books a-go-go Yesterday, I was at Barnes and Noble and finally found the book I've been looking for for weeks! Unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to tell you what book it is. Well, OK, it's The Best of Martha Stewart Living: Weddings. I know, I know. Shut up. But hey, if you're going to go Martha, the book is the way to do it, because her magazine is full of ads, and I don't want to pay $5 for 10 pages worth of copy. Instead, I will pay $50 for a book full of Martha. And man, it is the whitest book I've ever seen in my life. On one hand, the book is a really good thing (or a Good Thing, in Martha-speak), because it's giving us a lot of ideas for things with which we have absolutely no experience--how does one go about choosing flowers for an event, for instance. But on the other hand, all of the weddings pictured in the book are so unbelievably high class and decadent that it's leaving us both with a half-nauseated, half-covetous feeling. As I said to Joe yesterday, what we really need to do is to meet some really rich people, and try to get invited to their weddings. As for us, we can have our own low-key affair and not have to worry about the 100-foot receiving path of rose petals, ice sculptures yielding crudités, and personalized scented soap satchels with each guest's initials embroidered on the outside with satin thread. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. The other exciting book news of the day is that I'm now totally obsessed with Books on Tape. I started thinking that Books on Tape might be a nice diversion during exercise, especially now that we're back home from Connecticut and no longer have membership at that nice health club with the TVs on every wall. I know most people listen to music, but all the mix tapes I made in high school and college have since disintegrated, and old-fashioned girl that I am, I really haven't caught on to this whole MP3 craze that all the kids are talking about. (Mostly, I think this is related to the fact that my computer doesn't have speakers.) So anyway, Books on Tape. A few weeks ago, I got the audio book of Lolita, ready by Jeremy Irons. (Perhaps best known for his mellifluous reading of the part of "Scar" in The Lion King, or, as my mother mistakenly calls the character, "Scab.") Lolita's just one of those books I never got around to reading. I have it. I've started it. But somehow, I always get distracted, or lose track of where I am in the book, and before you know it, I'm just back to reading Of Mice and Men for the five billionth time. But I know that Lolita is supposed to be a good book. I like Nabokov--I had to read Pale Fire for some English class I took in college, so at least he's a known element. Plus, I pride myself on a certain level of pop-culture awareness, and for that reason alone, I need to read Lolita. So the verdict? I'm loving Books on Tape! Almost as good as regular books, in that you can really digest each word and imagine each scene as it plays out, only you can actually do stuff while listening to Books on Tape, like shopping at the supermarket, or jogging in the park. And the reading is so good. That voice! The inflections! I know it's Jeremy Irons, and not all readers must be that talented, but it's actually amazing how absorbing it is to have a story read to you like that. It reminds me of the one-man show that I saw of A Christmas Carol, with Patrick Stewart in a black box theater and five props, playing all the parts and narrating so that you can see everything that's being described, even though there's nothing to see. Fantastic. I'm going to go for a walk up to the Cloisters later on, just to have an excuse to listen for another hour. (Yeah, I know I could listen to it in my room, but it seems like a waste to listen to the tape while sitting still in your room--I could just read the book itself.) The weather here is suddenly gorgeous. Later this week, it's going to be sunny, and in the 80's. About damn time. xo Michelle |
Sunday . April 14 . 2002 . 4:00pm |
books a-go-go Yesterday, I was at Barnes and Noble and finally found the book I've been looking for for weeks! Unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to tell you what book it is. Well, OK, it's The Best of Martha Stewart Living: Weddings. I know, I know. Shut up. But hey, if you're going to go Martha, the book is the way to do it, because her magazine is full of ads, and I don't want to pay $5 for 10 pages worth of copy. Instead, I will pay $50 for a book full of Martha. And man, it is the whitest book I've ever seen in my life. On one hand, the book is a really good thing (or a Good Thing, in Martha-speak), because it's giving us a lot of ideas for things with which we have absolutely no experience--how does one go about choosing flowers for an event, for instance. But on the other hand, all of the weddings pictured in the book are so unbelievably high class and decadent that it's leaving us both with a half-nauseated, half-covetous feeling. As I said to Joe yesterday, what we really need to do is to meet some really rich people, and try to get invited to their weddings. As for us, we can have our own low-key affair and not have to worry about the 100-foot receiving path of rose petals, ice sculptures yielding crudités, and personalized scented soap satchels with each guest's initials embroidered on the outside with satin thread. Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. The other exciting book news of the day is that I'm now totally obsessed with Books on Tape. I started thinking that Books on Tape might be a nice diversion during exercise, especially now that we're back home from Connecticut and no longer have membership at that nice health club with the TVs on every wall. I know most people listen to music, but all the mix tapes I made in high school and college have since disintegrated, and old-fashioned girl that I am, I really haven't caught on to this whole MP3 craze that all the kids are talking about. (Mostly, I think this is related to the fact that my computer doesn't have speakers.) So anyway, Books on Tape. A few weeks ago, I got the audio book of Lolita, ready by Jeremy Irons. (Perhaps best known for his mellifluous reading of the part of "Scar" in The Lion King, or, as my mother mistakenly calls the character, "Scab.") Lolita's just one of those books I never got around to reading. I have it. I've started it. But somehow, I always get distracted, or lose track of where I am in the book, and before you know it, I'm just back to reading Of Mice and Men for the five billionth time. But I know that Lolita is supposed to be a good book. I like Nabokov--I had to read Pale Fire for some English class I took in college, so at least he's a known element. Plus, I pride myself on a certain level of pop-culture awareness, and for that reason alone, I need to read Lolita. So the verdict? I'm loving Books on Tape! Almost as good as regular books, in that you can really digest each word and imagine each scene as it plays out, only you can actually do stuff while listening to Books on Tape, like shopping at the supermarket, or jogging in the park. And the reading is so good. That voice! The inflections! I know it's Jeremy Irons, and not all readers must be that talented, but it's actually amazing how absorbing it is to have a story read to you like that. It reminds me of the one-man show that I saw of A Christmas Carol, with Patrick Stewart in a black box theater and five props, playing all the parts and narrating so that you can see everything that's being described, even though there's nothing to see. Fantastic. I'm going to go for a walk up to the Cloisters later on, just to have an excuse to listen for another hour. (Yeah, I know I could listen to it in my room, but it seems like a waste to listen to the tape while sitting still in your room--I could just read the book itself.) The weather here is suddenly gorgeous. Later this week, it's going to be sunny, and in the 80's. About damn time. xo Michelle |
Bikini Briefs |
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