Skin Deep by Karol Griffin

Skin Deep: Tattoos, The Disappearing West, Very Bad Men, and My Love for them All by Karol Griffin

I got my hands on an ARC copy of this, so I’m not sure that this is available to the general public yet.

The author is a tattoo artist who discusses how she got started tattooing, what tattoos mean to her, and the different reasons people get tattooed. She also talks about how people have taken the idea of what The West is like and have made it into kind of a caricature so that now when we think of what The West is, we think of the décor in a steakhouse rather than what The West used to be about.

She also talks about her personal life and the crazy men she’s been mixed up with.

I thought it was interesting—especially the parts where she discusses how she got to be so good at tattooing (practicing on oranges and Styrofoam cups). How scary would it be to do that first tattoo on human skin and know that if you screwed up, that person would be stuck with your mistake forever?