Unapologetically Mundane » readin’ and writin’

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The New York Public Library’s Main Branch

katie ett — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:00:13 +0000

The Main Library of the New York Public Library system is located approximately 3.5 steps from Kamran’s front door. A door that he has lived behind for approximately six years. And yet up until a couple of weeks ago, he’d never been there. Truth be told, I’d only been there once to pick something up, was confounded by the long empty marble hallways, ended up in the children’s section in the basement somewhere, ran away, and decided to go back to being illiterate.

But with Kamran in tow, I tried again, because I needed to renew my library card in order to be allowed to download ebooks from the library website so that I can not only continue being cheap and not buying books but also so I can continue being lazy and doing everything from my computer.

In short, Kamran was astounded at how beautiful and interesting the place was, and I was astounded that I don’t own a piece of artwork with a pooping donkey on it.

one of the long, empty, echoing, marble hallways

the map room, haunted by the reflection from my camera’s UV filter

eerily glowing LEGO lion

Kamran, the bronzed glamour boy

NERDS!

reminds me of something out of “Boardwalk Empire”

pooping donkey artwork!

Kamran, thinking he was really cheesing it up for the camera but basically looking like normal person

Kamran’s usual facial expression

Summers in NYC are so stifling (I know it’s bad wherever you are, but we don’t have air-conditioned cars, so can it) that we sometimes find ourselves just wanting to stay indoors for five solid months. Now that we know we love the library, we’re going to spend all of August with our cheeks pressed to the cold marble floor, copies of Don Juan and Dandelion Wine splayed out beside us.

Que Sera, Sera?

katie ett — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:00:04 +0000

You know how there are those blogs you keep reading and commenting on because, you know, they read and comment on yours? Like, it’s a relationship blog and you can’t imagine how they get anyone to sleep with them, or it’s a fashion blog and all of their clothes are out of the bad part of the 80s, or it’s a humor blog and all of their jokes are about PMS. And you’re like, “OMG, how can you not realize that your blog is so much worse than everyone else’s? How can you read other blogs and not think, ‘I’m doing it wrong’?”

What if you (meaning I) are that blog for other people?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Dumb

katie ett — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:00:51 +0000

Isn’t it funny when you’re so close to something that other people’s lack of knowledge about it seems preposterous?

Like when your co-worker comes up to your desk in the year 2010 and asks, “Have you heard of this band Radiohead?”

Or when you overhear a guy dining at the finest restaurant in the city ask the waiter if the oysters can be left off of their signature dish.

Or when you read a blog post in which a woman goes to see the movie version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, one of your favourite books of all time, and writes:

I was tearing like a silly woman at some point whereas my hubby was holding up his chin and trying hard to keep himself awake with the pop corn. The story about a boy who lost his father in 911 is sentimental but rather slow moving. I think it’s probably not a movie for men who usually enjoy comedies and action.

Have you ever seen someone so entirely miss the point?

Yes, I have a superiority complex.

Pretty Good Writin’

plumpdumpling — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:00:50 +0000

“I grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, where I hated everybody and everything. I couldn’t wait to leave. But Oak Park always struck me as my own ‘princedom by the sea.’ The reason: its architecture. I’d pass as many as twenty Frank Lloyd Wright homes on my way to school—scores of Prairie School buildings, breathtaking moments of America’s architectural coming-of-age. I once knew someone who lived in one of those homes. A certain Linda. Imagining this house now, I turn into Humbert Humbert catching glimpses of Lolita’s ‘lovely indrawn abdomen.’ I see the house’s natural woods, stone surfaces, and graceful symmetries. I’m back there, on that long, beautiful built-in ledge in her dimly lit, low-ceilinged, hazel-painted living room, sitting on golden-yellow Japanese cushions, with cinnamon-color pillows, finally being allowed to kiss wispy Linda, thinking, This is the best place that I have ever been.”

- Jerry Saltz, art critic, in New York magazine

Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close

plumpdumpling — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:00:24 +0000

I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:

I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.

Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.

I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.

My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.

But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.

