Reading Rambo

What went down on Saturday? C2E2 went down. C2E2 is one of Chicago's larger comic cons. It's at McCormick Place, which is a giant convention center south of downtown, and nerds from far and wide gather to get things signed, walk around in costume, and go to panels about Lady Representation in Comics (note: not actual panel name). My friend Doug and I went as Dr Sattler and Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park . IT WAS MY FIRST TIME COSPLAYING so everyone can just reserve judgment for next year when I am awesome at it. Doug put a dinosaur head on a sawed-off rake and dipped a mop-head in fake blood and carried that around all day, and I tied a can of Barbasol to my backpack and carried around a plastic cup of water. It was a loving tribute. But this is the thing. This is the thing about conventions. People are there because they are EXCITED. They're real damn jazzed about everything that's going on, and you can wear whatever the hell you want, and someone  will s...

I don't know how to hold books for pictures. I posted a blurby review of Edan Lepucki's California before I'd finished it, because that's how I do, but I have now actually finished it and attended an event of hers hosted by the excellent Chicago bookstore The Book Cellar (no, I did not get the double meaning of that name until I said it out loud, which was embarrassingly recently). I was impressed by The Book Cellar, Edan Lepucki, and California . All of them. Let's discuss why in reverse order: California is a book I requested from Little, Brown because I loved the cover SO MUCH and it said something about post-apocalyptic AND a small community with dark secrets. I would actually call it "semi-post-apocalyptic," but the two main characters are still forced to move into the forest and pee outside and build things out of wood they've chopped themselves and go to bed when it's dark out because THERE IS NO ELECTRICITY IN THE POST-APOCALYPT...

Donna Tartt came to Chicago. For those unaware, Donna Tartt wrote The Secret History and The Goldfinch (and also a third book that no one really talks about). She also has author pictures that cause hardened warriors to quake in their spike-tipped boots. Better known amongst her kindred as "Soul Reaper." I liked The Goldfinch . And I like author events. And Donna Tartt looked so impressively terrifying that I had a whole plan of going up to the author table and being AS CHEERFUL AS I COULD POSSIBLY BE to see what happened. So I went to Northwestern's Thorne Auditorium and sat in a seat that yielded this blurry picture (Tartt is, of course, on the right): The audience was mostly made up of gay men and older women. So I distrust my own reactions to the program, because maybe everyone aside from my friend Jeff and myself was fascinated by the talk and thought some very probing questions were put to Ms. Tartt. What seemed to happen, though, was the followi...

I needed to photocopy something, so I ran to the library after work. As I headed upstairs, I glanced at the Visiting Authors board as I always do, and was about to keep going when suddenly -- "Emma Donoghue. March 20. 3:30 PM." WHAT. What was today? Surely the 19th. NO IT WAS THE 20TH. AND IT WAS 5 PM. WHY GOD. WHY DID YOU DO THIS. Utterly dejected and pondering the meaninglessness of existence, I trudged the rest of the way upstairs. 'But perhaps she's still here!' I suddenly thought, and made my way to the security desk. "Do you know if the Emma Donoghue event is over?" Two extremely kind guards said maybe it was, as it was almost 5:30, but there was no harm in taking the elevator to the basement floor and checking. So I did. And you know what? The 3:30 event was over. BUT THERE WAS ANOTHER AT 6. And suddenly there I was. In a ridiculously not-full auditorium, watching Emma Donoghue speak. She was charming. She was tall. She was Irish-Can...

Author events! They are swell. Some of the time. I heartily recommend you go to one, unless it's someone like Jonathan Franzen, 'cause hah, what a tool. Every author event I've gone to, though, has been spiffy. LAST NIGHT BEING NO EXCEPTION. So meeting people I'm friends with on the internets is my favorite. I don't know why. People are neat? Sure, that. I've had maybe two not-great experiences out of a billion, but most of them have been like "It's YOU and now I don't have to wait for you to type things because you're right HERE and oh, let's go eat things and talk about television."  I follow  Elizabeth Fama's blog , and we occasionally chat on twitter (omg WHY are you not on twitter; it's so much fun), and she reported she was having a book release party at 57th Street Books in Hyde Park for Monstrous Beauty , which is her YA book +about mermaids and Massachusetts. COMPELLING STUFF. Here's the pretty cover, which...

Two years ago, I was linked to a vlog called Feminist Frequency . The subject was the Bechdel Test, which succinctly is: 1. Does a movie have at least two women in it 2. Do they talk to each other 3. About something other than a man At the very least, it's eye-opening about how for-granted we take a scarcity of women in film, despite us making up, what, 51% of the global population now? This test was invented by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip 'Dykes to Watch Out For.' I did not know the latter; I thought it was in a scholarly paper or something. But then I saw she was coming to Chicago to speak about her new book/graphic novel, so -- ! She writes graphic novels! Very well then. I picked up her first, Fun Home , as well as the newest, Are You My Mother? . They're both memoirs about her family: Fun Home is about her father and his possible suicide, and Are You My Mother? deals with psychoanalysis and her mother. I've read about half...