Vegetarian Vampires

Since Vegetarian Vampires seem so popular, what with Twilight selling by the truckload and Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse (a.k.a. HBO's True Blood) books rising in the cultural zeitgeist, it seems only fair to point out my favorite of the Vegetarian Vampire fare, a little graphic novel called Life Sucks.  Jessica Abel, arguably one of the best comics artists and writers in the country right now, wrote the book with Gabe Soria.  It is brilliantly drawn by Warren Pleece, but it, in my opinion is the sparkling crown in the Vegetarian Vampire fiction.  

Dave is a vampire, but unlike the Lost Boys, he doesn't get to sleep all day and party all night.  He sleeps all day and works at a horrible quick stop (a la Clerks) job at night.  He hates the idea of killing humans so he drinks blood substitute and is completely obsessed with a girl who is completely obsessed with vampires.  The only catch is the ridiculous goth who organizes vampire meetings and seems to hold this mysterious vixen's attention.  

Life Sucks injects humor, reality, and maybe even a little bit of pathos into the usually glamourous and romantic world of vampires.  What if vampires were just like us?  They have to pay rent, they have to live life...forever.  

Happy Reading,

Julia

Christmas Kids

If your family is at all like mine, you have about a trillion kids to buy presents for this Christmas.  Kids are hard to shop for; toy stores are overwhelming and generic, they hate clothes, and what else are you supposed to get them?  I'm a big fan of buying kids books, but it's hard to buy books sometimes.  Most kids have Goodnight, Moon or Where the Wild Things Are (and if they don't you should buy those for them immediately), but there are some lesser known classics they should own as well.  

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak,  author of Where the Wild Things Are, was my favorite book growing up.  About a kid who ends up in a pastry airplane and takes a ride through the kitchen.  He ends up in a glass of milk that breaks up the pastry and brings him back to his warm cozy bed.  

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss is a great treatise on deforestation and our climate crisis that's written in such a way it is easily accessible and not to freaky for kids.  If you want to teach kids to be respectful of the Earth, this is the book for you.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst follows Alexander through is bad day that just keeps getting worse.  In the end, it teaches a valuable lesson about picking yourself up off the ground after a bad day and looking forward to the next good one.  

Finally, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett ends up in the vein of The Lorax when you read closely.  It is about a town where meals rain from the sky.  One day, the pancakes get so big they cover houses and knock down trees, meatballs fall through roofs, soup floods the town of Chewandswallow and all the townspeople are forced to leave.  One of my favorites from childhood.  

Happy Holidays (and Reading),

Julia

Murder Mile

Down and Out on Murder Mile by Tony O'Neill should be added to the canon of great drug books. It should stand proudly alongside Naked Lunch and Permanent Midnight, stand tall among Last Exit to Brooklyn and Wonderland Avenue as a landmark of vein-injecting oblivion-inducing action. It gets into the nitty gritty of what being a heroin addict is all about, the filth, the craving, the aching, the vomiting, while at it's core harnessing the exquisite vulnerability of addiction.

Murder Mile along with O'Neill's first book Digging The Vein are both in contention to take places in the great drug memoir/fiction oeuvre. A must for anyone who likes to read about wretched messes or those who just like a good story of redemption.

Happy Reading,
Julia

Punk Rock Oeuvre, Part 3

Michael Cera seems to be a recurring theme this week in my book picks.  If you weren't already aware, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was a book before it was a movie, though it didn't come out too long before it became a movie so I can't blame you if you missed it.  

Personally, I thought the movie was surprisingly cute, but whatever you thought of it, or even if you didn't see it, the book is shockingly good.  Like all good books about teenagers, it does capture the exhilaration and newness of youth.  But like so few books do it captures the wanting, the horniness, the urges that, at the age of 17 or 18 we have not yet learned to control.  Nick and Norah have a lot to teach us: how to let go, how to give in, how to have the best night ever, and perhaps most importantly, how to realize when some connection between people transcends the humdrum wanting and horniness to become something more, something real.  

Happy Reading,

Julia

Punk Rock Oeuvre, Part 2

Stephanie Kuehnert's I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, like the other books in this 'series' transcends the Young Adult section that it is usually relegated to.  In my opinion, a book that deals with sex, drugs and rock & roll in an adult fashion, even if the book is about a teenager, should be in the regular fiction section, but that's just me.  

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone combines beautiful, seemingly effortless writing with gritty reality.  It portrays a version of life that is less than ideal, but wholly realistic.  From the less than romantic way the protagonist, Emily Black, looses her virginity to her search for her long lost mother, Kuehnert's writing captures the more somber side of growing up, the emptiness and the loneliness.  The music is what brings Emily back from the dark abyss.  And the saving power of music comes through Emily's journey into adulthood.  

