaboo and finds out that the Bad Lads of Brookville are planning to conquer that tiny queendom.  A small rescue party is formed, with Barry and Becky helping out.  Barry's learned how to pronounce "Pyrzqxgl," so that's a big help.  (Hulan is as coy as Baum about the pronunciation.)  

Hulan's writing is more intelligent than that of Neill, Snow, or Cosgrove, but I didn't feel like the plotting was very good.  And I do have to say that Cowville (why not Cowtown?) is one of the duller spots in Oz, and the Elsie the Cow joke ranks down there with Snow's Charlie McCarthy reference.  On the other hand, the comparison of the Tin Woodman's statue of Dorothy to Judy Garland is extra meta, considering that the illustration in Road was Neill's commentary on Denslow.

Ah, yes, illustration.  I would probably give this a B- if it weren't for O'Connor.  He's not as dreadful as Kramer or Dirk, but he's at best competent.  I didn't like how the twins' freckles look like pimples that are about to burst.  I didn't think he captured any of the Ozites, even Bungle, who, let's face it, can't be that hard to draw.  I was amused that he gave Salye milkmaid's cleavage on p. 37, especially since there's some mild sexual tension later between her and the oldest Bad Lad.  Not the one whose bottom is briefly bared.

Oh, yeah, perhaps because this book is inspired by Tik-Tok, all the chapter titles are alliterative, the longest being "Trot's Team Takes on the Twins."

High Fidelity

1995, 2000 Penguin edition
Nick Hornby
High Fidelity
Original price $12.95, bought used for $2.99
Worn paperback
B

This book reminded me of Meredith's The Egoist (1879).  As Robert Louis Stevenson tells it, "A young friend of Mr. Meredith's...came to him in agony.  'This is too bad of you,' he cried.  'Willoughby is me!'  'No, my dear fellow,' said the author, 'he is all of us.'"  Unlike "Sir Willoughby," Rob takes pride in his ordinariness, his averageness.  And he is like a lot of men you've met, especially the ones who are obsessed with something, music in his case.  He was born in 1959, and the story begins with his memories of adolescence and youth, particularly his "top five break-ups."  It's now 1994 and his girlfriend Laura just left him for another man.

Rob has a lot of flaws, from insecurity to stalking.  He's not exactly likable, but he's not hatable either.  Unlike in The Egoist, you're not allowed the distance of a third person proto-Wildean narrator.  You're stuck in Rob's head, and he does a lot of complaining, about women, about music, about his parents, about strangers, more about music, a bit about movies, and about the lack of success of the record store he owns.  He does grow up some during the book (unlike Willoughby, who's not much changed by his unfathomable-to-him rejection).

When people say, "The movie is always better," this is one of my examples proving otherwise.  It is a good book, but the movie benefits from tighter, funnier writing and from having the cute-but-not-quite-handsome John Cusack as Rob, not to mention his sister Joan as blunt but loyal Liz and of course Jack Black as music snob Barry.  It could be argued that the story isn't supposed to be that enjoyable, that Rob is miserable and we should be, too, but I'd rather have the movie win me over, rather than feel like it doesn't really matter who Rob ends up with or what he does for a living.

At one point in the novel (maybe in the movie, too, I can't remember since it's been over a year since I last watched), Rob says something about how Ian/Ray (Laura's new boyfriend) wanting to meet and talk things over is very '90s.  Here at mid-decade I'm getting a sense of a subtle shift.  Maybe because I was an adult, the 1990s don't feel as neatly divided into pieces as the earlier decades (including ones before I was born) do.  The 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s each seem like every two or three years there were vast changes-- in politics, pop culture, sexuality, etc.  Yes, I was doing different things every year or two of the '90s (including jobs), but I have to think a moment before I remember what happened to other people in those years, unlike the '80s, where I just know.  

I think this book is the first in my collection to show the younger Baby Boomers really distinguishing themselves from their predecessors, as they themselves become "not that young anymore."  It's not that they're all slackers, or apolitical, or what have you.  But there's a certain wistful skepticism, a hopeless hopefulness, that wasn't there before.  As well as ambivalence about both feminism and "the sexual revolution," but also about The Good Old Days of Simpler Times.  We'll see this again with Marian Keyes's Watermelon, coming up shortly, and Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary in 1996.  (That these three are all English or Irish novelists may or may not be significant.)  That I'm younger than the writers, but now older than the characters, adds a certain poignancy for me.  The mid-'90s don't seem that long ago, except when I think about things like Rob making mix tapes.

