The Literature Rant Post.

I love technology as much as the next person, but you know what I don't love? Electronic books. I understand it, sure, and if you love it, kudos to you, but here's the thing: There is nothing that will replace the way it feels to turn the page of a book. Actually turn it, like, with your hand. And books have a scent, it's a smell all their own, and I just sometimes think about my children with their electronic books, and they'll never understand the joy of lugging books home from the library or the smell of old pages and how it's different from the smell of new pages, and they, like so many other people lately, will not understand the power of the printed word.

There is nothing like seven books from the library and the way that stack of books looks on your bedside table. Did you know you can balance teacups next to your bed at the perfect height with a stack of 10-12 paperback novels? You probably didn't know that. And you probably don't know the excitement of reading a book under your covers with a flashlight because you can just turn up the backlight on your Kindle.

I had a nightmare that people were burning books and I kept shouting, "He was right! Bradbury was right!" but nobody understood and nobody listened, because nobody loved the printed word enough to care.

I guess I shouldn't complain about electronic books as long as they keep people actually reading, but I'm terrified of waking up one day and realizing a bookshelf for actual books is a futile device because every book I've ever needed is shoved inside my IPad. (If you've ever seen my bookshelf this is even sadder, because that thing is a beaut.) Books are not only beautiful by nature, but actually, physically beautiful. Have you seen the cover of Catcher in the Rye? And that's before you even open the thing and discover literature itself.

And literature itself! OH! Come on! Read more, for goodness sakes, people! I have never read Fifty Shades of Gray myself (and probably never will), but WOMEN ACTUALLY OPENED UP A NOVEL. This is a success, I say! And they liked it! Maybe they should try Jane Austen next. Maybe they should try Kurt Vonnegut next.

Here is my plea, really, at the end of the day: Just keep reading. The fact that you're reading this right now is hopeful. If I wrote a book (and I will someday), I hope you'd pick it up at B&N or something. Even download it on your Kindle (though the B&N purchase would smell better, I promise). As long as you're reading. That's my plea. Read Shakespeare. Read Chaucer. Read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Read the Harry Potter series beginning to end. Read some poetry. Read Anna Quindlen's Commencement Address at Villanova. Read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and rejoice because you're a wallflower, too. 

And here's some good news: It's getting colder outside, so you can make tea and sit at home and read. This is the best time of year for reading. It will save you from seasonal depression and make you literate and well-read and incredibly dateable. I mean, I date readers. Usually. Or try to turn them into readers, at least. By the power of cuteness or something.

But in all seriousness, there is something about the printed word that is growing increasingly mortal. I am 17 years old and I have seen entire nations destroyed in my lifetime. We are a generally destructive species, but if we destroy literature, destroy the printed word, what comes next? Art in general? Humanity?

We're an apocalyptic novel already, my friend. Go read one if you don't believe me. Just stay word-hungry.

Audrey Hepburn.
All my love,
Addy

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

-Rosemary Urquico

Manifesto Ultimatum: Day 6: Unpopular Opinion

"It's all fun and gay until someone looses their rights."

If you don't want an abortion, don't get one.

But Ayn Rand, economically, got it just right.

But Ayn Rand, rhetorically, got it just right.

And if I were to do it all over again, I would do a lot of things differently.

Skinny boys are hot.

And everybody leaves you in the end.

"Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark."

That's my moon. Someday, I'll write a real blog post. Probably.
All my love,
Addy

See how they run.

We are phenomenal. We are beautiful songs and young love. We are hot water in the morning and sweaters in the fall and handwritten letters. We are beautiful views and poems that make people cry and sunshine and we are rain, too. We are the pies that actually taste good. We are youth and late nights and the first snow. We are what it is like to be a part of something and we are dancing and we are new shoes. We are good books and good hair days and good games.

We are everything beautiful and wonderful and everything happy.

But here I am, trying to protect myself from us. It isn't being happy that makes me want to protect myself: It's the knowledge that happiness can't last. It's that we will have to be noise and not music and that young love rarely lasts. We will have to be the moment that hot water runs out and everything is just icy, icy cold. We do have to be the letters that don't come and the view is sometimes just polluted. We have to be what it is to be alone and we have to be the months when there is just too much snow and no one wants it around anymore. We have to be the shoes that can't be worn anymore and the plugs that get pulled. We have to be poorly written and we have to be bad hair days and we have to be everything sad.

We do have to be everything ugly and awful and everything sad.

That's life, and sometimes I hate the thought of that. But we can't protect ourselves from happiness without protecting us from sadness, so I suppose we'd better cherish while we have it -- happiness, I mean.

And for now, we're too lovely to look away from, and I'm going to cling to that.

