book a week geek

This post comes at a time when I am struggling with some terrible inner admittances. What? I like Beyonce now? And unicorns? And sitting in my bed reading Glamour? WTF, self? And okay, to be fair, for some reason Glamour randomly started coming to me last month out of nowhere and I have paid them zero dollars, but it keeps coming, and Diane Lane looked so cute on the cover that I had to read the article, and here I am. In guilty pleasure-land. I like some really, really, really terrible things.
Regardless, it is with much trepidation that I admit here, before you, that I started reading Twilight (p.s. I initially spelled that TWIGLIGHT!!). I am so not proud of this. It’s the trashiest, most terrible piece of “literature” I have ever read. The vampires sparkle. Sparkle. Like diamonds. WTF. I like all things vampires, which is good and fine (I think??) but I have sunk to an all-time low and embarrassing territory here. That said: I seriously cannot stop reading it. I advise you to walk swiftly away from this book. It will suck you in and ruin you and steal your soul and more importantly, all of your “omg the semester ends in 3 weeks” motivation. Don’t do it.

In a more uplifting and promising note, I’m also re-reading Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder, which is so good it’s scary and not even a little bit fair. The format of this is unusual for Margaret (I think I can call her that, maybe, because I’m her #1 fan), but she does it outstandingly and I so highly recommend it. Margaret, I love you. You give me hope, Margaret, that maybe I’m not a 14 year old dolt trapped in a 23 year old’s body!!

Next week: I talk about the Babysitter’s Club and how much I hated Dawn-the-dippy-vegetarian-from-Cali-with-divorced-parents but loved Stacey-the-fashionable-blonde-from-NYC!!!-who-had-diabetes. J/K.

When I was in tenth grade, I sat at a lunch table with 5 other girls.  They all had some variation of an eating disorder, or claimed to, in the least.  I liked to eat copious amounts of food then (uh, still do), and was the size of a fly, and thus, Melinda daily running to the bathroom mid-lunch to barf up her ice cream sandwich was kind of a mystery to me.  This might have been where my fascination with eating disorders began: cafeteria, dieters, Gina’s acid breath, the little stack of carrot slices Kris alloted herself per day.   Either way, hello life-long fascination.

Going Hungry: writers on desire, self-denial, and overcoming anorexia (ed. by Kate Taylor) is a compilation of essays by 17 essays by various women writers (and in a nod to the newsflash that men are struck by eating disorders just as easily as women, one essay by a male writer).  For the most part, these are heavy essays.  They are largely sad, and strange, and deeply upsetting.  I sometimes felt like I didn’t belong while reading them.  Like an outsider, or worse yet, a voyeur.

I would like to say that this book could serve as a warning, or in the least, a cautionary lesson to young men and women, but I can’t.  At points in nearly every essay, anorexia and bulimia are glamorized, are heralded; the writers claim to have felt sexy and more beautiful than ever whilst binging and purging.  This book offers little hope.  It offers few solutions to the readers who might have come to its pages looking for an answer, or for help.  To the converse: it likely holds a few more secrets for those seeking a new fullness strategy, or another way to hide their disorder, or an easier way to vomit (yes–they even chronicle this).   I wanted this book to slap me in the face and disgust me and terrify me and horrify me and I wanted to give a copy of it to a child of mine someday so they’d never be like the girls at my lunch table.  Anorexia and bulimia are ugly, vicious diseases–make no mistake of this–but never, ever, do these essays show that.  Writers flippantly talk of being hospitalized, near to death,  and it’s no big deal.  I realize that the point of these essays was largely not to solve a huge issue in a few hundred pages, but, c’mon.

My other complaint with this book, and maybe this is neither here nor there, is the homogeneity of the writers.  The majority are white (one is black, another–the only male–hispanic).  Most are monied.  Most go to Ivy League schools–Harvard, Yale & Stanford are tossed around casually by the majority of the authors.  This is a flat representation of a disease that plagues countless demographics.  Why not show that?

I came away from this book mostly feeling very, very sad, and simultaneously quite helpless.  It is perhaps not within the scope of this book to have included even an iota of a solution, but I can’t help feeling that it’s all too necessary regardless.

For a truly ugly and fantastic look at eating disorders, I highly recommend Marya Hornbacher’s memoir, Wasted : a memoir of anorexia and bulimia.  It is the book that Going Hungry could never be. 

I discovered today that I have a dangerous, scary obsession with the Beyonce video for the song “Single Girls.”  I have to confess that I am actually mesmerized by it.  I don’t even like music videos.  I don’t even like Beyonce.  BUT THAT SONG IS SO CATCHY.  And the video!  My only beef is that she’s wearing this weird claw thing on her left hand.  Do.  Not.  Want.

Tangent alert!!!:  R. Kelly.  Is he secretly a genius or what?

Also today the campus internet connection went kaput and people freaked out.  It was amazing.

Additionally, all that stuff people say about promoting healthy urinary tracts, it is so totally true.  Ladies, drink that cranberry juice, y’hear?

I was startled to realize recently that apathy no longer interests or amuses or attracts me.

Seriously, am I a grown-up?

Weird.

-any beer that Red Hook makes, but in particular, ESB

-pie

-growing one’s hair out

-written correspondance

-Alice Munro’s short story “A Bear Came Over the Mountain” & less-so, but still something I would get behind if there were a fight about it or something, Sarah Polley’s film based on the story, “Away From Her” (this is not just because I LOVE Sarah Polley and sad stories about old people, either)

-going to Canada/dreaming about Nova Scotian real estate

-making fake meatball subs (um, hello YUMMY)

-playing Uno

-family time

-dog walkin’

-getting up early when there’s no reason to

-Koha (dangerously, beautifully addictive & dorky)

I was hella stoked when I realized that the New Yorker had stolen James Wood from the London Review of Books.  I fucking love James Wood, and while I fantasize about the day that I can subscribe to (and faithfully manage to read all of) the NY, Harpers AND the LRoB, that’s just not wholly reasonable because, uh, I work & school & sometimes leave the house, so I am stuck shelling out my hard-earned monies to the NY & Harpers and stealing my brother’s LRoB.  This James Wood thing, though, it’s struck up a reasonable schism between my brother and I.  See, we both love James.  We collectively think he is a goddamn genius, and want him to come to Thanksgiving dinner and maybe, like, steal our mom from our dad so he can be our stepdad and maybe his genius will rub off on us or something.  So, as a LRoB subscriber, my brother was so totally not pleased that AH HA!–I get James now, all to myself.

Last week, in the New Yorker, my future stepdaddy wrote about Jose Saramago’s new book Death with Interruptions with such moving conviction that I couldn’t help but immediately run to the fiction shelves and grab it for myself.  I love when a review does this to me, when it ruins me and consumes me and motivates me (this one in particular motivated me so much that I had to pay a bunch of fines to check it out.  I hate paying fines.).   I started this today at work (shhh) and it is already so good that I want to fly home and curl up with a dog or two and ignore everything else and just read the night away.

This comes at a difficult time for me, because I’m also digging through Ben Snakepit’s The Snake Pit Book and his  My Life in a Jugular Vein, Dean Young’s Embryoyo (which is so. funny.!) and this compilation of essays written by folks with eating disorders (Going Hungry).  Additionally I am re-obsessed with the Stasi and have like fourteen related books on my bedside table that I need/want to read, and also school is kind of nightmare-ish right now, so that’s time-consuming too.  I doubt I will have much to say about Ben Snakepit’s stuff, other than it’s neat & that I couldn’t write about my life every single day because it would retrospectively bore me to tears, so it’s cool that he was able to do that and not freak the fuck out and do something insane to spice things up like tattoo his entire face with a picture of the Taj Mahal.  Or something.  However, Going Hungry is killing me for quite a few reasons, and I will have no choice but to hash it out eventually.  It’s sort of painful to read in large doses, but I’m getting there.

Lots on my plate.  Not enough time.

In my lil’ library department, we have an oft used collection of Underground Press papers from 1963-1985.  I was just browsing the index for Pittsburgh (for fun, y’know, ‘cuz library materials are fun) when I discovered, lo and behold, holdings for a paper called the “Mill Hunk Herald.”  This is such a good title.  I want to revive it and have totally excellent wacky glossy covers with, like, Jennifer Beals draped on the giant Sears at Pittsburgh Mills.  I don’t know why my brain is interpreting this title with:

a.) so much amusement

and

b.) so much incorrectness

but, well, there it is.  I’m amused by everything.

I am, like, the world’s worst blogger. My faithful readers must be thinking, “Wherever did Elaina go?!!”, to which I frankly have no answer. Um, to work? To school, maybe?

