Bandanas and October Supplies: A Memoir
Book Review by Jered Standing
Bandanas and October Supplies: A Memoir
by M. Dylan Raskin
(Thunder Mouth Press)
What can I say about Bandanas & October Supplies?
No, let’s approach this thing from a different angle…What can’t I say about Bandanas & October Supplies?
Well, I certainly can’t say that the author is a whiny, cargo shorts-wearing mamma’s boy, and most likely a highly closeted homosexual—because that wouldn’t be nice at all. And I wouldn’t want to bring up the large, double-spaced type and huge margins resulting in only about 52 pages worth of actual reading.
Of course, I also can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the book to a small degree.
M. Dylan Raskin loves his mommy and promises her many things. One of these things is that he will get her out of Manhattan for good. When we come into the story his mother is very ill, and Dylan thinks that getting her out of the city will help to make her better. He accomplishes this task only in short doses: day-trips to a place in south Florida called Lake George.
Like sitting through someone’s slideshow of “My Vacation with Mommy,†we get dragged along for the ride. We’re stuck in the backseat of Dylan’s Del Sol—that is, if the Honda Del Sol even has a backseat, which I don’t think it does—all the while being treated continuously to exaggeration after exaggeration about “the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen†or “the best memory you’ve ever heard of.â€
Say, are you interested in fleece? I mean, seriously, do you love it? Can you read pages and pages about it? How about cargo shorts? If you’re saying to yourself, “Yes finally! Cargo shorts and fleece in the same book? Yes!†then this book is for you.
No. This is all wrong.
Bandanas & October Supplies is not actually a bad book. I know I’m making it sound that way. It just wasn’t that interesting to me. I think many people can enjoy it. I just wanted to give everyone an idea of what to expect. Because on the back cover of the book, where you would generally find a brief synopsis along with maybe a review or two or an author bio, there is instead a note from the editor explaining that the author doesn’t believe in telling you what the book is about before you read it. And some mumbo-jumbo about how a quality book should stand on its own or something.
But I have a theory about the real reason the author wouldn’t want to preview the content of his book. I mean really—how many fleece enthusiasts do you know?
Was this written by Jennifer Gavin Orts?
Was this written by Jennifer Gavin Orts? This is Vanessa Gavin.
dear jennifer,
you must be a fleece enthusiast. i read this book, but wish that i could have read this review first. having a dying mother does not give you the right to create mediocre literature about it. i would like to thank this reviewer for an honest review, and for entertaining me (a fleece disparager) more than the book itself. oh, and there is a Lake George, Florida. it’s lovely. honest mistake.
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Jennifer Gavin said,
June 26, 2006 @ 7:15 amThis review just makes you look bad…plain and simple. Mean-spirited reviews of a book about a kid and his mother who’s dying of cancer are one thing, but to try so desperately to achieve cheap laughs and then completely screwing up the basic plots/locations of the various stories within the book (i.e. Lake George is in New York, not Florida; Raskin never talks about leaving Manhattan — he talks of leaving Queens) are just inexcusable. Mix-ups like these make readers question not only the informative value of your reviews, but also the integrity (do you actually READ the books you review, or do you skim through the first ten pages?).
I won’t ever take another one of your reviews seriously after reading this one; this is just poor, sloppy, hack work.
Sincerely yours,
Jennifer Gavin