In your FACE, Hanks.

The Very Worst Book I’ve Ever Read

plumpdumpling — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:30:23 +0000

I need to rant about the book I’m reading right now. I originally noticed it years ago while working at the bookstore and was taken by the luscious legs on the front cover. The book was a great seller and was always faced out on the shelf to attract attention, so I would often happen upon the legs and give them a quick admiration while putting other books away.

It’s called Jemima J, although I used to accidentally call it Jemina J in my head, pronounced JEM-inna, because my brain evidently blocked me from thinking a woman could be named after a brand of maple syrup. Anyway, I suddenly remembered the book the other day, procured a copy, and finally read it after all these years.

And it turns out it’s horrible. Not just horribly written, although it is that, despite the main character claiming in the first few pages that she has a real way with words. But mostly, it’s just written by what must be a horrible person. Author Jane Green’s anti-heroine hates herself, calls herself disgusting, talks about how much others pity her, has no social life, can’t get ahead at her job, avoids the mirror, and can barely speak to her beautiful roommates. All because she’s fat.

And that’s fine. Maybe some overweight people actually do feel that way. Maybe some overweight people actually consider backing out of rooms just so their hunky co-workers can’t see their humongous backsides. And Jemima does have a humongous backside. She eats bacon sandwiches for breakfast, mayonnaisey salads for lunch, and entire sleeves of cookies after dinner to deal with her emotions, and every time she steps into a room, people stare at her, because she’s so freaking massive. Or so we’re led to believe.

At one point, after we’ve listened to this superficial, spectacularly boring narrator go on and on about how her life would be perfect if she was a size 8–apparently this was the model-thin in the year 2000–the author finally reveals her weight: 204 pounds. Which is a size–what? 14? 12?! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like the end of the world to me. But according to the author, Jemima has a double or triple chin (Can someone explain to me how a triple chin would look?), can’t walk down the street without having to stop to pound down a thousand calories or so, and can barely be contained in clothing. And she’s never had a boyfriend, because who could date someone that fat?!

Oh, oh, and here’s the better part: when Jemima finally decides she wants to get “healthy”, she joins a gym and stops eating. And gets down to 120 pounds in a couple of months! Yaaaaay, Jemima! Yaaaaay, eating disorders!

I’m sure there’s some really important lesson at the end of the book about being happy with yourself and not meeting creepy guys on the Internet and sending them Photoshopped pictures of your head on a magazine model’s body, but I’ll never know, ’cause I ain’t finishing this crap. My only consolation is that I didn’t pay for it.

Finding My Childhood on eBay

plumpdumpling — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:00:42 +0000

The book I remember most from my childhood is The Monster at the End of this Book, starring “Sesame Street”‘s Grover.

But there’s this other book I think about all of the time. It was small, square, and black and had a rudimentary drawing of a peacock on the cover. My mom was a master of character voices (the voice she used to anthropomorphize hers and my dad’s first dog, Gussy, was asked for by name by the whole family: “Do the Gussy voice! Do the Gussy voice!”), and I distinctly remember her reading with her famous gusto, “Green meanies roasting weenies. Meanies jump in yellow jello. They turn into yellow fellows.”

But for the longest time, I couldn’t find the book anywhere online. I would type “green meanies roasting weenies” into every search engine I could find, never with any result. Until one day. I was a college kid working at the Columbus Public Library at the time and happened to Google it during my break for whatever reason. And there it was:

Seals on Wheels by Dean Walley. It turns out the book was printed by Hallmark Children’s Editions for a very short time in 1970 and had long been out of print by the time I read it as a child in the 80s, so my parents must have inherited it from someone else. Newly armed with the title and author, my Internet search began anew, and I discovered a single copy for sale on eBay.

For three hundred dollars.

So now I not only wanted the book for my own memory-keeping, but I wanted to make it my nest egg in case of future tough times. My childhood bedroom had long since been cleaned out by my super-neat father, but I hoped to find it among the things he saved for me in the old wooden toy chest he had made for my younger self and went home one weekend to dig through it. But of course there was no book.