Female Problems: An Unhelpful Guide

1995, undated later edition, from Dell
Nicole Hollander
Female Problems: An Unhelpful Guide
Original price $9.95, purchase price 49 cents
Worn paperback
C+

This is not a guide as such.  It's a mix of cartoons (some of them seeming to be left over from the '80s) and short humorous essays on, well, female problems.  (The cartoon accompanying "Guys Who Are Almost Perfect," with the woman who has a vampire boyfriend, is now ironic considering the swooning of women in real life over Edward Cullen.)  The book is very mildly amusing, nothing classic.  And I don't own Hollander's more recent books, all apparently about cats, so another of my authors bids goodbye as of 1995.

Out, Loud, & Laughing: A Collection of Gay & Lesbian Humor

1995, undated later edition, from Doubleday
Edited by Charles Flowers
Out, Loud, & Laughing: A Collection of Gay & Lesbian Humor
Bought newish for $12.95
Worn paperback with dedication from my friend, "Seems like good advice on how to live life-- 'Out, Loud, & Laughing.  Queerly, K____
B-

Since there are so many contributors and, as with (the then not yet out) Ellen DeGeneres, some humor doesn't work as well on the page, this is somewhat uneven.  I most liked Jaffe Cohen's "My Life as a Heterosexual," although it was more like a mini-memoir of growing up closeted and Jewish in the Nixon era.  Suzanne Westenhoefer and Lea DeLaria were probably the next best, with the latter bearing the dubious distinction of making the first mention in my book collection of the mullet, although not by that name.

Q: What's up with "the haircut"?
A: You've all seen "the haircut."  It's short on top, long in the back.  I call this cut "the mud flap."  Only lesbians and Billy Ray Cyrus have this haircut.  This haircut is an achy-breaky-big-mistakey.

It's ironic that there are two jokes about Sara Gilbert (or at least her character of Darlene Connor) being a lesbian, since Gilbert didn't actually come out till 2010 (just this week revealing that she realized her sexuality through dating her TV co-star Johnny Galecki).

I was disappointed in the rather flat contribution from David Sedaris, since I remember laughing out loud a few times at Me Talk Pretty One Day.  We'll see how I feel about it when we get to 2000....

My Point...And I Do Have One

1995, 1996 Bantam edition
Ellen Degeneres
My Point...And I Do Have One
Original price $6.50, purchase price $3.25
Worn paperback
B-

This was published (ha, you thought I was gonna say "came out") soon after Ellen's sitcom started, and she does refer to it (named after Ellen Barkin), unlike Roseanne in her autobiography.  This is not an autobiography as such, although some facts slip through, like her birthday, but mostly it's Ellen's wry goofy exaggeration.  Sometimes her humor works and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it works at first and then doesn't, and vice versa.  Unlike Woody Allen's humor collections, which work or don't on the basis of wordplay, I think you need the comic's voice here, although the cartoons by Susan Rose (not credited on the cover, just on the copyright page) are cute and fit the book.

And, no, I don't own either of her later print collections, but I do have her '90s sitcom on DVD and enjoy what I see of her of her talk show on YouTube.

The Golden Age Is In Us: Journeys & Encounters, 1987-1994

1995, possibly first edition, from Verso
Alexander Cockburn
The Golden Age Is In Us: Journeys & Encounters, 1987-1994
Probably bought new for unknown
Worn paperback
C+

Unlike 1988's Corruptions of Empire, which I could happily quote for an hour, I found this mix of journaling and journalism sometimes a bit boring or annoying.  Despite the Gulf War, there's surprisingly little on Bush's presidency (Quayle is mentioned once!), although Cockburn does work up animosity towards Bush's successor, "President McMuffin."  (However, the parallels between Clintonism and lesbian chic are something to ponder.)  And while the autobiographical parts are sometimes interesting, from his mother's death and various earthquakes, to less traumatic events (including his own occasional cross-dressing), I didn't feel I knew or liked him much better than I did before.

Between Corruptions and this book, I got married and divorced, and got a subscription to The Nation, which lapsed around the time this was published.  I mention this because I think this book might've belonged to my ex-husband.  There are many typos and I think it's my ex's handwriting that put "defiance?" where Cockburn says, "..the killing of peasants and social workers, all in defense of US and international laws."

At best, this is the bronze age of Cockburn's work.  While I enjoyed reading him in The Nation (more than Hitchens, less than Pollitt), I can see why I didn't get his later books.  Still, I was sorry to hear when he died July of last year (ironically a few days before his contemporary and former compatriot, Maeve Binchy).

