Rookie: Yearbook One is the first book-length anthology of Rookie magazine, spun out of Style Rookie, a fashion, culture and lifestyle site started by Tavi Gevinson when she was 11 years old. Rookie is a kind of spiritual descendant of the late, lamented Sassy magazine, which tried to do for teen girls' publishing what Ms did for women's periodicals in the 1970s. Gevinson and her co-conspirators are talented and insightful writers with authentic voices, keen eyes and lots to say. Their layouts are daring and fun, the subject matter varied, and the approach runs a gamut from whimsical to deadly serious.

Rookie: Yearbook One is a beautifully produced book, with lots of fun bonuses bound into it (including a flexidisc!). Ira Glass is a kind of mentor to Gevinson, and if you like his work, you'll recognize his influence on her's. But despite all the heavy hitting adults in her orbit, Gevinson's editorial direction is clearly of her own making. This is the kind of magazine I dream of giving to my own daughter some day. The anthology is the perfect gift for the smart young women in your life.

Angelenos can meet Gevinson and friends at a series of events next week, on November 9-10.

Rookie: Yearbook One

Click below for some samples from the book, courtesy of Drawn and Quarterly and Raincoast books.

Read the rest

Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 is an insanely ambitious novel of life three hundreds years hence, set in a solar system where the Earth continues to limp along, half-drowned, terrified, precarious -- and only one of many inhabited places, parent to a handful of planetary and lunar societies; grandparent to thousands of hollow, hurtling, spinning asteroids that have been turned into terraria supporting endangered species, vital crops, bizarre cults, sex-crazed pleasure-cruisers, and everything in between.

The solar system -- set in the future of the Red Mars trilogy -- is fractured. Not only are there multiple, warring, irreconcilable political factions but humanity itself has become strangely varied. Swan, one of the novel's protagonists, has replaced part of her gut-flora with alien bacteria and budded off avian brain tissue in her own brain. Others are "smalls" -- miniature humans adapted for high-gravity worlds where the square-cube law works in their favor -- or "talls." Some of these people are still of the same recognizable species, others seem to belong to a new human race, perhaps one with little to say to humanity.

2312 is an epic story of political intrigue among the many worlds. To call it epic is to do it a disservice. It's the kind of book that makes you realize that the ambition of Red Mars was just a warm-up; that books like Years of Rice and Salt, which reimagined millennia of history, were just a kind of mental exercise for Kim Stanley Robinson. 2312 paints an absolutely credible and astonishingly beautiful picture of the centuries to come, of the sort of schism and war, the art and love, the industry and ethics that might emerge from humanity going to space without conquering it and without solving all its problems.

Robinson's future is a weird mix of the pastoral and the futuristic. His descriptions of the "natural" and geoengineered environments are worthy of Thoreau, filled with an environmental lyricism that is hard to come by. Some of these descriptions are worked right into the text, while others appear in fractured interstitial chapters of fragmentary dialogue, lists, and miscellania, these a kind of poesie that are just as moving as any of the main action.

2312 is, in one sense, a detective novel. It opens with the suspicious death of Swan's aunt on Mercury, and with Swan's growing realization that her aunt was at the center of a systemwide secret cabal that had devoted itself to rooting out rogue "qubes" -- quantum computers that have attained some kind of sentience -- who may be behind her aunt's death. Swan has a qube implanted in her brain, which makes her role in the cabal even more fraught, but it's the least of he complications. Swan, after all, is something of a basket-case. Semi-immortal, hybridized with other animals as well as AIs, a gifted artist and a furious misanthrope, she must somehow win the confidence of her aunt's friends.

But though the murder and the qube conspiracy animate the story, they're far from all of it. Robinson's sweeping panorama of his future is at once hopeful and miserable, saying "Look what we might have" and "Look what we might lose" at the same moment.

I took this book slowly, all 565 pages of it, savoring it over a month. It's not a fast read. But it's not one you'll forget, either.

2312

During my treatment for breast cancer this year, nutrition was a big challenge. Hell, getting any food down was a challenge during chemo and radiation. That's where juice comes in. Fresh fruit and vegetable juices are a great way to get concentrated nutrition in an easy-to-ingest form. Green juices, root juices like carrot and beet, fruit juices—just as they each yield different colors, they also yield different flavor profiles and nutritional benefits.

I hunted around online for a single, affordable device that could produce a diverse array of juice.

I bought this: the Omega J8003 Nutrition Center Single-Gear Commercial Masticating Juicer. $229 on Amazon (free shipping if you're a Prime member, as I am).

