I seem to be taking a when-in-Rome approach to book-buying lately. I picked this up on a whim this weekend in Quimby's Books in Chicago.

This is the first Barry book I've read that deals directly with her real life. Though it seems obvious in her fictional comic strips that they're laden with memories that are real to her, that's not at all the same thing as really drawing her mother, grandmother, talking about her real neighbors, her real issues and plot turns. That's very, very inspiring writing to me. I should be a person who does What It Is soon.

Sometimes it's hard to rate a book with discrete sections like this. Overall I loved it, and it went so much deeper than I expected it to so up it goes. Not everything did it for me but it will for someone else. Highlights:

"Dancing": particularly "The dread and desire were equal." "The groove is so mysterious."

"The Aswang": all of it. That doesn't sound emphatic enough but believe it.

"Dogs" made me weep for sure. (I plan to adopt one soon.) Reading listings on Petfinder often feels epic to me.

I think Lynda Barry's work is mostly about the way that everything is, in fact, an epic.