The Net Chick Book Case

Grab a book, plop down in the bean bag, and start reading!

The Happy Mutant Handbook

edited by Mark Frauenfelder, Carla Sinclair, Gareth Branwyn, and Will Kreth, Riverhead Books, ©1995

Another book by ME! as well as Mark Frauenfelder (who's also this site's designer), Gareth Branwyn, Will Kreth, and designer Georgia Rucker (who also designed my book Net Chick.) Happy Mutants are delicious, if I do say so myself.

Check out these photos from our book signing at the Golden Apple Comic Book Store.

  • Mark and me with Timothy Leary
  • Mark and me with RU Sirius

    I'm going to add some excerpts here soon. But in the meantime, check out the spiffy ad for The Happy Mutant Handbook!

    The GenX Reader

    edited by Doug Rushkoff, Ballantine Books, ©1994

    Well, I'll be. Look what I just came across while reading this fine gem of a book: an interview with Slacker director Rick Linklater, and a trip through Toys R Us!


    Vamps & Tramps

    by Camille Paglia, Vintage Books, ©1994

    I always hated the word "feminist" until I got a load of Camille Paglia in 1991. I was in grad school, doing a paper on Madonna (defending her Justify My Love video), when I came across some articles written by Camille Paglia, one of them defending Madonna's "Material Girl" video (As if tough-girl Madonna even needs so many chicks running to her rescue!) I immediately became fascinated with Ms. Paglia, the "anti-feminist feminist," as she calls herself, the post-modern feminist, as many others brand her.

    Here is a lesbian academic who boldly embraces Madonna, femininity, TV and pop culture, prostitution ("I respect and honor the prostitute, ruler of the sexual realm, which men must pay to enter"), and pornography("What feminists denounce as woman's humiliating total accessibility in porn is actually her elevation to high priestess of a pagan paradise garden..."). Radical and humorous, she changed my whole outlook on what it means to be a feminist, and confirmed my already solid views on the power of femininity and female sexuality.

    Vamps & Tramps is a collection of her essays, book reviews, and interviews people have conducted of her. Here's a short excerpt:

    "Women will never succeed at the level or in the numbers they deserve until they get over their genteel reluctance to take abuse in the attack and counterattack of territorial warfare. The recent trend in feminism, notably in sexual harassment policy, has been to overrely on regulation and legislation rather than to promote personal responsibility. Women must not become wards and suppliants of authority figures. Freedom means rejecting dependency...Vamps and tramps are the seasoned symbols of tough-cookie feminism, my answer to the smug self-satisfaction and crass materialism of yuppie feminism. I admire the hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines..."

    If you crave more, read Tracy Quan's page-turning interview of Ms. Paglia from the oh-so-hip webzine Urban Desires.

    Net Chick

    by Carla Sinclair, Holt/Owl Books, ©1995

    Net Chick is my book and you can read some parts of it here.


    Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers:

    A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer

    by Betty Alexandra Toole, Strawberry Press, © 1992

    If you want to read about the first female hacker, Ada Lovelace (born in 1815 to Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke), then this book is a must. Here's a short review of it as excerpted from Net Chick.

    Ms. Toole researched for over eight years, burying herself in British archives and libraries, to narrate and edit this extraordinary collection of letters written by Ada Lovelace. Not only do they outline the evolution of Ada's ingenuity for the sciences, but they also enlighten us to all aspects of Lady Lovelace's multi-dimensional life: her passionate desire to flourish in "a man's world," her battle with drug addiction and chronic sickness, and her efforts as a mother and wife. Lovelace has also had a reputation as a wild gambler and lover. Who can tell us more truthfully about the accuracy of Ms. Lovelace's life than letters from the Lady herself?

    Excerpt from Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers:..

    "Ada's speculations from childhood on revealed that Ada could not and should not be easily boxed in time and place. Ada saw the need for a mathematical and scientific language which was more expressive and which incorporated imagination. Many of her ideas, from flying machines to a molecular universe, were not the foundation of work in the field; however, they reveal that she was a synthesizer and a visionary."

    If you want to browse through more shelves, check out these Net Chick-friendly bookstores: