Last  night, I went to an event at Lincoln Center celebrating Dan Brown–you may have heard of him? He wrote that book, the one about the Mona Lisa, called The DaVinci Code? There are movies with Tom Hanks. You’ve probably seen them.

Anyway, so he’s got a new book out--Inferno. My brilliant and creative husband has been handling a great deal of the marketing for the book (he came up with the line in the ad above!), so I went to the event in support of all the great work he’s been doing.

A reporter approached me as I was standing in the plaza outside Avery Fisher Hall, waiting for friends to arrive, and asked if I was there to see Dan Brown. I cautiously said yes, but then quickly added “But only in a professional capacity.” “So then you’re not a fan?” she asked. “Nope, sorry!” I felt bad, almost like I was selling the author out or something, but truthfully, I am just not the person she was looking to interview.

I tried to read The DaVinci Code back in the day, and I hated it. I couldn’t even finish it. To be honest, I found the writing pedantic. But, to be fair, my literary taste is not always the most representative of what the American public enjoys. Plot? If the writing is good enough, I don’t need it. Sometimes I don’t even want it. I don’t need mystery or intrigue or explosions. What I do need is good writing. But, that’s me, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.

Dan Brown is basically to the literary community what Guy Fieri has become to the restaurant community–a laughing stock. But notice I say “literary community,” which is a very specialized, mostly snobby and elitist (I count myself in this category), subset of voracious readers and writers. But for countless others, those who don’t write book reviews for national publications or snarky blogs, Dan Brown represents a great writer–someone who tells stories that keep them captivated and wanting more. Most importantly, stories that keep them reading and buying books–by the millions.

So, who am I to completely discount him, or any other popular writer for that matter (ahem E.L. James…), just because I don’t put literary stock in their work? There’s literature, and then there’s popular fiction. Many times, these intersect, but more often than not, the best sellers list is home to more mass market thrillers and fluffy romance novels than books of beautiful prose. And yes, that can be incredibly frustrating to both struggling writers and even moderately successful writers whose work is critically acclaimed, but largely ignored by the American public. But, as someone involved in this business of book publishing, I have to respect anyone who bolsters the industry and makes people more interested in reading books at all.

I did find myself wondering last night, though, hearing the multi-millionaire author responding to a question about negative reviews–is it worth the ridicule, the jealousy, the jokes, to simultaneously be one of the most successful yet most hated American authors? I guess, in the end, yes. (have you seen the guys house??) He’s obviously proud of his work, and has many, many fans, so why not?

Will I read the book? Probably not. But it was pretty cool to see him speak and I think his impact on the publishing industry is ultimately a good one.

What do you think?

What are YOU up to this weekend? I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I’m looking forward to mine!

Best of the Looks:

I’m a sucker for yellow, but I especially love E of District of Chic’s skirt paired with a classic button-up, an edgy necklace, and a lovely belt.

Blair’s skirt is bananas. Love it.

REALLY tempted to buy these TOM’S wedges–anyone have them?

I should probably never wear anything with the name “tap shorts” but these are so cute! 

A handy guide to bras.

Best of the Books:

Finally, women can stop competing with male writers! Hilarious. 

What happens when we pull a switcheroo on gendered book covers?

A few literary TED talks.

My friend Jill writes about why she supports the Orange Prize (Women in Fiction).

Some great vintage New Yorker ads that echo the sentiments of Gatsby.

After clicking through multiple slide shows of the event, I wanted to highlight my favorites of the night, traditional as they may be. Which looks were your favorites?

I love the color combo on Ivanka Trump

Jennifer Lawrence’s birdcage veil and dark lip are just a shade of punk

I like the contrast of the simple top and the ornate bottom of Blake Lively’s gown

Normally, I’m not a fan of Gwyneth at all, but I do really like this dress, even if it’s the opposite of punk. (Maybe she thought the theme was pink?)

Kerry Washington’s gown is just the right balance of pretty and punk

I’m a sucker for deep green, and I love the pattern and the feathers of Kirsten Dunst’s gown

Michelle Williams’ look is a little basic, but I’m obsessed with how good her hair looks

Best of the Looks:

I love Kayley of Sidewalk Ready’s flowy white dress with tan accents and wedges–perfect summer neutrals.

This style manual for employees of Abercrombie & Fitch makes my head hurt.

Some truly amazing prom photos of celebrities.

I loved reading this BookRiot post about Daisy’s diamonds in the Great Gatsby movie–I’m getting SO EXCITED for this movie!

Choosing the right sunglasses with the Effortless Chic.

Best of the Books:

A tale of one year without the Internet. It’s not what you think.

A round-up of NYC’s best bookstores.