The Glass Lake

1995, 1996 Dell edition
Maeve Binchy
The Glass Lake
Original price $7.50, purchase price 49 cents
Very worn paperback
B-

As I noted with Copper Beech, the natural object in the title is important to the story.  Discontented wife and mother Helen McMahon seems to drown in the lake that the very Binchy little town of Lough Glass is named for.  Her twelve-year-old daughter Kit burns the "farewell" note, so that apparent suicide Helen can be buried in the churchyard.  But Helen has run off with her lost love, Louis Gray. "Lena" had hoped to keep in touch with her children and thinks that their father is hiding the truth from them, so she starts writing to Kit, pretending to be Helen's school chum.  Kit visits London five years later and learns the truth.

In some ways, this is the best Binchy novel, in that it has an intriguing plot with a no-win situation, and deeper emotions than usual.  But there's so much about it that doesn't work and, unlike Firefly Summer, it doesn't really satisfy.  As in her past novels, the ending is rushed and a bit implausible (although she still hasn't hit the depths of Penny Candle).  I think this is the longest of the novels so far, over 700 pages, but she tries to do too much in the last 100 or so, especially the last twenty.  Also, I'm getting tired of the "cheating charmer" character, like in Penny Candle and, to a lesser degree, Circle of Friends.  It's soon obvious that Louis is no good, but Lena does what she can to hold on to him.  And then Binchy has a twist where Kit seems to be repeating her mother's history, but it's OK in her case because the promiscuous Stevie Sullivan reforms when he gets involved with her.  Also, I didn't like how Helen gives much less thought to her son, Emmet, when we're meant to think that she misses both children terribly.

As usual, there are chronological errors, but not the typical ones.  The story is set in the 1950s, from I think 1952 to 1959.  There's a heavy-handed bit, before Helen runs off, when she tells Kit that the 1960s will be a great time for women.  (She must've borrowed the time machine from Twisting Clare of Echoes.)  Equally annoying, Binchy can't keep straight the age difference between Kit and Emmet, nor that between Kit's frenemy Clio and kid sister Anna.  Anna is seven when the older girls are twelve, but acts sixteen when they're eighteen, and she's dating fifteen/seventeen-year-old Emmet and twenty-one-year-old Stevie.

I have to ask, did Binchy ever get a good editor?  This is the last of her books I own, although she kept writing right up to her death last year.

Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For

1995, possible first edition, although bought "new" a couple years later, published by Firebrand Books
Alison Bechdel
Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For
Bought "new" for $10.95
Slightly worn paperback
B

For the most part, I found this to be weaker than the other collections, but I really enjoyed the bonus story, "Sentimental Education," in which Ginger puts off finishing her thesis in order to "document her friendship network."  So we get glimpses of the Dykes in the early '80s, including incredibly, a porn-hating Lois who becomes Sparrow's first lover!  It's much less of a shock to see that Mo's first lover, Clarice as you'll recall, got tired of Mo's whining.

As for the mid-'90s, Clarice and Toni's son Rafi grows up quickly, from newborn to toddler, with Toni postponing coming out to her parents, until her cousin accidentally outs her.  Lois helps Mo and Thea get over their mutual infatuation, with New Year's kisses, and then Mo has a fling with Deirdre, but mostly Mo is unhappily celibate, leading to the great line "Is this eerily reminiscent of tenth grade, or what?" as she babysits Rafi and her friends go on a double date.

There are definitely nice moments along the way, including offpage Adam this time loaning June a dress, while Sparrow looks sharp in a tux.  I just didn't feel as drawn in as usual, no pun intended.

Next time, Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch out For (1997)....

Oh My Goddess!

1994, undated later edition, from Penguin
Sally Swain
Oh My Goddess!
Bought newish for $11.95
Slightly worn paperback
B-

Cute book with well-done art, slightly reminiscent of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, only these look like paintings of plates of goddesses rather than stylized vulvas.  Swain created modern goddesses, like Documentia, Goddess of Lists, and Acuppa, Goddess of Tea.  (Swain is Australian.)  Nothing brilliant here and it's a very quick read, but I like the different styles of art, and the multiculturalism.  And I have to remind myself that Jokerman font wasn't so overused back then.

This thin book completes not only 1994, but the current bookshelf.

Inside Gilligan's Island: A Three-Hour Tour...

