Title: Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture

Author: Kayla Oakes

Publisher: Holt 2009

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 256

Rating:  3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: A to Z -- O; Dewey -- 700s

How I Got It: Library Loan

As popular television shows adopt indie soundtracks and the signature style bleeds into mainstream fashion, the quirky individuality of the movement seems to be losing ground. In Slanted and Enchanted, Kaya Oakes demonstrates how this phase is part of the natural cycle of a culture that reinvents itself continuously to preserve its core ideals of experimentation, freedom, and collaboration.

Through interviews and profiles of the artists who have spearheaded the cause over the years—including Mike Watt, David Berman, Kathleen Hanna, and Dan Clowes—Oakes examines the collective creativity and cross-genre experimentation that are the hallmarks of this popular lifestyle trend. Her visits to music festivals, craft fairs, and smaller collectives around the country round out the story, providing a compelling portayal of indie life on the ground. Culminating in the current indie milieu of music, crafting, style, art, comics, and zines, Oakes reveals from whence indie came and where it will go next.

Not a bad book, but not really my cup of tea.  I read too much of this as sarcastic and/or pretentious.  I just couldn't get into this book at all.  At many points, the author presupposes knowledge of indie movers and shakers.  I just don't have that knowledge.  I felt lost and confused many times throughout.  I just kind of skimmed through this and immediately forgot it.