alibrarymama

So the book I reviewed yesterday made me so very angry that I was in desperate need of some lighter fare.

The Knitting Goddess by Deborah Bergman This book, a kitchen-witchy book of the first order, was a birthday gift. It’s a combination of stories of goddesses associated with the fiber arts, hands-on knitting advice, and reflections on using your knitting to help order your life. Amazingly, it does really well at all three. The stories are well told, putting fresh twists on familiar stories like that of Arachne, as well as including lesser-known goddesses like the Native American Grandmother Spider. The knitting advice is sound. It includes rare left-handed knitting instructions, and advice on yarns that goes beyond the basic wool-cotton-synthetic to tell you why, if you work with it long enough, you won’t care that merino pills and why you will neither find nor should you want bulky weight pure cashmere. The patterns look attractive, and are all at the beginner or low intermediate level. Perhaps best of all, rather than being clumped in one hard-to-digest lump at the beginning, the instructions start with the bare basics after the first story, and add a little bit more each chapter. I found reflective bits to be nice, thoughtful, while mostly avoiding the “woo woo space cadet” pagan trap. If you like fibers and myths, you’ll likely love this book. If you just like myths, it’s still worth picking up.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel While in graphic form, Allison Bechdel’s autobiography is not fluff. (“Who is Alison Bechdel?” asks . “Do you remember that comic series, Dykes to Watch Out For that my church’s old intern had?” “No… is she, like, the real life model for Joey in Chasing Amy?” “Quite likely, but without the secret straight urges part.) If you’ve been wondering why people write graphic novels when they could just write books, wonder no more. Bechdel’s mastery of the graphic format is truly awe-inspiring, her detailed pictures unobtrusively filling in the background of the story the text tells. Bechdel tells of herself and her relationship with her father, high school English teacher, part-time funeral home director, passionate restorer of historical houses, and – as she finds out in college, shortly after she discovers that she herself is a lesbian – closeted gay. The story comes to us not chronologically, but filtered through the lenses of the different classic works of literature over which father and daughter bonded. Read it.

She-Hulk Vol.1-3 by Dan Slott et al. Ill. Juan Bobillo This is truly fluffy fluff, yes indeed, kindly loaned to us by Superman Dave. Tiny and un-assuming lawyer by day, giant jade superhero and party girl by night, Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk struggles to balance her two identities while stopping supervillains and winning cases for the Superhuman Law Offices of the most prestigious law firm on the East Coast. There’s action, adventure, some mild passes at deep thoughts, and lots of cleavage shots.