Prezzies!

Birthday loot (thus far, supposedly more is on the way via UPS; cough KatieLizMarilyn cough)

Gnome birthday card from company whose products I am obsessed with

Twenty three dollars (thanks, grandpa)

Bigfoot: I not Dead, Graham Romieuartwork of Bigfoot: I not Dead

In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot, Graham Romieu

artwork of In Me Own Words

The Royal Tenenbaums Criterion Collection DVD

Red Forever21 DB Symbol coat (see previous Forever21 post)

White Alpaca Camargo scarf

Victorian Fantasy candle. Smells like bodice-ripping (thanks, Rachel)

Amaryllis plant (thanks, Enrico)

Mom, Please Don't Wear That. Dad, Please Stop Taking Pictures.

My family's coming tomorrow. In post-grad speak, that means FREE FOOD for 3 whole days!!! And, you know...bonding, I guess. We're planning on going to the SAM's Target Practice show, avoiding all the Bumbershooters, and browsing Elliott Bay. I'm quite fond of the parentals, actually, although I never quite know what to do with them when they come for a visit. But they always take me out to great restaurants that I couldn't otherwise afford, let me use their car for a run to Target, and pay for my sales-taxed clothing So it'll be pretty win-win! Lots of photos will be posted later.

Things I Like #6

Old YA Fiction




My mother was a "stay-at-home" mom until I was 18, as well as a history/lit. major whose parents made her read to her younger siblings as a child. Therefore, when I was growing up, I read new children's classics to myself while my mother read old children's classics to me. She read to me constantly, and I specifically remember sitting in the bathtub for like, an hour, while she read to me. Mostly she read books from her childhood, so I picked up a lot of 1960s cultural phenoms in my formative years. Here are the ones I remember most fondly. Some are not well known, some are totes obvi, but all are will be required reading for any potential future children I may raise.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.
Outside of Roald Dahl (who I am not putting on this list, as all of his books are my favorites), this is my favorite children's book. Case in point: I have a bookcase built into my Portland-bed's headboard, and this is definitely in there, along with like, the "real literature" of Marquez. It has great word-play, an inventive plot, unique and memorable characters, and a mystery that is quite gripping for the under-11 set. Maybe it's the fond memories I have of reading it as a child with my mommy, but I still find it nice to skim through.

Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander.
It's about a cat whose nine lives are spread out over several centuries. He goes to ancient Egypt, he's present at the kidnapping of St. Patrick, he hangs with Leo Da Vinci...and then he takes his 1960s owner Jason back in time to re-visit all these places with him. A talking, time-travelling cat--how could I not love it?! I did a book report and made a diorama of this in 3rd grade, complete with sugar-cube pyramid.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Thank god they haven't ruined this book by making it into a movie (update: apparently the did. Fuck). Seriously, this book has the most wonderful puns, word play, and meta-literary techniques to ever reside inside the pages of a children's text. Plus, the illustrator is a bamf. Those simple pen and ink drawings of the 60's are my ideal book illustrations for any text.

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
The author's name alone clues you in on how imaginative and atmospheric this book is. Confession: I was super-obsessed with ancient Egypt as a child and consumed every known children's book about it. This was one of them, although it centers on a bunch of kids in a 1970s SoCal apartment complex playing a make-believe game of ancient Egyptian gods...until one of the idol statues COMES TO LIFE! Also, cultural note, there are a lot of different ethnicities represented in the apartment house. I feel like it's one of the only 60s kids books to do so without having it be trite.

Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.
Elizabeth Enright wrote a TON of kids books that take place on the East Coast in romantic little towns full of eccentrics. Siblings Portia (!!) and Foster visit their cousin Julian in this tiny village and find a dried-up lake resort with extravagent Victorian homes. However, some of its residents didn't get the memo that the lake dried up and are still living there as if it were the boom days. The kids are "adopted" by Aunt Minihaha Cheever and Uncle Pindar Payton--GOOD STUFF! Eventually the siblings convince their parents to buy a home there in the sequel "Return to Gone-Away". I wanted to find "forgotten" houses so bad that in the summers I'd wander around on my bike in our beach town, scoping out little alleways and rotting cabins. I never found a romantic, still-preserved house, but I'm sure I found tons of meth-houses.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken.
Aiken wrote this in the 60s, but it reads like a Victorian children's novel in the vein of A Little Princess or The Secret Garden. You get a mysterious English manor, absent parents, an evil nanny, headstrong little girls, and frilly clothes. There's something about evil wolves chasing them (the book's part of a series, but I never read the others), and the girls have to leave the manor because of the evil nanny. They run around on the moors trying to escape the wolves and try to get the parents back from India so they'll expel the nanny from the property. It's pretty dark, and I can safey say it put the fear of God in me while still managing to entertain me to no end. I SO wanted to be one of those Victorian children who finds extreme adventure in moldy old houses while wearing petticoats and riding ponies.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg.
I don't think I really need to explain. I think I got too carried away with myself when claiming "Westing Game" as my hands-down favorite, because "Basil E." is EPICALLY EPIC. If you haven't read this, you probably shouldn't apply to be on Team Lara. I'm considering naming a child Claudia after this book's bad-ass. The girls of 60s YA fiction were, on a whole, way way cooler than those of the 80s and 90s (excepting Hermione and Ginny, natch). This is definitely required reading for any friends, lovers, or future children. I think this is why I love museums and "The Royal Tenenbaums" so much. Seriously, "Tenenbaums" would be way weaker without the "Basil E." references and general Konigsburg-tone.

