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. 

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” 

Well, I do love a book set in the 20's, and Gatsby doesn't let me down. I first read this book a few years ago, I think I ordered it online when I first got into that genre and this and Fiesta have been two of my absolute favourites. Set during the prohibition era of the "Roaring Twenties" this book is like a glamorous look back to the past. The writing is so beautifully descriptive that I get a wonderful sense of the atmosphere - probably one of the most delightfully descriptive books I've ever read. 

We are led through the story by narrator Nick Carraway, a college graduate and war vet. who has recently moved to New York to begin a career. His house sits next to an extravagant mansion, from which a constant stream of luxurious parties erupt. Nick is new to the "scene" and begins to spend time with his cousin Daisy Buchanan,  who lives on the better side of town with her husband and baby girl. After a few weeks Nick is issued an invite to one of the parties in the mansion - to which he takes Daisy's friend Jordan. At the party Nick meets with mysterious Jay Gatsby - the owner of the house and the thrower of the party. He is a curious sort of fellow - he does not even really attend the parties himself - or know many of the guests, and his personality begins to intrigue Nick. 

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

As Nick is getting to know Gatsby and begin a romance with Jordan, he is also spending time with Daisy and her husband Tom, who is having an affair with a married woman. Nick moves in all of these rather different circles as more of an observer than an attendee, he sits drinking tea with Daisy as she discusses her woes, he goes to parties thrown by Tom's extravagant mistress...but his own real involvement in the story and their lives doesn't come till Gatsby tells him a secret which will pull the circles of his life together and involve him in an integral role for two of his friends happiness. 

In a nutshell, The Great Gatsby is all glamour, parties, frivolity, passion, fickle love and bad decisions. Though Nick seems to be a lesser character in the thick of the novel, by the end we realise the flaws in the main protagonists, and the strengths in Nicks.

"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees." 

Luhrmann's Gatsby is released on 19/12

The book is a satire on the bourgeois culture and the frailty of the American Dream, with the heavy moral "The grass is always greener." But it is also a love story, the depth of which alters depending on which characters eyes you are looking at it through - desperate and consuming compared to wistful and fickle. It's so interesting to be able to see so many different takes on one story through just one character. 

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." 

The book has been adapted into film before but this December will come to cinema in 3D by director Baz Luhrmann, which personally I think is going to be wonderful - who better that a theatrical like Luhrmann to exaggerate the splendour of Gatsby's world? The trailer looks absolutely phenomenal, you can watch it here. 

Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen.

It is a truth universally acknowledged...

The novel is written in third person but is more or less in the point of view of Elizabeth Bennet, second eldest of the 5 Bennet girls. The story opens with a new neighbour renting a house near the Bennets, Charles Bingley an eligible young single man of five thousand pounds per year. The rest of the book is tender chase between Jane, the eldest Bennet girl and Bingley, who are separated by circumstance and the "helpful" advice of Bingley's friends and family, who find the Bennets unsuitable.

"The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." 

The friend who helps Bingley in this matter is Fitzwilliam Darcy, perhaps the most famous English literary character of all time. Darcy, the brooding, thoughtful friend becomes quite taken by Elizabeth, and in their chance encounters finds himself being slowly beguiled by her. However Darcy is thought of in quite a different manner by Elizabeth herself, who has heard accounts of Darcy which paint to be a very prideful, arrogant person, that is until Darcy shows Elizabeth his true character in many ways, leading to happy endings all round.

 “Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”

Why I love this book...there are many reasons. Firstly I really do just love and admire Jane Austen, she and the Bronte's will forever be some of my favourite authors of all time because they wrote at a time where it was not a commonplace thing to be a female writer, let alone be a female with any kind of profession. Secondly the characters are written so well, and that kind of applies to all of the characters in the book, which is a hard thing to do: create so many wonderful deep characters without taking up the whole space of the novel implementing their back stories.

"I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”

Pride And Prejudice was written in 1813, during the Romantic period and I know a lot of people avoid classic literature because it can be "harder to read" than modern English, but really there's nothing that difficult about it, if you're having trouble just be thorough, I find it's definitely worth it. (Also if you have the Wordsworth Classics copy pictured above there is a notes section in the back which details any out of use terms)

I would absolutely recommend this book to everyone, I think I read it first when I was around 11 year old and I go back to it around once a year (and if I'm honest could probably talk along with the film word for word) It's just such a great story with such lovely entertaining characters, definitely a worthwhile read if you've never picked it up.