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

Curator’s Corner #2: Nan Lawson

I don’t quite remember how I came across the art of Nan Lawson (I think it might’ve been a random Etsy find), but I just remember immediately falling in love with it! She’s very well known for her super quirky/nerdy art style and pop culture pieces from the likes of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Downton Abbey (I used her Lady Mary shirt in my Thoroughly Modern Mary post awhile ago), The Avengers, Doctor Who, Wes Anderson, etc. The Academy Awards also commissioned her earlier this year to create some pieces for their website of iconic cinematic couples for Valentine’s Day that people could send as virtual greetings (The Sound of Music and Gone With the Wind are pictured below). Nan’s work has also appeared in Timeout New York, Zooey Magazine, GadChick, and art galleries such as Gallery 1988.

I hope you all enjoy her work just as much as I do! Be sure to check out where to follow her on the interwebs and buy her prints, t-shirts, and other thing-a-ma-bobs at the end of the post.

“Summer”

“I Love My Piano”

“I’m Not a Hipster, I Just Dress Like One”

“The Piemaker”

“Max”

“Love is a Book”

“Gatsby”

“Friendship and Bravery”

The Oscars Love Letters – “The Sound of Music” & “Gone With the Wind”

“You Had Me At Meet Tornado”

“Joanie”

“Meow”

Spider-Man/Peter Parker

L-R: “Archer Avenue” & “Richie”

The Jerk

L-R: “The Rest of Our Lives” & “I Love You, But You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About”

“All of Time and Space”

Follow Nan on…

• Etsy (prints)
• Soceity 6 (prints, t-shirts, tech wear, etc)
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Pinterest
• Instagram

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

Sweat & The City

All SF trips must begin at Dynamo Donut.

Yesterday Tim and I celebrated our 5 month anniversary exploring the Mission district of San Francisco and catching Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Orpheum Theatre. But holy crap, was it HOT. We got stuck in traffic at the Alta Mont just before Livermore on our way there, and once we finally reached the Mission there was a Cesar Chavez festival thing going on, which meant that parking was impossible to find. After 45 minutes of driving in non-stop circles, we found a spot on 20th street and proceeded to walk 4 blocks in beneath the sweltering sun to get our delicious Dynamo Donuts.

Vanilla Bean and Candied Orange Blossom donuts.

By the time we got there, my face felt like it was literally about to melt off. Despite the rare summer heat in the city that day, we had a really great time.

Tim and I went into a couple of the Dog Eared Books locations that are scattered about in the Mission and found some pretty cool things. Well, Tim did anyway. He bought TONS of books, including a copy of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace for me. I got a bit too overwhelmed with the selection and didn’t have my booklist with me. RUGH! I didn’t leave empty handed though. I keep adding onto the pile of books I need to read. There isn’t enough time in the world to read them all. *cries*

There were soooo many beautiful copies of books from the Wizard of Oz series.

My finds. Tim recommended ‘Demian’ to me since I was frustrated from the lack of books I was holding.

Tim’s finds!

And due to the fact that we were stuck in traffic and couldn’t find parking right away, our exploring time got cut short and we also didn’t have enough time to check out Ike’s Place (a sandwich place all my classmates at SFSU could not stop talking about). *sigh* We definitely want to go back again in the nearby future so we can do more exploring and do all the things we originally planned to do.

My atheist boyfriend.

Dia de los muertos Giants gear.

Holly Golightly!

We headed downtown around 6:30ish to make sure we wouldn’t be late to Spamalot and I got to eat my Cheddar Bacon Buck from Buckhorn Grill. It is a cheesy and meaty delight. If it had eggs, I’m sure Ron Swanson would approve. And even though it was dark out by then, I could NOT STOP SWEATING. Seriously San Francisco, I don’t think you were ever this hot when I lived in the Bay.

I’ve seen a lot of musicals at The Orpheum. This was my first time going without a family member.

I watched Spamalot a few years ago in Las Vegas (even though I hadn’t seen the movie first… I know, that’s weird), and I found it just as funny the second time around. And yes, I watched the movie immediately after watching the musical the first time around (in case you were wondering).

And that was my day.

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.

Meep.

Today was exhausting and I feel like I didn’t even really do anything. Is that weird?

This afternoon I went to have my picture taken in my cap and gown at a photography studio. It was a bit awkward, and the photographer was not a fan of my no-tooth-smile. Other than that, he was a pretty silly dude. I’ve had my picture taken by him many moons ago when I was in high school. Remember when it was cool to get professional photos done with your friends (or in my case my sister and cousins)? Yep. That’s what we did. We didn’t take the proofs home, so I can’t show y’all how they turned out. I ended up only really like one out of 14  or so poses I did.

Once I got home my boss called and asked me to take care of something if I could (I’ve been telecommuting), and I said sure. I actually tried doing the task last night, but it was one of those things that seem simple, but the steps in doing it were actually quite complicated. I ended up working from 2:30 to 6:40. Oi! It had to do with setting up autoresponders on Kick Start Cart. I’ll eventually get it.

Somehow I managed to slip reading back into my life. The last book I read was One Day by Harvy Nicholls and I think that was in March. If you haven’t read it yet, run like your ass is on fire to the nearest bookstore. That book broke my heart and haunted me for days after reading it — in a good way. It even made me want to start writing fiction again! I have a story idea that was inspired from One Day, I just need to sit down and tweak with it a bit more. All I have are notes so far.  As of late I’m juggling between Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants and Barbara Comyns’ novel Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. Comyn’s book is a lot darker than I originally thought it would be — it’s about the Willoweed family and the English village they live in. The story starts off in the middle of a flood and ducks are swimming around the Willoweed house, dead animals are strewn about, Grandmother Willoweed is concerned about her rose bed, and a slew of unfortunate deaths occur with the village folk. AH! Good stuff so far though.

—

outfit details:

• cardigan: H&M
• brooch: from the flea market
• ring: from a vendor at SFSU
• top: I don’t know, but it’s from Ross
• pants: some off brand from TJ Maxx
• shoes: Bearpaw