There are far more expensive juicers, and there are more recent (and pricier) versions of this one—but this is a great entry-level, affordable tool. It suits my daily needs just fine, and I have used it regularly for the past 6 months. My friend Brian Lam at Wirecutter first pointed me to it. Three big strong points: Price, ease-of-use, ease of cleaning up.

Let me show you what I mean, with today's batch of what I jokingly referred to as my go-go juice, with apologies to Honey Boo Boo. I drank it every day during radiation, and here I am, alive. So, I suppose it helped me win.

A word about produce: I try to stick to organic (or at least from local farms that don't use synthetic chemical pesticides). That may or may not be your preference, but it's mine. Hitting farmers markets is great, too. But whatever's fresh and readily available and affordable, so you will be encouraged to juice regularly is best.

For the green juice I'm making today, I started with the large bunch of kale shown in the snapshot at left (thanks, @isalara!).

There are many varieties. My favorite is the one known as lacinato ("lacy") or black kale, sometimes called cavalo nero. It's dark and meaty, with rich flavor. But you can use purple, curly, whatever kale is in season and crisp. This giant bunch as big as my head cost me 2 bucks at my local farmers market.

In the photo below, you can see how I smush in the entire leaves of kale; stem and all. Other than washing them and inspecting them for any bugs or dirt, there's really no prep involved with the leafy greens. If they're so huge they jam in the intake, tear them up a little with your hands.

I add an apple or two for sweetness and to balance the intense kale flavor. The mouth of the juicer is too small for the apples to fit in whole, so I cut them into loose chunky slices just small enough to fit in. No need to remove core or skin.

* Update: A commenter points out that apple seeds contain naturally-occuring traces of cyanide. Sounds like you'd have to juice a WHOLE LOT of seeds to poison someone, but you can core your apples if you want to eliminate that question entirely.

I'm adding celery to this juice. 4-5 stalks. Clean them well, make sure to chop off any parts that are damaged or full of dirt. During cancer treatment, I had to be especially careful about dirt or contamination, because of my compromised immune system. You don't have to be quite so paranoid when you're healthy, but it's always good to clean your produce carefully.

To finish this juice, I'm adding a little squeeze of citrus. Today I'm using lime, but orange and lemon are great, too. I don't consume grapefruit because it messes with my cancer meds (if you're reading this post and you're a cancer patient on chemo, radiation, or hormone antagonists, talk to your doc before consuming grapefruit in any form).

For citrus, I use a little hand squeezer . You could also juice citrus in the juicer, but I prefer squeezing it to avoid the oily rind pulp, or the extra labor involved in cutting away the peel.

I also love how dry the pulp is is when it comes out. You really get the sense that the device is helping you squeeze the most mileage out of your produce. If you compost, add this stuff to your heap. It breaks down quickly and is full of good stuff for your garden.

I love this kale-apple-celery-lime juice so much. It tastes like a mellow, fruity, freshly-mowed lawn. I didn't strain this batch of juice, but if you want less fiber, there's a little wire mesh strainer included with the juicer parts. I like to add ginger or pineapple to this combo, if they're available and I'm in the mood.

Depending on the ratio of ingredients, you could add a smidge of maple syrup or agave to taste. But I rarely do, even when mixing juice for newbies who are grossed out by anything that isn't super-sweet. The apples add plenty of sweetness. Grapes, pineapple or pear would do the same. For a more savory juice, reduce the ratio of sweet stuff.

Cleanup is one of the biggest plusses of this device. As you can see in the photo here, you twist a dial that connects the macerating unit to the motor. Then, the parts pop out one by one. Just rinse them under the faucet, with a little soap and a sponge, and clean out that little metal grate with an included brush (basically, a toothbrush). Maybe a minute of cleanup work. I love how easy that part is. Juicers that require more cleanup time just tend to be used less frequently. And I didn't buy this thing to beautify the inside of my storage cabinet, I bought it to use every day.

Below: A minute and a little bit of warm water later. Look how tidy that is. It makes my OCD nerves tingle with joy. It's so simple and lazy-person-friendly.

One of the complaints I hear a lot about juicing is that the idea sounds good, but it's so expensive to buy produce, why bother. Maybe that's the case with other machines, but I haven't found this to be true with the Omega unit I bought.

The batch I made here cost about $6.50 in produce, takes maybe 10-15 minutes to prepare including setup and cleanup, and yielded 6 cups of juice. Way too much for one person to drink all in one sitting! Add that up, and it is way less expensive than buying a juice at a juice bar. It's so nutritionally dense, it tastes amazing, and it's just fun. You get into a rhythm of particular juices you like, tweaking them to your taste.

