The White Album and Notes to John
I appreciate that her work seems to be suddenly available and back in print. I often find it on shelves and see it arriving at my local independent bookstore.
Rusalka
Rusalka is a tortoiseshell cat, with beautifully brindled fur and a silly Groucho-Marx moustache. She’s bossy, chatty, and very, very lovey.
She was adopted at ten weeks old in September 2020 and is the youngest cat in our household. People warned us about ‘tortitude’ when we adopted her — and she does have attitude, but not nearly as much as we expected.
Rusalka hates to be picked up. Except when she wants onto your lap, then you have to pick her up. Any other time, and she will stick her legs and claws out and flail like you’re murdering her. She goes where she wants to go, and she might be a little bit spoiled.
But you are guaranteed to be Rusalka’s friend. This cat has always been friends with everyone. She is friends with the vet. After her shots, she will rub against the vet’s leg to remind them that they are still friends. She is friends with the service technicians who fix our furnace. And the plumber. And anyone who visits. And her sisters most of all. Rusalka even gets along with the famously anti-friends Jabberwocky.
She is very serious when she plays, whether that’s chasing a string or screaming before running after a felt bee thrown down the hallway. Her favourite toy is the bee on the string, but we don’t play that very often. When she catches the bee on the string, she bites down and growls and gets very, very serious about keeping what she has caught.
She’s the biggest, cuddliest Mama’s girl, and Hargrave rarely gets to lie down and read without Rusalka insisting on being put on her lap.
Moomin
I was late when it comes to the world of Moomin, only encountering it in my mid-twenties when I was really delving into the world of independent and vintage comics.
On Photography
Hers is one of those names that is constantly mentioned — especially if you read literary essays or are generally interested in the New York City art scene in the 1970s through the 1990s.
Girl, Interrupted
Girl, Interrupted features one of my favourite structures — it is a memoir constructed via vignettes. There are lots of margins here.
Horse Crazy
Not only is this published at a time when LGBT+ relationships were not depicted with any kind of regularity in literature, but it uses a framework that is used frequently in heterosexual romances.
To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life
While it might sound like a difficult read, it isn’t. Guibert’s voice remains strong even as his body is starting to weaken and more fear dominates his days.
Close to the Knives
Wojnarowicz is asking us to listen to him crying from his deathbed and the reader cannot turn away.
Voices of the Fallen Heroes
When you read these stories, it’s easy to start looking for threads of his eventual fate or at least the mental state that led to it. Are they there? Yes, but they are subtle.
Written on Water
These essays are talks over coffee and catching up after a long week. They are close friends talking about the issues that matter to them and the parts of the past still stuck to the hem of their clothes.
Hollywood Babylon
here’s one thing you have to remember if you decide to take this trip into the past of Hollywood mayhem. Most of the stories here? Not true. As in: ludicrously not true.