vassilissa

I've decided I'm going to post my reviews here, the pathetic ones I'm doing at $.20 for 50 words for fishpond.com.au because I am actually that broke and willing to write glib summaries for shiny book vouchers. I'm not very happy with the quality of my reviews - something icky happens to my prose when I try to write commercially, even though I know no one's actually reading them. Maybe posting them here, where I know people will read them, will help me in future.

I'll post them in batches of five, each batch earning me a dollar.


Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
5 of 5 Stars! – Customer review on 11/01/2009
"Fun Home" is a powerful, painful, and truthful memoir of a father and daughter's difficult relationship and parallel lives. It is erudite, beautifully drawn, funny, horrifying, sad, warm, and fair. Bechdel is best known for her wonderful, detailed chronicling of her own generation of the lesbian community. "Fun Home" is in the same easily accessible art style, but is much darker in content.

Stephen Fry, Paperweight
5 of 5 Stars! – Customer review on 11/01/2009
"Paperweight" is hilarious. The author himself suggests that this collection might be best classified as part of the bathroom genre of literature, but he underestimates his readers' demand (or perhaps overestimates the time they spend in the lavatory.) His writing style is fresh, funny, and interesting long past the expiry date of the newspapers and radio broadcasts in which his essays first appeared.

Diane DiMassa, The Complete Hothead Paisan
5 of 5 Stars! – Customer review on 11/01/2009
Hothead Paisan's message of violent revolution against the forces of patriarchy, capitalism, and homophobia was revolutionary in 1991 when Diane DiMassa first began publishing the work as a zine. At the time, conventional lesbian politics called for a Gandhian level of nonviolence; Hothead made it permissible to own one's anger. The same forces are still massed against outsiders like Hothead, and we need her brand of humour and outraged indignation as much as ever.

Kate Bornstein, My Gender Workbook
5 of 5 Stars! – Customer review on 11/01/2009

In this book, Kate Bornstein ably deconstructs the gender binary, guiding her readers with humour and authority through complex issues of identity and unsubtle issues of discrimination and intolerance, hoping to help them reach a sense of peace with their own gender or genders, and those of others. This book changed my life, and it may do the same for you, or at least make you aware of the range of possibilities available.

Andrew M. Greeley, The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain
3 of 5 Stars! – Customer review on 11/01/2009

I have to admit, I guessed the solution to this detective story halfway through. It was really not challenging at all, especially to someone who also reads Josephine Tey's detective stories: it has exactly the same plot as "To Love and Be Wise". That said, "The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain" is, like all Father Andrew M Greeley's books, charmingly written, sentimental, and kindly meant. If you like the other books in this series, you will probably like this one too.