From the Bookshelves

 

 

from Cannonball Read 3

The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can't suppress my excitement. Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire. 

 . . .

It's not until we enter the City Circle that I realize I must have completely stopped the circulation in Peeta's hand. That's how tightly I've been holding it. I look down at our linked fingers as I loosen my grasp, but he regains his grip on me. "No, don't let go of me," he says. The firelight flickers off his blue eyes. "Please. I might fall out of this thing."
"Okay," I say. So I keep holding on, but I can't help feeling strange about the way Cinna has linked us together. It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock us into the arena to kill each other. 

-The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

This trilogy marks a return to great literary heroines, beautifully thought-out characters that girls can look up to. It expresses great complex themes, the world is messy and complicated, and Collins does not underestimate her reader. I would rank her with John Green, Avi, Madeleine L'Engel . . . I'm so glad my sister handed me these books, and would recommend them to anyone.

Who is your favorite heroine?

Adele: Rolling in the Deep

Notes on a Thursday

What do you do after you have created one of the best concept albums/concert experiences ever conceived? If you are Colin Meloy and the Decemberists, you do an about-face and head in the other direction. On January 18th, 2011 the Decemberists released The King is Dead in the US. It boasts collaborations with R.E.M's Peter Buck and Gillian Welch, which are immediately apparent in the wailing mouth organ pieces and the structure of the guitar work. But at its core it maintains everything that is the Decemberists and everything that their fans love about them. The lyrics are yet again in rare form, as they always are. Colin Meloy is an amazing wordsmith, with lines like "Don't Carry it All's" 

"Let every vessel pitching hard to starboard
lay its head on summer's freckled knees"

Completely without concept, the songs are pretty gems dropped one after the other, yet still strong and solid and well-written.

"Rise to Me" is a simply amazing song, that I'm not sure I can talk about. It has steel slide guitars, amazing harmonies . . . a good country feel to it, without being too much so. I like that it has a slow tempo, that seems assured and strong like mountains, rather than angry and fast and hard. 

"June Hymn" and the entire album really, makes me want it to be spring and early summer, and drives with the windows down, and frisbee in the park, and picnics, and . . . it's supposed to snow tonight. dammit.

"This is why we fight" has the percussion-strength and tempo to remind us so subtly of The Hazards of Love, a sign that they are moving forward and evolving as a group, rather than simply returning to what they do best as some may claim. Also, the bass line is addictive and amazing, if you focus on it. 

Overall, they have impressed me, yet again. Though I'm not at all surprised. 

Other (better) reviews from legitimate sources:

Pitchfork
Paste (Andrew Leahey talks about how the songs are autobiographical and personal . . . I don't particularly know anything about that, but I'm also one of those "just let the music do its thing" people)


Interviews:


(I swear I didn't listen to this before I wrote this blog post. Seriously. I promise.)
NPR's All Things Considered

Listen to the entire album played live in Portland yesterday, here


 

Stylized.

Weheartit

""Style" is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style."
(John Fairchild)

Dear Mr. Fairchild,

If only it were that simple.

love,
Marlee

I've been sitting on this post for about a week. Writing it out, adding pictures, deciding I actually hate it, getting rid of everything.  . . . So it's actually been remarkably like my usual style conundrum.

I'd love to look like this image found on weheartit. Cleanly messy.

You see, here is my issue. I'm gonna try to get it into a little nutshell. I don't really follow celebrity fashion (in an "apply it to myself" sort of way) because I can't really think of a situation where I will have to be as dolled up as they are. They look gorgeous (usually) but I'm not in that universe and it's not required of my life. Following their day-to-day fashion choices requires looking at pictures taken by the paparazzi. I do not like the paparazzi. I get that it is their jobs at premieres, etc, but I find following people and hounding them (the people that want to be left alone, not the celebutantes . . . they're fair game) and creating dangerous situations to be pretty awful. 

Point being: no inspiration from the Hollywood quarter.

