Spinning

Spinning  by Tillie Walden

Tillie Walden was a competitive figure and synchronized ice skater for twelve years, but she says that although an ice rink will always be a familiar place, it will also always make her cringe.

With skating as the backdrop, the author conducts readers through a tour of the changes in her young life:  a family move from New Jersey to Texas, making (and losing) friends, learning new skills on the ice, falling in love with another girl, coming out to her friends and family, and always prepping for the next competition. 

Tillie worked hard.  She was good, and successful...and she hated the whole thing.

Using a comic/graphic novel format, Tillie tells her story--not just the skating, but other parts as well:  her friends, her family, and always, her loneliness.  The illustrations are simple, thoughtful and compelling.  

Recommended for readers 12 to adult.  Sexual situations are discussed tactfully, and there are no nekkid bodies on the page.  

Tomboy

Tomboy: a graphic memoir  by Liz Prince

Liz was a kid who knew what she liked:  boy stuff.  Boy clothing, boy toys and games, boy sports, boys as friends.  She also knew what she didn't like:  girl stuff.

Her road to adulthood was bumpy and full of uncertainty.  Was she a lesbian?  Transgender?  A complete freakazoidal weirdo that nobody would ever like (except her mom, because that's her mom's, like, job)?  

Would Liz ever conform to gender norms?  And more importantly:  would Liz ever want to comform?

This quick-paced graphic memoir is full of angst, but it's also funny.  Liz may not be much like other people, but she's got a handle on that now.  Her story is worth reading--and sharing.

Recommended for ages 14 to adult. 

Amazing Fantastic Incredible

Amazing Fantastic Incredible: a MARVELous memoir   by Stan Lee and Peter David and Colleen Doran

Of course Stan Lee's memoir is told in comic format.  

Mere print could never capture the exuberance, the ego, and the buoyant zest of the most legendary name in the history of comic books.  Stan Lee not only co-created many of Marvel Comics' most popular superhero characters like Spiderman, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and the Uncanny X-men, he spent his long and prolific career writing, editing, promoting and publishing comic books and the comic book industry.  

Stan Lee narrates his own life story with the same bouncy, conversational narrative style that he uses when talking to groups at comic book conventions:  big gestures, big ideas, and lots and lots of enthusiasm for the fun life he has had.  He doesn't skip over the sad stuff or the hard stuff, but he doesn't dwell there, either.  There are lots of little anecdotes from his life and plenty of unexpected stories too, like the time he worked on a WWII US Army campaign to combat venereal disease (give yourself a giggle and do a Google Image search for "VD Not Me" to see some of the vintage posters created by the campaign).

The narrative reads like a brag sheet splashed with copious amounts of super-radioactive slime:  it's not great literature, but it is great fun.  There are mentions of sex and sexual situations, references to comic book violence, and plenty of scantily-clad female superheros pictured.  Plus a few epic superheros who turn green or burst into flame periodically.

Highly recommended.  

Sex, Lies & Cookies

Sex, Lies & Cookies by  Lisa Glasberg

Tired of Martha Stewart perfection?  Or even Red Green’s sort of “perfection?”  Or maybe Martha Stewart meets Dr. Ruth with a plate of cookies?  Who wouldn’t want a book by this title? 

Radio personality “Lisa G” is lately known as part of Howard Stern’s radio group.  Most people choosing this book would expect to learn more about Stern, I’ll bet.  In fact, there is very little. 

What is here is one woman’s rise to become a radio personality.  From the time she was in junior high, Lisa wanted to be on radio, and this was to be the driving force behind her every thought, career move, and radio preparation.  Her voice on the radio allowed her to accept the love she didn’t feel in childhood and could not accept from her lovers.  Of which there were many:  “The nice thing about having people love you for your voice is that you don’t have to be anywhere near them while they’re listening to you.  You can be far, far, away.  And that’s how I liked it.  Unfortunately, I carried that fear of intimacy into my personal life.  I loved men, and I loved sex with men, but that whole relationship give-and-take thing?  I wasn’t such a fan of that.  My idea of a giving relationship with a man was to bake him cookies and take them over to his apartment while wearing a fur coat and nothing underneath.  And that’s not giving- that’s giving it away.”  However, we really don’t see that she does love sex.  In most of her relationships, she complains about her lack of fun in sex.  Perhaps she wants us to feel sorry for her lack of relationships also?  Perhaps she wants us to feel much more the career focus because of the lack of fun in sex?

This pretty much sums up the book- a swing through her many (poor) relationships and sex life, when what we wanted was the inside scoop on radio stations. The best section relayed her adventures with HOT 97, a hip-hop station in New York.  The idea of photographing her foot next to Shaquille O’Neal’s foot is a hoot.   We get that Lisa is unapologetic about her single-minded career focus:  “Men get rewarded for going after their careers single-mindedly.  And if they get married at age forty-eight . . . no one even raises an eyebrow.  But if a woman spends decades on her career, doesn’t get married, doesn’t have kids. . . well, I don’t need to tell you the kind of reaction that gets.”  Pretty current theme in popular non-fiction literature now.  

But let’s go back to the title:  it wasn’t leading us astray.  Sex, lies (in relationships) and cookies.  The cookie recipes are great.  Especially the lemonade bars and “Losing my cherry cookies.”  In fact, all of the cookies are deliberately placed for emphasis in the story, with little quips within the cookie story.  Cookies are such a focus that the “epilog” is a treatise on how to stage and produce a cookie party, broken down by steps months in advance.
           
This is billed as a memoir, and in light of recent problems with the facts within memoirs, Lisa admits that some of the facts are rearranged chronologically or combined to make more sense.
           
Originally we read this as a possible adult-to-young-adult focus.  We don't recommend it for teen readers.  We would recommend it to adult women for the beach this summer.  It doesn’t go beyond that.  And at $25.99, get it from the library or wait for paperback.  But it is fun.
           
Finally, a new favorite quote came from this book:  “That which does not kill you gives you a story to tell later.”