Gatsby, Good Omens and Catching Up

Guys, I am behind on blogging about stuff! I am very behind! This is a catch-up post. After you read this, you will be up to date on my goings on and we can all be goings on with our lives. And I will blog more frequently. Promise.

• I finished my librarian training and I start work tomorrow and I am SO EXCITED.
• I finished reading Good Omens by the illustrious Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It was VERY GOOD. I finally understand what all the fuss is about. I don't know if I should go through the trouble of reviewing a 22 year old book here, but I will just say it was: very funny, very poignant, very very clever, and extremely enjoyable. A unique take on Revelations and the apocalypse and so nice to read when all we seem to get these days are zombie apocalypses. Guys, the Bible did the apocalypse first, and it was scary as all get out. And Good Omens made me think about the apocalypse again, but in a new, cool and interesting way. Zombie apocalypses just don't hold a candle in my mind.
• ...that being said I'm about to start World War Z by Max Brooks which is about... the zombie apocalypse... *sigh*
• Also reading: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler. I can't get enough of Daniel Handler. I just started this and so far so good. This one I absolutely will review. 
• Also also reading: The Adventure Time Comics. Just finished issue 4. These comics are so well written (by Ryan North of Internet Comic Fame, and my first internet celebrity crush) and capture the tone of the TV series so well, I challenge you not to fall in love with them. I hope you accept. 
• The end of Sherlock Series 2 just finished airing in the US and now I finally feel like I can talk about the ending out in the open to everyone. If you haven't seen it yet, don't talk to me about Sherlock. I might spoil it. Even if I try not to, I still might. It's a bad habit. To be fair, my whole relationship with that show could be categorized as a bad habit.

I think that's it. I can't come up with anything else. Now I'll act like a real blog. This is the trailer for a movie titled The Great Gatsby:

I have very mixed feelings about every frame of this trailer. I will say that Leonardo DiCaprio looks more like Gatsby than I thought he would. And Carey Mulligan looks like she might make a good Daisy, even though I think she's a little young ( I did just watch her play a silly, frivolous Isabella Thorpe in 2007's Northanger Abbey; she played naive and foolish very well and that may bode well for her as Daisy.) Toby McGuire is just not my Nick. At all. Or my anyone for that matter. And I'm worried about the trapeze artists, and the glitter, and Gatsby throwing his shirts. And hopefully it will all come together and be one big beautiful Baz Luhrmann film and not.. a mess of symbolism and excess and flapper dresses. I'm not above bringing my heavily annotated copy of the novel to the theater and getting up to go read it somewhere if the movie goes horribly awry, that's all. Ugh. 

XOX

P.S. Northanger Abbey was so good! It was introduced to me as "fluffy and silly and wonderful" and it was all of those things. I'll be sure to write something up about it later, as it will give me an excuse to talk about JJ Feild as Henry Tilney who is very nearly my favorite Austen leading man. 

-Em

Tea-drunk and Writing

Guys, I am sleepy and tea-drunk. Originally, I was going to post some thoughts on writing and they were going to be good and clever, but then I drank too much tea. Now my head is all warm and fuzzy, and all I can think about is how I wish I had been closer to certain people when I was in college. I wish I could Facebook chat them and find out how they're doing without it seeming weird as hell. Tea-drunk is not close enough to real drunk for me to feel confident in my ability to say, "Hi! What's been ups?" without feeling like a creepy stalker who shouldn't still be trying to be friends with people I only had 2 classes with.

Drinking too much tea, or maybe thinking too much, has also given me the sort of stomach ache you get when you're anticipating something. My brain receives these "I-drank-too-much-tea" signals and interprets them as "oh God oh God I'm so nervous right now!" Sometimes bodies are incredibly stupid. Mine in particular.

Here are my thoughts on writing that I drafted half an hour ago. There is a dramatic shift in tone between these two blog sections. During this second part, I'm sober:

First of all, let me start off by saying this: I don't know shit about writing. Really. I try to and the more I read and listen the more I learn; college and workshopping and everything like that, it all helps. But when I sit and put pencil to paper, everything I've learned about process and craft works together in unconscious ways that I don't pay attention to. It's a bit like driving. You don't always pay attention when you're doing it, but you make it home safe from work every day.


