Heaven, I Mean Circle K

by Elsa Panizzon.

Ordinarily I'd try to put a little synopsis of the book here, but I don't think it can be done without draining all the life out of this sometimes harrowing, sometimes inspirational, always fabulously entertaining memoir. Elsa's true stories leave most fiction in the shade. 

So here's a story instead.

When I first started blogging at Xanga back in 2002, I heard about some of the oldtimers on the site, people like Fauquet and Notforprophet and VeryModern. "Old" was relative, of course; Xanga had only been around for a couple of years at that point, and had only added blogs (and spammed a number of people into starting them with a very artful fake email signed by "Bianca Broussard") about a year and a half earlier. VeryModern, in fact, had already come and gone by the time I signed up in March 2002; her blog was shuttered, with no visible posts, and it was kind of a shame from what people told me, because she had been wise and funny and told the most amazing stories. 

When I started seeing her name in other people's comment threads, I went to see if she'd reopened her own blog, and I've been following her ever since. She blogs on her own site now, ElsaElsa, which also includes a very active set of message boards. What little I know about astrology is thanks to her; it was also thanks to her that I got professional help for my clinical depression after my mom passed away. She's good people, Elsa P.

And her memoir is well worth reading. It's only available as a Kindle book at the moment, but Amazon makes it pretty easy to read those even if you don't have a Kindle (I don't).