One Night Stanzas

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Bookcase
This past weekend I spent a lovely weekend in Wetheral, visiting my mad-but-wonderful family. I had a great time popping tags with my sister in Carlisle’s excellent charity shops, saw lots of cute animals (Wetheral Animal Refuge is always on my must-visit list whenever I’m down there), visited my lovely Gampy (grandpa), enjoyed a family wine-drinking and pizza-scoffing get-together, and drank gallons of tea. However, one of the biggest highlights of my trip was mooching — and spending more money than I really actually have — in Bookcase, Carlisle’s biggest and best book shop.

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According to the website, Bookcase has over 250,000 books in stock, spread through thirty — yes, thirty — rooms. Occupying two fancy townhouses, the bookstore is like a massive — and very elegant — labyrinth, with room after room lined from floor to ceiling with books. It doesn’t matter how obscure your particular subject is — I’m convinced you could find a book on it somewhere in here. Their feminist section holds more volumes than an entire feminist bookstore! This was my second visit to this place, and although I found rooms I hadn’t realised were there the first time, when I finally found the rest of my party again they spoke of rooms I still hadn’t found. You could literally spend days in this place. I could quite happily live there (they have tea, too). If you’re ever in the Lake District/Cumbria area and you’re even vaguely interested in books or bookstore-mooching, this place needs to go on your bucket list! Oh yes — they’re also on Twitter!

George Watsky
As you all know, I need no more reasons to love George Watsky, yet he just keeps getting more and more excellent. He posted the lovely status above a couple of weeks ago, and I screencapped it. I read it again this week and it made me grin.

Daydreaming tattoos
I know what you’re thinking — it really hasn’t been that long since my last tattoo was inked. And yet, I get lovesick for something new quicker and quicker with each new piece. I have a big sketchbook in my house full of half-sketches, doodles, ideas, and some final drawings which now live permanently in my epidermis! This is one of the more-finished designs that I’m really thinking seriously about for The Next Big Thing. I’m not happy with the lettering on the paper scroll (it’s a quote from Ginsberg’s Kaddish), but otherwise it’s basically good to go under the needle. What do you think? Comments box!

Honourable mentions:
People who stick up for you when they don’t have to // my best friend getting a fabulous new job — and the celebratory drinks and chat that followed! // these crisps OH MY GOD // Kat Dennings. She is the coolest and the beautifullest and I love her // my totally weird and eccentric immediate family and all their weirdnesses and eccentricities. Did you know my sister has her own pet t-rex and he has his own Facebook page? // New series of the Big Bang Theory — I love this show in spite of myself // this coffee pot, which I am absolutely keeping as a present to myself if no one buys it by Christmas // Lovely Boyfriend, always // The Forest’s vegan chocolate and beetroot cake

What are YOU loving this week?

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You can also visit Read This Press for poetry and typewriter paraphernalia! Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Lovely links of loveliness.

“[Dorothy] Parker picked up two of Zelda [Fitzgerald]’s oils for a total of $35. And while Parker thought them of quality, she also found them too disturbing to hang—perhaps no surprise, as of the many things that Dorothy Parker was, champion nester was not one of them. According to Meade [Parker's biographer], “So phobic was her reaction to domesticity that she would rather have starved before boiling herself an egg.” Were you to do the equivalent favor to a friend’s artist wife in rehab today, you would plunk down $612.94.”

Such a weird, but great, idea for an article: what it cost eight women writers to make it in New York, over the past one hundred years.

I kind of like the idea of sending yourself a rejection letter.

Identifying the five types of work you do each day, and picking out the good stuff.

“But I forget the names, remembering them wrongly
Where they touch upon another name,
A town in France like a woman’s Christian name.

My childhood is preserved as a nation’s history,
My favourite fairy tales the shells
Leased by the hermit crab.”

Swiss posted a great poem by Medbh McGuckian this week. Read the rest here.

I’ve seen this done before, but this is by far the best example I’ve come across: poetry, written with book spines.

I have loved this poem since I read it in a children’s poetry anthology aged about six, before I had any idea who Lawrence Ferlinghetti was.

“The writers that I know and love are some of the hardest working individuals I’ve ever encountered. They spend years of their lives working on their books. They toil away at day jobs and then write when they’re not working. After their book gets published, they work their asses off to get it publicized, they do events, they write supplementary materials, they maintain websites, they talk to fans online, and they start writing their next book — A WRITER NEVER STOPS WORKING.”

Having read so many grim, I-don’t-really-like-e-books-but-I-have-to-pretend-I-do posts, it is so nice to have a kick-ass bookseller finally come out and tell it like it is about churned-out $1.99 fiction. I APPROVE.

Want some handy literary quotes to ink on your bedroom walls? Here’s Henry Rollins and Ira Glass over at Dog on a Swing.

Now, this is my idea of a mobile library!

“We park and walk up to the entrance. No running the gantlet between pickets shouting at me that I’m a murderer, no fear that someone will throw a bomb. The receptionist takes my name and says, “You just have to talk with a counselor first.” I don’t mind, I figure it’s part of the procedure. I tell the counselor I already have four children and I don’t want any more. I’m on a different track now. She nods understandingly and says they’ll be ready for me soon. No judgment, no showing me pictures of fetuses, no trying to make me feel guilty.”

Abortion: the good old days. This is really touching, sad and just plain great. Read it, all.

You’re not as busy as you think you are. Fact.

Oh hey, remember my Barcelona trip a couple of weeks ago? Well, my lovely friend and travel-buddy Ula is a street photographer — check out some of her beautiful images of the trip at her Flickr.

“[Obnoxious commenters] look around, see an internet reduced to a Giant Lavatory Wall, and decide to get in on the act themselves. [...] One of the most active cheerleaders of commenting is the Guardian, which employs a dozen or so moderators, plus another dozen “community co-ordinators” who monitor Facebook, Twitter, Tumblrs and so on (the paper doesn’t give out an exact number). Assuming these people are on a modest £20,000 each, that’s nearly half a million pounds a year spent on making sure that the “community” – 1 per cent of readers – is well-served.”

The always-great Helen Lewis on why you’re totally within your rights to shut down your comment thread and say FsCK YOU to the trolling masses. Applause!

Getting your books’ ISBNs tattooed on yourself? Personally, I think that is super cool.

Oh my goodness, Jon. Way to make my day by sending me NYAN WAITS. (Click it.)

Aaaand the obligatory cute posts: baby sea otter, anyone? And yes, naturally, there must and shall be A KITTY.

It was only a matter of time before Gala Darling had her own TED(xCMU) talk! It’s all about self-esteem, self-love, and (for me anyway) her odd-but-charming half-Kiwi-half-US accent (listen for how she suddenly says “writing on my blaaaahg”)!

OK, guilty confession — in spite of the awful lyrics and general cheesiness — I love this song. Perfect for hooping!

Grandparents discover Photo Booth. SO CUTE.

Have a great weekend!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

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