PS. I also made some rather delicious (and vegan!) banana cupcakes today, and have elected to consume several of those in place of an actual dinner. Unwise, perhaps, but it’s a Saturday night and I’m hanging ten by myself (well, me and The Doctor and Lady Gaga) so nutritional guidelines can suck it. You can find the recipe here. I think that baking is something I ought to get back into as well – I made a chocolate cake a couple of weeks ago (also vegan – but like today, mostly because we had no eggs in the house and I have a tempestuous relationship with dairy) but that aside my kitchen exploits have been minimal for the last year or so, actually. Moving out of home can have that effect on your baking supplies! But the cupboard’s stocked, and I’m on a budget, so more homecrafted cheap and delicious treats might be on the agenda.
third day of autumn
The third day of autumn, and already there’s a chill in the air. The weathermen and weatherwomen forecast a ‘weather bomb’ for today (perhaps the whole weekend, I should pay more attention) and the day has been rather explosive. But the sky seems to be blue for the time being, and I’ve dug out a merino top to keep me cuddly-warm, so this is acceptable.
The third day of autumn also means that university has started back, and I have survived those most horrific weeks (first year orientation week and first week of lectures both) in university bookstore land. Just. Tomorrow begins a six day working week, which will be about as much fun as it sounds, but it means additional money in the Escape Auckland And Go Everywhere fund. In theory.
A hectic workplace means comfort reading, so I’ve set aside goals of getting through anything award-winning and/or cerebral, and have been flicking through some Charlaine Harris again, and have also accumulated a wee stack of short story collections beside my bed, to pick and choose pieces as I see fit. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, Not Her Real Name by Emily Perkins (just for tradition’s sake – I’ve read this collection many many times), The Tent by Margaret Atwood and Best Lesbian Love Stories : New York City (for some REALLY lowbrow mushy reading). Although Neil Gaiman, Emily Perkins and Margaret Atwood are all award winners. I suppose short stories are less ongoing mental exertion.
Beyond books? I turfed through a bunch of old magazines at my mum’s house last weekend, various copies of Empire, Rip It Up, Real Groove, Frankie, Bust, Diva and others. I’m trying to work on getting rid of things I don’t need, both for monetary and spatial gain. I ripped out various pictures and have been putting them in what I’ve decided is my ‘inspiration’ moleskine – the one I’ve had longest, a blank page hardcover beauty that has been gradually filling up since June 2008. I was a voracious scribbler/collager at first, and then used it rarely, sticking to other lined notebooks, which were more appropriate for writing, I felt. But lately I’ve been going back to this notebook and filling it up with ideas and wishes and dreams and pictures and anything else. This is part of my Must Get Back To Creative Roots If I’m Ever Going To Make A Living From It scheme. It’s been a little haphazard over the last couple of weeks due to EXHAUSTION upon arrival home in the evenings (cf. previously mentioned start of university semester), but in a few weeks the madness will be over, and everything will seem brighter, I’m sure. For now, I will make do with my book/typewriter collage, and the Molly Crabapple picture I cut out from an ad in Bust.
Oh, and I think some actual blogging will happen too. Hypothetically.
It’s the third day of autumn, and it’s time to get back on track.
picking up where we left off?
So, it’s January. Again. Last time I posted, it was last January. Oh dear. That’s not to say that I haven’t been reading – quite the contrary – but I’ve just been slack, apparently. Or forgetful, rather. Or attracted to the simplicity of Tumblr.
Anyway, a new year, time to get back to it. Talking about books and stuff – truthfully, I’d like to expand beyond books, mostly because Gala Darling has been my favourite blog of late. But books are what I know and do, it’s true.
I’ve finished my degree, and can now claim to be a graduate in English and Classics. I’m currently working full time at the University Bookshop, dancing around the general book floor and reorganising the teen books. It’s a pretty decent way to wile away the days whilst attempting to save (read: failing) to go to Europe. I’ve been reading my way through many a book, naturally. Let’s see… I’ve been working my way through the books of A Song of Ice and Fire, and am currently about halfway through A Dance With Dragons. I read The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (not to be confused with The Windup Bird Chronicles by Murakami, which I haven’t read, but I did finally read Kafka on the Shore, which was fantastic, and you all should go read it) and Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Jeffrey Eugenides has been a point of interest – I’ve read Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides, not to mention learned how to pronounce his name properly – it’s yoo-juh-NIGH-dees, apparently.
