This could be the most controversial novel to emerge in our times, not just from Saudi Arabia, but from the whole of the Arab world. —Al-Hayat
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I think this looks good for Autostraddle Book Club. Thoughts?
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What: A total scandal/best-seller in Arabic, this ‘literary tour de force’ is the story of a nameless teenager at a girls’ school in the heavily Shi’ite Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive societies in the world who, like her classmates, has no contact with men outside her family. So what happens? SMOKING HOT LESBIAN AFFAIR. “When the glamorous Dai tries to seduce her, her feelings of guilt are overcome by an overwhelming desire for sexual and emotional intimacy. Dai introduces her to a secret world of lesbian parties, online flirtations, and hotel liaisons—a world in which the thrill of infatuation and the shame of obsession are deeply intertwined.”

Now What? This is Lorrie Moore’s first book since 1998’s Birds of America: Stories, which is one of Moore’s three stunning short story collections you should have read by now (Self-Help. Like Life). Moore’s unique iconic style has made her one of the most revered writers of her generation, but regardless of what everyone else thinks, we think she perfectly articulates the cockeyed, cynical, defensively vulnerable and hopeful worldview of girls like us. Her piercingly intelligent, lonely and accidentally witty protagonists are like some Angela Chase + Virginia Woolf + Woody Allen mashup. A Gate at the Stairs, we’re assuming, will be well worth the wait.
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What’s it About Though?: “Brittly witty and lurkingly dark, the portrait of a Midwest college town through the eyes of Tassie Keltjin, a student from the country whose mind has been lit up by learning but who spends nearly all this story out of class, as a nanny for a couple who have adopted a toddler.”

Something Familiar About All This …: It’s former AfterEllen Editor and current AfterEllen columnist Malinda Lo’s debut YA novel! With endorsements from genre queens like Meg Cabot, Ash’s “lesbian re-telling of Cinderella” is probs good for all ages. (Also, we love YA books at AS.) StuntDouble writes; “There is no prince, no birds to help her dress as she Bibbidi-Bobbidi -Boos around her cottage. But there are fairies, one in particular who wishes to steal Ash away from human life. Ash almost decides to give into him, but then she meets Kaisa, a female Huntress of the King. She’s beautiful, strong, independent — and best of all, she treats Ash as her equal. I can’t tell you the rest, except to say that as the story progresses, Ash is forced to choose between fairy tales and abiding love.”

What: You love GraphJam.com, right? Well, now you can enjoy it without risking the health of your retinas. Founded in February 2008 with one mission (“to rescue pie charts, Venn diagrams, decision trees, and other graphs from the terminal boredom of the office”), this book will probs make web-geeks, hipster graphic designers and eccentric statisticians cream in their pants.

Who? Dear friend of the gays Kathy Griffin is unplugged, uncesnsored, and “unafraid to dish” in her new book Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin. She’s also kinda unscesnored and unafraid to dish on the teevee too, but you should know by now that good girls are rewarded for reading so there must be lots of fun juicy things in there. She also reveals “intimate details about her life,” like about her dysfunctional family, plastic surgery disasters and messy divorce with that dopey looking guy on the first season of My Life on The D-List. Then she talks about how this divorce inspired her to go lesbian. Also, she had a lesbian assistant once, Jessica, though I don’t know if that’s in the book. Are you there, Kathy? It’s us, Autostraddle!

The Drama: When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. Howevs, his wife couldn’t bear to destroy the manuscript, thus leading to 2008’s widely publicized drama over Dmitri Nabokov’s (Vladmir’s 75-year-old son and only surviving heir) right to publish his father’s last piece of writing. The Original of Laura promises to be a “fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality” which will “afford us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.

The Question: Is it possible to enjoy a book that you know the author never wanted you to read, or will you feel guilty like you’re reading your girlfriend’s diary? Judging by Amazon’s pre-order ranking for this baby, we’re thinking the “last surviving masterpiece” thing is overriding the “I told you not to look” thing.

Who? David Byrne of The Talking Heads and incredible cult film True Stories. YEAH THAT DAVID BYRNE.

Where? Byrne takes a worldwide tour of fascinating cities like Sydney, Australia; Manila, Philippines and New York City with his “trusty fold-up bicycle” while offering his views on urban planning, art, and postmodern civilization in general.

WE JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT GENDER THEORY FOREVER: Welcome to the new world of “girls’ studies” — “the socialization of girls versus the socialization of boys. You know we love this shit.”

Wha…? Oddly the Amazon listing for My Invented Life blithely skirts one of the main reasons you might be interested in reading this fun YA debut novel: it’s so queer!  Your best clue is that “readers who liked this book” also enjoyed “Annie on my Mind & Dare Truth or Promise.”