I’ve since had a Seals on Wheels eBay search saved and often get e-mails claiming that a copy is up for auction, but it always turns out to be some sort of seal for a truck tire. You can imagine my heartbreak.

But a real, legit copy turned up today for $50. And then I thought, “Hey, doesn’t Amazon sell used books, too?” So I checked, and it turns out they have two copies! And fifteen copies of the paperback version! FIFTEEN!! For six or seven years now, I’ve been feeling hopeless about this book and wondering if I should’ve just spent the $300 on it when I had the chance, and it turns out I could’ve had it for $30.

Now that it’s within reach, though, I’m scared. What if it’s not as good as I remember? What if it’s too painful to read now that my mom’s gone? Is it better to have my memories, or am I going to kick myself again if I don’t buy this thing?

Here’s the very insightful conversation Kamran and I had about the issue:

Not so helpful.

I’m No Good with the Alphabet

plumpdumpling — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:00:14 +0000

Aside from it being, you know, generally not good, notice anything funny about this scrapbook page I made in Tracey‘s store during my Thanksgiving trip to Ohio?

I knew something was wrong with it when I glued it down, but I just couldn’t figure out what.

Put Me at the Slow Reader Table

plumpdumpling — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:00:36 +0000

So the Selected Short Stories portion of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Selected Short Stories kind of sucks, huh? I guess an author isn’t obligated to write more than one inspiring work of early modernist feminism, but I was really taken aback by the difference between The Awakening and the rest of the book.

Of course, I didn’t get that Robert’s note there at the end meant he was never coming back until I read the Wikipedia article on the story, so maybe I shouldn’t judge.

The New Kindle is Coming!, and the Best Cover for Kindle 2

plumpdumpling — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:30:19 +0000

My friend Jeff pointed me to Engadget’s article on the new Kindle today, and it got me thinking about how my Kindle has been so life-changing and will only be more life-changing for other people now that it’s available in different colors, has an even faster refresh rate, and is selling for $139.

Have you looked at my Shelfari shelf recently? It’s exploding. Now that I’m never without a book, I’m flying through them like never before. Even crappy books like the Sarah Silverman one. Even books I thought would be crappy but turned out to be engrossing, like Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures. If I get 20 pages into a book and don’t care about it yet, I don’t have to wait until I’m home or at the library to get something else; I just click over to my home screen and choose another one. There’s literally nothing I miss about real books.

I assume you’ll all run out and buy the new version when it’s released on August 27th, but in case you decide to buy the Kindle 2 on eBay for even cheaper, let me recommend the cover that I have. I shopped around for days and finally decided on the TrendyDigital MaxGuard Leather Cover in purple. It’s so sleek and feels so good in my hands with its leather shell and soft suede-like interior. The Kindle slides into its pocket and fits so snugly that it doesn’t need any elastic bands or metal prongs to hold it in. The magnetic closure makes this great little snapping sound when you flip it closed that sounds so smart I can’t help but feel as if everyone on the train has heard it and is envious of me.

I’ll tell you who I’m envious of, though: these people who carry their Kindles without any case at all. I see them on the train with their 1/3rd-inch-thick readers, and I think, How rich must you be to not care about scratching that thing up? I’ll bet they’re all reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, too.

(Okay, fine, I read it and didn’t hate it.)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading at the Gym

plumpdumpling — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:30:49 +0000

I only downloaded Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running because of its super-romantic-but-maybe-only-to-me title. I figured it was figurative, because obviously a book about running would never actually be called This is Totally a Book About Running. But it really is a memoir about training your body for marathons and how that relates to training your mind for writing, and I decided to go ahead with it because I like Murakami so well.

It’s fine reading it on the subway and all, but where I’m really getting the most joy out of it is in the gym. I used to seriously dread waking up at 5:45 to go to the basement of Kamran’s building, and I tried hard to make it more tolerable with books and movies, but I always bounced around too much to concentrate on tiny text, and I always got too easily bored with intense indie plotlines. But now that I can pump up the text size on my Kindle, going to the gym seems like a small sacrifice for having quiet time to read (because obviously I would never wake up before 6 just to challenge my intellect), and it makes me feel so much less hateful toward the elliptical machine when the person I’m reading about is working hard, too.

