bookshelves of doom

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I stupidly waited until the last minute to RSVP for the John Green event in Cambridge, and so of course it's totally full with a long waiting list.  I don't know WHAT I was thinking.  As I'd be driving down from Maine, it doesn't really make sense for me to chance it, you know?

I think I'll drown my sorrows by watching Twin Peaks (yes, AGAIN) and re-starting my t-shirt sweatshop.  I'm about to make my first 'Real vampires don't sparkle.' shirt.  YES.  And at least I took today and tomorrow off.  YES.

I guess I'll survive.

Oh, I should probably write about Paper Towns sometime this weekend!  And pick up Mansfield Park again!  And finish the other three books I'm in the middle of!  And do some Cybils reading!  So I'm not going to wallow in the fact that I'M AN IDIOT or anything.

Hooray! Or, I really need to get back on the T-Shirt Making Train.

Lauren on her Gob Bluth t-shirt.

T-Shirt of the Week.

My apologies for the image quality.  The good (and I use that term very lightly) library camera is on the fritz, so I had to use the not-so-good one.

No explanation needed this week, I'm sure.

What was it that you called Jane Eyre, C.C.?  "A bodice ripper without the bodice ripping?"  I think that was it.

I re-read it recently, bound and determined to NOT skip the St. John Rivers chapters. 

I failed.   

T-Shirt of the Week.

Crisis averted.

Just before I posted this, I realized that I had printed the wrong year on my shirt.  So, with a Sharpie and the Crapulous Magic of Microsoft Paint, I fixed it.

There are two major camps when it comes to The Giving Tree.  There are those who believe that it is a sweet and charming story of motherhood, devotion and unconditional love.  And there are those of us who read the story, get to the last page, read the words "And the tree was happy", look at the illustration of the Unhappy Frowning Man sitting on the Poor Dead Stump, and say:

"Bite me, Shel.  The TREE is no longer a TREE.  It is a STUMP."

Now I'll just sit back and wait to be bawled out.

I'm a little scared.

Last week's T-Shirt of the Week.

I was out sick last Friday, so today I've got a double-dose of t-shirt-i-ness.

I recently read Cold Comfort Farm for the first time.  I remember seeing the trailer for the Beckinsale movie way back when, but I never did see the movie, so all I really knew about the story was that it involved "something nasty in the woodshed".

Why didn't anyone ever tell me that the book is (very basically) about a Wodehouse character living in a Bronte world?  Or, more simply, that it's a giggle-fest?

I would have read it much sooner.

Flora, the heroine, is adorably awful.  In this bit, she and a friend are talking about her new life as an orphan:

'Well... what then, darling?  Now, Flora, don't be feeble.  You know perfectly well that you will be miserable if you haven't got a job, when all your friends have.  Besides, a hundred pounds a year won't even keep you in stockings and fans.  What will you live on?'

'My relatives,' replied Flora.

Mrs Smiling gave her a shocked glance of inquiry, for, though civilized in her tastes, she was a strong-minded and moral woman.

'Yes, Mary,' repeated Flora firmly, 'I am only nineteen, but I have already observed that whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one's friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one's own consciences, to the amount one may impose upon one's relatives.'

I love her.

[Later:  I've just realized that there's a typo in the second shirt.  Grrr.]

T-Shirt of the Week.

Bertie Wooster and Jeeves may be the most well-known Wodehouse characters, but Psmith is the dreamiest.

(Why, yes.  I do have a plethora of literary crushes.)

If you've never read Leave it to Psmith, you must.  It's actually the last Psmith book, but it's my favorite.

I mean it, you know.  It's a must read. 

It's even set at Blandings Castle, with Lord Emsworth and Freddie and the Empress and features the downfall of the Efficient Mr. Baxter*.  (He comes back.)

You should probably read all of the Blandings stories, too.

*Who will probably end up with his own shirt, actually.  He's just so awful.  I love him.

T-Shirt of the Week.

So many kids read Beverly Cleary's books and love Ramona -- but for me, it was always about Beezus.

I, too, have a rambunctious and adorable and charismatic younger sister.

So, yes, I identified with poor Beezus Quimby, who always played second fiddle to her rambunctious and adorable and charismatic younger sister.

Ramona was always doing something exasperating, like squeezing all of the toothpaste out or pulling Susan's boing-boing curls or taking one bite out of every apple because the first bite tastes the best... while poor Beezus embroidered.

We have an entire roll of film of my sister, as an adorable toddler, eating leaves.  You can see me in the background in some of the shots, wearing my HUGE glasses, reading a book.  Then there was that time that (oh god, she's going to kill me) she made finger puppets out of tampon applicators.

I was probably reading then, too.

Sob.

Anyhoo, soon older sisters everywhere will be able to unite -- there'll be some of these shirts available at my Etsy shop tomorrow.

Hank got my shirt!

Hooray!

I'm so glad it went over well.

(My name is actually pronounced LEE-la, like the character on Doctor Who, but I've lived with it for a very long time, and thus I've learned to understand that everyone is going to pronounce it differently.)

T-Shirt of the Week.

Okay.  I horrified poor Josh with this while we were driving through the car wash yesterday.  Take into consideration that I made it up on the fly, so some of the rhymes are slightly forced.

To the tune of My Darling Clementine:

Oh Lee Scoresby, Oh Lee Scoresby,
And my daaaaarling Hester, too,
I lost you at Alamo Gulch,
And I was, I was so bluuuuue.

Then I found you, yes I found you,
I found you once again.
In the Land of the Dead, your sacrifice
made me want to kick Phil Pullman.

Oh Lee Scoresby, oh Lee Scoresby
But all is not for.... naught,
I will see you, come December,
In the form of Sam Elli-OTT.

Soon to be found in my Etsy shop.

T-Shirt of the Week.

I figured that since the book didn't get an Alex*, it should AT LEAST have its own t-shirt.

Also, I would like to be the Duchess.**

And I'd like to know how to do that swordfighting thing.  Note that I didn't say I would like to LEARN how to do that swordfighting thing.  No.  That would be waaaay too hard. 

I'd just like to magically BE more swashbuckly.

Who out there has not yet experienced the awesomeness of The Privilege of the Sword?  Rectify that situation, please.  Thank you.

Oh, and I'd like to enter self-congratulatory mode for a moment:  I am so dedicated to my T-Shirt of the Week posts that I came into work on a SNOW DAY.  Once I have my laptop -- which I will pay for with the proceeds from my Etsy shop, tra la*** -- silliness like that will no longer be necessary.

I'm going home to dye some more shirts.  Have fun at work, suckers.

*Dammit.  Dammit.  Dammit.  Dammit.

**At the end of PotS, I mean.  Though the Duchess in Swordspoint is pretty rad, too.

***Excellent plug, right?

T-Shirt of the Week.

Although I haven't been covering the Higher Power of Lucky controversy here, I have been following it.

If you (somehow) have missed it, Fuse has a great roundup of links here.  Oh, and you won't want to miss Neil Gaiman's response. 

In a nutshell, some people -- some librarians -- are objecting to the word "scrotum" on the first page of this year's Newbery winner. 

All of this led to the recent article in the NYT that included this asinine statement:

Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.

Darn those authors!  They're trying to corrupt children with their sneaky ways!

Anyhoo.  If you want a specific size, let me know -- the best way of going about it would probably be to email me with the word "scrotum" as a subject heading.  I need to find a way of keeping requests straight.  Actually, if you've already asked for a tee (regardless of slogan) and I haven't posted it yet, feel free to email the request to me again.

T-Shirt of the Week.

It just had to be done.

I was planning on displaying Boy Proof and Queen of Cool on the circulation desk today -- in the hopes of bringing more readers into the CoC fold -- but they both seem to be checked out at the moment. 

Rats.

Anyway, if you're a fan of the YA lit and you haven't read her, you should.  She's fabber than fab.

I'm slowly adding more sizes to my Etsy shop.  As I've said, if you want a tighter fit, go with the Boys sizes (I wear the Boys L -- it's snug, but doesn't make me look like a ho).  Hoping to whip up a few Carson Drew shirts soonish. 

T-Shirt of the Week.

Yes.  My father is Idaville's Chief of Police, I hang out with my tough-girl friend Sally Kimball and I put my Amazing Grasp of Normally Useless Information to good use by solving mysteries around town -- No Case Too Small.

Today I am Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown. 

Poor Bugs Meany got a raw deal, though.  With a name like that, how the heck could he turn out to be anything other than a Bad Guy?

If there is demand, I'll whip up a couple more of these babies and post them at my Etsy shop with the others.  Let me know if you're looking for a specific size and I'll see what I can do.

T-Shirt of the Week.

Yep.

There it is. 

The first time I read Wuthering Heights, I had to repeatedly stop myself from throwing the book across the room.  I wanted to slap almost every single character.  (Yet I was totally entranced.  Odd, that.)

Anyway.  Of the whole crew, Heathcliff makes me the most crazy.

Thus, the shirt.  (And my love of the third Fforde book.)

So what's the deal?  Am I the only Heathcliff-hater out there?  Does everyone else in the world think he's the dreamiest?  I guess I'm about to find out.  This is the first one I've been vaguely scared of wearing to work.  I'm worried that a pack of blue-haired Heathcliff fangirls will batter me with their enormous purses. 

Further bulletins as events warrant.

T-Shirt of the Week.

I believe it is my duty to inform the masses that Carson Drew is a total lech. 

HE IS!  I'm not reading too closely into the text, I swear!

T-Shirt of the Week.

You know.  Because a shirt that says "I am Turtle Wexler" would have just been too obvious.  (I'm sure that won't stop me from making one at some point, though.)

I have The Westing Game on the brain due to the upcoming sequel -- found out a co-worker hadn't read it (the freaking horror!), and stomped down to the Children's Room, checked it out, and gave it to her.  Then I was informed that another one of my co-workers hadn't read it, so I'll be assigning it to her next.  Will my work never end??

T-Shirt of the Week.

Again with the crappy image.  Sorry.  The library needs a new camera.  That, or I need to get a bit less lazy when taking these pictures.

Anyway, I wore this one yesterday and people argued with me all day long.  (And remember, I work at the adult circulation desk, not in the kid's room.)  I had no idea that I was in the minority about Snape. 

My favorite response was an older woman who said, "Trust Snape!?  And it's even GREEN?!"  She was totally horrified.  Rad.   

T-shirt of the week.

Feast your eyes on the amazingosity of my new nerdy creation. 

If you're able to ignore the craptasticness of my folding job, that is.  Not to mention the image itself.  Anyway.

If the reference escapes you, you're missing out in a big way.  Work on that.  I think I started with Murder Must Advertise (which, granted, doesn't feature Harriet) and then went back to the beginning.

I suspect that I'll soon have a Bunter-related shirt, too.  And one for Miss Climpson. 

T-Shirt of the Week.

I've gotten way into stenciling lately.  Super fun, because get this:  You can create shirts that say WHATEVER YOU WANT!

Yes, yes.

I know.

I'm a big fat nerd.

Whatever.

For those of you who are not big fat nerds, "Damalur-sol" comes from Robin McKinley's Damar books.  It means "Lady Hero".

Now pardon me.  I'm going to go and buy some more RIT.