So: let’s check out one of our fave queer YA book blogs, who reports the following plot anchors: Roz suspects Eva might be gay, although Eva has a boyfriend, who keeps flirting with Roz. Roz flirts with Jonathan who turns out to be gay. Roz pretends to be gay to find out if Eva is, and then has to deal with how to find a boyfriend despite pretending to like girls, and then has to deal with the possibility that she does indeed like girls. There’s a motley crew of other sexuality-confused friends, a cross-dressing production of As You Like It, and well, so much more.

Really? Yeah! That title fills us with optimism, joy and social activist energy! We’re gonna win you guys! This “first ever marriage equality primer” promises to show why gay marriage will become law and how to win equality rights fastest, via never-released interviews of marriage equality leaders.

Who? Dr. Davina Kotulski is the author of Why You Should Give A Damn About Gay Marriage and an Advisory Board Member for Marriage Equality USA. She lives with all the other genius-dykes in the San Francisco Bay Area and is therefore an uber-expert. Everyone should listen to her. Also it’s easier to argue with your grandparents when you’ve got the facts on lockdown.

What/When/Where/How? Nona Willis Aronowitz & Emma Bee Bernstein had a lot of questions for a lot of people, including well-known feminists like Kathleen Hanna, Erica Jong, Michele Wallace and Starhawk as well as women who don’t relate to feminism at all. In probs the most awesome road trip of all time, the two girls crossed the country to track a conversation about “the current state of feminism and its many definitions … the past and the present … glimmers on the future … the promise of the open road … how young women grapple with the concepts of freedom, equality, joy, ambition, sex, and love –whether they call it “feminism” or not.”

Who? Aronowitz is a successful writer and cultural critic who did her Wesleyan thesis on 70s porn and its influence on the feminist movement and total cutie Emma Bee Bernstein, Aronowitz’s feminist roadtrip partner-in crime, was an accomplished photographer & essayist. (Check out the Girldrive Blog).I was already daydreaming about how it would be so cute to interview Nona & Emma together for Autostraddle and have Robin photograph Emma and Emma photograph Robin when I got to the part Emma’s bio which reads: “Emma Bee Bernstein died in Venice, Italy, in December 2008 at the age of 23.” Now I’ve been sort of crying at my keyboard, reading eulogies and looking at photographs for the past hour.+

From Feministing: “Emma ended her own life. It’s almost impossible for me conceive of someone that alive now being dead. But I have to believe that she needed release in some profound way that even her beautiful family and friends, that even her relationship to art and feminism, couldn’t provide. It’s not romantic. It’s unacceptable. It’s also a reminder that life is a fragile, fragile thing, a choice that we each make every single day. When Emma was alive, she made the choice fiercely and with her whole being. I thank her for the lesson.”

Get the book, y’hear? And we’ll start stalking Nona for an interview on what’s sure to be an epic book for our generation of eager feminist weirdos.

Actual Review of Shoplifting From American Apparel by Marie “Riese” Lyn Bernard

I just finished reading all 102 pages of Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin. Other books I’ve read by Tao Lin include his poetry you are a little bit happier than i am (which I reviewed on my blog Autowin) and the first 10-15 pages of his novel Eeeee Eee Eeee. I was at page 115 of his short story collection Bed, which I think is really good, when I got Shoplifting From American Apparel in the mail and decided to read it.

What happened in this book? The description in Shoplifting From American Apparel‘s press packet avoids nailing down plot points. Instead, it names settings (Atlantic City, NYC, Gainsville, Florida and the post-post-modern “location” of Gmail Chat) and specific locations (‘VIP rooms in hip Clubs,’ the NYU Library, central booking in Chinatown); identifies themes (the “unidirectional nature of time rendering everything beautiful and sad,” “class, culture and the arts”) and attitudes (‘funny, journalistic, ‘existentially-minded’); and quotes Tao Lin’s own evaluation of the book as, “2 parts shoplifting arrest, 5 parts vague relationship issues.” It’s about a guy named ‘Sam’ who is clearly ‘Tao Lin.’

I’m gonna talk about myself (Riese) right now for a second

Once I was ‘arguing’ with Autostradle COO Brooke about the “added value” of publishing a “Lady Gaga-Related Dress of Guns Conspiracy Theory” short story that I’d written in collaboration with Internicaine Katrina Casino, Intern Hot Laura and Intern Emily Choo on Autostraddle as a ‘Daily Fix’ between the hours of 3 AM and 6 AM and then taking it down and somehow I chose to cite Tao Lin’s declaration on Bookslut that he was writing a novel called Statutory Rape starring Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning* as evidence of the ‘acceptability’ of using Real Celebs in short stories and the ‘added value’ of ‘internet stunts’ in general** and she told me I’m not allowed to cite Tao Lin anymore as evidence of why I should do anything. I let Alex read the Lady Gaga story in an early incarnation and she said it was really bad and had been funnier when I’d explained it to her on the phone. I told my therapist about the story and she asked me if I was stoned.

