This is one hell of a sentence: "I attended a reading last night at a bookstore that placed on the set out for the audience to sit upon while the reader stood in front first reading and then taking questions seats folded flyers advertising, or perhaps merely listing, upcoming events at the very bookstore in which the reading first was to take, then was taking, and finally had taken place."
I think the Oulipo guys probably got laid a lot. For real.
actually, that first event sounds delightful.
$25 seems really cheap, for dinner, drinks and a new (to you) book, especially in your fair but scandalously expensive city.
I'll be honest: I'm probably going to attend the first event. With a suitably snooty book, of course—I'm thinking Wittgenstein's Mistress.
I found the store by googling the line about getting a BA in English. Just below it on the results list was an article about useless majors.
I like my nerds like my Bananas Foster, lit.
I can't give you a link, x., because if we both go we'll both end up just talking to each other.
I would feel terrible having enabled such rudeness.
What are the best and worst possible books to bring to an event where one is invited to bring a book about "HOME"? Where would, say, Geek Love, The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica, or About Behaviorism fall on the traditional Unfogged scale*?
* "Will this make an attractive person more likely to sleep with me?"
"Will this make an attractive personMotumbo more likely to sleep withsex me?"
Best: Wittgenstein's Mistress (duh).
Worst: Angela's Ashes.
Those events do sound astonishingly cheap given the context.
I would bring Twilight. What symbolizes home more completely than Edward's love for Bella?
14: Wouldn't that depend on precisely what sort of attractive person one were looking for?
I now think 17 would have been marginally improved if I had said that the "worst" option was Wittgenstein's Nephew.
21: So we're just answering from our own personal perspectives, then? I guess that makes sense.
Bring a hard-bound copy of the Odyssey, use it to hit everyone there in the face, and then take home all the food.
Is there some kind of paleo diet war-cry I should let loose with before leaving?
Show up with a book about knives and tell people you say "hone".
You could combine 25 and 28 by bringing an actual knife.
Halford's home life is best symbolized by either Lord of the Flies or Hunt, Gather, Cook.
Bringing a copy of Speak, Memory might very well get you laid, except that why would you ever want to give away your copy of Speak, Memory?
Now I'm imagining a scene of someone handing over Speak, Memory with a little light flirtation and . . . oh my God it is so fucking repugnant. BOOKSWAT EVERYONE.
32: I guess one would have to buy a new copy of any book one actually liked.
The temptation to bring Marilynne Robinson's novel Home is strong.
I suppose that would be sincere insofar as I'd expect to like the book - I've been through Gilead twice - but insincere insofar as I'd be using it almost wholly because of its title.
For these purposes a used copy would be better.
For these purposes a used copy would be better.
One could buy a new used copy, or a new new copy to keep, giving away the old one.
I don't think I could quite handle giving away an old copy of a true favourite unless I was quite sure that whomever I met there was going to stay in my life permanently. (Come to think of it, fairly early in my courtship of my husband I gave him a book that I was truly loathe to see leave my possession. Fortunately, that worked out in my favour.)
favour
So it seems you're assimilating nicely.
I changed spell check to British English so that it gives me the ugly red squiggly line when I spell things Uh-Murican, mostly because I'm tired of my co-workers and others teasing me and figure I might as well train myself now so that when I have to write more professionally people don't wonder why I didn't take the time to do it correctly. (Obviously people know I'm American and understand that I spell differently, but I feel like it's more respectful to change my spelling. Or something.)
You'll still sound like this, though.
Holy shit, finally understood the "DOROTHY EDITION". I was going to suggest bringing the Ratman's Notebooks. Independent People or Life: A User's Manual both would work and probably achieve the cockblock which you almost certainly seek. To remove all doubt, maybe The Collector.
Holy shit, Independent People is a great idea.
I had also thought of Life a User's Manual (note punctuation).
Why would the punctuation matter in the translated title?
If the new Oz movie has a novelization, bring that. Also.
Why would the punctuation matter in the translated title?
By cause of the French title is not La Vie, mode d'emploi but rather La Vie mode d'emploi.
Yeah but I don't think that's as big a deal en francais, ie the absence of the punctuation isn't as weird. Also I doubt that book's a cockblock these days.
As a last resort, then, one can observe that the title of the book as translated in English simply is Life a User's Manual, whether or not omitting a comma or colon after "Life" is more or less remarkable in English than omitting one after "Vie" is in French.
How about this?: You bring Independent People, I'll bring The Good Terrorist or perhaps The Sweetest Dream, we pretend not to know each other, and we'll see who does better at meeting people.
(If I were actually to bring a book about home that I've found quite meaningful, it'd be Galveston, but I'm pretty sure that'd be way too lowbrow for such a gathering.)
