Books: 471
You Got to Be Kidding!: The Cultural Arsonist’s Satirical Reading of The Bible
Dr. Joe Wenke
Trans Über LLC
Wenke bills Kidding as a “satirical reading” of the Bible. Yes, his language is snarky and irreverent, but as Anna Russell used to say in her famous take-offs on Wagner’s Ring cycle, “I’m not making this up, you know.” No matter how the fundamentalists want to praise the sanctity of a marriage between one man and one woman, which they claim is borne out by biblical injunction, Wenke points to Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines, noting that while God resented their foreignness, He was cool with the numbers. Wenke takes the reader through Old and New Testaments, wittily and wisely, time after time drawing out the reaction (as in the cherry-picking possibilities of Leviticus and other books),”Oh, really?” Gisele Xtravaganza graces the cover.
Pickle in the Middle Murder: A Shay O’Hanlon Caper
Jessie Chandler
Midnight Ink
$14.99
A Renaissance Fair treat turns to murder, murder most foul, committed in a Porta privy. Worse yet, her lover, officer JT Bordeaux, is charged with the killing. The usual gang rallies round to find the real killer–friends Coop and Eddy, hounds Dawg and Bogey–but the atmosphere in Chandler’s third caper is darker and more intense. Corpse Russell Krasski was a child trafficker with an unsettling connection to JT, and while sleuthing, Shay finds evidence that questions JT’s fidelity. Mainstay Rocky drops a bombshell–he is to wed his love Tulip–but that knot is not tied in this installment. Now, with marriage available to all Minnesotans, what might we expect for volume four? Something tasty, no doubt, topped with a pickle–and relish.
Martin Duberman Reader: The Essential Historical, Biographical, and Autobiographical Writings
Martin Duberman
$21.95
The New Press
Duberman is the author of many books on many topics, from non-fiction (The Worlds of Lincoln Kirsten; Stonewall; About Time: Exploring the Gay Past) to fiction (Haymarket) and drama (Male Armor: Selected Plays, 1968-1974). The collection covers a lifetime of Duberman’s writings, well known for their historicity and attention to the individual experience, as exemplified here in “The Stonewall Riots.” All of these pieces have been previously published, yet the excerpts are strong enough to stand on their own and illuminate Duberman’s half a century of working for social change in many areas, times he has lived through and observed first hand. Whether you are familiar with or new to Duberman’s writing, this volume provides valuable, insightful reading and will point the way to further exploration.
A Horse Named Sorrow
Trebor Healey
Terrace Books
$26.95
San Francisco in the 1980s -1990s seems further removed in time than it is in literal years; closer to the massacre at Wounded Knee, one of the novel’s themes, than our present days. Narrator Seamus Blake, twenty-one, meets a newcomer to San Francisco and experiences a rush of hope. Handsome Jimmy Keane, fresh from Buffalo, New York, on his string-bedecked bicycle, may be the love and salvation that Seamus (or “Shame” as Jimmy aptly nicknames him) has been seeking. But like many thousands during that time, Jimmy falls ill and dies after making Seamus promise to “Take me home the way I came.” Seamus sets out on the bike with Jimmy’s ashes in a purple velvet bag on this lyrical odyssey of love and loss.