Dare Truth or Promise, by Paula Boock (good read for gay/questioning teens, definitely brought some memories to the surface) and Triple Ripple by Brigid Lowry (my FAVOURITE teen author, and possibly favourite author of all time). Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan (the former being one of the authors behind Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which I LOVE) was a fine form of entry into the world of John Green’s stuff. I reread Breaking Dawn over the course of a slow week at work, flicking through an already slightly mangled store copy at the counter – I felt I needed to review it before inevitably caving and watching the film.
I’ve also been cultivating a mild addiction to Sookie Stackhouse related things, after a friend gifted the first 8 books to me, and Dom and I started watching True Blood. I’ve now read through all the books I own, and we’re up to the second season of the show (after gradual watching of the first half of the first season, we powered through five or so episodes last night).
Anyway. Herein I do swear that I will be back on the blogging bandwagon. And writing in general. I’ve made the fine purchase of The Exercise Book as released by the IIML at Vic, and have been doing bits and pieces here and there. The fact that my high school English/Creative Writing teacher and at least a couple of uni tutors have exercises in the book reminds me that I have a damn good foundation and should make the most of it.
BIG DAY OUT 2011
It’s still feeling peculiar writing ’11 for the year. I guess that tends to linger until the end of the summer. Which is creeping alarmingly close, actually. January’s really disappeared rather quickly.
But this blog is not to whine about my perception of time. Nay, this entry is about something far more exciting. For last Friday was the Auckland stop off the Big Day Out. And, unsurprisingly, I was there. It’s become my rule of thumb that if I’m in the country, I go to BDO, because there will always be some bands I love, even if I don’t know it yet. This year’s major drawcard for me was Ms Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, AKA the supergoddess M.I.A.
But that’s getting ahead of myself, really, if I want to describe the day in any kind of chronological fashion. I didn’t go for the queuing for the gates to open approach that I’ve taken a couple of times in the past, since the first band that came under the Need To See heading was The Greenhornes, who weren’t on until after midday. So I turned up around eleven, and caught a little bit of the Kids of ’88 (latest Big Thing in NZ techno-pop), enough to hear a song that I knew, anyway, and the second part of Luger Boa‘s set (although I thought I was listening to Die! Die! Die! – oops) – and then it was time for The Greenhornes. I managed to get a pretty decent front-and-centre type position, and they killed. I haven’t listened to much of them later, but circa ’07 I was pretty into them, what with their Jack White affiliations and the fact that they featured heavily on the soundtrack for Broken Flowers, and I was in my I WANNA BE INDIE SO BAD phase. I was suitably impressed, and intend to reintroduce myself to them.
The day progressed. CSS were adorable, and I’m madly in love with Lovefoxxx. The Silent Disco was fun, for ten minutes or so. What I heard of the Deftones was pretty decent, likewise Wolfmother. The Black Keys regrettably didn’t make it to BDO in the end, so they were off the menu, but Shihad‘s playing through of The General Electric was badASS. Pacifier is an amazing crowd song, it has to be said, and Jon Toogood has some serious flair.
Thennnn a little bit of Iggy and the Stooges was experienced, but we had migrated further up into the stands by this point as the heavens had decided to open. I’m not entirely devastated by this, as I saw them a few years back. C’est la vie. So instead of kind of experiencing them from a vague vantage point, I decided to bail and went to check out The Naked and Famous. I’d seen them open for Florence + The Machine back in August, at the time only knowing one song, and since then they’ve released an album and revealed themselves to be Thoroughly Excellent. Their cover of The Mint Chicks’ Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! was a little overlong, but cool nonetheless.
