Synonyms For Churlish

meaghano:

One time I asked a boy what he was reading and he told me he was reading this book and I will admit, I scoffed. I asked him if all he read were self-help books, books about how to write books, etc., etc. (Now that is how I flirt (emotional abuse)).

Anyway, in the meantime, I have heard people I respect recommend this book time and again, and when I moved in the new apt, I saw this on my roommate’s bookshelf and asked her about it and she urged me to read it so I put it in my bag without knowing much about it.

Then that night I wrote Erica one of my long, winding, blogfriend emails. She asked me what I would ask for if it could be delivered to my doorstep in the morning. I thought about it a lot (because that is just the sort of thing Girls Like Us love to think about). Objectively considered “being in love.” Objectively considered ” my own brownstone apartment.” Objectively considered, “hot yoga body.” Objectively considered “Yahoo acquisition followed by early retirement followed by book deal.”

But all that stuff was sort of complicated and tenuous and none of it was anything I was ready for or would really want unearned (you can separate them into those categories yourself) (okay, the brownstone I’d take) but what was really coming unasked out of me was the one thing I can’t stop thinking about, hoping for, fixating on, setting my yoga intention as:

Discipline.

It’s what I dream about every night before I go to bed. It’s what I mentally wrestle my way into and out of and torture myself intellectually with— it’s what, in my mind, everything is hanging on: a lack of discipline. How to be better? Discipline.

It makes me want to puke just thinking about it. And you know why? I can control it. It’s up to me. If I can’t “get it together,” it’s because of my lack of discipline. The thought of it consumes me. The doing of it? Not as much!

So I wrote that email and went to bed and did not wake up early to write the way I dream about, but woke up late and didn’t have time to shower before work and took the bus to the train and sat down and opened up this book to see what all the fuss was about and guess what it is about?

GAHHH.

Anyway it’s accessible and cheerful and hopeful and great and it’s a book about Getting Things Done and all that but I am pretty convinced it’s basically the key to my universe and it’s gonna change everything for me and I love it.

See, I’m normally completely against reblogging, especially great big posts like this one, but I wanted to share this because it’s made me log onto Amazon and order myself a copy. Although the first page will probably say “SAY NO TO REBLOGGING, YOU MISERABLE COPYCAT CHEAT” and then I’ll be guilted into compliance. Even if I learn nothing, my firstborn child is going to be called Twyla. That’s something at least.

So, I watched Doubt this afternoon, and on proclaiming it ‘amazing’ on Twitter, my friend Sam replied immediately with “Is it wrong that I really wanted to do Streep while I was watching that film?”

Yes Sam, it is quite wrong.

Although she is amazing, as is future hubby PSH.

It’s interesting because I’m reading a John Updike book at the mo that deals with faith through the generations of a family, In The Beauty Of The Lilies. (Title’s a bit shit, I know.) The first dude was a pastor who went on to be a salesman when he lost his faith suddenly one day. So far I’m about halfway through, and it’s (typically, for Updike) quite brilliantly written. Doesn’t have the same take-your-breath-away sentences that Cormac McCarthy or Ali Smith do, but he writes real characters that you simply do not want to leave. You want them to stay in your lives so you can get to know them or help them out or tell them they’re idiots or whatever.

I think I’ll read it aloud to Phillip Seymour Hoffman when we’re married.

I’m not sure which is more disappointing; that Booker-winning author Yann Martel’s follow-up to The Life Of Pi is going to be another animal allegory, or that this is what he looks like.

I’d always kinda imagined him to be tanned and dashing, writing from a Greek balcony and doing yoga at sunrise.

So yeah, anyways, he’s finally cut down on all that yoga and hard sex in order to write a new book. It’s apparently about the Holocaust, and while The Life Of Pi was incredible and had a similar formula, I don’t want Martel to be a stick-to-a-formula kinda guy. I want him to be a Greek balcony kinda guy. A yoga kinda guy. Not a Jewfro-and-formula-sticking kinda guy.

Not at all.

I won a competition on twitter a couple of weeks ago, and the prize was two tickets to the Vintage Day taking place at Foyles in London this month. Then the event was postponed and they offered me five Vintage Classics of my choice instead. They arrived this morning. It’s a good job my housemate opened the door to the delivery man because I was rather excited and may have acted inappropriately towards him.

The cover deisgns are pretty cool, aren’t they? Especially the Bulgarov one with a giant cat and the moon and a little teeny tiny pig with wings. Apparently NASA are bombing the moon today so perhaps this cover will be worth thousands in the future. Do you think the whole world’ll start spinning wildly out of orbit and we’ll all fall over and feel sick? That would be super-weird.

I also got America by Kafka but that’s got an old-style cover so doesn’t look quite so nice. Didn’t want to spoil the photo with it.

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a western set in Texas and Mexico. To commemorate the fact that I an now reading this book, here is a picture of a miniature pony from Iceland.

For the record, I think Danny Wallace is a twat. I don’t like people who pull those raised eyebrow I’m-just-a-confused-middle-class-30-something-trying-to-pretend-I’m-still-a-cool-student-in-a-mixed-up-grown-up-world faces.

But Jo at work recommended his book Friends Like These to me when I was going on about how I like Stuart Maconie even though I can’t show off about reading his stuff like I can when I’m getting into something by Bukowski or Updike or Hemingway. Then Lisa from work said “ooh, I’ve read that too!” and she really liked it, so now I’ve borrowed Jo’s copy and when I was reading it on the train this morning there was a bit about a poem in Burger King that went “rum ba pum pum pum” and I had to look out of the window so no-one on the train could see how I was giggling at a Danny Wallace book.

Will have to go for something Booker-nominated next to even things out.

This is from an amazing new picture book by Shaun Tan. I just read it online at my desk and nearly cried at the end…

I feel this massive sense of guilt when I give up reading a book, even if it’s Virginia Woolf levels of terrible. However, Martin Amis has given me several reasons to throw in the towel with Money.

Firstly, I’m nearly half way through and nothing - nothing - has happened. At all. And it’s not like the main dude is having these massively complex thought processes all the time either. Amis barely tells you who anyone is, never mind what they’re thinking about.

It’s just like American Psycho, except nobody feeds any urinal cakes to prostitutes. I never thought I’d say this, but even some kind of needless Patrick Bates violence would lift this drivel of pub crawls and erm, some more pub crawls.

I’ve run out of things to even say about it, it’s that bland. It’s not like I can rail against some aspect or other that has offended me, because the book would have to be about something for that to happen.

And finally, I received a copy of Licks Of Love by John Updike in the post today, which features the novella sequel to the Rabbit Angstrom books, Rabbit Remembered. CANCEL EVERYTHING, DRAW THE CURTAINS, READ THAT SWEET SWEET AMAZINGNESS UNTIL YOUR EYES FALL OUT.

Faber have released a new anthology called Eighty Years Of Book Cover Design. This one is my favourite so far.