New Stuff This Week

Published on February 1, 2025 0 Comments

 

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Zines

A Fat Chick’s Take on New Years Resolutions by Jamie Kadas (Curvy Girl Comics) $10

Test Patterns #2 by Lizzie Cooper $10

Collected Variations $20

Rubber Ducky Portraits by Marxalot $11

Cowgirl $15

Zines by Cullen Parr $3.50 each: Stories We Tell, Tiny World

Questions and Answers by Dave Hankins & friends $5

Thirteen Facts $2 each: #20 Sister Rosetta Tharpe, #21 Nosferatu, #22 Boris Karloff

Zines Can Be About Anything $2

Urban Guerrilla #28 Winter by Jay Unidos $10

The Human Experiment by Riley Brady $12

Comics

Fizzle #5 by Whit Taylor (Radiator Comics) $8

Comics by Zaponator: Ego Trip May 2024 $2.50 + Fun Times Comix #4 Jan 2025 $5

Queer Ecology Pigeons by S. Maloney $10

People Feelings by Data $4

Every Plant in My Room 2nd Edition by Sarah Leslie McNeil (Room Press) $4

Graphic Novels

Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey (Drawn & Quarterly) $22.95

Museum of Degenerates: Portraits of the American Grotesque by Eli Valley (OR Books) $44.95

Politics & Revolution Books

Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico by Heather Cleary & friends (Feminist Press) $25.95

The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism by Sue Coe with Stephen F. Eisenman (OR Books) $22.95

Revolution In These Times: Black Panther Party Veteran Dhoruba Bin Wahad on Antifascism, Black Liberation, and a Culture of Resistance by Dhoruba Bin Wahad & friends (Common Notions) $20

Music & Film Books

Cold Glitter: The Untold Story of Canadian Glam by Robert Dayton (Feral House) $39.95

Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn: A Walk On The Wild Side With Andy Warhol’s Most Fabulous Superstar by Jeff Copeland (Feral House) $22.95

PONK! by Marcus Clayton (Nightboat Books) $19.95

Poetry

Pictosyntax by Chris Carlozo $7.50

The Technicolor Sycamore 10000 Afternoon Family Earth Band Revue by Ryan Skrabalak $15

Magazines & Newspapers

The Internationalist #74 $1

Tape Op #165 $5.99

Lit Journals

From Blue Cubicle Press: The Last Line #10 $3, The First Line vol 26 #4 $6

Recommended Reading: Vibrant Voices on the Page

Published on January 29, 2025 0 Comments

A pile of books and zines that tell personal stories, available at Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago.

The world is a flaming mess right now. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’m right there with you. Whenever I’m struggling, I know that I can find respite in personal narratives. Reading about another person’s challenges, triumphs, sorrows, and joys reminds me that, as Adrienne Rich wrote, our stories flow in more than one direction.

Our shop is, of course, packed to the brick walls with vibrant voices on the page. Here are a few of the tales in which I’ve taken solace lately.

Every single issue of Lucinda J. Williams’ Bookshelf Voyeur series is a pure delight. Her latest release, #8: On Scrapbooks, delves into the fascinating lives that the zinemaker first encountered within a collection of turn-of-the-century ephemera.

Anxious Critters #1 and #2: I adore this pair of sweet zines about the relationship between creator Alex O’Keefe and her housemate: A very cute bunny named Ivy.

Although I’m a native Chicagoan, I’ve lived a good chunk of my life in small Midwestern towns, each with its own unique DIY community. Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett takes a compelling look at how the hardcore punk movement played out in one central Illinois city in the ’80s and ’90s.

When someone I know returns from a trip, the first thing I ask is what they ate during their journey. April Malig chronicles her culinary adventures, with words and gorgeous colorwashed images, in April’s Eating Zine #5: Everything I Ate in Japan (Part One: Toyko!) and April’s Eating Zine #5.5: Everything I Ate in Japan (Part 2: Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Atami!).