Post TNAF was Sia. Sia’s one of those musicians I know I should listen to and like, but to be honest, I haven’t really done so yet. I stayed for the first couple of songs, and she was adorable, but I had been informed by all and sundry that Rammstein was a set not to be missed. Pyrotechnics are always a good drawcard. So upon my return to the main stadium stages, I joined the crowd, and was blown away. They were beyond epic, even pyrotechnics aside. I’m currently doing some serious Rammstein investigation, and since many of my uni friends are of somewhat metal-oriented music taste, I’m in good company to learn more. Du Hast was the only song of theirs that I knew in advance, and when they played it the crowd at large went a little cray cray. It was awesome.
Tool were next, and I saw quite a bit of their set, both from ground level and up by the Summit Bar. And although big fans have said their performance this year wasn’t as good as concerts past, I was still impressed, and am also in the process of investigating them. New musics FTW! BUT. Viewing of Tool was cut short because starting at the same time they finished, but over in the Boiler Room, was the aforementioned M.I.A., and crowd permeation was all too necessary.
I had seen M.I.A. once before, at Coachella ’09, and she was spectacular, but I didn’t really know her music beyond Paper Planes, and since she was on the Coachella main stage, the experience was mostly had on the big screens from afar. This time around, with The Boyfriend’s skills and company, we were about two metres from the stage. Can I get a ‘HELL YEAH’?
She looked smoking hot – unfortunately I brought my new little Samsung camera with me which has proven absolutely shocking at managing unblurred concert photos, so I don’t have any of my own to share, and the internet is proving less than fruitful at this point in time. Alas alack. But she did. Let me tell you. She has a fine pair of legs, does Ms Maya. Aesthetics aside, she was in fine form, and the setlist was varied and awesome. She opened with The Message, appropriately, and it was excellent. Bamboo Banga was amazing, Galang filled me with glee and dancey dancey funtimes, Born Free was full-tilt awesome, and Paper Planes was, of course, hugely crowd-pleasing. It would have been enhanced if she’d played Bucky Done Gun, Jimmy & XXXO, but still.
For the entirety of her set, I think, it was pouring down outside the tent – which kind of made me retract every feeling of malaise I’d had towards her being put in the Boiler Room. We were still damp from sweaty Boiler Roomness and the water spray, but not freezing like the rain had brought upon us all earlier in the day.
I’m not sure if it managed to top BDO ’08, because, I mean, Bjork. And Arcade Fire. But between Rammstein and M.I.A, and others too, there was some seriously amaaaaaze musical action occurring at Mt Smart this year. I’m still debating whether I’ll go to the Laneway festival on Monday – probably not – but either way, it’s been a stellar start to 2011′s musical offerings. Woo!
the summer book et al
A couple of years ago my lovely lovely Welsh penpal sent me a copy of The Summer Book by Tove Jansson in a package of things. What this means for this moment is a) I’m a terrible correspondent via snail mail and should be imprisoned for crimes against Pen Pal Do-Goodery and b) I have finally read it.
Tove Jansson was an author I was vaguely aware of from a reasonably young age – my mother acquired one of the Finn Family Moomintroll books and it sat on my bookshelf forever. I felt it was beneath my eight-year-old dignity to read a book with illustrations of little white hippo-y creatures not only on the cover but throughout the pages. Shock horror.
So it went unread. And regrettably continues to remain in such a stasis because I have no idea where it has gone. BUT, said penpal was a longtime fan of Jansson’s books, and so I was gifted with a copy of one of her adult novels – The Summer Book, as I’ve already said. It took me a while to get into, as it’s quite a floaty narrative style that I have to be in a certain mindset to read for a long period of time, but I decided a couple of weeks ago that I had to Just Do It, as Nike would bid me do. It is summer, after all, and I’m trying to get through all my unread books, so mid-January was ideal The Summer Book reading time. And conveniently, for this matter anyway, I’ve been spending much time on public transport of late, which proved most fruitful in this reading venture.
As much as the book is a novel – or novella, perhaps, when length is properly considered – I found it read more like a series of individual short stories, and I’m sure I’m not the first person to have made this observation. The two key characters of Sophia and her grandmother remain the pivotal part of every chapter, as does the island setting, but each any one chapter’s story could happily exist in its own right, without the chapters on either side to hold it up – there’s really no overarching plot. So it felt more like reading a short story collection which happened to have the same familiar characters recycled than a ‘novel’ in the traditional sense of the word.
