book a week geek

-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?