the book bum

      I know much less about music than I do about books, but I can definitely tell you that my taste in music is influenced by my appreciation for good writing.  I especially love songs with wordplay or that take on a slightly different meaning the more you listen to them.  With this in mind, I've compiled a list of my favorite poetic singers in the hopes that they will confound and delight you, too. 1. Marina Diamandis aka Marina and the Diamonds - She's probably my favorite singer of all time.  "Mowgli's Road" is one of her most poetic and clever songs, but I was totally mystified by it for a while. It's pretty clear that she's feeling pressure to conform to what the music industry wants from her, but then there's also this weird silverware metaphor about how "the cutlery will keep on chasing me" and how the "spoons are metally mean and "the knives are bloody cold".  It took me weeks before I suddenly had a eureka moment l...

          Hello!!!  I'm feeling very cheerful tonight, because a few hours ago I went to an event called LIT Crawl and had a wonderful time.  And since it was a literary event, I thought I'd share it with you-all.           LIT Crawl is an event that takes place once a month in Brooklyn.  It is like a pub crawl in that many businesses (including bars) take part in it, but that is where the similarity ends, because instead of offering discounted alcohol, these businesses host free (!!) literary events all night long (or at least from 5:00 to 8:00 pm).  These events occur in three shifts so that people can fit in three different events in one night.  The events change from month to month, but they vary pretty widely.  For example, tonight I went to a performance art/poetry reading in a laundromat, in which the two performers danced on top of washing machines and discussed the voyeuristic and weirdly personal ...

      I've been a ferocious reader for over ten years now (exactly eleven in two months!!), and in my time as such I have learned a great deal about books besides the fact that they transport you to mystical places and are NOT MEANT TO BE READ ON TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICES.  No, there is much more to books than that, my friends.  For example, they have many excellent uses outside that may be less obvious to a  person who does not tote a book about with her wherever she goes.  Here are a few examples. All these lovely books have lots of potential uses, so don't just let them sit around gathering dust! 1.   They can be weaponized.   There is nothing unethical about this.  I am a small and innocuous/innocent-looking fifteen-year-old girl.  I am not a master of martial arts or kickboxing or even old-fashioned girl street-fighting.  I need to be able to defend myself, dammit!!!  So whenever someone gets too close, I whip out th...