Link via Carolyn– available at JC Penny! Want!

Peej next to the tree at my dad’s. Like everything in that house, it leans slightly to the right (heyo!). This was the first year that we did Christmas in the family room since it was the first year that Peej’s piano was in the living room (it’s not enough that he has to upstage me with his famous musician-ness, he also has to displace my Christmas morning) and I was extremely disoriented by the whole experience. You know when you’re not paying attention as you walk up a flight of stairs and you think there’s one more stair at the top but there really isn’t and you pick your foot up too high and then fall down a little? That’s what this was like. When I tried to express how I was uncomfortable with the break from tradition Peej blew up with “Where the hell were you when they took The Indian down off the wall, huh??” The Indian being a print that hasn’t appeared in the family room for over a decade and whose disappearance apparently scarred Patrick for life. We have long memories.

En Route to Stickles Family Christmas Eve, Dad, Peej and I did our annual round of Let’s Name All of The Presidents In Chronological Order. Every year this game makes me promise myself that I’ll somehow memorize all of them over the course of the coming year so I can wow the history nerds with my newfound knowledge come Christmas, and every year I fail to do that and embarrass myself mightily. It’s a rotation game– if I name the first president (which I can, in fact, do), then Peej names the second, dad names the third, I name the 4th, and so on. This year Peej decided to mandate that we also each include a Fun Fact about the president that we were naming, with margins wide enough to include things like “Our fattest president!” (Sorry, Taft). The rotation worked out so that I was saddled with President Number 3. I had no idea who that was. I started randomly naming Founding Fathers while all of the color drained from my founding father’s face as he thought about all of the money he spent turning me into an alumni of the same university as Thomas Jefferson only to have me completely disgrace his legacy on Christmas Eve ‘08. Oops. Sorry, TJ. I’m usually good through the first 10 or so presidents because I just name buildings on the William & Mary campus, but after that I’m a disaster all the way up until Carter. This year I was lucky enough to pull president #21, Chester A. Arthur, which I only know thanks to the Die Hard movies. Take whatever you can get, Dad!

At Christmas Eve I remain a founding member of the kids’ table (I am 3rd oldest of the children at this half of the family, after Bud and Katie Bud’s Wife) where we have our own set of traditions. Within 3 minutes someone will bring up that corn makes you aggressive and that’s why they don’t serve it in prisions, a fun fact I can be blamed for due to the one day I was paying attention in my Biology of the Mind class or whatever it was called that I needed to complete my priceless and extremely useful Psychology degree at Mr Jefferson’s University. We also take bets on how long it’ll be before we hear Aunt Maryellen go “Did we go oldest to youngest or youngest to oldest last year??” as she starts trying to figure out what the present distribution order will be. And we go with the old standbys– staring at The Baby as she does cute stuff and demanding that Peejplay the piano. Or, if possible, both:

Piano Meg from Cristin on Vimeo.

Meg and Peej Piano Time is one of my favorite things. After I uploaded this video, I went back and watched the first one I took this spring when Meg was about 10 months old and instantly became terrified of how big she’s getting and how she looks like a real person now instead of a baby. Sometimes when Older Brother Bud is in foreign countries for work or for grad school he likes to drink too much and send me emails about how Meg’s getting to be a kid instead of a baby and they make me want to laugh and cry simultaneously because I feel like we all want her to stay little and grow up at the same time.

Cousin Thomas is one of the younger occupants of the kids’ table, but if keeps delivering performances like this year’s, I’m going to look forward to his Christmas Company for decades to come. I can’t stop laughing at this picture. At my aunt’s baby shower when she was pregnant with Thomas we all went around and made one wish for the baby and I said I hoped he had Uncle Mike’s sense of humor, so I’m taking full credit for this one. This kid’s going to grow up to be a total ladykiller.

I was pretty excited for this to be the first Christmas where The Baby figured out what the deal was with presents but that’s going to have to wait until 2009, because she hasn’t quite gotten it down. I need to show her the pure joy that comes with creasing wrapping paper at perfect 45 degree angles as you’re preparing your gifts and the even bigger joy that comes from completely destroying the work someone else did on a present that was wrapped for you. The main times when we could get Meg to pay attention to her presents was when they were books.

