Zine, Ellie Anglin, 1604 Dundas Street W., Apt. 3, Toronto, ON, M6K 1T8, $12 (+ postage)
Here we have a full-colour tribute to a button collection the narrator holds sacred. The cut and pasted words dance over flowery collages of buttons and images evoking bursting pride, a sense of solitude, the anguish of heartbreak, and even riffs on God, Richard Nixon, and Gertrude Stein (how is it that I have two zines that reference Gertrude Stein in one month?). This quarter- sized zine is so thick with buttons (well, pages) that you can barely close it. Anglin creates colourful worlds, ironic associations and dreamy assemblages with a consistent interaction between image and text throughout. In the same way an overtly protective collector obsessively lords over every aspect of their collection, each page here is organized with great care. Anyone who ever displaced pain onto objects, who took shelter in an eccentric hobby, or who just had to be alone for a bit might see a bit of themselves in here. This mischievous zine is too disheartening to be a joke, too funny to be taken literally, and a good amount of strange. If Joanna Newsom’s music was a zine it might be Tender Buttons. (Chris Landry)