1994, revised from the 1988 edition, from St. Martin's Press
Sherwood Schwartz
Inside Gilligan's Island: A Three-Hour Tour Through the Making of a Television Classic
Bought new for $13.95
Worn paperback
B-

The creator himself weighs on his (in)famous show.  Parts of the book clearly weren't updated (as when he talks about how much time has passed), but yes, he very briefly mentions the original Professor and "girls."  He also, amusingly enough, talks about cowriting the script for the first Brady Bunch movie, with son Lloyd.  He and Lloyd would go on to cowrite Brady, Brady, Brady, which I've read but don't own, having found Lloyd's ego unbearable.  (I'm not alone in this, as you'll see if you take a peek at the Amazon reviews.)  Not that Sherwood doesn't himself have annoying quirks as a nonfiction writer, among them mild sexism and pretentiousness.  (Note, Samuel Johnson was not a "Victorian" writer, having died in 1784.)

Still, the saga of how GI became a show remains an interesting one, and although Denver and Johnson's books, to say nothing of Green's, have more to say about what actually aired, this is the book to find out what went on behind the scenes, especially before the show was even on the schedule.  I haven't watched the original pilot in a long while (I'm saving it for November, in honor of the 50th anniversary of taping), but I do recall that the calypso theme song didn't really work, and I can only imagine how wretched it was sung by "the songbird from Passaic."  The elder Schwartz has an ego of his own, but he's not afraid to poke fun at himself.

Media-Tions: Forays into the Culture and Gender Wars

1994, undated later edition, from South End Press
Elayne Rapping
Media-Tions: Forays into the Culture and Gender Wars
Original price $15.00, purchase price $11.99
Worn paperback
B

I liked this book more than I recalled, even though Rapping does criticize Faludi's Backlash.  (I agree with her criticisms of Wolf's Beauty Myth.)  It's ironic that one of her criticisms is that some of Backlash was then "old news," considering that Rapping includes '70s pieces on soap operas and Tupperware.  And some of what she writes about has already been covered by other books I've read, such as Woody Allen's involvement with Soon-Yi (Goodman's Value Judgments collection from '93).  

Still, it was fun and thought-provoking to get Rapping's views on Amy Fisher, Thelma and Louise, Beverly Hills 90210, and, yes, rapping with a small R.  The other feminist media critics I've looked at mostly haven't addressed (then) modern music, and I like that pre-Baby-Boomer Rapping (born in 1938) found positive things to say about not just Madonna but other aspects of Music TV (little and big Ms, Ts, and Vs).  In fact, this book is sort of the inverse of Smith's Misogynies, in that it's a little too upbeat and positive.  Still, it was a nice change.  And, although a straight mother of two, she addresses gay representation more than her peers.  (One element missing in Douglas's otherwise wonderful Where the Girls Are, an issue I'll be returning to when I get up to Enlightened Sexism in 2010.)

I think Rapping is the first to get the quadruple crown of all my "criticism" tags, since she also discusses romance novels.

Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living out on a Limb

1994, possibly first edition, from Houghton Mifflin Company
Peter Nelson, edited and designed by David Larkin, principal photography by Paul Rocheleau, with drawings by Royal Barry Wills and Charles H. Crombie
Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living out on a Limb
Original price $19.95, purchase price $5.60
Worn paperback
B

There are two irrational desires that Walt Disney's Swiss Family Robinson fueled in me as a child.  One was a crush on Tommy Kirk.  The other was a wish to live, or at least vacation, in a treehouse, even though I was and am afraid of heights.  This book obviously taps into the latter desire, one that I'm not alone in.  Nelson and even more so Rocheleau offer glimpses of treehouses around the world (although disproportionately in the Pacific Northwest), from simple platforms to villas.  The middle part of the book shows how Nelson, with the help of hard-working friends, built a treehouse in British Columbia.  Although there's some practical advice, this isn't really a how-to book, but fuel for daydreams and perhaps inspiration.  As such, it works.

I, Elizabeth

1994, first edition, from Doubleday
Rosalind Miles
I, Elizabeth
Original and purchase price unknown
Hardcover with split spine
C+

This feels like a missed opportunity.  Miles takes Elizabeth I from age 10 to about 67, but she puts too much emphasis on Elizabeth's romance-novel-like romances with men who trip her Electra Complex, and not enough on the politics of the time.  Also, fairly far into the novel, Miles is off by a year or two, which matters particularly since this is when Elizabeth is in early adolescence.  (Miles even gets Henry VIII's death year wrong, and that's not exactly a hard fact to check.) 

