1Q84

My daughter gave me this book for my 57th birthday (along with an Alice Walker hand silk-screened shirt and bookplates exactly like the ones I used when I was a kid). I sat up and read a lot of it last night, skipping around. It's a collection of zine pieces with an alphabetical organization but my reading plan was more like flipping and seeing what caught my eye, which worked just fine. It's a visually wonderful book, with its zine aesthetic (that sounds so academic) - some hand-written pages, some typed, some typed words with drawings around the edges, lots of glue and scissors involved. It's a great reminder that books are not just digital bits, but a visual experience, a chance to be delighted and for the words to be given a special place on the page. Take that, blah Kindle pages without souls. The pieces on gender and health and abuse and recovery and quitting drinking and everything related to identity are great. Also the ones on anarchism and feminism and how they fit together and how to keep hoping even when things seem hopelessly screwed up. I kept thinking of who I want to share different parts with - it's the kind of book that makes you want to share. Also recipes here and there, notes about writers, and stuff on making music and writing and growing food and figuring out how to live. It's a good book to have around when you want to stop doing something you don't want to do and just read for a bit. And oh wow, there's a table of contents. I have to go read, now.