Utne receives some 1,200 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, and zines. Add in hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs, and it's a flood of media that lines the walls of our library and piles high on our desks. All the ideas, people, and stories inspire lively daily chatter, but they can't all fit into our bimonthly magazine. So we share the gems here in our weekly editions of 'From the Stacks.' Check in every Friday for the freshest highlights of the independent and alternative media.

A strange, wonderful, funny, thick, hand-sized book of captioned drawings by Anders Nilsen, Monologues for the Coming Plague, just out from Fantagraphics, compiles two of Nilsen's sketchbooks. Reading it is like watching an absurdist stand-up comic testing punch lines. Get inside the heads of birds being fed by a woman, a man talking with a dog about getting a job, a man in prison for killing the Buddha, and a semiotician whose head appears as a dark scribble and who asserts, 'There are enormous boulders of lint that rumble through the wilderness now and then, crushing everything in their path.' Each page compels one to the next, even while it says, 'Stop! Think about this!' or evokes laughter. Brilliant, sweet, and possibly demented. -- Chris Dodge

The July/August issue of New Moon has arrived, taking on challenging topics in what it calls 'The 'Issue' Issue.' With a demographic of young ladies roughly eight to fourteen, New Moon is more zine than glossy, boasting an editorial board of girls in the target age range and publishing many reader submissions. In one such piece, entitled 'Dance Fever,' a girl's experiences at school dances become a metaphor for life. 'All the fun times you could be having,' writes Sula Sidnell-Greene, 'might pass you by if you don't step away from the wall and dance.' Longtime readers may remember that the magazine once came with an attached newsletter for parents. This has evolved into its own publication, Daughters, which must be subscribed to separately. -- Suzanne Lindgren

The tone of ReNew may seem self-righteously hardcore at times, but the Australian magazine does its best to make technical information on sustainable living (think solar panels and insulated windows) accessible for both expert and novice conservationists. In the latest issue (July/September), Linda Cockburn's article 'Lose weight, get healthy, save money and help save the planet' describes her family's venture from a two-income, time- and money-stressed household to one of self-sufficiency and decreased emissions. Notably, the Cockburns were able to save money during the experiment despite Linda's quitting work in order to raise a garden and her son. Apparently you can have your organic veggies and eat them too, although ReNew lets us know it's no small undertaking. -- Suzanne Lindgren