Additionally, there were two aspects of Miles's and/or Elizabeth's writing style and/or personality that grated on me.  One is that Elizabeth often quotes Shakespeare, without acknowledgement.  Are we meant to think that a poet-playwright whose name the queen couldn't even remember had somehow become quotable to that level by 1600?  Or is Miles implying that the queen wrote Shakespeare's plays?  At least Elizabeth could conceivably make these sort of references, but what about the "shitting bull" pun about the Pope?  It's not just the crudity, but why is Miles also punning about a Native American leader who wouldn't even be born for another three centuries?

That another annoying aspect is not unrelated.  There's a disgust throughout with the human body (unless it belongs to a handsome man of course).  This is at its worst in the descriptions of her half-sister, Mary I.  There's also some gratuitous homophobia (gratuitous in the sense that it's somewhat off-topic and adds nothing to the plot or character development), but I can't say that heterosexuality comes off much better.

What did I like?  Well, oddly enough, I liked that Elizabeth is an unreliable or at least naive narrator, since she'll size up a situation and then be dead wrong.  True, this goes against the image of her as canny and savvy, but it worked in the novel.  Also, I thought Miles did a nice job of showing the passage of time (when she could get the year right), and how Elizabeth adapted to changing circumstances.  The book is never boring, even if it's often irritating.  I'd actually remembered it as better than Margaret George's Henry VIII novel, but I think that's because I still like Elizabeth better than her father.  Still, she deserves a better first-person story than this.

The New Book of Rock Lists

1994, edition from later that year, from Fireside
Dave Marsh and James Bernard
The New Book of Rock Lists
Probably bought newish for $15.00
Worn paperback
B-

I guess this is about equally good to the 1981 edition, but it has some of the flaws of the earlier book, as well as some new ones.  Once again, there's no index, although I suppose you can guess where a list is based on what chapter it's likely in.  The thing is, some of the previous chapters-- like the ones on the Beatles and Elvis-- have been collapsed into other chapters, like "History."  And I found it somewhat annoying how the coauthors would say "rock & rap," like that's a thing.  Either rap is part of rock and shouldn't be privileged over other subgenres, or it's a separate genre in of itself.

In fact, I found a disconnect while reading this edition, that I didn't before.  Marsh and Bernard would agree with my comment that the earlier edition came out at a very transitional time in music, but we would disagree on what was significant about the baker's dozen of years of new music.  While I doubled my age (13 to 26), I mostly listened to the more pop-oriented end of rock, rather than the harsher sounds of rap/hip-hop and metal.  Yes, I was aware of those subgenres, but even the bands and artists I liked were lighter, e.g. En Vogue and Van Halen.  And I can't remember one reference to the Thompson Twins, and very few to even Culture Club.  Of the groups/artists that I have '91-'93 videos of on VHS, they're either not mentioned at all, or only once or twice, such as Tony! Toni! Tone! or Tom Cochrane.  To say nothing of Deee-lite and the B-52s a few years earlier.  Dave Marsh himself is on about half a dozen of the lists, and all he did as a musician was the Rock Bottom Remainders.

That all said, I did enjoy the book, finding it informative and sometimes amusing.  Some lists are updated while others are frozen in time, and of course there are new lists.  The Enemies List is probably the most significantly changed, since Tipper Gore and others drew their ire for efforts towards censorship.  And of course the list of "Famous Censorship Cases" expanded, my favorite example being Rhino Records' 1984 release of The Official Record Album of the Olympics, featuring the doo-whop band the Olympics:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/OLYMPICS-OFFICIAL-RECORD-ALBUM-OF-RHINO-SEALED-LP-/230815702823

The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend

1994, 1998 Cleis edition
Mabel Maney
The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend
Bought newish for $14.95
Slightly worn paperback
B-

It turns out I like this about equally to the first "Cherry & Nancy" book.  In this one, they and their friends take a road trip from Idaho to Illinois (with some time in Iowa as well), in order for Nancy to confess to the murder of her molesting father.  Despite that, the tone is still pretty light and the focus is still on romance among the girls, with "perfect couple" Midge & Velma having a spat but ending up married (with Midge impersonating Frank Hardly).  Meanwhile, Officer Jackie Jones falls for Cherry, after a fling with Cherry's boss.  The funny thing is, only about two weeks have passed since the series started.

Next up, A Ghost in the Closet, with the Hardly Boys helping their chum Nancy, in 1995....