Sometimes something that I love comes out of it, and other times it is absolutely awful and I look at my notebook or my computer screen and sigh and tell myself that this is why I need to find a real job. But I do love writing. When I start working on something it's what I imagine being addicted to drugs is like. It's all I think about, it's what I breathe, I try to get away from everyone at work at lunch time so I can sit in a corner and script dialogue that I wont ever use because it makes me feel something.  When people come near me I snap at them and am basically really rude and awful, but it doesn't matter because I need the words to be on the page more than I need people to like me (this is not very nice, but it is true. The fact that it's true really lends itself back to the drug metaphor well, because when I'm not writing I am a very dependent person. When I'm doing it, it changes me.)

God, that was so much more coherent than this. All this writing talk started because I've been feeling really inspired lately, and I believe it's because of all the good writing I've been steeped in. Sometimes reading or listening to writing that's better than yours is discouraging. That used to be how I felt all the time. I'd write stuff and I'd be like, "Ugh, this is nowhere near as good as Shakespeare!" and then crumple it up and start over. But I'm at a place right now where good writing (Adverbs by Daniel Handler {again}, Sherlock {yes, that fucking TV show again}, Adventure Time {the comic by Ryan North and the TV show}, Travels With Myself and Another by Martha Gelhorn, everything by Frank O'Hara, and the collected works of Paul Verlaine {in both English and French}) is just pushing me. The more I listen and read, the more I want to create and do. Tonight it's all sort of jumbled up in my head and I can't really manage to get any of my own work done because I keep Googling poems by Frank O'Hara and Paul Verlaine. Seriously, everyone else: stop being so fucking amazing. You are driving me to drink. Too much tea.

XOX

(Click the pic to check out its source. Should be your go to for AT screen-cap needs.)

Getting Out of Bed is Hard... (Prepping for Zurich and Venice)

Day of travel, here I come!

Not really though, as I am still lying warm and cozy in my blanket cocoon. I did, however, manage to do most of my packing last night while listening to/watching fantastic Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious. It is one of my favorites and is notoriously... good. Hahaha... I am tired still.

I realized that I still haven't said anything about Hunger Games (da film), and that makes it seem like it was bad or forgettable. It was actually very good. A little on the longer side coming in at 2 hours and 20 some odd minutes, but all minutes well spent. The thing that surprised me the most (in a good way, mind)  was how little the characters talked. Given that the book is mostly told in Katniss' internal monologue (I just typed "brain narration" and thought: no, you're an English major and there's a word for that) there were a lot of ways they could have shot the film to handle that. I think the fact that they chose a "few extra lines and y'all better act good" as their strategy was great. Some very nice cinematography and overall a very close follow of the books. I thought it was good fun.

Now, this trip... Before I go on trips I get nervous. I get nervous in the same way that I get nervous standing in line for the biggest roller coaster at the amusement park. I'm excited and I know it will be fun, but I'm also afraid I might die. It's mostly unfounded because generally people don't die on roller coasters (or airplanes), but ohmygodwhatifIdie! Still, if I really think I'm going to die before I get there I shouldn't waste my time packing but, guys, I have packed so many things. I have packed a ton of stuff because in my head Venice might be so great that I will decide to stay there forever, and I'll need extra clothes and books for what will become a transitional period in my life. Also, you will all be needing passports to come visit me.

I'm going to get up now and take a shower. Unless I get extremely bored in the airport this is the last time you'll hear from me until we reach Zurich, where assuredly things will be nice and Swiss. Hoping to find cheese, hot chocolate and someone who can point me toward the gate to my transfer flight in at least 3 of Switzerland's 4 national languages. Will try to learn Romansh during the layover! I promise my next post will have pictures too. I know words are so dull all on their own.

XOX


Books I'm taking with me, in case you were wondering (not counting the ones on my PC Nook reader thing, which are all the ones that it came with anyway; I just cant convince myself that eBooks are something I want to involve myself with yet. ANYWAY):

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I started this book several months ago and then got distracted by life and other books and had to put it down. Very ready to pick it back up again. Sherlock Holmes mysteries are some of my favorites.

Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir by Martha Gellhorn

Similar to Hound, I was reading this book right in the middle of a lot of things and I had to put it down and attend to life. But now I have time and I'm so looking forward to it. I'm in the middle of an early chapter where she's in China with an unidentified companion (my guess is Hemingway) and her descriptions and stories are incredible. She was a travel writer and novelist and so fascinating. When I read this book I always feel like I need to don a shirt dress, get some of that 1940's verve, and go on some grand adventure for greater purpose. Martha Gellhorn was a bad ass.

The Best of Nancy Drew: Classics Collection Vol. 2 (including The Hidden Staircase, The Ghost of Blackwood Hall and The Thirteenth Pearl) by Carolyn Keene

I love Nancy Drew. I have since I was little and I will until I die. Her mysteries are fun and not so scary that I can't read them before bed (I'm looking at you Hound...) And, as a character Nancy is just so charming and absurd at the same time. Her dad buys her everything, she gets into trouble and no one cares, she hardly ever goes to school and she solves mysteries with her two best friends who aren't as smart or pretty as her. She's like the Barbie of YA literature.  If you have any love for Nancy Drew then you should check out these comics with haste. Kate Beaton's interpretation is hysterical(ly accurate.)

Quick Hits on Some Absolutely Fabulous Things!

No time for travel lately (and with a jaunt to Venice just around the corner I have no money to travel, even if I did have time); however, I have managed to immerse myself in a few things that I need to recommend to everyone who stumbles across these lonely little posts. Ready? Here we go:

1. "The Art of Video Games" exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Category: Sort-of travel): This exhibit at the Smithsonian was a lot of fun. It was very interesting to get a glimpse at games that have defined and redefined video gaming and art. The exhibit isn't very big; there are only 3 rooms, one of them is specifically set aside for game play (only 5 games are available to play, in no particular order: PacMan, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and Flower.) There are plenty of interesting videos with interviews from designers and creators, and there are plenty of soundbites about individual games themselves. I'm not sure they form the most cohesive exhibit I've ever seen, but if it's a topic you're interested in there is probably enough information to satiate you. Is it worth a trip all on its own? Maybe not. It just isn't big enough to be its own day trip. If you're game (aha ha!) though, and headed to the city, or looking for an excuse to get out to a museum, it will certainly do. It leaves DC and heads on the road in September. For more info, click here:  http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/
   
2. Sherlock (Category: Television Show): Dear Lord in Heaven. There is no end to the good things I could say about this show. If you haven't seen it and enjoy fantastic writing, great acting or a wonderful mystery, then you are missing out. Set in modern times, this Sherlock Holmes retelling is practically perfect in every way. It has just enough inventiveness to stand out and allow its actors and creators plenty of room to play, while still pulling enough material from its source to please even the most voracious Conan Doyle fans. Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who fame) and Mark Gatiss (author of the Lucifer Box series) write and co-create like a dream, somehow managing to make every episode harrowing and heartfelt. I could gush all night about this show, and if it becomes clear to me that no one reads this blog, one day I may do an episode by episode review of it to satiate my own need to watch and rewatch this show. You can watch the first season on Netflix Instant Watch. The second season has already aired in the UK, and begins airing on your local PBS station in May in Masterpiece Mystery.
   
3. Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute (Category: Novel): This novel is third in what will hopefully be an extensive series by author Jonathan L. Howard. If you haven't read the first two, you should (Johannes Cabal The Necromancer, and Johannes Cabal The Detective, respectively); however, you'll be able to manage this one just fine if you haven't. You do need a sense of humor and an appreciation for the macabre; once you have that, you'll be ready to go. This third foray into fiction with our eponymous antihero is steeped in the lore of H.P. Lovecraft, and it comes out all the more delightful because of it. Having not read much (hardly any, though it is on my list) Lovecraft I still felt perfectly at ease in the world Howard creates/borrows. While the plot twists and turns, it's easily graspable and by far one of the most fun I've had reading in quite awhile. Though surly and sarcastic Herr Cabal is, it doesn't take long to realize that there is no better guide to the Dreamlands, and no one you'd rather have take you. You'll have to order this one from the UK though because (as of this writing) there hasn't been a US publish date set yet. It is entirely worth the extra $3.00 shipping. 

Well, that is it my darling darlings. I have to pop off to bed now, as I will be up late late tomorrow for the midnight showing of The Hunger Games. Expect a review to follow, and then that will most likely be it until I am en route to Venice. So good night all, and enjoy!

With all my love. XOX