I love a pocket-size zine, since I like never want to be without a story to get lost in. Ker-bloom! always delivers a perfect bite-sized tale presented in a beautiful letterpress package. Issue #171 begins with the epic statement: “Sometimes it pays to be a known Lord of the Rings nerd.”

So perhaps you’d like to add your own story to the glorious chorus of voices in this universe? We’ve got two of my favorite books about writing in stock right now. 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg and many of the writer’s literary friends — including Carmen Maria Machado, Roxane Gay, and Kiese Laymon — just came out in paperback. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos is the book I would put into the hands of any storyteller who wants to deepen their own practice.

If you do decide to share your story with the world, please consider putting it into a zine and consigning it with us! You might want to grab a This is Going in My Perzine sticker to give folks a heads-up. 🙂

—   With love and solidarity, C.E. Hanifin

New Stuff This Week

Published on January 25, 2025 0 Comments

 

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Zines

Zines by Chuck Melnychuk, $3 each:
Branta #1 The Zine of New Honking Birds of a Feather
Melnychuk’s Borsch Recipe Zine
Make the Gods Weep

Hi-Fi Anxiety issues #26-28.5 $10 each

Sherl Stepped Sideways $3

Comics

Grixly issues #67 + #68 by Nate McDonough & friends $3 each

New stuff & restocks from Joe Sikoryak:
Awful Tooth #1 A True Tale of Dental Denial $4
When We Were Trekkies #8-$10 $5 each

Graphic Novel

Joe Galaxy December 2024 Space Wonders and Horrors by Massimo Mattioli (Fantagraphics) $34.99

Film Books

Black Coffee Lightning: David Lynch Returns to Twin Peaks by Greg Olson (Fayetteville Mafia Press) $24.99

Mayhem & Outer Limits Books

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World by Dorian Lynskey $32

All Directions Point Home by BHM $24

Fiction

Tominic Dorito vs the Unreliable Narrator by Jesse Mack $12

Poetry

Haiku by Bill Albert (Grilled Cheese Publishing) $10.95

Eleven Austin Poets #1 edited by Tom Jennings (Udumbara Press) $9.99

New stuff & restocks from Pig Roast Publishing:
On High at Red Tide by Gabriel Hart
Abuser by Morgenrede
No Lands Man by Lisa Carver
Rockin’ Out On the Machine by Jeff Schneider
Blaze Kimber by Adam Johnson
…and more.

From the Archive

Published on January 21, 2025 0 Comments

I was organizing the basement, particularly a flat file cabinet and the piles of stuff that had amassed around it. I was reminded that we tend to hire people that are artists and writers (often they’re people who have consigned their work with us too). If you work here you find yourself doing a variety of tasks including making signs, and we have a nice collection of them. It would be impossible to show you all the signs we’ve amassed over the years in one post, so I’ve selected a few of my favorites today.

Former Quimby’s employee Gabby Schulz made this hilarious sign when we were having a tiki-themed day. The part that really slays me is the “So to speak.”

If you’re a Peter Bagge fan, you 100% will find this clever AF. Aaron Renier didn’t work here but made us this awesome sign anyway. So great.

That devil cabbage! Gabby made both the weed one and the Harder Drugz signs above, and they are little nuggets (ba ha ha ha) of hilarity. I love the tiny character portraits on both that serve as amusing commentary.

Here’s former Quimby’s employee Corinne Halbert’s contribution to the weed bag (THE JOKES NEVER END I CAN’T HELP IT). The fact that it has a tab of LSD on it is quintessential Corinne, and is a nice little inadvertent shout out to her book Acid Nun.

We sure seem to have a lot of signs about the drug books we sell, ha ha. I’m sure there’s more in the collection. Why didn’t I wait until 420 to whip these out? Because they’re awesome and you need to see these little pieces of art and history right now.

