books
05 Sep 2012

the perks of being a wallflower

Anyone else excited about The Perks of Being a Wallflower movie? This is a book I have felt fondly toward since I was a teen, when I saw actual commercials on MTV for this very book. A television commercial, can you believe that? In between Road Rules and Say What Karaoke!

Yes, yes, they will probably ruin it because Movies Ruin All Books. I, however, am skilled in separating books and their movie counterparts. They are what they are.

Plus, Emma Watson? Emma Watson.

I think I will queue up Perks in my reading list. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good re-read, and I know for a fact that my copy is a lovely, worn-in paperback that I think was withdrawn from the library at one point. Feels good in a purse, laid flat on a table, in my hands.

Now which box of books to open first…

2
book reviews
04 Sep 2012

Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

E-books. Let’s skip the “Is Print Dead?” and “Are Publishers Evil to Libraries?” debate and just talk about reading for a minute.

Do you think you read differently on your electronic reader of choice than you do a print book? I’ve found my eBooks pile up, unread, faster than my print books do (which is saying something, let me tell you…), maybe because eBooks don’t make an actual pile per se. They stay tucked away in their little digital home, minding their own business.

Unless, I’ve recently learned, they are un-put-downable.

Jenny Hubbard’s Paper Covers Rock was one such book. Alex is a sixteen-year-old student at an all-male boarding school. One of Alex’s best friends – Thomas – has just drowned after the boys jumped from a rock into the river, and in order to process, to distract, and to confess his own implication, Alex begins this, his “novel.” Short chapters jump quickly back and forth in time as Alex remembers good and bad times with Thomas and their friend Glenn and recalls the moments leading up to the accident, but like all teenagers (all people?), Alex gets distracted from literary re-tellings by moments in his present-day life. An intense and possibly reciprocated crush on his young English teacher – who may know more than she’s letting on about the accident – pervades Alex’s life, and the novels and poems of the classical canon she loves pervades Alex’s writing – the book is full of quotations, allusions, and general old-book-talk. As their relationship grows and Alex begins to reveal details from Thomas’s death and Glenn starts to act completely crazy, the tension lured me back to that silver eReader and away from my other reading.

I will say that when I’m reading an un-put-downable eBook, I start to click that little forward arrow faster than my eyes can probably be necessary. And reading this book so quickly and on an electronic device felt extra strange because A) this is a significantly literary-type book, one that could afford a little slow-reading, B) it is chock-FULL of bits of even MORE literary-type works (Moby Dick, Thoreau, lots of poetry) and C) it is set in the 80’s, when books were still made of paper.

The premise might seem to you more seasoned YA fans to be a direct rip-off of A Separate Peace, but it’s more like a variation on a theme, an deeper exploration of character,  a satisfying companion. Whatever your choice of mediums, I would recommend Paper Covers Rock wholeheartedly.

boston
03 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-five

August 26 – September 1

I have landed.

Not feeling quite as shell-shocked, but still surprised about how terrible terrible TERRIBLE moving in is. There’s the exhaustion of packing, the guilt that you even own all of this shit, the disruption of your schedules and habits, followed by social awkwardness of having to convince friends to help you move and/or the endless small and large expenditures associated with moving, and then, if you are young and dumb, a day of hell when you move all your furniture and boxes down 3 flights of stairs and then up 3 flights of stairs. The next day, you wake up in a pile of garbage, every muscle in your body is screaming at you, and you must call Comcast 6 or 8 times in one day.

This is depression-causing mayhem. I hate everything about this place, other than the increased square footage. It is crazy old, not well kept up, lacking in simple comforts such as Machines That Wash Things and everyone I talk who has lived in the neighborhood their whole lives say things like “You guys are living WHERE? Text me when you get home, let me know if you made it,” even though we live .3 miles from our old apartment.

So I hate it, but really I just hate all that stuff in the first paragraph and I am taking it out on my poor, crappy apartment. And I will live here for at least a year, after which I will either have grown accustomed to my apartment’s quirks and become comfortable with the neighborhood, or I will leave for greener pastures.

After that point, I will either start the cycle again or hire someone to conduct said moving.

I think I will start saving my pennies either way, just in case.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast intake is spiraling completely out of control… I won’t even try to chronicle what I have been listening to, because both content and quantity might shock your system.
  • Whilst packing, I inflicted a number of Broadway musicals upon Lance, including Fiddler on the Roof!
  • Whilst assembling some sanity at my new favorite coffee shop (because it is so close by), I listened to the soothing tones of Honeyhoney and Skrillex.
boston
29 Aug 2012

here’s something

I am moving.

So, my apartment is full of so much crap and boxes I keep running into things and getting bruised.

So, I have to bring half of my library books back without being read.

So, I am crying and angry most of the time because moving sucks.

I have moved eight times. The first time, I was a small, small baby. My parents moved from a one bed to a two bed in the same apartment complex. The last time I moved, I was comatose for a week or so, but I recovered and have so many lovely memories of this place. Many, many hours playing Super Smash Brothers. Lots of nights with friends playing games. Futon sleepovers, making Mexican food, birthdays, hangovers, scrambled eggs, TV marathons, laying on the floor and listening to the neighbors fight.

I would stay, but they built a Whole Foods two blocks away, which both improved my daily life and raised my rent by 200 dollars a month.