The first book I read in the gym on my Kindle was Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and I actually found myself wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail while I read it. And now I actually find myself wanting to run while reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. This morning, I went an extra .3 miles just because Murakami told me my muscles will cooperate with me if I push them harder little by little. Before, I would purposely go .3 miles less every day just to spite Kamran and his desire for me to love working out.

So, now that I’m on this activity-themed book kick, anything you’d recommend?

The Best Thing About “Eclipse” (and the Most Annoying)

plumpdumpling — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:00:07 +0000

I was surprised to learn, upon reading them, that though the writing is as awful as I would’ve imagined, the plot of the Twilight series is actually pretty clever. Unlike, say, “Lost”, all of the loose ends eventually tie up, and the things you never thought would matter suddenly do. There are no red herrings nor MacGuffins in them.

Yet they still totally annoy me simply because their author, Stephenie Meyer, has to thank the band Muse in each of them. In all of the novels’ afterwords, right alongside appreciation of her editor and agent, she’ll say things like, “And thanks also to my favourite band, the very aptly named Muse, for providing a saga’s worth of inspiration.” And then I will claw her eyes out.

It’s not even that I don’t like Muse. I actually really liked them in NINETEEN-NINETY-NINE when I was listening to them. But I just can’t handle some kids’-book-writin’, middle-aged Mormon thinking she’s all cool for liking one pop-alt band. It’s like moviestars thinking anyone cares about their political activism. And you know she’s just doing it in some used-to-be-unpopular girl’s attempt to befriend the band she loves.

I went to see Eclipse last night with my friend Ash, though, and aside from a couple of actually-hilarious moments, what I was surprised by most was the soundtrack. It does not suck. In fact, it includes The Bravery, the amazing Ohio band The Black Keys, and my favourite band right now, Band of Horses. And the music is used really well. The first time you see, Jacob, for instance, the camera moves in on his face as a grinding bluesy song starts, and it’s this total moment. How annoying is that?

I can console myself with the fact that I know it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer choosing the music and how it’s used, but I can still continue to hate her for all of her Muse-suck-upping. Mostly because I know I’d do exactly the same thing if I was in her shoes.

Except with a better band.

5 Ways My Kindle Surprised Me

plumpdumpling — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:45:59 +0000

Now that the iPad has been released, several people have asked me if I wish I would’ve waited another week to buy my Kindle.

And my answer is always, “Are you kidding?” The iPad is great-looking and probably fun to use, but it’s not an e-reader. The Kindle is actually everything I hoped it’d be and more, for half the price of even the cheapest iPad (and almost $600 cheaper than the most expensive one). I feel like I didn’t know half of what it was capable of before I bought it, and I wouldn’t have hesitated as long as I did had I known what I was in store for.

• Built-In Dictionary: A small button on the front acts as a mouse that allows you to scroll around pages. When you rest the cursor beside any word, a text bubble pops up at the bottom of the page with the definition. I always thought I was a smartypants who was soooo good at figuring out words from their context clues, but it turns out that no, no, I am not.

• Free Wireless 3G Internet Access: Why is this not the main point they’re using to sell the Kindle other than, you know, the whole being-able-to-read-books-on-it thing? The Amazon store is of course built right in, but Google and Wikipedia searches are, too, and I was even able to view this very blog on it. It was the text version, like you might see on a BlackBerry, but still. Dedicated wireless!

• Highlighting and Notes: I used to carry around miniature sticky notes to plop down all over my book pages, but the Kindle not only lets you highlight the text itself, it also lets you type notes on the page you’re reading. It collects your highlights and notes in a file that lists them and includes a small excerpt from each one so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance. When you plug your Kindle into your computer’s USB port, you can copy the file from your Kindle to your computer and edit it from there. GENIUS.