This one took me completely by surprise and made me mourn the fact that I wasn't able to read it as a young punk girl who's only hope was music and books.

Happy Reading,

Julia

Punk Rock Oeuvre, Part 1

There are a small handful of books that any young punk rocker must read at some point.  Not just books like On The Road or any of the plethora of books on Punk, but actual fiction that portrays young punks as they are, kids who are passionate about music, politics and life.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is the first of these punk rock books.  Though not an overt depiction of punk rockers, the rest of the books in this short series of reviews will be, Perks of Being a Wallflower deals with the real outcasts of high school society, not just the people who aren't star quarterbacks, but people who actually run in an entirely different circle.  The group of kids in Wallflower could care less about football players or cheerleaders, they aren't ostracized because they want to be in those crowds, they actively choose not to be in those crowds and concentrate instead on things like playing Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday night, or talking to the awesome girl you like.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower straddles that line of awkward adolescence and self-discovery.  The main character, Charlie, deals with girls, masturbation, and finding out that his best friend is gay.  In each case, Chbosky infuses the exhilaration of adolescence with the pain of growing up and the overall fun of midnight showings of Rocky Horror.  

Happy Reading,

Julia

Horizontal Hysteria

Eight months ago I had no idea who Chelsea Handler was. All I knew, I had to fly across town from the LA Times Festival of Books home to shower the 100 heat off of me and then jet over to the Wiltern for an event with this person. And I had less than an hour to accomplish all of this. As I sell books and have to stay with them I seldom get to go watch the performer, which was exactly the case on this night. But something struck me as people walked bleary eyed into and out of the theater, looking like they had drunk the proverbial kool-aid. Something about this lady had people hooked, and judging by the title of her newest book, Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, I would likely be it's next victim.

Sure enough I started tivoing her show and was quickly won over by her caustic charm and the constant referral to her alcoholism. Yes, I loved her from then on.

It has, however, taken me until this very day to actually read one of her books. They've taunted me from shelves, from boxes, from magazine articles for months now, and, being the OCD-in-a-weird-way person that I am, I felt I needed to read them in sequential order. Today, along with working entirely too much, I read the entirety of My Horizontal Life, Chelsea's first book about her life as a sexually liberated woman. Throughout the book people, including her father, call her a slut, but I'd like to think that she's just a woman who knows what she wants...sex, and lots of it.

The stories in My Horizontal Life had me laughing out loud in my favorite bar. They are witty, charming, and carry an underlying tone of vulnerability that perhaps Ms. Handler herself is unaware of. There's just something about Chelsea though, she calls it like it is and in this world, that's all we can ask for.

Happy Reading,
Julia

Teenage Years, Part 2

Growing up in the Bay Area in the '90s there were certain staples of culture that touched everyone.  Some were more mainstream, like a love of Sublime or the inevitable experience of missing the last BART train and having to figure out another mode of transportation across the bay.  Some were underground, like hanging out at 924 Gilman or reading Youth in Revolt.

At some point, C.D. Payne's book about a kid who's sick of his completely deranged parents and accidentally ends up running from the law, and dressing as a girl so he can stay in school to see his crush, Sheeni, crossed my path.  Of course, any book about adolescent boys must be compared to Catcher in the Rye.  I'm guilty of it myself.  But Nick Twisp, makes Holden Caulfield look like a complete amateur as he evades the Oakland Police, CHP and even the FBI in a series of narrow escapes that keep getting more and more outrageous, yet never seem to cross into ridiculous.  

Youth in Revolt is one of those books that captures the thrill of youth without condescending to the youth it describes.  Plus, Michael Cera is playing Nick Twisp in the movie.

Happy Reading,

Julia

Teenage Years, Part 1

There are those little gems you find in a cool bookstore completely by accident that become beloved, well-worn books that make their way around your immediate group of friends, Grab Onto Me Tightly As If I Knew the Way, by Bryan Charles, was one of those books for me.  Not only is it a kind of Catcher in the Rye of the Nirvana generation, but in a way that Holden could never be, the narrator, Vim Sweeney, is deeply damaged, and somewhat unaware of that damage.  He's just a kid trying to make it through High School graduation and the beginning of life.  

I can't quite put my finger on why this novel works so well, but somehow it does.  And unlike Catcher in the Rye, which I truly believe you have to read as a teenager, or you won't connect to it in the way you are supposed to, Grab onto Me Tightly works for an adult who is less in touch with the overwhelming emotion of those formative years.  It's just a great read.

Happy Reading,

Julia