Did you know Quimby’s used to sell DVDs? And when I started here in 2001 we had VHS tapes! Over time we phased out selling that stuff because it stopped moving for us. But there was a moment when we had it, and when it got cheap to burn your own stuff people were more prolific in consigning that type of thing with us. We had to keep the discs behind the counter because otherwise they’d get stolen though. And god forbid we get some design book that came with a disc! Forget about it. Former Quimby’s mini-comic sommelier Neil Brideau (of Radiator Comics) made this sign for us, and it’s very telling of an era.

This is the flat file I was telling you about. The labels on the files have zero bearing as to what’s in the drawers, but they are hilarious: “Satanic Sex,” “Manson,” “Naked Wings.” And so on. I laugh out loud every time I look at them. I hope they stay on there forever.

xoxo

Liz

@caboosezine

New Stuff This Week

Published on January 18, 2025 0 Comments

 

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Zines

More issues of Pound the Pavement:
#24 Bonus Tracks to an Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels $8
#33 Shut Rikers $15
#34 Barricade Documentation of the Student Occupations of 2024 In Solidarity With Palestine $25

2 zines by Robert Zant:
Thin Places $15
Bits and Bobs $10

Nature Is Queer by Eve Gordon $2.50

Zines by Wynter Appleford, $10 each:
Cannabis Is Queer
It’s Giving Cuntry: In Queer Defense of Country Music a Fanzine

Why I Left Higher Ed and You Can Too: The TLDR Zine by thetranscribe $10

Comics

new issues of mini kuš!, $6 each:
#123 Undertow by Sara Boica
#124 COMICUM by Majenye
#125 Into the Thicket by Mark Antonius Puhkan
#126 On the Honeylands of Mars by Matti Hagelberg

Intrusive Thoughts at the Bean #1 by Erika Saindon $4

Novice #2 by Sean McCarthy $10

New comics by Finn Walker:
My Life As a Weapon $5
Myrodemus #4 Genesis $8

Graphic Novels/Manga

The Legend of Kamui vol 1 by Shirato Sanpei (Drawn & Quarterly) $39.95

Art Books

Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) by Interference Archive & friends (Common Notions) $40

Funkadelic: The Vibrant Artistry of the ’70s by Victionary $49.95

Politics & Revolution & Essay

Iran in Revolt: Revolutionary Aspirations in a Post-Democratic World by Hamid Dabashi (Haymarket Books) $24.95

In Defense of Barbarism: Non-Whites Against the Empire by Louisa Yousfi $17.95

After Accountability: A Critical Genealogy of a Concept (Revised and Updated Edition) by Pinko Collective $19.95

Between Existentialism and Marxism (New Edition) Jean-Paul Sartre $24.95

Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible by Sonali Kolhatkar $16.95

Class, Crisis and the State by Erik Olin Wright $24.95

Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader edited by Malu Halasa & Jordan Elgrably $24.95

Self-Care

Black Psychedelic Revolution: From Trauma to Liberation–How to Heal From Racial, Generational, and Systemic Trauma Through Reclaiming Black Psychedelic Culture by Nicholas Powers, PhD $19.95

Mayhem & Outer Limits

The Real Story of Dinosaurs and Dragons: Science Sets the Fossil Record Straight by Philip J. Senter (Feral House) $24.95

Time Machines: Telegraphic Images in Nineteenth Century France by Richard Taws $50

Film

Blood on Satan’s Claw: or, The Devil’s Skin by Robert Wynne-Simmons with illustrations by Richard Wells (Unbound) $18.95

Food Books

A Story About Pizza by Erica D’Arcangelo $14.99

Sexxxy

Elska #50 Odesa Ukraine $20

Fiction

Big Lofty Dream by Karloz Belasquez $10

Roberto Bolano reprints:
Monsieur Pain $15
The Insufferable Gaucho $16
Amulet $17

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls: A Novel by Grady Hendrix $30

The Contortionists Handbook by Craig Clevenger $18.99

Plastic: A Novel by Scott Guild $18

Lit Journals

KSMT #1 by MJ Woods & friends $7

Drift #14 Fall 2024 $19.99

Moss Piglet January 2025 $15