My favorite combinations right now are: this green juice; carrot-orange; beet-carrot; Watermelon-cucumber-lime; virgin mojito (mint-lime-grape over crushed ice and more crushed mint); and a blend that's kind of like V-8: spinach, lettuce, tomato, celery, cucumber, onion, Tabasco, Soy sauce, liquid smoke, and lemon. It's so good, seriously. I don't drink alcohol, but if you do, you cannot possibly find a better Bloody Mary mix.

One thing I'd like to do that I haven't yet is look at before and after blood counts (my blood was tested weekly during my primary cancer treatment, and will be every 90 days or so for the next year). I'd want to compare, say, a month with no daily consumption of juice, compared to a month of daily juicing. More or less the same diet, all other factors being more or less equal. I suspect that certain levels in my blood lab report would be higher with daily juice intake—like folate, for instance. I really prefer getting nutrition from food and juice, less so from pills. But I also just really like the way juice tastes.

---

TIPS and NOTES:

• This is what's known as a masticating (crushing) juicer. It smushes the juice out of your produce, and kinda poops out the pulp at the other end. Over at Wirecutter, in his review of the Omega line, Brian Lam goes into a lot of detail on how this works differently than centrifugal juicers like the Breville. A little side bonus with the masticating designs: quieter. The centrifugal designs tend to be a lot louder.

• Whatever kind of juice you prepare, it's best consumed right after you make it, for flavor and nutrition. I like to make a day's batch, store it in an airtight glass pitcher, and sip or share as needed. Juice like this that does not contain added stabilizers will separate if you let it sit. If it does, stir or shake. Sometimes I like to dump it in the blender and make it all frothy like a pint of green Guinness.

• There are tons of recipes for juices online. Experiment with them, or just improvise. Don't be afraid to fail. When in doubt, my motto with juicing is to limit the number of ingredients, and see how each addition changes the combined flavor.

• This device can also be used to extrude pasta, make soymilk, and other cooking tasks. I haven't used it for any of those, so I can't speak to its usefulness in those area.

• If all you want to juice is oranges, and absolutely nothing else, there are more efficient tools for that. This one handles citrus just fine, but its value is in its versatility with many different kinds of ingredients: it excels at hard fruits and vegetables (beets, carrots, apples) and leafy greens (wheatgrass, kale, and the like), and also does okay with softer fruits.

• Sometimes it's nice to add fresh herbs and spices, like ginger root, turmeric, mint, basil, or cilantro (the latter are great in tomato-based savory blends). This works best if you add other bulkier ingredients after the herb/spice ingredient, so all the flavor makes it through. Ginger followed by apple, for example. Not ginger at the very end.

• An unexpected bonus: I've noticed that when I drink juice, I tend to crave less coffee and simple carb-y/sugary snacks between meals. This is an anecdote I've heard from other people who got into juicing. I didn't start with the intent of cutting down my coffee or carb-snack intake, but it did end up doing that.

• If you don't want to make trips to the grocery store every day for produce, there are ways to extend the life of your fruits and veggies. Kale lasts days longer for me when I rinse it as soon as I get home, then store it with a damp paper towel in a plastic baggie, or in a salad spinner with some water in the bottom.

• When you're buying produce for juicing, remember that you can often buy uglier, cosmetically less-desirable pickings and save money. For instance, I bought the apples you see in these snapshots at a nearby farmer's market. The farmer had one bin with beautiful huge shiny perfect organic apples for $3/lb., and another bin with smaller, mottled-looking "seconds" for $1.75/lb. The ugly ones taste just as awesome.

• John Kohler's discountjuicers.com review site and YouTube channel are a far more extensive resource for comparison shopping than this blog post could ever hope to be.

Happy drinking!

---

Amazon: Omega J8003 Nutrition Center Single-Gear Commercial Masticating Juicer.

---

It wasn't so long ago, that UK heavies Bong were just an amusingly-named band that counted an Aquarius Records customer as a member. It took a while, but eventually we got 'em to send us some records (you can imagine, a band named Bong isn't the most businesslike and efficient bunch, nice folks though they are). And their brand of stoned, psychedelic, Eastern-tinged doomdrone improv proved to be right up our alley, and appropriate to their moniker.