Happy Thanksgiving (Spanksgiving).

All my love,

Addy

Topknots.

Clichés are good, I think. You can say something that everyone understands and lead up to it with, "I know it's cliché, but..." and then no one can make fun of you. Or you can just say it and everyone can laugh at you, but you don't have to use too many words. They're perfect, obviously. I walk around shouting things like, "Ah, to be young and foolish!" and "What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" because we are a cliché. 

But we're also not a cliché. We've a voice of our own, huh? We've words of our own, yeah? We've got a voice on paper, at least, right? We have great word choice, don't we? 

We're something original, sure, but we're also something not.

We're something not, because at the end of the day, we are all ears, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

But mostly we're something not because we still don't know what we've got until it's gone. Even if we're the most original, most alive, most non-cliché people on the face of the planet, we don't seem to notice until we're not. 

We don't realize that we're in love with people until they've packed their bags and hopped on airplanes, or that we like our parents until they have left us to do their job, or that we like books with paper until everyone reads on a Kindle. We don't even seem to see the people with eyes so blue they really should make you stop and stare -- until they've closed their eyes. We didn't pay attention to Kilgore Trout until Kilgore Trout stopped writing. We didn't notice that we liked their hair until they cut it. We didn't realize how much we like being healthy, how much we like each other, how much we like the sunshine, until we were sick and lonely and the rain clouds had rolled in. 

And you didn't love Joseph Gordon-Levitt until he loved Autumn and not you.

We're the elephant in the room. We're the bee's knees. We're unable to fight our way out of a paper sack and we're all bent out of shape. We're the cat's meow and the cat's pajamas and a cat nap and all other cat-related things, too, probably.

We're completely cliché, because after all of these years, we still haven't opened our own eyes to notice the colors of everyone else's, and we won't, until their eyes are gone.

Open your eyes, for heavens sake. Notice the colors. Notice the shapes of the words that you write. Notice the way your overpriced yogurt fills up your self-serve cup before you eat it. Notice the way the bass guitar carries the songs that you sing along to. Notice the way Mojgani's voice carves out his words, because you are his words, and you are my words, too, and everyone else's words, because we're just a product of a whole bunch of words, but you've never even noticed that, have you? So notice it. Notice it because Mojgani's words will be gone. Notice it because mine will be gone and yours will be gone and everybody else's words will be gone, too, and then we'll realize what we had. 

I'd tell you to not let them go, but I if I did that, you might never notice you were holding them. 

So let them go, maybe. Maybe then we'll notice.

"So much in these few words."

All my love,

Addy

P.S. Megan B: www.weheartit.com -- try it. Good pictures. Great pictures. And also dumb pictures, but it's worth sifting through.

Excuse me, Jane?

To write something good must've been so much easier 200-some-odd years ago, don't you think? Because 200 years ago, no one had penned the words, "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen," or "All this happened, more or less." In fact, at that point, no one had even written, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife."


200 years ago, you had nothing to live up to. You had nothing to be compared to. The dictionary had only been out for a couple of centuries, so you didn't even have to spell everything correctly, really. Did editors exist? I'm pretty sure they didn't, and if editors didn't exist, you didn't have to do anything right or go through a long, exhausting process in which some well-educated, well-read, uppity businessperson (not that there is anything wrong with being well-educated, well-read, uppity and having an MBA) said things like, "This chapter isn't exactly adding anything to the story, so we're going to cut it," and you didn't have to agree, especially if you were in love with that chapter that wasn't exactly adding anything to the story, because editors didn't even exist yet, I don't think.


Writing wasn't the only easy thing 200 years ago. No one had to reply to text messages from people they didn't like or worry about gas prices. They got to go running through fields to reply to letters! I'm all for advancements in technology, but I'd have no objections to running through fields, replying to letters from people I might marry sometime soon.


(I obviously don't have an editor to tell me that that last paragraph wasn't adding anything to my post. (Because it wasn't.))


Anyway.


The point I'm getting at, though, is this one: At some point, somebody did sit down and write "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth," and somebody did sit down and write, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," (see what I did there?) and somebody did sit down and write, "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."


Somebody did sit down, and somebody did write those things, and somebody did it because somebody was inspired, sitting there one day, thinking, "This is not for you."


Somebody wrote it. Somebody wrote it, and somebody's words were embedded in platinum and heralded as a classic.


Somebody wrote it. Somebody wrote it, and maybe that's what's important.


Somebody wrote it. Somebody wrote it, and who are we not to be that somebody?


Carrots help us see much better in the dark.
All my love,
Addy

Re: Stacks.

Everything I tell you has this awful little lie as an undertone, you know that, right? If you noticed the incredible literary tactic there, I'd stop using it.