[* according to HTML GIANT, when publishing pieces of the novel in lit-mag NOON, “NOON’s lawyer made [Tao] change [the names “Haley Joel Osment” and “Dakota Fanning”]–they were worried.”]

[** I also mentioned the works of Miranda July & Lydia Davis, who Brooke did not object to or seem interested in]

Nevertheless, I trekked from my room (where I am alone) to the living room (where Alex & Brooke are) to whine about this book review.

Me: I am so bad at writing book reviews, or writing movie reviews, theater reviews, art reviews, music reviews … I’m done with the book post except this book review.

Brooke: You know what, I think you spend too long on everything anyhow.

Me: I know

Alex: This is like that style post where you said you were so bad at writing about fashion & you didn’t know how and then it was like, completely awesome.

Me: That’s because I copied down 100 adjectives from fashion magazines while I was getting a pedicure because I think the problem is I don’t know enough adjectives, I need to have more adjectives at the front of my brain ready to be utilized.

Brooke: How do you do that?

Me: I don’t know, a workbook or something

[I forget some stuff we said here]

Me: … and then I read all these other book reviews online, which are mostly ‘negative’, and thought about how good all these book reviewers are, and how I’m jealous of their goodness and wished they worked for me, and how I think I am a ‘good writer’ but am bad at reviewing

Brooke: All the reviews are negative?

Me: Well I mean, ‘mostly’, like not negative but like, skeptical, anyhow I don’t think he cares, that’s not the point, I mean I think that’s what pisses critics off, that he genuinely believes all publicity is good publicity, he’s like really honest or something, or unashamed, like he’s fucking with you, which as you know is something I love like haha literary critics I made you read a 110 page book about thoughts I had in my head where nothing really ‘happens’ or haha I made you sit through a reading where I read “Tonight we ate a whale” over & over 40,000 times*, you know, like it’s a commentary on culture [I point at the three Andy Warhol posters on the wall in the living room], like Andy Warhol photocopied a bunch of soup cans and people bought it, Andy Warhol changed the world, like a commentary on pop culture, and Tao Lin is making a commentary on hipster culture/cyberculture, which I am obsessed with and therefore always impressed by his stunts/actions and then the books as secondary material**

[*exaggeration/misrepresentation to make Tao Lin seem ‘cooler’, in truth he read “the next night we ate whale” only 4,000 times]

[** His short story book, which’s more traditional format-wise, is amazingly solid however and I imagine critically ‘positively’ received. My ex-girlfriend also likes his short stories and she’s very tough to please, she only likes Elif Bautman and James Joyce.]

Brooke: But how successful can he be if doesn’t make any money, didn’t you say he had to sell his drawings on ebay?

Me: I thought that was cool that he did that

Brooke: I know you did, we can’t talk about this

Me: Well, he’s only 25 and he’s published four books, he’s really smart, and really good I think he makes  money maybe he’s not ‘good a money management’* but you know, he started his own publishing house, MuuMuu House. He owns that. And has a ‘sponsorship deal’ with Hipster Runoff.**

[* I don’t know why I said this]

[**I don’t remember where I got this info from or if it was true or what it means]

… and has a lot of interns

Brooke: So do you

Alex: Well, I know you think he’s like part of this ‘movement,’ and you can argue with me like about Rothko [nobody puts Rothko in a corner so i can’t transcribe the rest]…

Me: All I’ve written so far is, “my girlfriend would hate this book.”

Alex: Yeah, I think Tao Lin is a smartass asshole prick!

Me: I think you would read four pages and throw it against the wall and yell something

Alex: Yeah, I would

Brooke: Well did you like it?

Me: Of course I loved every minute of it, because I am also a young hipster-ish overeducated ‘up-and-coming’ writer — like, not one-tenth as successful as Tao Lin at all but anyhow — anyhow like Tao Lin I’m also a lonely, ostensibly socially awkward, internet-addled semi-hipster living in New York City with a college degree from a ‘good school’ but ‘unstable employment situations’ who thinks more than everyone else thinks and feels detached from social situations and feels the internet is weird and should be made fun of and I also have suffered from serious depression and less-serious alienation despite the fact that the circumstances of my life have not been ridiculously depressing and also for some reason I think other people want to hear all the thoughts from my head on twitter so it was like reading my thoughts but by a much better writer, I underlined a lot of things, I felt it had a lot of insights, for me it was like porn. Shoplifting From American Apparel was like porn for my ‘feelings’ & my little baby mind

Brooke: You should write that then, write what you just said to us

Me: Ok

‘Everyone’ ‘should’ read Shoplifting from American Apparel, it’s short and tasty like a snack