Now, a couple years later, we've sold many, many Bong lps, cds, and cd-rs - and one of us here even got to see 'em live, at the amazing Roadburn festival in Holland. And even though they're not the sort of band to move around much on stage, they weren't boring. In fact, they were TERRIFIC. (Above is footage from their show at this year's Roadburn.) And now, Bong's 2010 performance has been released on Roadburn's in-house label as "Bong: Live At Roadburn 2010"

Read the rest

Terry Pratchett's latest novel, Dodger, isn't a Discworld book, except, well, it kind of is. Nominally, this is an historical novel, a fictionalized account of the fictionalized person who inspired Mr Charlie Dickens to create his much-beloved character The Artful Dodger. But as the story unfolds, the parallels between the early Victorian London of Dickens (and Mayhew) and the Ankh-Morpork of Pratchett's Discworld novels become sharper and clearer, so that by the end, we're reading a story that really could be set in either one of those fantastical places, and what's more, there's a kind of vividness to Dodger that comes, I think, from its proximity to the origin of Pratchett's inspiration, a cask-strength version of what makes Pratchett so addictive and so loved.

Dodger tells the story of a young street-urchin, a "geezer" who is known throughout the tenements of central London as a dashing and fearless character. Dodger is a "tosher," a young man who scrounges in the sewers of London for coins and jewels and little bits and pieces that wash up, and he worships the Lady, a deity descended from the Roman goddess Cloacina, the patron of the sewers the Romans carved out beneath Londinium. He is fearless, noble, but also lightfingered, with a cheeky propensity for making off with anything that isn't nailed down or buttoned firmly in a gentleman's coat-pocket.

Dodger starts one night in the sewers, when Dodger hears the cries of a woman in distress from above. While in Discworld, this distress might be hinted at and painted in vague, impressionistic strokes, here it is as vivid as Dickens: the woman whose rescue Dodger leaps to is being horribly beaten by a gang of thugs, whom Dodger lashes out at, dealing out fast and furious blows until they run off. As he tends to the woman, he meets Charlie Dickens and Henry Mayhew, the first of two historical personages to make an appearance in the pages of Dodger (others include Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli, and Sweeney Todd).

So begins the story of Dodger's coming of age. He and the woman he rescues fall in love, but the men who hunted her are still chasing after her, driven by a great imperial house of Europe whose king would see her dead. Against this backdrop, Dodger must both beat the assassins and thugs on his trail, and also find his true love's way clear of the deadly intrigue, all the while mixing in the alien environs of high society -- and journalistic circles -- whom he is introduced to by Dickens.

Dodger features some of Pratchett's most engaging characters yet -- which is saying something! -- inasmuch as these people are allowed to experience and react to the mercilessly cruel world of Victorian London, which Pratchett is fearless about describing. This isn't a book for the squeamish, but then, neither is Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, which Pratchett describes as the genesis for this novel in an author's afterword.

Which is not to say that Dodger lacks the humor that makes Pratchett so beloved. This is a book that is every bit as funny as any Discworld novel, and includes Pratchett's signature trick of hiding the gravity of the world in absurdity, a very serious pill wrapped up in a fluffy, sweet confection.

What's more, Dodger features the most satisfying climax and denouement of any Pratchett novel of my recollection, a thunderous final chord that lingers and stretches. It's a masterwork from a treasure and hero of a writer, and it will delight you.

Dodger

Back in 2007/8, I was totally taken by DC's Minx imprint, which ran little digest-sized, girl-positive graphic novels aimed at young adults, primarily girls. They were smart, not in the least patronizing, and utterly charming. The best of the very good selection (which included such outstanding titles as Cecil Castellucci's PLAIN Janes/Janes in Love; Derek Kirk Kim's Good as Lily; and Andi Watson's Clubbing) was Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly's New York Four, which told the story of four young women who meet as NYU freshmen, and whose lives are complicated by love, family, friendship, and school.

New York Four featured a perfect mix of engaging characters (think of Los Bros Hernandez's Love and Rockets Locas); fantastic, expressively inked characters; and a storyline that was a love-struck hymn to New York City -- echoing Brian Woods's masterwork DMZ. It was also incomplete, ending on a cliffhanger that was left hanging when DC folded up the Minx imprint.

For four years, I've been thinking about the New York Four, and wondering how their stories ended. Now I know. Four years later, DC's Vertigo has published The New York Five, the sequel (and conclusion?) to the original Minx title. I've just finished it and it was worth the wait. The characters from the original story return seasoned by their first semester, wiser and more gunshy, but still filled with the wild, reckless energy that made them so engaging in the first volume. They face more hardship, further cement their bonds, and sometimes dissolve them in moving scenes of betrayal, bravery and love.

It was a long wait, but it was worth it. I hope Vertigo publishes the two volumes between a single set of covers -- they'd make a lovely gift for any young person making sense of the world (and any adult who wanted to revisit the maelstrom of frightful first independence).

The New York Five

Read the rest