The Great CATSby

outfit details – glasses: Derek Cardigan (buy here) // pullover: Out of Print Clothing (buy here)

Hello, Old Sports!

With the recent release of the film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, I wanted to re-read the novel before seeing the movie… ’cause that’s how I roll. My expectations aren’t too high for it though; I already have a feeling that it’s going to be one of those the-book-is-better-than-the-movie kind of deals. And Christina Hendricks should’ve totally been cast as Myrtle Wilson, am I right?! I mean, Isla Fisher is gorgeous, but Myrtle’s described as having a bit more of a figure. Plus Christina Hendricks and Carey Mulligan are my lady loves, so it would’ve been mind blowing to see them in a movie together! Anyhow, I found my old copy from high school with notes dated from May of 2002 (#hellaold!) hidden within the pages, but both of my part time jobs have kept me busy and so has my Etsy store, so I haven’t really found a whole lot of time to sit down and read. RUGH. But thankfully audiobooks exist ! I just bought the version Jake Gyllenhaal narrates on Audible (it’s $6.95!!!), and I’m listening to it as I type this very blog post!

The glasses I’m wearing might look familiar — I put them on my “Wishful Wednesdays” post awhile ago. I bought them immediately after I wrote the post too. Waste time I do not! The frames are a lot smaller than I’m used to, but I really like them. I’ve always wanted to try out cat eye frames too. And just like my first order from Coastal.com, the glasses came in a nice case and also came with a bottle of glasses cleaner, a cloth to wipe them with, and a screwdriver to tighten/loosen the glasses. I was a little freaked out when I first put them on though because they were really narrow and had the sides of my face in a tight bear hug. I thought, “OMG, NOOO! I don’t want to have to return these!” And then I remembered that I could go to LensCrafters and have them adjust the glasses for me, and for free nonetheless. Crisis averted! I’m over the moon about these glasses, and I loooove the fact that they have semicolons and colons on them. It’s a subtle detail, but as someone who majored in Creative Writing I can’t help but be super excited about it. Haha! If you haven’t checked out Coastal.com, they have smorgasbord of fantastically wonderful frames and first-time customers get their first pair of glasses for free. Well, you pay for shipping, but other than that they’re FREE!

And don’t my new glasses look just dandy with my The Great Gatsby pullover?  ;)

Cheers,
Nina

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

outfit details – shirt: Out of Print Clothing (buy here) // peter pan collar necklace: TJMaxx (doesn’t have a brand label) // cardigan: Kersh // belt: Mossimo // skirt: Xhileration (buy here) //boots: Steve Madden // glasses: Derek Cardigan (buy here)

On Friday I went to San Francisco with Jen and Shanice since I didn’t have to work in the morning. Yay four-day weekend (for me anyway)!!! While Jen went to school, Shanice and I window-shopped around the downtown area and I picked up a Glinda wand at the Disney Store! But all the walking around we did left us ridiculously tired and the burgers we ate for lunch didn’t pack much energy. And I spent effing $3.50 on orange juice because I was too tired and thirsty to find Jamba Juice (gift card yo!), but it just so happened to be right next to Jen’s school. *grumble* By the time we met up with Jen to take pictures in the studio I was feeling pretty loopy from being malnourished and dehydrated. I lept, danced, spun in the spinny chairs, and made stupid faces during and in between test shots. Lots of silliness occurred (see picture below).

I posed for a few photos for Jen’s digital photography class and did some for funsies. I found a beautiful typewriter on the props table and had to incorporate it into my shoot since it went perfectly with my The Sun Also Rises shirt from Out of Print Clothing! This might look familiar to you as it was on my Christmas Wish List post in December. Tim ended up getting it for me for Christmas I added a glitzy Peter Pan collar necklace to it that I found at TJMaxx last month. Fancy, yah? Ernest Hemingway probably wouldn’t be impressed, but that’s okay. Me likes it! I read The Sun Also Rises for a Modern American Novel class during my first semester as SFSU. It was the only book I thoroughly enjoyed from that course, which is kind of sad considering that we read five books. Well, I find it sad anyway.