I’ve been reading lots of things, it’s true. And knitting lots of things. And watching lots of, um, well, Gilmore Girls. I feel no shame admitting that. This is the girl who faithfully watched the O.C. until the very last episode, who bawled her little eyeballs out when Marissa Cooper died, who was so devastated by Coop dying that she couldn’t leave the house on her 22nd birthday. The girl who has canceled plans in order to spend entire Saturdays (9-9, baby) watching Top Model marathons. The girl so devoted to Buffy she scours Digital Dissertations & ETD looking for Buffy-related theses and dissertations (at least I’m putting my reference skills to work?). Obviously, I have no television shame. Whatevs.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, then, to hear that I have been reading BUFFY SCHOLARLY ESSAYS. That’s right, faithful readers. Buffy studies–they exist. This month, I’ve read:

-Sex and the slayer : a gender studies primer for the Buffy fan, edited by Lorna Jowett

-Fighting the forces : what’s at stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery (if there were a god of Buffy studies, it would be Lavery)

and

-Slayer slang : a Buffy the vampire slayer lexicon, by Michael Adams

I’m not entirely sure if I’m proud of this, or embarrassed. I actually liked all of these books/compilations. Sure, I kind of hid Fighting the forces behind a notebook when I was reading it on the bus (okay, it has a really really shitty cover) but, Buffyverse folks notwithstanding, there’s some decent writing in here to appeal to most people who like wacky television.

All of this is why it should come as no surprise that I am so eagerly awaiting the return of Gilmore girls and the politics of identity : essays on family and feminism in the television series (edited by Ritch Calvin) to my lil library. I mean, why not?

Yesterday I went on a date with my mom. My mom is fun and pretty hilarious, and we are the best of pals. She is going away for the rest of the month (which makes me sad) so we decided it was necessary to bond to the max. Also I have personal days to kill before June ends, so, alas: best day ever happened.

I am telling you about this day not only because it was the best day ever, but also because you should and CAN live it. Our day began at my parents’ house, where I drank a smoothie and fervently prayed (silently, of course) that my mom had changed CDs in her car since the last time I went somewhere with her. We got in her car and headed on our way down the Turnpike, where I quickly discovered that, no, she hadn’t changed CDs and yes, I still had to listen to Johnny Cash, the Juno soundtrack and La Vie En Rose on repeat over and over again. (Actually, I lied. This is the only part of the day you can’t live, because it would be really creepy if you went to my parents’ house and insisted that my mom make you a smoothie and then drive you to Fayette County).

Alas. We arrived in Ohio Pyle and had a picnic at Cucumber Falls, where I had never been, but am dying to return to, and soon, because it is insanely beautiful and I never wanted to leave. Also, our picnic was delish: rice & jalapeno salad (mom’s specialty??), pickled beets, iced tea, Dr. Kracker’s crackers (these are my favorite), honeydew and baklava. Unconventional, yes, but delicious. Next, we went further down the road to Kentuck Knob, where I had also never been. I’ve been to Fallingwater (literally a hop, skip & a jump away from Kentuck Knob) many a time and always really loved it, but, seriously, I think Kentuck Knob blew it out of the water in loveliness. We walked in the woods for a long while there, and also stopped to visit the Sculpture Garden, wherein my mom entertained me by saying really adorable things about art. I will not tell you what they are though, because making fun of my mom is my thing and I don’t want anyone else to get their kicks at her expense.

Finally, we journeyed to Sandhill Berries, which is pretty much the greatest place ever. They will make you any dessert imaginable with raspberries or blackberries or strawberries on it. Hello, heaven. No trip to Westmoreland County is complete without stopping here. They also make wine there now, and will let you sample many of them.

I was insanely touristy yesterday and took a million pictures. They are here.

Bookwise: this morning I tried to start reading Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief on the bus but the guy sitting next to me kept telling me he liked my nose, so no progress was made there. Oh well.

my life got crazy and hectic. This comes as a surprise to me (and probably everyone else, too) because I barely have a life. I am actually doing my homework & enjoying some of it (just some. Not all of it. Not you, Managing Libraries. You are the death of me), things are oddly busy for the summer at work, and I accidentally took on a part-time job doing research for an old professor of mine who is publishing a book later this summer. It is because I didn’t already spend enough time either in a library or in school learning about libraries that I took on a sweet research job.

So eventually, when I have 8 minutes to sit down and think, I need to write about: Michael Pollan and why he disappointed me, that book about crack dealers and oh!, Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking, which is fabulous (and I don’t even like to use the word fabulous).

Additionally, I hate summer. I want to cry and move north. Eff you, summer.  I should also note that I haven’t even had enough free time this week to read my celebrity gossip blogs, which concerns and frightens me.  WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE IN CELEB-LAND THAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT????????!!!?!