Looking for in and out books

One of the judges who sat on the panel for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Linda Sue Park, had this to say about what she was looking for in books she considered as finalists in a blog post about the book award experience:

In reading a book [I look] "for two primary qualities: I think of them as 'in' and 'out.' When I'm reading, I want to be 'in' the story. You know the feeling: I want to find it so compelling that I can't bear to put it down. When I do have to put it down and am getting on with the rest of my life, that's the 'out' part--I'm out of the story but I want it to be with me still. I'll find myself thinking about it, wondering about the character(s), recalling scenes or images. A story both 'in' and 'out' for me: That's what I was seeking."

I've read a couple books like this in the past year, and am always on the lookout for more. The links I've provided will point you to the best blog posts I've found on each book, as I am not in the right frame of mind to give these books the just write up they deserve.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
A Drowned Maiden's Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz
Man Stealing for Fat Girl's by Michelle Embree
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

"funny"

The Quotation Mark Abuse Pool on Flickr....

....makes me laugh every time!

prose poem that guts me like a fish

Let’s just get this out in the open.

I was 14 and madly in love for the first time. He was 21. He made me suddenly, unaccustomedly beautiful with his kisses and mix tapes. During the year of elation and longing, he never mentioned that he had a girlfriend who lived across the street. A serious girl. A girl his age. A girl he loved. Unlike inappropriate, high school, secret me.

The next time, I was 15 visiting a friend at college. It was a friend’s friend’s boyfriend who looked like Jim Morrison and wore leather pants and burned candles and incense. She was at work and I wanted him to touch me. She found out. I don’t know what happened after that.

I was 19 and he was my boyfriend’s archrival. I was 20 and it was my lover’s girlfriend and we had to lie because otherwise he always wanted to watch. I was 24 and her girlfriend knew about it but then changed her mind about the open relationship. We saw each other anyway. I was 30 and we wanted each other but were committed to other people; the way we look at each other still scorches the walls. I turned thirty-something and pointedly wasn’t invited to a funeral/ a wedding/ a baby shower because of a rumor.

I am a few years older now and I know this: There are tastes of mouths I could not have lived without; there are times I’ve pretended it was just about the sex because I couldn’t stand the way my heart was about to burst with happiness and awe and I couldn’t be that vulnerable, not again, not with this one. That waiting to have someone’s stolen seconds can burn you alive. That the shittiest thing you can do in the world is lie to someone you love; also that there are certain times you have no other choice – not honoring this fascination, this car crash of desire, is also a lie. [cliché]That there is power in having someone risk everything for you. That there is nothing more frightening than being willing to take this freefall. That it is not as simple as we were always promised. Love – at least the pair-bonded, prescribed love – does not conquer all.

Arrow, meet heart. Apple, meet Eve.

-daphne gottlieb

the Look Book

This is my favorite thing right now, New York street fashion extrapolated and analyzed by the subjects themselves.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LOOK? I guess you would call it fussy. I was brought up in that era of suits and dresses with coats, and that is the way I continue to dress. I have a drawer, and I bet I have 50 pairs of gloves in it. All kinds, from the wrist to above the elbow.

Musicbox Music

Who couldn't be hypnotized by the sounds of a music box? There's something so wonderfully eerie found in its echos and reverb - ghostlike, childlike. I've been thinking that maybe I would like to collect music boxes - though only if I could assure myself that I'd stick with it and accumulate tons of them, I want to be known as the girl who collects weird old music boxes. Secretly I want to be like the cranky old man from Pollyanna with prisms strewn through his house - I feel like collecting music boxes could help me reach this goal.

With this in mind, I started thinking about musicians that utilize music boxes in various fashions in their music. I know I've heard it done lots, but here are a few I came up with at the moment.

The first time I heard this done was on The Fakes record, on the song Pretty Ballerina Pleasure. Song opens with that same tinkling tune that every jewelry box with a pop up twirling ballerina plays - most girls will recognize this song even if they never owned one themselves. The rest of the song is a sort of riot grrrl cacophony of distorted whispered singing about being a pretty little girl.

The art punk psych folk new weird america band, CocoRosie, released an album in 2003, La Maison de Mon Rêve that is described as deceptively innocent: enchanting and sweet yet eerie and twisted. An acoustic guitar paints melody through a haze of cryptic sounds and perversely angelic voices. A broken radio transmits a music box orchestra. Tiny field mice sing gospel. A music box orchestra! Sounds of broken toys dancing in the fields! An operatic voice singing from behind a mask of tragedy. You see what I mean, how wonderful, how wonderful!

Bjork. Vespertine. From an interview with David Hemingway, printed in Record Collector Magazine. I'd always wanted to work with music boxes but it was waiting for the right occasion. I'd been collecting them and stuff. The main thing was that I wanted to write my own songs in music boxes. In the beginning, the music box company weren't very excited. They'd made wooden boxes for eons and I wanted see-through plexiglass. They couldn't get their head round it - they were like 'Why?' They wanted to make the plonky sound softer with wood but I wanted it as hard as possible, like it was frozen. In the end, they said it was the best thing they'd ever done. Enough said, perhaps?

My last musicbox music recommendation is from a girl from France named Colleen. Or wait, does she perform music as Colleen when her name is something else? I am not sure, but you should definitely listen to this radio show, archived on the WNYC website from October, where she talks about the music she creates with a mix of acoustic instruments - classical guitar, music boxes, cello, bells - and electronic digital delays. She performs four songs live on air.

'...knitted wellington boots, knitted pot plants, a knitted sink, knitted stove, knitted vegemite jars...' Its funny, this resurgence of knitting as a trend, what with all the articles titled Knitting! The New Yoga! & say that knitting is not just for Grannies anymore! But these Australian grannies made a whole room of 1950s life out of knitted & crocheted yarn... so much cooler than the endless scarves and squares I pump out. Goodbye Lenin, indeed.

Autumnal Poetry

Last fall I ordered a chapbook written by my favorite contemporary poet, Louise Gluck. It is called October and was to be a birthday present for myself. The chapbook never arrived and I was never charged for it. With the darkening of the night and the stagnant greyness of the days, I forgot all about finding it elsewhere.

The winter passage was survived, and the rain arrived to scrub the ground clean of dry grasses. The sun blossoms trees, and we remember the feeling that is yearly forgotten about the beauty of awakening life, the feeling of hope running through your blood and lining the pit of your stomach.

And today, after a full year of seasonal changes, the thin black chapbook lined with one stark poem has unexpectedly arrived. October arrived in November, right when I needed it more than ever. Thank you.

Missing DC

I moved to Brooklyn in the summer of 2005 from Washington DC. I came here partly to go back to school, partly to follow love and partly as a way to change my life. I loved DC for many years, but it made me feel stuck. So here I am in New York - I love the city, but do miss bits and pieces of the DC life from time to time. Today I am missing Ben's Chili Bowl - it's 11:30 on a Thursday morning and my mouth is watering for their vegetarian chili cheese fries - I usually hate that greasy, messy kind of chaotic food but there is just something so incredibly addictive about this restaurant. Ben's is considered a Washington landmark - a restaurant built on U Street in the late 50's in the building of an old silent movie theater. It's one of the only businesses to survive the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and you can tell the DC community appreciates and recognizes its history.

Just look at that plastic dish of salty non-meaty gooey goodness. Delicious, I say, delicious.