Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson

When I got my tattoo, it was a last-minute thing. My friend had decided it was the night to get her tattoo, and she'd done a little bit of research but hadn't made an appointment, so we walked into what she was assured was one of the better tattoo parlors in the city. Lots of flash on the wall, and binders full of it. (Flash is the paper typically tacked up all over tattoo parlor walls, a display of what the tattoo artists can do or have done; it also serves as idea fodder.) We ended up waiting five hours because there was only one artist working (which we found odd for a Friday night) and he was coloring in a huge tattoo on a woman's back; we both thought that if we left, we might make excuses not to come back. And boy, were there a lot of interesting people wandering in and out of that place. The girl doing the piercing that night was plenty busy.

Jeff Johnson's book Tattoo Machine, a collection of memories and analysis of the tattoo business (past, present and future), was an interesting book to spend a few hours with. Johnson co-owns a successful tattoo shop in Portland, Oregon. His stories are sad and funny and infuriating--and one story about the guy who wanted a banner with a name and number in it creeped me out. It seems obvious through his style that Johnson spent some time learning the craft of writing stories. He probably worked especially hard on his voice; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the persona he presents in the book is the persona the people who visit his shop see.

He does take off on tangents every now and then, rants that I would've recommended removing. But mostly he tells stories, and he does it well.

Anyone who has even the slightest interest in what goes on behind the scenes in a tattoo shop should read this. As you can imagine, he runs into all sorts of people--and he spares no one.

Rubies in the Orchard by Lynda Resnick with Francis Wilkinson

Sadly, I can't recommend Rubies in the Orchard to readers (unless they're really interested in POM Wonderful, Resnick's personal Camelot company). This book should have been more engaging. Maybe if Resnick had been as emphatic as she tells us she is with her products, she wouldn't have let so much mediocre writing slip by. Or maybe Wilkinson wasn't the right "with" guy for the job--excellent book writing is far different from newspaper or magazine writing.

Throughout the book, I got the feeling Resnick dictated, with little revision between dictation and printing. Resnick creates a sense of talking to a student-reader, which another blog reviewer calls a condescending tone, but I think the tone Resnick strove for is one of assertion; Resnick has a lot of experience and wants you to benefit from her hard-earned wisdom. Of course, if statements like, "Believe me, I know," had been stripped from drafts, some of that perceived condescension might have been mitigated.

Resnick's use of truisms and statistical yet unquantified generalities ("A number of geologists" is referred to on page 173) further undermines her authority. And for someone who declares a high level of eco-awareness, I found it hard to comprehend so many pages wasted on lauding the book, praises most people won't read--poor trees! (Myself, I tend to veer away from books with so much space utilized for curried praise, usually a precursor to my disappointment.)

There are times when the book feels like "a celebration of Me and My accomplishments," learning from"My mistakes"--all so very Mr. Rogers.

And it's not that the book is awful--it's not. It's just that the reader has to work a little too hard to stay interested from point A to point B to point C. Mostly, Resnick seems not to have fully realized what she wanted this book to be--a book about marketing or a marketing memoir.* It would have been better if she had gone with one or the other. Instead, she straddles the two options, which results in a list-style of writing. Clearly she had some parts that would have benefited from a better narrative approach.

I love the cover, and some of the stories she has to tell are interesting. But those may be the best compliments I have for Rubies in the Orchard (which is really too bad, because I eagerly approached this reading).


*And then there are the textbook-style boxes highlighting her key points.

Thanks to Molly Peters at POM Wonderful for sending me this review copy.