As for the actual writing and whatnot, Tove Jansson has a magical way with words – and I’d imagine this comes through to an even greater extent in the original Swedish, but super kudos to whoever the translator was (I can’t be bothered checking right now) because whatever that spark is like in the mother tongue, it still shines through in English. Sophia and her grandmother are both fascinating characters – the grandmother arguably more so, with Sophia being somewhat a quintessential creative-spirited question-asking young girl. The grandmother is SASSY.
Anyway. I recommend it. Go read it, and breathe in the landscape of a Scandinavian island world in summertime.
To keep up the summer theme, here I do suggest a few excellent tracks with ‘Summer’ in the title, to keep you in an appropriately sunshiney mood if you’re a fellow Southern Hemisphere dweller, or to lift your wintery spirits if you’re stuck in northern climes. Go youtube ‘em and maybe even download them on iTunes.
Summertime – Beck (or alternatively the Sex Bob-Omb version, obviously)
Summer Love – The Brunettes
The Sweet Sounds of Summer – The Shangri-Las
Cruel Summer – Karen Elson
Summer House – Gold Motel
Summer Girl – Family of the Year
Summerboy – Lady Gaga
Summer in the City - Regina Spektor
Big Day Out related update to follow, y’all. Summer festivals fit in with summery updates, obviously.
Ciao, knives.
Mr Nancy, I presume.
Today I finally finished Anansi Boys.
I have a weird relationship with Neil Gaiman books. Probably it’s because I have a weird relationship with the entity that is Neil himself (spot the Twitter reference) – he was an author I knew of, and I’d watched and enjoyed Stardust (but hadn’t read the book) when suddenly he was a focal point in the Amanda Palmer world that I was somewhat involving myself in.
(By somewhat, I mean going to shows in Florida whilst living in Montreal, and the like. You know, the usual.)
I had vowed that I would read at least one of his books before meeting him, but alas, it did not happen in time. I’d started Neverwhere, and read a few stories from Smoke and Mirrors, but nothing more, when I met him at a show/reading he and Amanda were doing at the Housingworks Bookstore in NYC. I shook his hand, he introduced himself and knew who I was (I was at that time part of an apartment dwelling duo known to Teh AFP Internetz as ‘The Barely Legal Lesbians’, partly identifiable by our unnaturally coloured hair) and he signed a setlist for me after the show. Badass? I think so.
But I still didn’t get around to properly reading any of his books until I returned from the Great North American Adventure of 2009 and found myself back in Kiwiland. I read Stardust soon after, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And then I eventually got around to reading The Graveyard Book, a topic which has already been broached here. I love the way he writes, the way he creates characters and places and manipulates words. He would certainly rank highly among my ‘favourite’ authors. But every time I read something he’s written – Stardust excluded – I take a bizarrely long time to power through the pages. In one respect, this means I’m absorbing the story more, I suppose, but it’s also frustrating as I tend to be more of the zap-pow variety when it comes to reading speed. American Gods was glorious, but again, took me quite some time to get into, and even then, the actual time taken to complete the novel, even once I was immersed in it, was pretty damn long.
Anansi Boys has been the bane of my life for the last couple of months. I started it. And then forgot I was reading it. And then had to start again, got about 100 pages in, and then stopped again. I would try to hack back at it, but would wind up only reading a few pages at a time. I suppose it didn’t help that I was also in the middle of exams/December work whilst trying to do this, but still. Then, yesterday, I decided to put in a proper effort, choose only appropriate reading-supportive (rather than distracting) music to play, and get into it. And I finally finished it.
It was definitely a book that kept building and building and building as it went along, with a pleasantly short dénouement, rather than trying to drag it all out after the main action had occurred. I spent the first half of the book enjoying it, but being disappointed when comparing it back to American Gods, but by the time I finished it, I was much more satisfied with it. I still preferred American Gods, certainly, but Anansi Boys proved itself a thoroughly excellent read, in the end. I think the more constant presence of creeping supernatural themes in American Gods kept me a little more engaged, but that was really the whole point of Fat Charlie Nancy, I suppose, his supposed distance from the godlike.
