The freaks are winning – The Inner Swine Collection by Jeff Somers

What would happen if the Indian contract writers who churn out The Punisher were to read Neuromancer and try to duplicate it? The Avery Cates series of books by Jeff Somers:

• The Electric Church (2007)
• The Digital Plague (2008)
• The Eternal Prison (2009)
• The Terminal State (coming)

I had read the Digital Plague (I think it was a gift? or I found it in a trashcan…I don’t remember exactly how it came into my possession…) and decided to order The Electric Church via PaperBackSwap.com. When I did, I also requested “The freaks are winning – The Inner Swine Collection” which is a book collecting articles from the zine that Jeff has been writing since 1995.

The Avery Cates books were fast paced, and not bad enough that I stopped reading them, but I don’t think I’ll be requesting the next two in the series. The inner swine collection was good bathroom reading, in that each article was short, and not interesting enough to give you hemorrhoids by making you sit on the toilet longer than you really needed to. A few gems stood out, which I will list here in case you want to skip to the good parts:

• Mr. Mute’s Guide to Making a Zine, and Dance with a Hand in My Pants (How I produce 60 pages of Quality Shit for Cheap) are both good articles that give a honest view of the zine production process.
• You can safely skip all of the Pig in Shit editorials.
• Most of the American Wedding Confidential articles are worth reading, and some of them are downright funny.
• Cheerios, Taters, and a Big Bowl of Ice: The Single Woman’s Guide to Economic Food Shopping (by Karen Accavalo) – the only article not written by Jeff is a definite must read.
• If you read the Everybody’s Talkin’ at me: Reviews, Letters, Legal Threats section you will find that Jeff will publish any review of The Inner Swing that includes his name, (Jeff Somers), which is one of the only reasons I mention this section.

Varying quality aside, the fact that Jeff has been churning out three to four issues a year since 1995 is impressive. If you want to get them for free, go to The Inner Swine website.

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3. Book Review: Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow