read this! look smart!

there were a flurry of articles last month about how to fake it...no, not like that, ladies. i'm talking about how to appear more well-read and literate than, let's face it, you really are. (pop on over to loni's blog for links to all those articles).

this one was the most unique though - a fun post by bookslut about five specific works that lit snobs might expect you know. the author's suggestion for the best way to fake that you've actually read them? cruise by on one specific scene.

all right. go on, get to it, and don't say i never did anything for you.


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How To Talk Like You've Read Something You Haven't

There are certain books that tend to come up in conversation over and over again. Some of the time I have read it and can hold my own. Other times, however, I’ll either say I’ve read it and then just nod and remain quiet when they try to pry a conversation out of me, or I’ll just admit I have no idea what they’re talking about.

I figured there were two remedies to the end of the conversation that comes with having not read the book. I could either read the books or I could find a way to convincingly bluff my way through the conversation.

I decided to bluff. I do have a reputation as a bookslut to uphold.

All that’s needed for a successful bluff is mentioning a scene from the book. If the book was made into a movie, don’t try to reference a scene that made it to film. Everyone does that. To make it more believable, be vague. If you don’t mention characters’ names, you can then say, “Oh, it was such a long time ago, I’m a bit hazy on the details…” when you are asked your opinion on another specific scene.

Here are some examples of books that tend to come into my conversations and scenes you can use to bluff your way through a conversation. No one will be any wiser.


Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

There is a wealth of material to reference in this book. The scene I tend to mention is early in the book: a character’s apartment is full of cockroaches, but he too afraid to kill them. Instead, he traps them in glasses until his apartment is an obstacle course of upside down glasses with a cockroach in each, lethargically refusing to die.

However, that scene is pretty early on in the book. If you want people to think you read at least a bit more, there’s always the rehab. A man escapes from rehab every night to put cats in bags and set them on fire. That might be harder to work into polite conversation, however.


Ulysses by James Joyce

Masturbation should always be a great cocktail party topic. And if there’s such a thing as a great masturbation scene from literature, I think James Joyce has a fine contender with his Gerty / Leopold Bloom scene.

The scene itself doesn’t consist of much. Gerty sees Bloom on a hill, and being a romantic schoolgirl, she envisions him as a heroic character. Joyce satirizes a great deal of romance novels with Gerty’s inner monologue. The kicker of the scene is that while Gerty is imagining them running away together into the sunset, Bloom is jerking off to her hemline. When she stands to walk away, he notices she walks with a limp. His reaction? “Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show.”


Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The movie is very faithful to the book until the end, so the ending is what you’ll want to use. It’s best to just get indignant to how they changed the ending, because that’s the complaint I hear the most.

The buildings didn’t explode in the book because Tyler favored a more faulty type of bomb. The narrator shot himself surrounded by Marla and an assortment of the support group members.

Or you could mention that the soap in the book was made from the liposuctioned fat of Marla’s mother.


House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The scene that creeped me out the most was always hearing the S.O.S. tapping through the strange doorway.

However, if you mention the letters from Truant’s (the narrator of the story) mother in the hospital, you can pretend like you’ve read two books, House of Leaves and The Whalestoe Letters. Truant’s mother was institutionalized and died in the hospital. One theory I’ve seen mentioned a few times is that the entire book is her delusion. Doesn’t hold up well, but can inspire passionate conversations about the book. All you have to do is bring it up, then stand back and nod.


The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

There is some controversy over whether The Matrix ripped off The Invisibles. Even Morrison seems to think it’s true. If this ever comes up, this is what Kenan thinks you should say:

“What a load of bullshit. If Morrison wants to be angry at someone for ripping him off, he should be mad at Osama bin Laden for stealing his idea for decentralized cells of terrorists. Jesus.”

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find the article here if you'd like. how about that liposuctioned fat, eh?

bookworms vs. nerds - article/blog

what do you think, kids, does this explain me? a recent study by the british psychological society found that the "more fiction a person reads, the more empathy they have and the better they perform on tests of social understanding and awareness. By contrast, reading more non-fiction, fact-based books shows the opposite association."

a little power...

an open letter. to the librarian who keeps telling me how to sit in the library.

LOOK!

i am asian! i like to be barefoot! i especially like to be barefoot when i study! because studying law, my friend, SUCKS.

it is a miserable experience. there is too much to know. and not enough time to learn aforementioned knowledge. and it's not just that i have to know some stuff about the law! i am also expected to know MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE about the law. do you see?! do you see how those three elements combined are inherently counterintuitive to the concept of doing well?

so anything that i can do to make myself feel better - I NEED right now!

YES. that does include me showing up in your library in sweatpants and subjecting you to the unfortunate sight of my un-makeup-ed, undone hair "ensemble." to be fair, i always try to pair said pants with a cute tank top, but trust me, i understand it's not a pleasant sight. when you consider it in a package with my less-than-sparkling personality right now, I GET THAT I AM NOT A SYMPATHETIC SOUL.

BUT I NEED THIS. i need to be able to sit cross-legged on your incredibly uncomfortable wooden chairs and bang my forehead alternately on the glass table top and my casebook. please don't tell me it is a "health risk." i buy on average 10 books from your used bookstore every six weeks! you make a profit on me! DONT YOU FEEL I HAVE EARNED THIS? *sobbing* GO AWAY...



deep breaths. in closing, thank you for your free wifi. thank you for your fabulous comic book collection. but leave me alone with how i sit. thanks.

jadis.

ps. how about staying open a lil' later than 9pm, eh? smooches.

bookshelves

i adore my books. currently they are all affectionately crammed three-deep into my mid-height lame ass billy bookshelf, but as soon as i have enough money to not have to begin sentences with, "as soon as i have enough money," i am going to purchase at least two more, maybe a tall one with opaque glass doors and certainly a nice big wooden one (real wooden, not ikea particleboard wooden, though that's working fine for me for now).

alas, at this time i shall be content to merely pine. i think a lot of it is erin's influence - her (unhealthy) obsession with furniture design has rubbed off on me to an extent, and i'm enjoying thinking about not only the different ways form and function can work together (or not), but how they can also be real design strengths.

(okay, can you tell i'm sick of law reading and just ready to go back to analyzing useless crap again? give me chekhov! bf skinner, godard! f, i'll even do an essay on f-ing bookshelves and herman miller, just NO MORE CIV PRO).

anyway, bookshelves.


this is neat, huh?? tilt, tilt... i can imagine putting all my plays into these, or, um, my cliff's notes.

i also love this:

that's f-ing badass, man! i probably wouldn't want it for my house, but those lines are so nice and crisp, and i love how it just pops. (not to mention that titanic lamp kind of tricks out your eyes...)

now, see, this on the other hand is a bad idea. there is no respect! no organization! i am not a fan.

and this is just impractical and ugly.

you sick of these yet? i want to end on the best one. ladies and gentlemen, i give you:

what, not impressed, you say?? well, i'll admit, empty, this design makes little sense. looks a bit like tigger's stripes or something, but they are a little irrelevant.

until you put books on there.

i am not kidding:

holy shit, man!!!!!! was i not kidding?!?! look at what this design does - it creates open space, not just on the sides of the books but above them, too. (granted, there aren't that many in here, but the way the shelves go it *does* create that negative space.) it accomodates varying heights and thicknesses of volumes, and it's all tilt-y, which breaks up the lines at soft angles. i fucking love it, man, i am not kidding. plus, it's crazy enough to catch the eye, but it's not absolutely atrocious to have in a home. neat, right?!?!

*[blogger's note: the site changed the photos, so there's no longer a full-length shot with books on the shelves. =( sorry, kids! i'll keep checking back, and upload the handsomer ones if they ever get put back online. meanwhile, apologies for the comments not really fitting the photos...]

recommendations 2 - kid stuff

first off, i want to say that kari and i have successfully converted marcos on to veronica mars. i use the word ‘converted’ a bit loosely; he saw it on tv and he liked it, without any actual intervention from us. still, being correct early on allows for a very satisfactory ‘we told you so,’ and a victory is a victory!

my second list of recommendations is a hark back to kidhood. enjoy:

smart kids’ fiction
a couple summers ago i retreated from the essays and textbooks that i had been flooded with at williams and devoted the entire summer to re-read awesome kids’ books. i did all three harry potters, as well as the classics (the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, the giver, a wrinkle in time, the true confessions of charlotte doyle, the witches, etc). there’s something daring about kids’ fiction; how it doesn’t succumb to the fear of being silly. but there is a specific time when i appreciate kids’ fiction the most – when it doesn’t underestimate the reader. it is rare, but remarkable, when authors of kids books don’t necessarily resort to the easy solution, and instead unfold their stories in a complex & intriguing way. i think this is why some stories really remain with us into adulthood—it resonates deeply with us because we are so impressed with it.

i’ve got two contemporary examples. the first one is the third harry potter, the prisoner of azkaban. usually, authors have three or so different storylines going, and sometimes those plots end up intertwining, particularly at the end of the book. but with books that deal with an entirely different universe, sometimes these plots are just stories to flesh out the world. what rowling does in hp3 is amazing – her ending ties together five or six different story elements that you completely did not see coming; little things that happened earlier that seemed irrelevant or that seemed to already have a conclusion suddenly proved vital to the primary plotline. the structure is so complex and savvy! my second contemporary example is louis sachar’s relatively recent newberry award winner holes, which some may remember from the movie version that was made a couple years ago. like tom stoppard’s “arcadia” (a work of genius! and hilarious to boot), holes tells a modern story at the same time as a historical one, and the interesting part is where the two overlap – and possibly influence each other. a fairly advanced style, considering i think the thing was aimed at 9-13 year olds. anyway, i hadn’t read or heard anything about this book before i bought it for ry, so by the time the ending rolled around, and all these separate, ridiculous elements just wove themselves together, i was sold.

mac & cheese
especially if you add a bit of your own, real, (i like mild) cheddar on top. mmmm. there’s something to be said for easy mac, too. it’s horrible for you (*so* salty) but it’s awesome! you can make it so fast!

one more thing about mac & cheese – some moms make it with the breadcrumbs or something on top and then bake it. i have never made this. it’s delicious. i’ve only had personal experience making it from the box (annie’s is quite yummy, even if it’s from a box), but if anyone has the recipe for the kind with the breadcrumbs…send it my way.

cartoons
…especially on saturday mornings! there’s something about sleepily rooting for a superhero to beat the bad guy and get the girl that’s a very satisfying way to start one’s weekend. a short list of cartoons that i (and my family!) enjoy (or have in the past): "spiderman TAS," "xmen TAS," "the new adventures of batman & superman," "mighty max" (man, that’s old, i wonder if anyone remembers it), "gargoyles," "adventures of chip and dale," "darkwing duck"… ryry also liked "jackie chan adventures" (not my favorite), "xmen evolution" (eeeehhhh), and "fairly oddparents". now, of course, we’re all about the "family guy." but back in the day, the classics were it! looking back, the old "xmen" storylines actually followed the gist of the comics themselves (ie, pretty dark for kid stuff), and "gargoyles" definitely worked in some of that complex storytelling i spoke about before (c'mon, what other kids series dealt with main villans from shakespeare?!). good stuff.

comments welcome.