• Text-to-Speech: Yeah, it reads to you. I’m not talking about playing audiobooks on it. I’m talking about a male or female voice (that’s not too robotic) that recites the text for you while you eat a sandwich with one hand and wipe your butt with the other. I will never use this, but I’m pleased with its existence nonetheless.

• MP3s: It plays them. While you read, on the subway, with the gangster-looking guy next to you listening to some sappy Beyoncé that you can be so thankful you don’t have to hear.

I don’t need a free hand on the train to flip the page, I don’t have to lug five paperbacks on the plane with me every time I visit my family, and I can catch up on (for free!) all of the classics I should’ve read in college but was too busy being a band groupie to take time for.

There’s one negative: the Kindle can read PDFs, but it can’t read them as well as the ebooks you buy from Amazon.com. Meaning that you can’t highlight or write notes in them. NOT A FAN. Luckily, there’s a free program called MobiPocket Creator that lets you convert your PDFs into a format the Kindle likes and can highlight/notate.

Of course, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and all of these things were clear to everyone else. Anyway, are you convinced yet?

Read These New Blogs Now

plumpdumpling — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:35:50 +0000

I know this sounds cheesy, but aside from actually needing to write in order to keep all of my feelings from bursting out of me at inopportune times, I like the community that a blog creates. I like having a few people who I can rely on to find something to say about everything I post and who can rely on me to do the same. (i.e. Tracey and Bachelor Girl)

A lot of blogs that I like end up failing, and I think it’s because they never develop a community of people who make them feel as if it’s important that they keep writing. (Not that I think I’m curing cancer here.) Mostly it’s because they never make an effort to reach out to other bloggers, maybe because most writers are insecure yet narcissistic.

What I’m leading up to is that there are a few blogs that I recently started reading and that I’d really, really love you to read, too. Because I like nothing more than to see your comments on other blogs and to publicly mock you for them.

• Feast on Scraps, Tracey’s idea/inspiration blog that’s loosely related to our forays into scrapbooking but is mostly just pretty stuff she likes

• Good Hair, Kim Luck, Kim’s blog about how Jesus has given her great hair but absolutely nothing else good in life

• Sandy Olive, Sandy’s blog about . . . you know, stuff . . . and I’m not even sure why it’s good, but it is, and it’s often very heartfelt

Feel free to comment with any blogs you think are worthwhile, too.

All of the Memory Cards in the World Wouldn’t Be Enough to Hold All the Unnecessary Quotation Marks in New York City

plumpdumpling — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:40:18 +0000

Hey, look! Some of my amazing photography prowess is currently being displayed on the front page of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks!

Dr. Boyfriend and I were walking down Broadway on a hunt for rainbow-flavored shaved ice one weekend afternoon this summer when we spotted a store window full of the chintziest figurines imaginable. I thought the sign was pretty lame, actually, but I really wanted to give fame to the Last Supper sculpture below it:

Sadly, blog owner Bethany evidently didn’t think Jesus made the grade and just posted the sign itself.

I’m a Nationally-Recognized, For-Real Writer (Sorta)

plumpdumpling — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:32:49 +0000

Clearly I don’t brag about myself enough here, because I never told you that I totally won an extremely important and incredibly lucrative writing contest earlier this year. The contest was sponsored by the Gotham Writers’ Workshop here in NYC, and the idea of it was to submit a memoir made up of only six words.

Their example was a famous one by Hemingway that says,

“For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Ohhhhhhh, it tugs on your heartstrings, doesn’t it? My boyfriend Kamran’s friend Mike told us about the contest and offered up,

“I should have asked her age,”

to which Kamran replied,

“And then I got crabs again,”

and while I thought those were both brilliant, I went a much more serious route and submitted,

“I’ll never know mom’s meatloaf recipe.”

I didn’t actually expect to be chosen, of course, because I thought it was only meaningful to me. This is sort of embarrassing, but I’d been having a deep hankerin’ for meatloaf around that time, and my mom’s was so much better than any I’ve had since, and I’d kill to make it just like she did. But of course she’s been dead eight years now, and of course I can’t remember exactly what she put in it, and of course my dad isn’t any help in the matter. And thinking about the empty hole in my stomach where that meatloaf should be made me think about all the empty holes in me that parts of her should be filling, and so I entered the contest.

Weeks later, I received an e-mail from the Writers’ Workshop that said,

Here’s a writing contest update from the co-editors of the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.

———————————–
Dear Gotham Writers,

Thank you so much for taking the time to enter our Six-Word Memoir Writing Contest. You guys crafted some amazing submissions, and choosing a winner was extremely tough (when we compiled Not Quite What I Was Planning, a least we got to choose 832!)

But, this time around, the winner is….

I’ll never know mom’s meatloaf recipe.
by Kathleen Ett of Brooklyn, NY

———————————–

The “but, this time around” dashed my hopes, but then I realized that this was a mass e-mail and that the but was intended for everyone BUT me! So evidently the judges got the implicit meaning, even if the explicit words themselves were sorta lame.

And my prize? Well, absolutely nothing. But it looks like I’ll be published in the sequel to the original six-word memoir book, and that’s pret-ty rad. Plus, my name is all up in lights on the results page at the Gotham website. Neat, huh?

The interesting thing is that this was the same week I found out I was going to be in an issue of Time Out New York (and more on that here, for posterity) and that I’d gotten a part in an upcoming Meryl Streep/Amy Adams film. I guess good things really do come in threes.

Book Slut

plumpdumpling — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:19:10 +0000

I feel like a different and better person when I have reading material in public, especially hardcover books. Back when I worked for Barnes & Noble and had all the hardcovers I could ever need and want at my disposal, I ripped through everything the day it was released, wanting to look all-knowing in front of customers. “Oh, the new Junot Diaz? I mean, it’s interesting, but I don’t get the hype,” I’d say as I led them instead to the Miranda July collection of short stories. “No, no, don’t get that Augusten Burroughs,” I’d command, adding, “You really need to read Running with Scissorsfirst if you want to enjoy Dry, and you can skip Sellovision altogether.” Once I quit there, though, I realized that I couldn’t afford to buy the hardcovers I was used to getting for free, and I’m not the kind of girl to own paperbacks.

I’ve been making due with library books for months now, but it’s not the same. I know that people see the little Dewey Decimal number on the spine and think less of me; the New York Public Library, after all, is only for doctoral candidate research and minorities who want to look at porn but can’t afford to have the Internet in their own homes (unlike the Columbus Metropolitan Library, where I used to work in Ohio, which provides what its users want and not what looks most pretentious on paper and is a beacon for the community, so ha). So thank god for my extremely generous co-worker Adam, who without any urging on my part, purchased the new David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, for me out of the goodness of his heart a couple of weeks ago.

Now when I’m on the train, I feel people looking at me differently. Not only are they thinking, Look at that girl with her expensive hardcover,” they’re also thinking, Oh, David Sedaris has a new book? My, aren’t I behind the times. The only problem is that I find myself reading this book sooooo slowly, just to make it last longer. I read the same paragraphs over and over to really suck all the worth out of them and take every chance to close the book after only reading a page or two. My subway stop is five stations away, so I’d better just, uh, put this back in my bag and, uh, concentrate on where I’m going, I’ll tell myself.

I’ve been wondering what I’ll do when the pages inevitably run out. Sure, I can reread it a couple of times without anyone noticing, but then what? Submit to paperbacks just to be able to hide them inside the Sedaris? Take to stealing dust jackets of even newer, more expensive books to slap on $5.98 copies of leftover bargain bin chick lit? Actually reading my copy of the 688-page I Am Charlotte Simmons like Adam’s been pushing me to just because I know it’ll take me two years to finish it?

LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING IF I CAN’T HOLD A BOOK FACE-OUT AGAINST MY CHEST FAUX-ABSENTMINDEDLY AND ALLOW PEOPLE TO ADMIRE ME.

Unapologetically Mundane » readin’ and writin’

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The New York Public Library’s Main Branch

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