Crazy Enough

Versatile lead singer, rocker, and glamorous chanteuse Storm Large's frank, confessional memoir, Crazy Enough, featuring angry tales of coping with her mother's mental illness and manipulation and her own self-medicating addictions and reckless habits, starting in childhood, took me way out of my comfort zone.  That's a good thing.  Knowing that she's now a transcendent stage and club performer, using her huge voice and stage presence to the fullest, is what makes these sordid stories of her distant and not-so-distant past a hero's journey.  The only reason for rating her book at four stars instead of five is to express one smitten fan's opinion that her music is even better than her revealing, entertainingly crafted words.

How Many Lanes Must Neil Gaiman Walk Down?

While many readers will take The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a parable for an adult's hazy recollection of the intense feelings and dark fears and fantasies of childhood, a more specific perspective is possible: this is Neil Gaiman's gothic self-portrait, in the sense of a painter who depicts himself looking in a mirror, his bemused image standing out centrally if tentatively, embedded as it is in the composition among his favorite semiotic objects.

Fittingly for a creator and writer of comics, it's also Gaiman's superhero origins story, presenting how a figurative, residual hole in the author's heart from childhood traumatic events has led to his lifelong, genius ability to access his sharp, surrealistic imagination for popular consumption and illumination.