Molly McArdle

08:59 18th Jun 2013

Notes: 5

Tags: True Blood blood guess what it's blood television

You feel like eating your feelings, [and] guess what? It’s blood. You will be eating blood.

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True Blood Season 6 Premiere Recap | Vulture

I love recaps and I love True Blood and I HATE BLOOD.

10:28 17th Jun 2013

Notes: 6

Tags: witch news friendship Em magic Spells and How They Work

Lessons in Modern Witchcraft, Minus the Broomsticks - NYTimes.com

Other courses include “History of Witchcraft,” “Introduction to Magic,” “Spells and How They Work” and “Esbats: Celebrating the Phases of the Moon.”

Very important witch news!!

11:44 14th Jun 2013

Notes: 19

Tags: bow down Erykah Badu

[My mother] told me that I’m the best, starting at about 2. “You are the best. You are the winner. Somebody else may get the trophy, but you are the best.” The best is kind of relative, it means you did your best. You are it. There’s not another Erykah. You only have one chance to be Erykah, so don’t waste time trying to figure out some shit you already know. You know who you are, you know what you want, you know what you like. Don’t second-guess yourself. Follow your heart, no second thoughts.

Erykah Badu Loves You: A Conversation With the Artist
“You only have one chance to be Erykah.”

[My mother] told me that I’m the best, starting at about 2. “You are the best. You are the winner. Somebody else may get the trophy, but you are the best.” The best is kind of relative, it means you did your best. You are it. There’s not another Erykah. You only have one chance to be Erykah, so don’t waste time trying to figure out some shit you already know. You know who you are, you know what you want, you know what you like. Don’t second-guess yourself. Follow your heart, no second thoughts.

Erykah Badu Loves You: A Conversation With the Artist

“You only have one chance to be Erykah.”

17:16 13th Jun 2013

Notes: 12

Tags: lit Queens Library tumblarians libraries librarians Tumblr

image: Download

Join me and these clipart white dudes at Blogging with Tumblr | Queens Library. I’ll be talking about the lit community on Tumblr!

11:30

Notes: 25

Tags: life announcement FYI UMass Amherst MFA tumblarians

image: Download

Now is as good a time as any to announce this so here goes: I’ll be leaving Library Journal to get my MFA in fiction at UMass Amherst this fall. I will miss LJ and New York so much, but I am also incredibly excited to start on this new project, this new degree! I am going to take so many weird classes.

I’m also happy to say that I’ll be working in some capacity at The Massachusetts Review and will be taking over, with my co-editor Liana Camper-Barry, the MFA program’s lit mag, Route 9. I’m going to continue to run The Rumblr, and will never stop checking the tumblarians tag like the creep I am.

12:11 12th Jun 2013

Notes: 1

Tags: gchat family Eamon lasers

14:57 11th Jun 2013

Notes: 2

Tags: lit my reviews Pump Me Up DC One Thousand and One Nights Hanan al-Shaykh Roger Gastman

Some recent Library Journal reviews.

From the May 1 issue:

Gastman, Roger. Pump Me Up: DC Subculture of the 1980s. Ginko. Mar. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9781584235132. $44.95. FINE ARTS

Gastman (coauthor, The History of American Graffiti) has spent the past two decades compiling poster art, buttons, clothing, and ephemera from the go go and punk communities that animated DC music culture in the 1980s. Through interviews with civil rights luminary Walter Fauntroy and music icon Ian MacKaye as well as essays about poster companies, music venues, and graffiti, the book chronicles the visual culture of DC’s most distinctive musical genres. Henry Rollins, former Black Flag front man and native Washingtonian, introduces the book; Cool “Disco” Dan, the underground yet ubiquitous DC graffiti artist, is profiled prominently. Gastman also directed the recent documentary, The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan, with Joseph Pattisall. VERDICT While DC has changed radically since the 1980s, an important piece of it survives here. This celebration of a bygone DC provides a refreshing alternative to the many books that trumpet New York’s gritty past—it’s interesting to see how other American cities did it. Recommended for readers interested in graphic design, 20th-century urban histories, the visual culture of music, and all things DC.—Molly McArdle, Library Journal

From the June 15 issue:

al-Shaykh, Hanan. One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling. Pantheon. Jun. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9780307958860. $26. F

Lebanese novelist al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) takes the hundreds of stories that make up the traditional One Thousand and One Nights and pares them down to a concise 19. Focusing on tales that expose misogyny—of men who kill their wives and lovers, who injure them, or who leave them for dead—al-Shaykh is interested in how women grapple with a society that is stacked against them. Gone are Aladdin, Ali Baba, and even much of Sinbad, but what remains is a haunting collection of stories about women who, if not always heroic, are resilient, funny, sexual, and, above all, smart. Anchored by two central framing narratives, the tales lead into one another like a set of matryoshka dolls. The beautiful language is deceptively simple: readers are in danger of being lulled into marathon reading sessions. VERDICT It’s no wonder al-Shaykh identifies with Shahrazad; they are very much the same. This retelling will find an eager audience in readers who love folktales, especially those with a feminist slant. Not for the faint of heart, these stories are gory, lusty, and very, very good. [See Author Q&A, LJ Reviews, ow.ly/kzWHL].—Molly McArdle, Library Journal

19:50 10th Jun 2013

Notes: 31

Reblogged from thelifeguardlibrarian

Tags: NYT TumblrBEA tumblarians Library Journal

The days are stuffed with panels on everything from running a store to the latest literary gadgets. (Among this year’s offerings: “Your Christian Shopper Could Be Buying More” and “Libraries + Tumblr = Connecting Readers + Writers.”)

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Expo Takes Manhattan - NYTimes.com

My panel was mentioned in the NYT!

14:38 7th Jun 2013

Notes: 13

Tags: lit my writing Classic Returns Library Journal poetry Rilke

Rilke declined to critique [Kappus’s poetry], saying “most events are unsayable, occur in a space that no word has ever penetrated, and most unsayable of all are works of art, mysterious existences whose life endures alongside ours, which passes away.” They maintained a correspondence for six years, though nine of the ten letters Rilke wrote Kappus were sent in 1903 and 1904. Rilke emphasized again and again the importance of solitude for an artist: “Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.

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Happy Birthday Kierkegaard | Classic Returns

My latest Classic Returns column for LJ!