I also have a sort of odd body shape (larger on top, but straight skinny hips)
 

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 This brings us to vintage photography and style bloggers. As I've tried to determine how I want to present myself, I've started pulling photos, links (as everyone does, this isn't rocket science), and creating a list with sort of associative words for how I want to look, and what I want the clothes to be.

Deborah Kaplan, from Jeana Sohn's blog series, Closet Visit.

Natural fibers (cotton. cotton. cotton cotton cotton), fitted, classic lines, slightly off-beat, bold colors, denim, leather. Right now I'm working on blending what seems like the two aesthetics that have stuck with me the longest: clean and classic with a sort of bohemian twist. 

photo of Janis Joplin by Jim Marshall, simple top with awesome necklaces and badass attitude.

Lauren Moffatt, from Refinery29

Image from the Sartorialist

The two blogs that seem to help me with this the most is of course, the amazing street style blog The Sartorialist and Joanna Goddard's A Cup of Jo. I also, of course, rip out pages and spreads from magazines and keep them in a binder that I cull through every couple of months . . . I feel like that in particular helps me discover visually what I consistantly love and am drawn to. 

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I'm still not sure if I'm totally happy with this post, but what can you do? Just get on with it, I guess.

Travels, on a microcosmic level

Well, not super microcosmic. I went into the city via metro to visit with a friend that I haven't seen in quite some time. She's absolutely wonderful and I adore spending time with her! We've been discussing something that I can't quite talk about yet, but essentially it boils down to the worry and stress of a dream going from a concept to a reality and all the nit-picky little details that start to plague your mind (even if they're months down the road). Anyway, I snapped some pictures on my Blackberry on the way home (not the ones I really wanted to take, because . . . well, the train was moving quickly. 



I just find public transit to be sort of peaceful, oddly enough. When you're not stewing in other-people-are-too-close juices/feelings/general squiky-ness, that is. A nice seat, an iPod, maybe a good book, and the world rushing by you = a nice time to contemplate the universe.

and yes, I realize that I am a smidgen of a hipster. but just a smidgen.

From The Bookshelves

Source: The International Bookseller

  I bury myself in the next housekeeping article, then the League newsletter. For the second week in a row, I leave out Hilly's bathroom initiative. An hour later, I find myself staring off at the window. My Copy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sits on the window ledge. I walk over and pick it up, afraid the light will fade the paper jacket, the black-and-white photo of the humble, impoverished family on the cover. The book is warm and heavy from the sun. I wonder if I'll ever write anything worth anything at all. I turn when I hear Pascagoula's knock on my door. That's when the idea comes to me.

No. I couldn't. That would be . . . crossing the line.

But the idea won't go away.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

This book is so wonderful, on so many levels. Three different narrators, three distinct voices, three amazing stories that all inevitably weave together. What kept striking me as I read it was that I am in the same place as Skeeter (recent college graduate, living at home, trying to find work/make my life "matter"), but that we are in such incredibly different environment. It seems so foreign to me, the level of understood prejudice and ignorance that was just an accepted part of society . . . parts of the book floored me, and brought tears to my eyes. The amount of sacrifice, the injured pride . . . it seems like it should be total fiction, from somewhere else entirely. And yet it was only 45-50 years ago, in the country where I live. And its a battle still being fought, in America and all over the world. The Help is funny, entertaining, heart-wrenching, and eye-opening. Get on it, kiddies.

Two Thousand and Eleventy

So, it's the beginning of a new year. Lots of exciting things will be happening for me in 2011, some of which I can talk about right now and some I can't (or shouldn't). Here are the ones I CAN talk about, in no particular order (except maybe chronological).


-continued (or revived, depending on how you look at it) Notes on a Thursday
       -Lady Gaga concerts
       -U2 w/ Florence & the Machine concert
       -The Wailin' Jennys (hopefully)

 -lots and lots of From the Bookshelves. And From the Bookshelves to Cinema, for that matter.



-hopefully some nice little personal posts and windows into my life. Not that it's all that exciting.

-For example, photos of my recently-redone room from when I was pacing around late at night.