And now that I’ve finished this spiel, I must go be A Helpful Daughter and clean and tidy things, as my mother’s cousin from the US is coming to visit. Maybe some of my Amurkin friends should stow away in her luggage? DC’s not that far from NYC, after all…
(And appropriately, her name is Nancy.)
THE RETURN OF THE THING
Today, beautiful today, marks the first day of my return to more regular part-time work hours. No more excessive pre-Christmas shifts, no more 7am unlocking of automatic doors to be the Magazines Bitch because I’m nice and fill in for people when they ask. Just one evening and one weekend day chaque semaine, and occasionally an extra day if I’m feeling generous. Which means I can return to THINKING FOR MYSELF! And this includes BLOGGING. And reading, obviously.
So let’s get ourselves caught up. What things – books, music, movies, the usual suspects, duh – have tickled my fancy over the last couple of months as I lay in WordPress stasis?
- Scott Pilgrim (Bryan Lee O’Malley / Edgar Wright)
- Room (Emma Donoghue)
- Voltaire (in general)
- /\/\ /\ Y /\ (M.I.A.)
- Arrested Development
And other stuff too, but for now these are focal points, I suppose.
ESPECIALLY SCOTT PILGRIM.
If you haven’t watched the movie, please go beg/borrow/steal it from somewhere IRL or on the Internet and FIX THIS. Because it is actually hilarious, so… a-maaaaa-zing and various other positive descriptors that may or may not be stolen from the movie itself. The storyline is ridiculous/epic, the visual effects are stunning (apparently the film’s in one of the longlisty things for the SFX Oscar) and the music/acting/EVERYTHING are all badass. Even Michael Cera goes a bit beyond his usual typecast quiet-indie-boy thing. I watched it THREE TIMES in one night a week ago. Three different commentaries, and it was still awesome every time.
And can I return to the brilliance of the soundtrack? It’s not quite the Indie 101 Mixtape that the Twilight soundtracks have been - Eclipse‘s OST was amazing, and redeemed the atrocity that was the movie somewhat – but it may be even better. I would pretty much call it flawless, with no tracks pulling down the overall sound of the album. Deciding to put Metric‘s original version of Black Sheep on the OST instead of the version performed by The Clash At Demonhead in the film was a good call, I feel, because as much as Brie Larson is amazing, she just isn’t Emily Haines, and the instrumentation in the TCAD version is a little lacking. But putting on the Sex Bob-Omb versions of their songs was definitely necessary (although the special edition album does include the Beck originals and they are arguably better… but still. SBO for life)
This has just been movie excitement so far, you’ll notice. But the original Scott Pilgrim-ness (Plumtree song titles aside) comes from the Bryan Lee O’Malley graphic novels. And they kick so much ass that it’s hard to deal. There are six of them, and you should buy them and read them all. The characters are more interesting in written/drawn form, I think, mostly due to there being more space and scope for development on the page than with limited screen time. Scott himself is a much cooler character in the graphic novels, for the most part, and you get more insight into supporting characters that the movie alone doesn’t show.
It’s becoming an obsessive thing. I’m probably going to be cosplaying as Ramona Flowers at Wellington Armageddon. BECAUSE I CAN. And because she’s my hair-soul-twin, AND on that note, it gives me a good excuse to keep my hair interesting until then.
But enough with the Pilgrimage. Onto other things of Significance.
If you recall, many moons ago I stated an ambition to Read Important Books That Win Things And Stuff. My most recent addition to that list has been Room, by Emma Donoghue, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year. And by this year, I mean last year. Damn January. It’s an amazing book, with one of the most interesting narrators I’ve encountered recently – I have to say, novelists who manage to convincingly pull off the mind of a ‘different’ child for the duration of a novel impress me no end (case in point – Oskar in Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). Giving away the plot would be mean, so instead I will just say GO READ IT. It nearly won the Booker for good reason. Now I just have to track down a copy of The Finkler Question…
Next on the list - VOLTAIRE. He was one of those musicians (well a jack of all trades, really) that I knew of, knew I ought to listen to and investigate, but never quite got around to it. But I finally did investigate him, a few months ago, and have been doing more significant reconnaissance in the last couple of weeks. He may be the current king of the goth scene, but that doesn’t mean you should be expecting traditional ‘goth’ sounds à la The Cure’s more sombre and less New Wave moments. It’s macabre, rather than depressing, and I for one take great delight in this particular facet of supposed goth music.