The case of the American Women Novelists category at Wikipedia.

Beautiful bookplates by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

At Ploughshares, a call for new punctuation.

The family of writers. 

Happy weekend, all!

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I’m currently re-reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler . It’s a childhood favorite that still holds up, many years later. Much has been written in the past week since the passing of E.L. Konigsburg, the book’s author. Simply summed up, if you read the book as a child, chances are very good that you treasure it, and if you didn’t–there’s still time.

To a kid, the book is magical. Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, in an act of rebellion from their staid lives in suburban Connecticut, plan an elaborate escape–to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A favorite passage:

Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back. She didn’t like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not just be running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. To a large place, a comfortable place, an indoor place, and preferably a beautiful place.

They sleep in a giant antique bed and slip into school groups during the day. They pack their clothes in instrument cases and hide them in ancient funereal urns and behind ornate tapestries. They hide in bathroom stalls and under beds to escape museum guards and staff. They do laundry at laundromats and eat at automats, counting their pennies and always budgeting. They take baths in a giant fountain, where they also steal coins. In this scenario, Konigsburg manages to tap into the fantasies of almost every kid out there–to live a secret life by cover of night somewhere elegant and fascinating.

One year, in Girl Scouts, we took a bus to the Boston Museum of Science and slept there with a bunch of other Girl Scout troops. We brought sleeping bags and money to buy astronaut ice cream in the gift shop. Our group slept underneath a giant reproduction of the moon and I remember thinking how appropriate it was. We brushed our teeth in the men’s restroom because there were no men there–it was perhaps the first time I ever saw a urinal. This experience is seared into my memory unlike any other of my childhood, the rest of which is fairly fuzzy. The Museum of Science was one of my very favorite places, so full of fun exhibits and crazy things. I loved going there, and to sleep there, while no one else was around, to have the run of the museum after dark, was a special kind of magic. Konigsburg understood that feeling perfectly.

Claudia Kincaid is a fantastic character. She is smart, opinionated, and practical. She knows what she wants and how to get it. At the same time, she is generous with her little brother and becomes completely enamored by a mysterious new sculpture of unknown origin–a two-foot tall marble statue she calls Angel. It’s posited that it could be a creation of Michelangelo–Claudia and Jamie set out to find the truth.

Claudia’s style is put together, refined, and preppy. Here’s the look I picture her wearing:

Have you read this classic? What do you think of it?

I’ve definitely grown more open-minded and bold since those days. Blogging has certainly helped, as has living in cities, and just generally gaining more confidence about what works for my style and body and what doesn’t.

Even with this growth, I find there are still many trends I won’t be adopting any time soon. At least, that’s what I think now…here are a few:

Boyfriend Jeans

Every blogger and her sister has been sporting these distressed, baggy, rolled up jeans for the past year or two, usually paired with an impossible pair of heels, and damn can some of them pull it off. More power to them. But this look is just not for me AT ALL. I would look like a hobo with a shoe fetish if I tried this.

Overalls

Yes, my friends, in case you haven’t noticed, overalls are back in style. I went crazy for this trend the last time around, but I was 12 then, and could afford to look like a farmer. Now, there’s no excuse.

Leather Pants

This chick is certainly rocking the leather pants, but that doesn’t mean any schlub on the street should start wearing them to the office. I mean, honestly, come on. There’s no way I could even fit my legs into a pair of these things.

Now, I know I sound a little like a cranky old person, and I don’t mean to offend or judge anyone who does wear leather pants (or overalls or boyfriend jeans…or wedge sneakers or vests or camo print anything….), but these trends just don’t work for me personally, for my style or for my body type or lifestyle. If you can/want to pull it off, more power to you! In the meantime, here are some trends that I’ve fully embraced:

• polka dots
• printed pants
• neon
• colored jeans
• pattern mixing
• leopard

Despite the above picture (taken while in Bermuda), this post is not about reading on vacation. No, I’d like to talk about a vacation FROM reading–a reading vacation, if you will.

I think this concept is different for everyone. For some, it’s a break from the reading you do for school or work–obligated reading–to read something purely for pleasure. For others, it’s a total break from reading–a gap, a rest stop between books.

Since I’m no longer in school and do any reading for my job during my time in the office, I don’t really have a need for the first type of reading vacation. I can read whatever I want, whenever I want, for the most part, which I realize makes me very lucky. As for a total break in reading…are you kidding me? I don’t think I’ve ever gone longer than a few days between books, since I was about 8 years old. I always have to be reading something, or I feel lost. Maybe that’s weird, but it’s true. I am always reading.