 I could talk for a week about how this makes me feel and still not be able to describe it well enough– it feels like when I watch Peej on stage, or when people ask me why I have a picture of an aircraft carrier in my office and I get to explain that I’m Brendan’s sister, and I almost wind up crying thinking about how proud I am of them and how lucky I am to be related to them. And how I better get to work at actually accomplishing something in my life so that the two of them can know what that feels like. I have said a thousand times that I had two main fears in life– one is being pushed in front of a subway train (this isn’t getting any better as I get older and {allegedly} wiser. Every train I get on, Tiny Lunatic Cristin in my brain exhales and goes “well, that’s one less train we’ll get pushed in front of.” Then Tiny Even Crazier Cristin in my brain goes “yeah, but doesn’t that mean that we have a greater statistical chance of getting pushed in front of the next one?” You would not believe the amount of mental space I devote to this argument. Watching me walk towards the yellow line as my train pulls in is like watching the last 10 minutes of Field of Dreams), and the other is that if I have kids, they won’t like to read. Because really, if you wanted to make me mad, what would you do? You would root for the Yankees, and you would hate reading.

Watching the Megatron around anything that vaguely resembles a book, though, I have to hope that some of this is genetic. I know a lot of it is her being raised by awesome parents, but this kid is almost pathological about books. She also just went horseback riding for the first time and loved every second of it. That’s my girl.

I was second-to-last in present giving this year, which means next year I should get to go second if any of us can remember, for the first time, what the previous year’s order was. And I capped my turn off, as always, with the Books For Young People distro.

Molly got an autographed copy of Julie’s book, and peer pressured into coming to spend a day with me at work under whatever vague Career Shadowing auspices we can come up with. I hope this pans out because I think we would have a ball. I can already think of a dozen people I would want to talk to her about their jobs at work, though I’m having trouble coming up with how I would explain what I do. It was recently brought to my attention that very few of my friends can describe my actual job outside of saying “sales” since they think I spend all of my time planning Halloween costumes and building gingerbread houses. Fair enough.

At my dad’s house the next morning, I spent the annual 3 hours I have to fill waiting for my brothers to wake up so that I can get some presents taking pictures of the dog with the Jack Russell ornament I got him from angles that make him look like Godzilla.

Don’t… look… behind you!

Like all of the showboaters in our family, Jack has taken to sending out his own Christmas card featuring a picture of himself. (I have no idea where he could have gotten such a lame idea). I’m rooting for this one for the ‘09 card. It’s a pretty accurate depiction of Jack’s Reign of Terror over my parents’ house.

One of my big accomplishments for Christmas this year was not using any gift wrap, which was very difficult for me emotionally. I think that everyone has One Thing that they are better at than everyone else they know, and my Thing is gift wrapping. But it’s all bad for the environment and stuff, so this year everyone got their presents in reusable bags (most of which were Brooklyn tote bags from Fishs Eddy, because I might be environmentally conscious but I am still self centered). My second big accomplishment comes with a big thank you for WorkFriend Amanda, who alerted me to the existence of Fruit Stickles. Considering how much time I know Older Brother Bud spends googling his family members, I can’t believe he didn’t find them first. (Before you become as confused as we were, there is no fruit in those packages– they’re basically popsicle sticks coated in some kind of flavoring that you use to spear fruit. I KNOW. How have you lived this long without them?? Peej opened his and immediately busted out “Yeah, I hear this all the time. Except it’s usually preceded by ‘You’re a–’.”).

Check out the clogs on this kid. And their close proximity to one of my favorite books of ‘08, which made a guest appearance on Christmas morning.

This was the first year I decided to use my morning downtime constructively to shower and make myself look presentable so I don’t have that “hey, what’s that homeless person doing in my house?” reaction I usually wind up with when I scroll through my christmas pictures. That’s why I’m including this picture– just so we have proof that there was one year where I had good hair on Christmas morning.

Peej is the hardest of all of us to find gifts for. All of his clothes have been previously owned by 70 year old men and then sold at a garage sale, he lives out of a suitcase and has very little need for material possessions, and he’s a music and literature snob. Last year our mom gave him a box of money and I was jealous that I hadn’t thought of that first. This year I gave him the most random collection of stuff ever, including this slide whistle that I found at Blue Ribbon General Storewhile I was doing my Shop Local christmas blitz. If you got a christmas present from me, part of it probably came from this store. It is the best place on earth. I wanted everything that they carry the second I stepped foot in there and I plan to go back as frequently as possible and if you live in Brooklyn you have no excuse for not shopping here because it’s one of those places that you want to sleep over in, it’s so cool, and you feel like you’re giving your money to an establishment you have an emotional connection to instead of, say, buying zombie movies in bluray online, as I’ve been doing all morning. I was singing along to the Boss’ version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town when the owner went “so you’re from new jersey?” and I fell in love with her. It’s a great place. And it had this slide whistle, which captured peej’s attention about 8 times longer than anything else I’ve ever given him. I’m resolving to get him one weird musical instrument per gift giving holiday from now on.

