Monica Drake

Sock Monkey by Tony Millionaire (Dark Horse Books) Tony Millionaire’s brilliant comics sway easily between cryptic and base, surreal and direct. Now he’s written a children’s book. In this book, a stuffed and nervous toy crow replaces his famous character of Drinky Crow, the lush, “…not a dusty old taxidermy crow, but a soft fuzzy […]

Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut Emily White (Scribner) Big breasts? The girl’s a slut. Exotic features? Again, a slut. Maybe she moved to town mid school year, or comes from the wrong side of the highway. Maybe she’s had sex with every boy in school or she could still be […]

Anchee Min Arts & Lectures Last week, Anchee Min stood in front of a full, luxurious crowd at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and described her “pot of noodles”–a bout of tape worm-filled diarrhea, finally cured with the medicine of “Pagoda candies.” She contracted tape worms during a subsistence-level childhood. As the oldest child, with […]

Before & After: Stories From New York Edited by Thomas Beller (Norton) The short essays that make up this book are drawn from Thomas Beller’s website, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. Beller is the author of The Sleepover Artist, editor and cofounder of Open City Magazine, and a New Yorker. Beller’s neighborhood is New York. There’s a […]

Living Jewels: The Natural Design of Beetles Poul Beckmann and Ruth Kaspin (Prestel Books) The beauty of this book is in the illustrations: large-scale photographs of beetles are set against a stark, white background. The beetles are sculptural and graphic, with polka dots and stripes along their jeweled backs. On some specimens, antenna curve over […]

Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser (Harper Collins) On the surface, a fast food chain is a study in de-personalization, valuing homogeneity over individuality. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser quotes the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, as he declares, “We have found out…that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists…We will make conformists out […]

William Stafford Birthday Celebration Central Library 801 SW 10th Ave, 248-5234 7pm In a poem titled, “Thinking About Being Called Simple by a Critic,” William Stafford wrote, “…Who but a friend/could give so sternly what the sky/feels for everyone but few learn to/cherish? In the dark with the truth/I began the sentence of my life/and […]

ANGER Sleight of Hand by Suzy Vitello SLOTH The Demon of Noontide by Kassten Alonso PRIDE Order NOW by Wm. Steven Humphrey ENVY True Friends Aren’t Better than You by Kevin Sampsell LUST My Favorite Sin by Joelle Fraser GREED Oregon Blue by Monica Drake GLUTTONY A Cuckoo Tale by Kate Bernheimer

Reagan In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision For America Ronald Reagan, Kiron Skinner, Martin Anderson, Annelise Andersib (Free Press) “Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”–Ronald Reagan, (who employed ghost writers […]

The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold Kate Bernheimer (FCZ Publishing) “…He gave me some leather pants to wear. The pants were so heavy on my legs that I understood how we are all animals.” This is the voice of Ketzia Gold, a protagonist who can say anything, gliding between surreal dreamscape and nightmare, the natural […]