Which leads me to a third variant of the reading vacation–a break from yourself. I know there are others like me out there–we’re constantly reading, always adding to our “to-read” list, participating in some kind of race against ourselves to see how many books we can read, how many different types of books we can read, how many authors/novels/stories/essays we can cram into our literary database brains.  Most of the time, we love it–it’s invigorating and fun, always reading something new and different! But then there are other times–we may be in a reading rut, or having a rough time in our personal lives or professional lives, and the prospect of reading some heavy book full of literary themes or abstract imagery is just…exhausting.

I’ve been in a bit of reading rut myself–I found the last book we read for my book club a little boring and outdated, and it’s been a little while since I read anything that made me excited and happy. I just finished re-reading Catch-22, which while just as fabulous as I remembered, is a dark and heavy and long read, and it took me a few weeks, with some breaks, to finally finish. That got my momentum down quite a bit. To get myself back on track, I’ve decided to give myself a reading vacation.

What does my version of a reading vacation entail? Well, this time around, it means I’m reading a friend’s not-yet-published novel, catching up on a couple of issues of The New Yorker, and re-reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I bought for myself a few years ago (on vacation!) and haven’t gotten around to reading yet because I was too “busy” reading everything else on my fanatical to-read list. I like to read it as my unwinding-before-bed read, which I don’t normally consider a separate category, but for the purposes of the reading vacation, it seems appropriate. And next week I’m planning on treating myself to a re-read of The Great Gatsby in anticipation of the movie, and also because it’s been a few years and it’s one of my all-time favorites.

Tangentially, this reading vacation is related to the concept of re-reading, which I don’t normally allow myself to do. But I’m slowly discovering the pleasures of it (on which I plan to elaborate in a future post) and I may need to carve out more time to do it in the future.

Do you ever taking reading vacations? What do they entail for you? I’d like to hear about it!

One of our main motivations when we chose Bermuda for our vacation was its proximity. Only a two-hour flight from NYC, Bermuda lies off the coast of the Carolinas, to the East. It is not technically a part of the Carribbean and is actually a British territory (meaning they drive on the “wrong” side of the road). Because it’s pretty far north as far as tropical islands, April is still considered the off season because temperatures haven’t quite warmed up yet, and so we were able to get a good deal on a nice hotel and the island was relatively uncrowded.

Given these practical reasons, I was actually taken aback at how beautiful it is. The water is that clear crystal blue you usually only see in commercials and on post cards, and the sand is soft and white (or pink, in some places). We got lucky with the weather, for the most part–nearly every day we were there it was warm and sunny, with temps in the low 70s. We were told this is not typical, and indeed, our last morning was gray and chill.

In Bermuda, the houses are sherbet-colored and have names like “Hibiscus Cottage.” They line the winding roads and hills like brightly-colored children’s toys. When you’re a tourist, you’re prohibited from renting a car, so your options are renting a moped or taking the bus. Because I’m tragically uncoordinated and found the roads way too narrow and windy to even entertain the idea of riding a scooter on it, the bus was our main way to go. The island is long and narrow, with just a few main roads, each of which is punctuated by small bus shelters every few hundred feet. These are two directions–a blue pole if you’re heading away from Hamilton (the main city and capital) and a pink pole if you’re heading toward it. Really, there’s no way to get lost. Riding the bus was not only the best way to see the island, but it was also really interesting to ride along with the locals, on their way home from work or school. I have heard that in other tropical locations, like Mexico and Jamaica, the tourist areas are sharply separated from the areas where people actually live, so it was nice to be able to experience the island with no restrictions.

We stayed at a family-owned hotel called the Pompano Beach Club, where everyone was exceedingly friendly. Our room looked out on the ocean so we spent a lot of time sitting in the white plastic chairs on our balcony, just being hypnotized by the sparkling blue of the water. It being the off season, we had the run of the place to ourselves for a couple of days before the weekend crew showed up, so the peace and quiet was really nice–a much-needed change from the frantic pace of NYC. Our meals were included as well, which took the stress and pressure off of trying to find a new place to eat every night. Also, the island is quite expensive, even by New York standards, so it was a relief not to spend $100 a night on dinner as well.

During our four days there, I explored the oldest settlement, ate fried seafood on a dock, walked through a lovely crumbling graveyard, took the bus from one tip of the island to the other multiple times, drank cocktails while waiting for the sunset, descended into a cave full of stalactites thousands of years old, layed on the beach, went swimming in the pool, bought a dress at the English Sports Shop, had a happy hour beer suspended above the main drag of Hamilton, was sad when our glass-bottomed boat whale watching tour was cancelled, took a ferry, got a bad sunburn, went to the zoo and aquarium, and learned so much more about the place and the people than I expected.