I'd just like to note that despite Nosflow's best efforts to make it appear intimidating, Independent People is super great and not really difficult or experimental at all. Hard to think of any fiction reader who wouldn't like it, if you're not immediately repulsed by the idea of reading about farmers in Iceland.
Or by commenters who can't close tags.
When have I attempted to make it appear intimidating?
I you can find someone who thinks _Grave of the Fireflies_ is a date movie, _Independent People_ should do fine.
I bought it for my father for Christmas, partly because of Halford's recommendation! (And I thought that getting him the Edwyn St. Aubyn novels, Halford's other rec. at the time, would be a little too dickish even for me.)
43: Weirdly, I keep getting British people telling me that they love American accents. I can't figure it out, as it doesn't accord with how I think it should be.
44, 45: I was going to suggest Independent People, but I've never actually read it; you should all be happy to know that you've given sufficient account of it that I know now I can pretend I've read it.
I would also never ever go to an event like this because I would feel like a perfect dickweed the entire time. That said, I'd bring Soyinka's Aké.
157 -- as much as I hate to say it, your taste is not known to run to the simple, straightforward literature of the people. Though you can prove me wrong by bringing The Notebook to this event.
So it's really that just by recommending it vigorously I've managed to make it seem intimidating? Pah!
A novel partly about home life that would either be a great or a terrible choice depending on the recipient: Springer's Progress.
The novelization of Tremors would probably work great.
Seasonally appropriate Laxness on the home farm:
And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year's withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake's two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes - who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres?
||
Dude weekend update: I am watching basketball in some kind of super deluxe barcalounger, drinking craft beer, while some dudes play pool. So, no surprises, really.
|>
My friend Sabin has a new book out: http://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/event/sabin-willett-abide-me
Yeah, well, I got a driver's license today and the abbreviation for my eye color is BRO.
The best and rarest sensation in literature, for me (hence for everybody because I am the best and can disrespect with impunity the irrational forces of the univ--ow! my nemesis!), is something like "This book is too much gun for me."
17: home is an earth on which you are the last woman?
I love that book.
It's a book about being, or failing to be, at home in the world.
I suppose it is. There's something perversely comforting to me about reading it rather literally.
39 I was obsessed with Vikram Seth's Golden Gate for a few years and used to love giving away my copy and getting a new one.
74. I do that, although not with Golden Gate (though I did like it). I gave away my copy of In the Heart of the Valley of Love a couple of times, and then decided I didn't want to be without it, so I started stockpiling copies to give away.
73: sure, I don't think my claim is incompatible with reading it rather literally too.
A Journey Around My Room would be pretty literal-minded.
I was rather impressed in a sick way last week by City Lights' vast holdings of micro-circulation American Trotskyist/Tiresome Twat magazines. Like I wouldn't have been too surprised to find the print version of my blog. And then I was impressed in the usual way by the vast holdings of books.
including the ones by people I know. perhaps I should write one.
"In the Spring of 1790... he wears his "traveling outfit"--his favorite pink and blue pajamas."
When did people start wearing pajamas?
(1790 seems a bit early to me for an English person, but not if he'd spent time in South Asia.)
83: I had never thought about the origin of pajamas--I just looked it up on wikipedia. I somehow thought pajamas were invented in the twenties, and before that everyone wore nightshirts. I was thinking particularly of stripy pajamas as worn by sitcom dads in the fifties, but then I realized that just because the pajamas were pink and blue, they need not necessarily be striped.
I'd have guessed "when the banyan became passe", so 1790 is early but plausible.
I don't know when they became more common than nightshirts. WWI, maybe.
I think I'd have to bring some flannery o'connor and then just glare around all the time. oh, or I think the best ever would be melville's "the confidence man." I'm mos def bringing that, and then no one will know whether to believe anything I say or not.
just lately my husband undertook the project of selling quite a few of our books [ARGH DIE NO!] in my store, in part because termites had eaten the wall of built-in shelves in the dining room and there sort of wasn't anyplace to put them. but I saw at work one day he had put our copy of moby dick with rockwell kent engravings for sale and I brought it home in high dudgeon. "beloved wife," he said. "we have been married for almost 15 years now. I think that one copy of moby dick with the rockwell kent engravings will suffice for the both of us." and then I had to take it back and put it back on the shelf. and then, saturday, some of our best clients bought it as a gift, and I found that that copy had the tattered book jacket folded inside, in the front, still colored blue. what the fuck?!?? my husband says calmly, "that will just make it all the more exciting when we buy another used copy on abebooks that does have the jacket." but he knows I will never make him buy it. banned emoticon :-(
||
It is normal to invite one's favorite profs to one's wedding, yes? No?
|>