Plus Brian Viglione drums on one of his records. SOLD to the girl who thought about flying to San Francisco for New Years in order to see the Dresden Dolls play. I mean, what?
Basically, go listen to him, and I very much doubt that you’ll regret it. There are Balkan influences, and moments of mariachi-esque glory and every song I’ve heard so far has definitely gotten a tick in the ‘good’ column.
Today’s the 10th of January, which means that it’s only ELEVEN DAYS until the Big Day Out here in Auckland-town. And this means M.I.A. Hell. Fucking. Yeah. I’ve seen her once before, at Coachella 2009, and she was one of my favourite performers of the whole festival. Which was three days long and basically had the best line-up ever, as far as I was concerned. One thing that IS perplexing me regarding her BDO showings is that she played the main stage at Coachella (and that’s a stage/crowd BDO-goers can’t even fathom in size, really. I mean, it’s HUGE.) and is only playing the Boiler Room at BDO. It takes an extremely good reason for me to enter the Boiler Room at all, but M.I.A. is more than enough to persuade me in, even if she should really be taking her rightful place on one of the blue or orange stages. I’ve only gotten my hands on her latest album, Maya – or /\/\ /\ Y /\ if you want to style it correctly – quite recently, but it’s already being spun with alarming frequency. I think overall I might still prefer Kala, but there are tracks on the new record that I adore - Born Free andXXXO probably being my favourites for the moment. Even if XXXO does have that awkward twitter/iPhone line.
And finally, another item in the ‘I know I should like it but let me get around to it’ files – I have finally watched a decent chunk of Arrested Development. And it’s just as fantastic as everyone has always made it out to be, and I really need to further my viewing and embrace it entirely. Jason Bateman’s awesome, Portia de Rossi is an obvious combo of attractive and badass, and both Alia Shawkat and Michael Cera are SO. ADORABLE.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have books to read and movies to watch. In case you’re interested, my current book pile includes
- Anansi Boys
- Alias Grace
- The Hobbit (I JUST HAVE TO GET IT FINISHED)
- Middlesex
- The Summer Book
- Kafka On The Shore
- Dune
- Three Vampire Tales (includes Dracula, Carmilla and The Vampyre)
I’m going to TRY to finish all of them before summer’s up, but we’ll see how that goes. If I vow to do so, I’ll be more gutted if I don’t manage it, so instead I will merely promise a valiant effort.
Ciao, knives.
still alive, still alive
Life descends into horrible vapidness when the December retail season hits. Working too much, and hating every moment of it save for the occasional hair-related compliment and/or intelligent literary discussion that comes along once in a blue moon.
This is why I could never ever work full time in that place.
Anyway. Desire to read things that are deep and meaningful and new has somewhat abated over the past few weeks, but once the first week of January is over, I’ll hopefully get back to form and back to (semi) regular bloggity action.
What I HAVE been reading lately, and what will eventually get a proper write up, is all six volumes of the Scott Pilgrim Graphic Novels. And they are amazing. I’m not a frequent graphic novel connoisseur, but Bryan Lee O’Malley is amaaaaazing.
I’m also currently getting through the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Until Dark. I got a free copy from the Hachette Livre roadshow, and it seemed a suitably easy read to keep me occupied. One needs to have the occasionally trashy title to turn to, right?
So, back with a vengeance soon, I hope.
iNaNoWriMo
It sounds like an Apple product of some kind, with the ‘i’ at the front, but that’s just me attempting to include myself in the phenomenon that is NaNoWriMo. Since it stands for ‘National Novel-Writing Month’, I feel obliged to switch it up for my unAmerican purposes. InterNational Novel-Writing Month. iNaNoWriMo. Catchy, n’est-ce pas?
Perhaps pas.