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden.
From the same author-illustrator team who brought us that perennial 3rd grad favorite Mr. Popper's Penguins. I remember crying during a reading of Cricket, and I wanted a pet cricket so I could have it sleep in a cozy little match-box bed--such are the many memorable, darling details of Selden's MAGNUM OPUS!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
I specifically remember being confused on how to pronounce her last name, and I can still say I have a little confusion: "Long-ell"? "Lang-ell" "Ling-ell"? So many options. That is not, however, what I most remember about this book. I'm pretty sure if you haven't read it you're not American. That's all there is to it. Classic. Plus, I always sympathized with Meg's messy hair. And Calvin O'Keefe sounded like a super hottie. I read the whole series. There are like, a MILLION of the freaking things, but none of them quite compare with this one. Literary connection: Ellen Raskin (see first entry) illustrated the edition that my mom has on our bookshelf.


Okay, obviously this list is not exhaustive of my literary consumption as a child since I didn't list any Victorian children's lit, contemporary lit. (Hellloooo "Number the Stars"), the Ramona series, or Roald Dahl. However, it's a pretty good representation of what has cumulated in my literary personality. After writing all these down, I realize that my mother picked out some killer girl characters for me to emulate, and moost of these were written by women. Way to be progressive, 1960s juvenile literature!

Suburbia

I've been out of town for the past two weekends, and I chose to spend my time in the wildernesses of...suburban Puyallup and Portland. Let me tell you, neither locale is for the faint of heart!

I went to visit my mother's brother and family the weekend of the 14th, and I got to take the exotic transportation device known as "The Sounder". It was my first time. I was excited because the trains are the same double-decker kind used all over Italy. Rather than seeing the sparkling Ligurian Sea, however, I was treated to the damp, gray valley that is Pierce county. My aunt and uncle's farm is a treasure-trove of Americana, and I spent the weekend feeding horses, playing with cats and dogs, baking, painting my cousin's bedroom, not showering, not getting dressed, playing Rock Band, eating oreos dipped in raspberry jam, and being lazy with my lovely cousins. I also learned a very important skill: apple peeling. My aunt has this fantastic machine that allows you to pop an apple onto a rod and spin a handle, slowly advancing the apple toward a razor blade, which peels and cores the apple in one fun motion!

I got to do this procedure about 10 times and I was quite giddy, as avid Team Lara fans may imagine. It was magical.

This weekend I made the epic journey down to P-town for a doctor's appointment and some old fashioned family bonding. I helped pick out paint colors for our kitchen, family room, and den, beat my dad at Mario Kart, listened to my mother hum while making dinner, dealt with the thermostat being raised to 75 deg., introduced my grandpa to Thai food, went to the library, and had, generally speaking, hott times. And by "hott times" I mean falling asleep with my cat on the couch at 10pm on a Friday night with a rerun of CSI on in the background. It was bizarre (read: wonderful) to go four whole days without seeing a single hipster, to be the one almost hitting a pedestrian instead of being the pedestrian, and to not pay any sales tax on my hair conditioner from Fred Meyer. Ahh, suburbia, with all your joys and mysteries, how I love thee!

Coming up for Team Lara: Thanksgiving reunions with the BFFs, a review of the second Pants movie during a drunken viewing at said BFF reunion, my 22nd birthday, the hell that is Lemieux's reading room at 4am on Tuesday of Finals Week, and the Holy Grail of Fall Quarter--Christmas Break!!

Things I like

I've decided that, since all of you are rooting for Team Lara, you should know my likes and dislikes. Thus, "Things I Like", will be a regularly featured blog topic.

First Thing I Like:

Humerous greeting cards.

My mother notoriously does not send me mail. My roommate gets care packages galore, while I am lucky to receive a card on major holidays (with a crisp $5 that my mother tells me to spend on something holiday-related, like candy, as if trying to deter me from spending it on booze). However, when la madre e il padre DO decide to send me a card, it's usually quite fab, and almost always animal-related. Here is the card they sent me for Halloween.

Here is the outside:

Things I like so far: it's grammar-related, the two girls look like total hos, neither has clean hair, and they are in some sort of diner.

And the Inside:

Things I like: Blondie got skooled, their expressions don't change, and my mother's note that these girls are English majors. Thanks for pointing that out, Mom.

And that was the first edition of Things I Like. Later entries will most likely cover my cat, Carlo Rossi, celebrity children, and Sweet Valley High books. Stay tuned.