By the mid-1980s there was an entire subsection of lower Manhattan that had been abandoned by the city. Landlords had neglected their buildings, tenants left, and the underworld took over. It was about this time that a small group of people began to reclaim buildings that were empty and close to demolition. They were known as squatters because they moved in but paid no rent. ... Read More...
Waiting on Wednesday: The Revolution of Every Day
Waiting On Wednesday (WOW) is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights an upcoming release I'm eagerly anticipating at The Gilmore Guide to Books. What Goodreads says: In the midnineties, New York’s Lower East Side contained a city within its shadows: a community of squatters who staked their claims on abandoned tenements and lived ... Read More...
Beside the Sea
Two young boys journey with their mother to see the ocean for the first time and have an adventure. Unfortunately, nothing is as planned and the trip is not what it seems. For their mother, finding herself out of sync with the world is not unusual, even regarding something as straightforward as sleep. …we’d suddenly find it was the next morning, like other people do, the ones ... Read More...
Dora: A Headcase
Seventeen is no place to be. You want to get out, you want to shake off a self like old dead skin. You want to take how things are and chuck it like a rock. And guess what? If it’s bad for you, the only way to alleviate the pain is to make it that much worse for everyone around you and at that, Dora is a champion. Ida is her birth name but Dora is the name she gives herself. ... Read More...
Misfit: A Novel
The 50th anniversary of Marilyn’s death was this month and it’s been heralded by an uptick in new books about her life. I reviewed Lois Banner’s biography Marilyn last week but was interested to see what a fiction author would do, especially as so much of Marilyn’s life reads like fiction anyway. How would one choose which way to go from the trove of material available? In ... Read More...