If I’m a bad blogger in the near future, I am either packing, unpacking, or weeping.

weird things i love
28 Aug 2012

to my sister dear

Dear C-Rollin,
Happy Birthday!

I hope you have a happy day and a good year at college. I will get you a present, but I am moving in like 3 days so I don’t know what it will be yet. Do you like books? Or t-shirts? Or both?

I have these predictions for your 19th year: you will become an excellent vegetarian chef, you will get all A’s but one B+, you will get a part-time job, you will make two nice friends, and you will fall in love.

Many happy things will happen to you because you are one of the best people. Smart and special you are. Let everyone know it.

Love to you,

Jessica

 

life maintenance
27 Aug 2012

2012: week thirty-four

August 19 – August 25

These weeks have been a bit of limbo – settling into a new routine, schedule, job, but also getting ready to disrupt said schedule and routine with a Move and a New Address. Things just won’t be until after September 1.

In an absence of a permanent location and entirely settled routine, I am trying to focus on good habits. Getting up early. Consistent (mostly sugar/carb free) sustenance. Running for consecutive days. Writing. Etc. Good habits will follow you anywhere, and if habits are already in place, when you arrive you’ll say “Oh! I must set up my blah-di-blah so I can blah-di-blah immediately!” instead of being a lazy lout and never unpacking a single box.

Speaking of lazy louts, I slept in yesterday and today and my neck and head paid for my sins. There are days that I am tense and headachey to the point of misery, and those are the days I delay caffeine and sleep past 9 a.m. I think that means that I am old, old woman. Or I need a new pillow.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Thanks to Ashley, I discovered like 7 new podcasts this week. Favorites included Professor Blastoff and JV Club. And the Josh Radnor episode of Making It? A dream. Ted Mosby + Zen meditation + euchre. Lust.

Watching:

  • LOST. LOST. LOST.
  • That boy I live with finally went out for the night on Thursday and left me at home alone. “What are you going to do tonight?” he asked. “Pack,” I answered. And then I watched Twilight. World’s most awkward movie.

 

life maintenance
25 Aug 2012

all the things

My apartment is half empty, half wrecked. Boxes everywhere, full, half-full, empty. I don’t know what to do with all these library books – these library books! Who packs up books that belong to a library and puts them into a U-Haul?

Moving is a great excuse to start clean. New place, new mindset.

But first, you must confront everything in your head, your life, your apartment. Maybe I have been watching a few too many episodes of the last season of LOST, but this feels like a reckoning. Is this object going to have a place in my new life? Is it useful or beautiful? Do I have time to think this hard about every object I put into a cardboard box?

I’m hoping that moving won’t knock me out to the extent it did last time I moved. The 1st falls on a weekend, not a workday. I will have an entire 48 hours to move in, unpack, and recover.

However, I have the next six days to reckon with this: my emptying apartment and all the memories it holds, the fresh life I might find in my new place, and, oh yeah, all of my shit.

1
books
24 Aug 2012

mpgd

Although the manic pixie dream girl is a fictional phenomenon usually found in film (see this helpful video), she is also often found frequenting the pages of the realistic YA novel.

See: Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Dub in Rats Saw God, and of course, Alaska.

Some people find this particular character trope problematic, on a feminist level. Some people find ALL character tropes to be lazy on from a literary standpoint – a embrace of a certain level of stereotype, of cliche – and therefore problematic.

Some people? Embrace that crazy girl for all she’s worth.

I’m going to assume that the title is an act of publishing/marketing and not an artistic choice. It’s one thing to use  fiction to dive into problematic stereotypes or common depictions of certain minority groups. It’s quite another to name your book after said stereotype, complete with a teen-glam cover such as this.

Though… if you are asking whether I will read this book when it comes out in April 2013?

Wel… maybe.

I also just put My Teenage Dream Ended on hold at the library, so perhaps you should reconsider your evaluation of my tastes/recommendations.

books
22 Aug 2012

NetGalley: a tale of obsession

Dear Friends,

How do you NOT download 10,000 galleys from NetGalley?

I’ve been avoiding signing up for a number of reasons… apparently good ones. After two weeks, my eReader runneth over.

Add this to the problem that is Visiting A Library Every Day Because I Work There and Checking Out Books Every Damn Day…

I am in need of the world’s nerdiest intervention.

 

 

2
books
21 Aug 2012

books in the home

I almost didn’t pick up Deborah Needleman’s Perfectly Imperfect Home.

First of all, I couldn’t navigate my own library’s nonfiction section well enough to find the home decorating books. But that is neither here nor there.

I was also skeptical about a decorating book with no photographs. What is the point? Illustrations are lovely, but these rooms are not REAL, they are imaginary. Of course they look cute.

Then I remembered that… uh… illustrations are lovely. Especially Virginia Johnson’s.

And then I started to love the emphasis on form+function… not designers, not mid-century-modern-clean-lines-vintage-blah-di-blah. This book introduced the verb “cozify” into my life, as in “to make cozy,” which I like.

And then I stumbled across an entire section devoted to my favorite household decoration:

“Books are physical manifestations of our histories, our interests, and our passions. They are also beautiful creations of design and typography that evoke their era. There are plenty of anachronistic things that are essential for a comfortable home: we certainly don’t need candlelight or blazing fires or antique mirrors but we love them for how they make us feel. Our books allow us to be surrounded by things we love and admire, and allow others to share in our interests without even having to mention them. Books make a room feel like a room.”

And to that, I say, amen.