The Lisa Diaries

by Lisa Crystal Carver

Based on the notorious Nerve.com column! For three years, Lisa Carver dished out the details of her sexual adventures in Nerve.coms most popular weekly column, "The Lisa Diaries." She says, "I described meeting my husband, falling in love, and trying to keep my marriage from falling apart. Dave and I expected to have an open relationship. Neither of us wanted to give up the rest of the world, yet at the same time we wanted to be bound to each other like normal married people. So we had to write our own rules, and then keep changing them. In the second year of the diary, I wanted a divorce; in the third year, we decided to have a baby instead. Ours is a tale of marital problems and solutions, just with a few more penises and vaginas than usual." This book contains never-seen-before entries from the year before the diary began to appear on Nerve.com, "an action-packed, sex-and-drug-filled year that online readers haven't witnessed." So take a ride with Lisa Carver and company, through four wild years of sex, drugs, and wild adventures of the carnal kind.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Sexuality

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

About the author

Lisa Crystal Carver (born 1968[1]), also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby.[2] Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes (her ex-husband with whom she performed Suckdog), Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many. A collection of notable articles from the zine was published as Rollerderby: The Book.

She started touring with the performance art band Psycodrama when she was 18 years old.[3] It was also at this time that she became a prostitute, which has been a major theme in her writings over the years.[4] She began touring with Costes a year later, and would also tour without him when he was in France. She toured the U.S. and Europe six times, the last time in 1998. The noise music soap operas included audience interaction including dancing and mock-rape of audience members.[3]

Carver is the also the author of Dancing Queen: a Lusty Look at the American Dream, in which she expounds upon various relics of pop culture past, including Lawrence Welk, roller rinks, and Olivia Newton-John. In 2005, Soft Skull Press released her newest book, Drugs Are Nice, detailing her early childhood and later romantic relationships with Costes, Boyd Rice and Smog's Bill Callahan. In addition to writing her own 'zines and books, Carver has also written for various magazines (including Peter Bagge's comic book Hate) and kept a fictionalized journal about her sex life for the website Nerve. Although Carver no longer writes her journal for the site, she is still a semi-regular contributor. The online Journal at Nerve was subsequently published in book form as The Lisa Diaries: Four Years in the Sex Life of Lisa Carver and Company. (via Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Mo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Lisa Carver and I can't help it. I am a sucker for snarky Scorpio women.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Lisa Carver and I somehow missed this book. Weird to read it now when it was written 20+ years ago but also interesting to delve into that time in Lisa’s life.

[HeavyReader · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book to review for Clamor (RIP), but didn't like it enough to recommend it to anyone (and Clamor prefered to run reviews of items reviewers were recommending).

I didn't think the sex was very hot, and I didn't think the writing was very good. All of the people in the book (and their relationships) seemed disfunctional, and Ms. Carver wrote in a way that was very mean-spirited and snarky. I would not want to try to be friends with the Lisa Carver of these diaries, nor would I want to have sex with her.

[J M-B · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fan since 'Rollerderby'

[Lisa Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know what to expect when I got this book...Maybe a wry silly sex adventure? But I was surprised by not only the quality of the writing, but by the real story of the book. Yeah, its about sex and being wacky and adventurous and trying to keep a long-term relationship interesting, but it is more about love and the many ways it exists, and about plowing through reality with someone. The core of the story is about how hard it is to stay on the edge, and how much easier it is with someone else teetering out there with you.

[Juliette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This chick is CRAZY!! I know I've said that before, but she is. Lots of weird sex journaling. Weird weird weird. I always feel bad for kids when their mom or dad ends up writing raunchy sex tell-alls, but then again, I read it. So shame on me.

[Erin Tuzuner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bold and honest endeavor to record a relationship in all the squishy details. No one is spared the roving eye and fevered hand of sexual attraction/repulsion preserved in these pages.

[Duc]

I'm interested in Diaries of all sorts.