And then I felt like everything was right in theory, but in real life, it was oh-so-wrong.

Awkward me (pt. 2).

The Are You a Social Deadweight? An excerpt from a quiz from Classy by Derek Blasberg


2. You see a girl you know at a party. When you go up and say hi, she:
A.) Makes an excuse about a family medical emergency and leaves.
B.) Frantically looks around for someone to talk to and looks disappointed when she can't find anyone she knows.
C.) Gives you a big hug and says how happy she is to see you.


Is there an "I don't go to parties" option? 'Cause, you know, I don't go to parties.


I think we can jump to conclusions with this one.


He loved Big Brother.
All my love,
Addy

The truth about time.

"So it goes."

That's what Mr. Vonnegut taught me.


I have writer's block. It's awful.
All my love,
Addy

1984 vs. anything else.

   

My mother always tells me to stop reading at the dinner table and at my grandmother's house and in church and in math class and whatnot. She says that it's rude and it's more fun to talk plus it makes people feel like my book is much more interesting than they are.


The semi-unfortunate fact of the matter is this: Often, books are more interesting than people. 


I mean, personally, I'd often rather read about George Orwell's 1949 vision of what 1984 would be like than listen to someone talk about the funeral they attended this morning.


I sing about spooning at church functions.*
All my love,
Addy
*Fact. I sang You & I by Ingrid Michealson.

2012. But not, actually.

Apparently, the world is ending on Saturday. Quite frankly, I'm skeptical, so I have done zero planning. I figure I'll just head over to the Jaynes Manor because (according to the boys) they have so much dang food supply we could all just live off it for basically the rest of our lives.

Anyway. Today, this happened:

Boy: Did you know the world is going to end on Saturday?

Us: Yep.

Boy: Where've I been? I have so much to do! I made an official task list. Look.

The Official Task List for the Last 48 Hours:

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

Make out.

(etc. etc. It was quite long, really.)

It was very, very funny. I think we sometimes forget he is, under all those books and ties, a 17-year-old boy.

I'm just glad someone's got their priorities straight.

And then...

All my love,

Addy

Boyfriends.

Pre-script: I am probably going to dye my hair red. Not red red, but redder than it is now. Strawberry blonde. Because I am, in Emily's words, "young and have no one to stop me."

Today, Matthew Tom Pockrus, possessor of an ACT score that ends with a 4 and begins with a 3, significant other of our high school's most attractive female, and self-proclaimed "charmer" told me this: "You should get a boyfriend."

Awesome, Matt. Let me just sift through the "I Want to be Your Boyfriend" applications of all of the men who are just dying to be my boyfriend and choose one here real quick.

Or maybe I'll make a "Wanted" ad and hang it up around high school. Here's what it'll say:

"Wanted: A male who is perfect (give or take a hair or two)." That ought to work, right?

But in all seriousness, I can't just "get a boyfriend." A.) I just don't think relationships are my thing. People are weird when they're in them. B.) I don't need anyone. C.) I fall in love with people who shan't ever reciprocate my feelings. D.) I am searching for perfection, and I know it exists, but it doesn't love me back. So I'm searching for it elsewhere, and it really doesn't exist anywhere else.

And, E.) I can't just decide to have a boyfriend, Matt. Also, F.) Matthew, whether or not I have a beau is not exactly the determining factor in my self-worth.

But, nonetheless, here is my advice to you boys. It was written by Rosemarie Urquico in response to something some man wrote called, "Date an Illiterate Girl," and although it is not perfect... It is perfect in a way. If you are a boy who loves the idea of dating a reader/writer (with points to follow) please put in an "I Want to be Your Boyfriend" application for me to look over.

Anyway. Just read this:

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality, but she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

(Cough, cough.)

Tomorrow is, technically, today.

All my love,

Addy

And then bibliophiles obtained cute clothing.

[Image 01]

[Image 02]

[Image 03]

[Image 04]

[Image 05]

I love books and I love clothes and I love books with pretty covers. Who knew they could be so lovely when put together?

Image 01: This book is killing me, I must admit. However, it's brilliance is undeniable and the shirt is lovely.

Image 02: This book opened my eyes to loving reading. I read it with my dad and we both cried at the end.

Image 03: Best. Book. Ever. Hands down. Simply prophetic.

Image 04: I admit it: I LOVE JANE. I LOVE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

Image 05: I hated this book upon first reading it, but I am now learning how profound it is. Plus, I love this one. It's the prettiest.

Basically, I need all of the things pictured above. Click here to buy one for me. Or just to see all of the beautiful things and read about the project.

Pickles.

All my love,

Addy