Category: Books

Bret Easton Ellis and “The Baby-Sitters Club”

Posted by Alison – November 15, 2010

Remember how the first chapter of every Baby-Sitters Club book wasn’t even worth reading? Reiterating who the characters were and setting up the series and all that? Well, this clever piece re-imagines all the boring, sentimental details as envisioned by the master of disaffected youth, arcane tidbits about music and an affinity for choking, Bret Easton Ellis (not the actual Easton Ellis, unfortunately). Suddenly the Club seems a lot more angsty…and I see a pixie stick/cocaine addition becoming a crucial element of Claudia’s storyline.

“Kristy
…and Mary-Anne had been talking for about 10 minutes before I stopped totally zoning out, just trying to mellow really on the B-side of this new Beach Boy album. There is nothing more depressing than coming home after last bell at StoneyBrook High, trying to get my room in order for the Baby-Sitters’ Club meeting, and then realizing that you really don’t even give a shit anymore. Like, sorry that you have diabetes Stacey, but do we have to spend half the afternoon discussing it? And yeah, it really bums me out to watch Claudia just snort up half those Pixie Stixs when she is so blatantly trying to get attention to her sugar problem, but every time we try to talk to her about it she says she needs it to focus on her art and that her super-strict Asian parents are coming down on her ass again so what’s the point, really? This whole club is really getting to be a drag but whatever, I started the project and I just know that bitch Marci is waiting for me to like, drop the ball on this whole thing so she can pick up all the money and maybe Mary-Anne’s boyfriend Logan as a nice “fuck you too” perk.”

Read more at Crushable.

Knots

Posted by Alison – October 14, 2010

Want: Far Beyond The Fringe (Three-Dimensional Knotting Techniques Using Macrame & Nautical Ropework) by Eugene Andes, VNR, 1973.

[Via Stopping Off Place]

My Soul is an Enchanted Boat

Posted by Alison – September 14, 2010

Asia: From Prometheus Unbound

Listen to Vincent Price read poetry. Music to my ears.

My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music’s most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

We have past Age’s icy caves,
And Manhood’s dark and tossing waves,
And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers,
Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Via WFMU's Attack of the Blog]

The Secret of the Old Clock

Posted by Alison – September 14, 2010

I loved Nancy Drew. When I was ten I would read multiple books from the series simultaneously just to see if I could keep them all straight. I actually tried to reread the books earlier this year and gave up; I might have only casually noticed the sexism and antiquated attitudes as a kid, but as an adult it’s kind of ridiculous — endless commentary about Bess being fat, George looking like a dude, Nancy’s a liberated sleuth but also a daddy’s girl with access to a car, etc.

However! There is more to life than wayward nostalgia for Nancy Drew. Kate Beaton’s Hark, a Vagrant is pure gold. These tongue-in-cheek comics approach the celebrities and topics of yore — Nero, St. Francis, and and a quite funny one about Lord Byron — and use them for witticisms aplenty. The skull collection panel is my favorite. That Nancy, always getting into trouble!

Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People

Posted by Alison – July 5, 2010


I can’t even begin to express my excitement for the upcoming Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People. Honestly, I’d buy anything Amy Sedaris was selling, including a peanut with glued-on eyes. (True story.) Amy Sedaris is a freaking genius, and not just when it comes to pantyhose and weed jokes. So pumped. I’m pre-ordering as we speak.

[Via Amy Sedaris Rocks]

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