You know what else is sad? I sent my camera off to Best Buy to get it checked out — it’s unfixable and the camera I had is no longer sold/available so now I have to go and look for another one! They gave me a list of cameras that are “comparable” to mine, but they were all regular point and shoots whereas mine was a DSLR. I don’t want to do camera homework! I just know that I’m looking to get another Canon. I’m kinda iffy of the G15, which is basically the upgraded version of my camera, just because it doesn’t have a swivel screen and the screen it does have is exposed. I need the swivel screen. I just do, okay? Okay.

If you happen to be into cameras, I’d love to hear your recommendations!

Cheers,
Nina

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

The Raven by chezfancypants featuring  Out of Print Clothing

My Super Bowl Sunday was spent by shopping and watching Liberal Arts (which is basically like a super long episode of How I Met Your Mother) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show! Tim and I actually had a bit of a How I Met Your Mother/ Susan Sarandon movie weekend since we watched Jeff, Who Lives At Home which stars Jason Segel and co-stars Surandon as his mother, and then Liberal Arts was written and directed by Ted Mosby Josh Radnor, and we followed that with Rocky Horror in which Sarandon plays Janet Weiss.

I am so thankful that Tim has no interest in American football. Dudes like that are so hard to find — they’re basically unicorns! Um… I just called my boyfriend a unicorn. o,0

Anyhow, since the team that won the Super Bowl is named after an Edgar Allan Poe poem I thought it would be fun to make an outfit based around Out of Print Clothing’s “The Raven” long-sleeved shirt. And BTW, they’re having a little sale in honor of their 3rd anniversary and for being able to send 440,000 books to various literary causes (yay reading!!!). So until Feb. 7 you can take 20% off your purchase with the code BOOKSFORALL. Now I can finally get that The Great Gatsby pullover I’ve been drooling over for years (that thing has been on every wish list and I still have yet to get it)!

Here are a few versions of “The Raven” recited by Vincent Price and James Earl Jones (he did the narration on The Simpsons one too):

Click here to watch The Simpsons’ version

Hope your Monday’s not too dreary (especially if you’re a Niners fan).

Cheers,
Nina

Happy 200th Pride & Prejudice!

I’m the worst self-proclaimed bookworm that ever lived. I can’t even remember the last time I read a book! I have all this guilt festering within my innards as I have so many books collecting dust due to my negligence to pick one up and explore the stories their pages contain. I’m attempting to get back into the habit of reading often, but picking what book to start off with has been a doozy. But since today marks Pride & Prejudices‘s 200th anniversary I thought that it would be appropriate to start reading since I’ve been wanting to give it another go (I totally gave up on it when I was supposed to read it for a Jane Austen class… which I somehow passed with a B) — and I am SO OBSESSED with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube! If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a webseries that’s a modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice and Lizzie is a communications grad student and the web show is to act as being part of her thesis. It’s super interactive too as each character has their own Twitter account and whatnot. Oh, and Jane Bennet works in fashion and has her own LookBook account! It hasn’t been updated in awhile which makes me sad because I really loved her outfits. *le sigh* It’s worth a peek though!

The Lizzie Bennet Diaires definitely played a part in me wanting to give P&P another chance.

Here’s the first episode of the series:

art by Nan Lawson

I’d love to ramble on a bit more, but I’ve got to get going or else I’ll be late for work. Enjoy your Monday! <– what an odd thing to say.

Cheers,
Nina

B i b l i o p h i l e

When I was in school I was soooo frustrated with the amount of reading I had to do for all of my classes. I studied Creative Writing, so of course I knew what I was getting into. And like all my professors say, you can’t write unless you read. ‘Tis very true. And I liked a lot of the short stories and a handful of books that were assigned to me — I was just frustrated by the fact that I never had time to read the books that I wanted to read. Actually, that’s a lie. All the time I spent on Tumblr, Facebook, and Netflix (and sometimes I did all three at once), I could’ve been reading a book that I wanted to read for funsies. But… um… I didn’t. :/

Now that I’ve graduated and have more free time than I’d actually like to have, I DON’T READ OFTEN. What the hell is up with that? Starting from this month on, I’m challenging myself to read at least one book each week and  write more. I finished reading The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin last week, and am starting The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger again. I started it a couple years ago and didn’t finish it, so I’m attempting it once more. I liked it, but for whatever reason I got distracted and never got around to finishing it. A lot of people have read this in high school; none of the English classes I took in high school had this book on the lesson plan, so I feel extremely deprived.

