Site Of The Month

Last month I posted a "Christmas Gift Ideas" which was comprised of items I'd found on a few stores on Big Cartel. In keeping with the Christmas theme, this moth I've looked at Etsy to find some ideas for gifts for literature lovers. Please click any of the links below the pictures to be taken to the sellers pages where you can get more information on any of the products, see prices and more pictures.

Jewellery:

1.Scrable Pendant   2.Catcher Pendant  3.Darcy Pendant 4.Penguin Pendant 5.Stoker Pendant 6. Typewriter Pendant 7.mini book pendant 

1. Pendant with 3 tiles, one a scrabble letter, one a Louisa May Alcott quote, and one a "Shh! I'm Reading!" print. 2. Pendant with print from The Catcher In The Rye. 3. Pendant with a Mr. Darcy quote. 4. The classic Penguin emblem on a pendant. 5.Filligree patterned pendant with a Bram Stoker quote. 6. Pendant made from a typewriter key. 7.Miniature book pendant (so cute!)

Also below are the Got Words Bracelet , the 3 book locket and the book locket.

Home wares:

1.Custom Fold 2.Keepsake Box 3.Tolkein Box  4.Book Lamp 5.Coasters 6.R&J Square 7.R&J Heart 

1. Custom made hardback book carving, open the book out and display your carving, cut from the pages. 

2. Keepsake Box with French typography on the lid, a lovely gift box  or just somewhere pretty to keep memories. 3. Small trinket box made from paper mache, with pages from "The Lord Of The Ring" as covering. 4. Metal framed lamp with almost a scalloped shade made from book pages, (this looks amazing lit up!) 5. Ceramic coasters with opening paragraphs from Ulysses  Moby Dick, Great Expectations and Huckleberry Finn printed on the surface. 6. Square trinket box with print from Romeo & Juliet on the lid. 7. Heart shaped trinket box with print from Romeo & Juliet on the lid. Also see below for this amazing Christmas Bauble. 

Prints:

1.dictionary print  2. print 3.p.pan print  4,5&6. h.p prints

1. Dictionary page with a beautiful anatomical heart and flowers print. 2."I Love You To The Moon And Back" printed on the page of a vintage encyclopaedia. 3. Peter Pan decal on pages from the book. 4,5&6. Iconic Harry Potter images printed onto pages from the books (only 3 of 6 are shown). Also are these colourful gatsby prints below. 

Clothing & Accessories:

1.Clutch  2.Persuasion Scarf 

1.The clutch is inspired by Natalie Portman's red carpet Lolita clutch, there are a few of these on etsy, this shop in particular offering Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Also available are Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Dorothy Parker - Stories, The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (features a bust portrait of Elizabeth and her signature on the front)The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice. 2. The scarf is white, 100% cotton knit, and features print from Jane Austen's Persuasion. 

If you're in the U.K. be careful on Etsy, a lot of the items come from U.S. sellers so you might end up paying a fair bit in postage, but if you are in the U.S. then you'll probably find the postage is a lot easier for you. The products on etsy are a lot more charming and have a cute "gifty" feel to them, probably because the site is more well known for being about crafts and creativity, whereas BigCartel creates business  Whichever it is you decide to have a look at (if any) they each offer some wonderful things that perhaps you wouldn't normally see in the shops, and I think a lot of these things would make lovely gifts. 

Diary - Chuck Palahniuk

I know I posted a review on Fight Club where I stated that as my favourite Palahniuk novel, but Diary only just missed out on that top spot. I love that Palahniuk writes both male and female lead protagonist characters, not that that's unheard of, of course, it's just that he writes both sexes so believably. I never doubt his characters.

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” 

Diary is about a woman, Misty, whose husband Peter is in a coma after attempting suicide. He becomes her life size voodoo doll as she spends her time at his bedside stabbing him with pins to see if he will respond, though this isn't done maliciously. They live in Peters home town, the seaside idyll of Waytansea Island (I do love a good pun...) Back when she was in College, before Misty became Peters wife, she was studying art but gave it up to be a mother to her daughter Tabbi, trading her paintbrush for a waitress's notepad in the Hotel where she works as her husband works building houses.

After Peter enters his coma, Misty begins to receive complaints from her Husbands clients. She discovers that he had been building secret rooms into the houses he has constructed and covering the hidden walls in graffiti...

“Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.” 

While immersed in the mystery of her comatose husbands hidden rooms, Peters mother begins encouraging Misty to paint again, and sadly she gets her wish when Misty is thrown into a tumult of emotions she can only expel through her art when Tabbi accidentally drowns in the sea below the Hotel. Misty throws herself into her art. It is all she thinks about and soon an exhibit is announced to showcase her paintings for the town in the Hotel.

Spoiler Alert! I don't normally reveal an entire plot when I review a book, but, just this once...I'm breaking the rules, so if you want to find out what happens in Diary by yourself, stop reading now!

However...There is a much darker side to this story. We discover that Misty's entire life has been a plan conjured by the residents of the island. Every four generations a young man from the island leaves to find a wife. The young woman he finds must fit one condition; she must be attracted to an item of jewellery given to her by the young man. The residents believe these items of jewellery which attract the women, belonged to them in previous lives, and so they are in a way, controlled by their desire to have them again. 
Once married they must return to Waytansea and have children. The husband will later die, as will the child/ren, pushing the mother into a creative flourish in which they will produce items to attract tourists to the Hotel. Complicated? It's not over yet...Once the tourists are attracted by the works produced they will be trapped inside the Hotel and killed, in Diary's case, by a fire. The residents of the island then claim a huge insurance for the lives and live in luxury until it is time for the cycle to repeat. I won't completely reveal the plot here because things to change slightly in Misty's case, so the above isn't exactly what happens, I just had to write about it so I could talk about my favourite part of the book, Stendhal Syndrome. 

Stendhal syndrome is defined as:

 "A psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world."

and it is hands down one of the best things I've ever read. I love that this syndrome exists, reading about it in Diary, (as it's what's said to hold the tourists in the room with the art even though it's burning) is the first I've ever heard of it, but since I've researched it quite a lot because it's just such a beautiful idea. I can't really describe why I like the idea of this syndrome or why I felt the need to include it in this post, but I think it's because I don't just see art as paintings, I see it in everything creative, whether it be a poem, a novel or a song and this brief description above describes so well what I feel when I experience art that I just felt I had to share it. 

“Your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.” 

Diary is written via a 3rd persons perspective so we don't necessarily feel like an integral part of the story as a reader, but I'd define Diary as a mystery, in which case I think it's the norm to be on the fringes of the story, though we are still shown Misty's thoughts. I also class this as a sort of love story too, though not Hollywood love, more Palahniuks brand of truthful, realistic tenderness. As I said, this is a favourite of mine from this author so I absolutely recommend you pick it up, it's one of the best written novels I own. I think it would absolutely appeal to all ages, and maybe more so if you're a reader looking to get into this kind of transgressive genre as I think it would be a great gateway novel.

Site Of The Month...

I found a great blog called "The Composites" created by Brian Joseph Davies, where he makes images of literary characters using law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions taken from books, It's really interesting and well worth a look. 

Count Dracula, Dracula, Bram Stoker

A tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache…His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead…His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking…For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin…The blue eyes transformed with fury. 

You can also buy a book of the composites, which range from anyone like Jane Eyre to Katniss Everdeen. such a clever idea and so interesting to see if the pictures we conjure up while reading a book are true to what we're told about the characters. Links to how you can buy the book are on the blog. Click here to visit The Composites.