How to Build a Girl: In Which We All Wanted to be Dolly Wilde

Aaaaaand we're off! Not in quite the same way as the first section - AHEM - but moving along plot-wise. Get your minds out of the hairbrush and deodorant-filled gutter.

SO! Johanna Morrigan is dead, long live Dolly Wilde! Let us pause for a moment and fondly recall 1992, when we were in our early teens and the third wave of feminism was - I say in retrospect - just getting off the ground. Grrrrls were rioting, grunge was happening, and my mother was Distinctly Unhappy with the amount of Angry Lady Singers caterwauling from my bedroom. It was an abrupt shift from the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers & Hammerstein that were previously issuing from the CD boombox I got for my birthday. I had just begged for my first set of pointe shoes and was fantasizing about choreographing a full ballet to Little Earthquakes.

What I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to stop relating for long enough to have a coherent thought about this book.

I have maybe a lot of feelings about 1992.

I love Johanna and her Dolly Wilde persona. I love how she likes music whose creators she could probably take in a fight, her vulnerable relationship with her father, and her initial terror and then love of a mosh pit. I love that she thinks Smashing Pumpkins are too mopey. I laughed hysterically at her opinion of band security, having talked myself backstage a few times and thought the same thing.

So, in conclusion,

and if you're beginning to feel the same way too, you can pre-order it right here from Odyssey Books, which is where our lovely host Emily works! Thanks for putting this shindig together, madam!

I luf you.