On a Sunday night five years ago, my roommate and I stole a sign under the cover of darkness. It is probably one of the only acts of public vandalism I’ve ever committed, and it was worth it. The sign was posted all along Beacon Street in Brookline, where the Boston Marathon would be held the next day. It read “No Stopping Monday” meaning,  in practical terms, no parking. But there seemed to be a double meaning to that sign–there would be no stopping for the runners about to accept the challenge of running 26.2 grueling miles, and it seemed like an appropriate mantra on many a Monday morning, shuffling out of my room and encountering this sign hanging above our kitchen sink. We hung it there for our Marathon Monday party and just never took it down. It seemed to embody the kind of hopefulness and perseverance we witnessed in all of the runners as we cheered them on, that kind of inspiration all of us need at one point or another.

A great deal has been said since Monday’s bombings of the Boston Marathon, and much of it has been said far more eloquently than I could say. But there’s a part of me that’s clamoring to write about this, not to try and make sense of it (there IS no sense) or to tell anyone how to feel or even to tell anyone how I feel (who even knows?) but because writing just helps sometimes. And I would like to try anything that may help.

I read an article in The Atlantic that resonated with me. It says that every year, tens of thousands of students arrive in Boston, and every year, tens of thousands of graduates also leave Boston, disseminating around the world, carrying pieces and memories of Boston with them everywhere they go. That is absolutely true. I grew up just an hour south of Boston, in Rhode Island. Trips to Boston were not infrequent, and by the time I moved there for grad school in 2006, it was so familiar that I was not intimidated–not really. Though I went away for college and even lived abroad for a year, I moved back home after graduation, so Boston was my first real home away from home as an adult. In Boston, I lived in my first apartment, had my first full-time job in publishing, and met the man who would become my husband. I made life-long friendships and had more fun than I knew what to do with. So, yeah, when I left the city in August 2010, four years after I had moved there, you could say I took a huge part of it with me. And it’s still here, though I’ve lived in NYC for nearly three years now.

My first apartment in Boston was actually in Brookline, a garden apartment on Beacon Street just outside of Cleveland Circle, a few miles from the finish line of the marathon. I watched the marathon from the sidewalk every year I lived there, taking the day off of work because my company wasn’t based in Massachusetts, so didn’t get Patriots Day off. Friends would drop by or stay for the afternoon, drifting in and out of the apartment to watch the race live or catch the coverage of the finish line on tv. It was a festive and joyous day, no matter what the weather. Spectators would set up along the sidewalks hours before the first runners came through, hunkering down in folding chairs with plastic cups of beer and Dunkin Donuts. We’d bring out chairs and tables and snacks, staking claim to our little corner of the action, making friends with neighbors and other spectators just there for the event.

If you’ve never been, it’s tough to convey just how contagious the energy is. I’ll be frank–the most I’ve ever been able to run without stopping is about 3 1/2 miles (on a GOOD day), but watching these runners, so determined and even CHEERFUL so close to the end of the race, was so damned inspiring I’d swear I would be able to run a marathon some day. And on Marathon Monday, I’d BELIEVE it. All kinds of people, young and old, run by, in all manners of costumes and running gear, some with face paint, others with their names markered down their legs, many with causes emblazoned across their chests and backs. Some ran with their nation’s flags and others with names of friends or loved ones they were running to honor. We’d cheer and scream out their names, their countries, the color of their t-shirts–anything to let them know we were watching, we were rooting for them, we knew they could finish. No stopping.

For me, Marathon Monday is inseparable from my memories of Boston, just as it is for many who lived there and live there. I can’t bear to think that it will now be associated with such hate and violence and pain, though I know it will always also continue to be a symbol of determination, strength, courage, and honor–now moreso than ever.

This week has been a rough one, what with Monday’s events and the complete and utter failure of our government to even begin to make progress in gun control. It’s completely frustrating, gut-wrenching, confusing, and maddening. But there will be no stopping, because, as Ice Cube once said, “Life ain’t a track meet, it’s a marathon.” In all seriousness, though, this is a reminder to myself not to give up or lose hope. We’re better than that.

Best of the Looks:

Chioma’s look is seriously cute and seriously making me pine for summer. I love the bright colors and those sandals (from Target!) are calling my name.

A really really gorgeous vintage opal and diamond ring from one of my favorite stores, Erie Basin.

I need this bag….even though, in reality, another tote bag is the LAST thing I need more of.

Even after all these years, I still have a girl crush on Keri Russell. And how awesome does she look in her leather dress?

Best of the Books:

I really enjoyed reading this Rumpus interview with Karen Russell--I can’t wait to read her new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove!

Beer & Books–a classic combination.

Every book lover’s dilemma.

A video roundup on organizing your books.

Have a great weekend!