Etsy

I just added my Etsy shop to my blog. It is over there on the side under "About Me." I love Etsy and have pretty decent luck with it. It's been awhile since I added anything new, but I have ideas and will hopefully put them into action soon when I get a minute!
My shop is named PunkAndEuie and I primarily make books. Check it out!

Ex libris,

Marissa

Bibliomania.

I sit here basking in the aftereffects of The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez. My friend Ketti recommended this one to me, and I'm thrilled that she did. Here is a book-- a small book of only about one hundred pages-- that explores the lengths of bibliomania and how books can be destructive to one's self. That is a boring sentence I just wrote and does not do the book any sort of justice whatsoever, but I am so taken by the book that I can't even write about it. Here is a review from Fine Books & Collections magazine that gives a better summary than I could. Clearly there is a reason why I am not a book reviewer by profession. :)

"To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books." from The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Domiguez, page 35.

Ex libris,

Marissa

Books about books.

Just this morning, I finished Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. It is an excellent book about books. Sometimes b-a-b can be very dry. I imagine the whole genre only appeals to bibliophiles like myself. Fadiman's book, however, is lively and engaging. I found myself laughing aloud (at the hairdresser, no less, so I got weird looks).

I picked up the book while I was shelving at work. I was initially taken by the title because ex libris is a favorite phrase of mine. It's Latin for "from the library (of)". I find it curious that the books about books come right after computer manuals in Dewey, but that's a different story. Anyway, I checked the book out to add to my HUGE stack of library books. I like to mix up fiction and nonfiction so I always have an option of what to read.

A favorite part:

on shopping in secondhand bookstores:
"'Alas,' wrote Henry Ward Beecher. 'Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!'...In secondhand bookstores, each volume is one-of-a-kind, neither replaceable from a publisher's warehouse nor visually identical to its original siblings, which have accreted individuality with every change of ownership. If I don't buy the book now, I may never have another chance. And therefore, like Beecher, who believed the temptations of drink were paltry compared with the temptations of books, I am weak."

I am extraordinarily weak when it comes to secondhand bookstores. I also relate to Fadiman in the way that she is a compulsive proofreader/officer of the grammar police, she has a particular pen she likes to write with, and she treats her books roughly as a sign of intimacy. It was a great read!

Check it out.

Ex libris,

Marissa

The Twilight Saga

I never thought I could get sucked into a series the way I did with J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, but it has happened with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga.

I was skeptical when Jenn, a friend of mine/teen librarian extraordinaire, suggested the first in the series, Twilight.  I then read New Moon and Eclipse and I am officially hooked.  Meyer's characterizations are so real and she makes the idea of vampires among us plausible.  She also has this amazing way of creating such heat and sexual tension between Bella and Edward, the two main characters.  However, she doesn't make the book a teen sex fest.  Indeed, there is no more than some intense kissing in the first three books.  Whether this is a reflection of Meyer's Mormon faith or just the storyline, I don't know.  But I find it a refreshing change from all the other media that is geared toward teens. 

Breaking Dawn, the fourth and last in the series, is being released on August 2.  I pretty much volunteered to co-run a release party for the new book at the library I work at, and I am so excited about it.  I was so gung ho that I got some other library employees reading the books, and methinks they are going to help out, too.  We're going to have a trivia contest, a scavenger hunt, some crafty goodness, a lot of red food, and we're giving the book out at the stroke of midnight.  It is going to ROCK.

I don't think Meyer's series will take away from the success of Rowling's Harry Potter because it is a different audience.  I do think Stephenie Meyer is going to go far in her literary career.  In my impatience for Breaking Dawn, I picked up her first adult novel The Host and I'm enjoying it.  It is much more sci-fi than fantasy (think "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" circa 1956), but not unpleasantly so as I find most sci-fi to be.

I highly recommend the Twilight saga for some fun, intense fantasy reading!

Stephenie Meyer's website

Ex libris,

Marissa

Be bookish.

I like books.  Making them, reading them, buying them.  I work in a library and I do some bookbinding, so it would be safe to say that books are pretty much everything.  This blog is about--you guessed it--books.  So enjoy.

Ex libris,

Marissa