Anyway, I’m going to strive towards doing it, although November is, naturally, a terrible month for them to pick, given that it’s a month that involves final exams and then ideally as much work as possible. Nobody ever thinks about us poor Southern-Hemisphere-dwellers. My story is currently called The Poetic Life Of Ruby Palmer, Lost Cause – and while this is subject to change, I am rather attached to it, as I tend to be with titles I let hang around my brain for a while. It has elements of real-life influence, obviously – it’s about a somewhat offbeat writerly girl in her last year of high school, which sounds a little like me a few years ago – but I’m pretty sure Ruby’s going to wind up more badass than me, or at least more badass than I was at sixteen-going-on-seventeen, for the most part.
I’ve (barely) survived my first exam, which involved much prattling about Ovid, and only have two more before supposed ‘freedom’. Colour me stoked.
In the watching/listening/reading realm of things, I have offish finished reading all the Tortallan books (save for Terrier and Bloodhound), having finished reading Trickster’s Queen. And now, in addition to my reading of The Hobbit, I’m lazily getting through the first Circle of Magic book. My Hobbit-y reading has been paired with watching Fellowship of the Ring at this exact moment. They’re about to go into the Mines of Moria. I just had a ‘No, Frodo, what are you saying?! Y’all should try to finish taking the Caradhras pass!’ moment. Poor Gandalf. /nerd.
And musically, I’ve been listening to Voltaire’s Ooky Spooky record, which is excellent indeed, and The Passenger by Iggy Pop has been on repeat (just the one song, because… why not?).
I’ll keep you updated on how iNaNoWriMo gets along, my friendos.
Ég er ekki í raun að tala íslensku en hægt er að nota á netinu þýðendum.
I haven’t said much about music lately, aside from grammatical references in pseudo-indie songs of yesteryear. Sure, this blog is called ‘Raw Library’, but it’s not meant to be exclusively about books. Oh no. Because, in fact, I do a lot more music-listening than I do reading/writing, truth be told – probably because it can be more of a background activity, but still. My eventual career ambitions lie around words of the penned variety, yes, but my musical obsession is also significant. I’m the kind of girl who flies places for concerts, wastes her meagre pay on CDs – actual CDs! they still exist! – and is a somewhat badass flute player. Actually, given that my other ‘primary’ instrument is ukulele, I decided I should call myself a ‘fluke player’. Maybe this should be a thing? Maybe not. And because my iTunes shuffle just threw me a track from an album I hadn’t listened to for a while, I decided that the time has come for a vague let’s-poke-around-music-a-bit type post. And this is it.
The track in question is Pad Sést Ekki Sætari Mey (I hope your browsers don’t turn that into Windings) from Gling-Gló by Björk Gu∂mundsdóttir & tríó Gun∂mundar Ingólfssonar – aka Björk and some jazz-tastic friends. AND IT IS SO GOOD. I picked it up on a Wellingtonian adventure a few years back for $5 or something at the Real Groovy on Cuba Street and have appreciated it ever since. The CD is mostly in Icelandic (which is among the most excellent languages on the planet, and which I intend to try to learn some day) save for a couple of tracks in English, and it’s all jazz-ish, and all fantastic. I particularly enjoy the songs which are standards that one recognises EXCEPT THAT THEY’RE IN ICELANDIC.
Anyway. Go listen to it.
A little more shuffle-based clicking was supposed to present me with opportunities to talk about some other CDs too, but nothing inspired me to write anything much except that I rediscovered one of the few songs on the second Raconteurs album that I really liked (Five on the Five, the album being Consolers of the Lonely. It’s not a bad record, it’s just not a patch on their first one. Go listen to Broken Boy Soldiers if somehow you haven’t yet done so). And also the awesomeness of a few OSTs was reminded. Thus, go find the soundtracks for -
- Whip It
- (500) Days of Summer
- Mean Girls (obviously)
- Coffee & Cigarettes
- Marie Antoinette
- Ghost World
I’ve also been listening to Unicorn Steak and Fino + Bleed by Die Mannequin, and both records are awesome and deserving of your attention. If you’re in a punk-y mood. They’re Canadian, which obviously makes them a little bit cooler than you automatically. Unless you’re Canadian. Or a kiwi. Or, actually, it depends on the individual in question
Thus ends an entry of a musical nature. Somewhat. Back to reading Trickster and debating the merits of tidying my room. PEACE OUT.