Other books I was deprived of in high school:

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxly
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• 1984 by George Orwell

Those are the only ones I can think of at the moment, but I know there’s more.

I’ve been told that The Catcher In The Rye is a book you either love or hate because the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is a bit of a prick. One time on Facebook I took a quiz to see what literary character I am and my result was Holden. My sister said it fit because we’re both angsty. I’m glad she didn’t say because we’re both pricks.

Here are some other books I plan on starting/re-starting/re-reading this month:

I got 'An Abundance of Katherines' over the weekend with my 15% off coupon! Tim just picked a random book off the shelf to take a picture with.

• Looking For Alaska by John Green
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• How To Be Good by Nick Hornby (started this earlier this year and got distracted)
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (was in the middle of this years ago and had to put it away because of school)
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Peep Show by Joshua Braff
• Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (my favorite book of all evers)

Enough blogging about reading books. It’s SSR time!

The Fault In Our Stars

“My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.”

I’ve been itching to read a book, but I have that typical 1st world issue where I have a shelves upon shelves lined with books I have yet to read, yet I don’t feel like reading any of them. I want something new. Something different. And I knew I wanted something John Green because I have been so anxious to get my hands on The Fault In Our Stars or Looking For Alaska. Tim presented me with my very own copy of The Fault In Our Stars on Friday night. Yay! He had his own copy (that I was supposed to borrow), but it was dogeared and passages he liked were underlined, so he gave me a copy of my own to dogear and underline (although I don’t particularly like writing in my books). <3

At 11:30 pm I was immersed in 16-year-old Hazel Grace’s universe, a worldly girl diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She meets Augustus Waters at a Cancer Kids Support Group (which she isn’t fond of going to) whose been NEC for 14 months. It’s the age old boy meets girl formula… I don’t think I have to explain what happens between them, right? John Green’s writing is simple yet poignant. I found myself reading until past 1 am, and when I woke up the next morning I read well into the afternoon and became an emotional wreck. I don’t want to give the plot away, but let’s just say I became emotionally invested in the characters. I had a full on sobfest and was just a heaping mess full of overflowing thoughts. John Green’s way of writing and storytelling just got to me. That talented scribbler got me to ugly cry! Like so:

And of course, since we’re dealing with cancer in this book, I couldn’t help but look at my own life. Here I am, slightly healthy, no sign of any life threatening diseases (that I know of), and what am I doing with myself? Nothing. I work at my old, low paying job as a reading tutor which is something, I suppose. I’m living with my family in my podunk hometown that’s damn near claiming bankruptcy, feeling overly pressured to conform to society by means of getting a well-paying job (and fast!), and I’m not nearly devoted to writing fiction as I was when I was in school. What happened? What am I doing with myself? Where’d my drive go?

I tend to have a love/hate relationship with books that make me think like that and put me in a state of depression. But at the same time feeling that kind of depressed is a good thing. It’s motivating. It makes you want to go out and do something. Being depressed by way of unrequited love is way worse because you can’t do anything about it. Being depressed by way of not being happy with your life is better because at least you know you can do something about it… does that make sense?

The Fault In Our Stars is gut wrenchingly beautiful and inspiring. I’m finding that stories are flowing in my head again (I just need to make sure I buckle down and write). And yes, you will probably get ugly-crying-face too, but it’s completely worth it.

This wasn’t much of a review, but I just feel like this book has left an indelible mark on me and I urge whoever reads this blog to get their hands on a copy and I hope it makes some sort of impact on you as well.