But that slide whistle had nothing on what went down at mom’s house. After two months of talking about how much I wanted a fake bearskin rug, my dreams have finally been realized. As I type this, on my couch with the rug within site, I’m a little worried that I’m becoming a cartoon character here– that the more weird stuff I amass in this apartment, the closer I am to turning into a weird cross between Willy Wonka and one of those crazy old ladies who hordes old newspapers and bottles of urine because she’s afraid to throw anything away. It’s a slippery slope, I imagine. But for now, my joy at owning the bear overwhelms all other hesitations. I have great plans for this rug, and you can watch them take shape here. If you’re planning a visit to Sunset Park any time soon, you should probably have a couple of poses in mind for your photo session.

More of The Baby reading! I can’t get enough of this! Here she’s reading a book about a pig named Mimi from our friends at Bloomsbury who suggested this when I started bemoaning the fact that Meg couldn’t say her own name and had started to refer to herself as Mimi, the way Mariah Carey does sometimes. I was vehemently against this initially, knowing how hard it is to shake a nickname in our family once you pick it up, but I’m coming around. I like that it’s not her real name and I like that she picked it out for herself, and I like that she clearly knows her name is Megan but sometimes refuses to pay attention to you unless you call her Mimi, and I like that her dad has taken to nicknaming her nickname and just calling her Meems and when he’s holding her winter jacket and trying to get her into her car seat will be like “Meems, are we ready to do this, or what?”

A few days after Christmas we were enjoying more Baby Time and Katie told me a story about how Meg had watched the Grinch movie for the first time that week, and how through the whole thing she kept repeating something but no one could understand what she was saying. They thought she was saying “pop-pop,” which is a version of what she calls one of her grandpas, but whenever they pointed at said grandpa that didn’t seem to placate her. After awhile someone figured out that she was looking at the Grinch cartoon and saying “Hop On Pop,” which is one of the Seuss books she has at home. My head exploded when I heard this. “SHE KNEW! She knew it was the same illustrator! She was giving you COMP TITLES! She’s going to work in CHILDREN’S BOOKS!” Oh, Meg. Even if you grow up to be a Mets fan (which is unlikely given your mom roots for the Evil Empire and your dad recognizes that saddling his children with that is setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment) I might never be prouder of you than I was right there.

Added bonus of the bearskin rug– it quickly became background scenery, and I didn’t realize how scary and hilarious that was until I uploaded the pictures and saw that there was a terrifying stuffed rug silently screaming just off center in many of my shots. I like this one in particular for the juxtaposition of horror: What’s more frightening, an angry bear about to eat you, or a doll that your grandma gives you that has four faces and a head that spins around?

Grammie is Big Into Feelings, to put it mildly. So when she saw a doll that could help someone in the pre-verbal stages of their life express how they were feeling, she couldn’t resist. Usually I can fake it when someone opens a ridiculous gift but as soon as the Feelings Doll showed up at Christmas I damn near lost it. I mean, come on. That’s the creepiest thing in the world. With the possible exception of:

Peej gives Elmo a hug, as commanded from Cristin on Vimeo.

Elmo Live. Ironically, I am convinced that this doll is the last thing you see before you die. Horrifying.

After we were done playing with dolls it was time for the gambling and the accusations of trickery. A week before Christmas we had all gotten an email from my mom instructing us to send her our favorite Christmas song so that she could compile a CD and we could have a fun time listening to it and trying to guess who had picked what song. I assumed that this would land us with 6 repeats of All I Want For Christmas Is You so I avoided that one on purpose. I was initially going to go with Feliz Navidad in honor of the door decorations every apartment building but mine in a 4 block radius is sporting, but ultimately chose the John Denver & the Muppets version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Since this isn’t enough to jack up everyone’s blood pressure we also each put in $5 to make it worth our while. I insisted that the pot be divided between first and second place, thinking that it could be the difference of just one song and that wouldn’t be very fair, which in retrospect was pretty stupid of me considering I TOTALLY DESTROYED EVERYONE AT THIS GAME. I won by a margin of 3 songs. This victory had two outcomes, one immediate and one that won’t rear its ugly head for another eleven and a half months or so: 1) The moment the scores were tallied and I was named winner Peej started accusing me of cheating. “The word document with the list was open on mom’s computer all day! You could have looked at it at any time!” And how does that mean *I* cheated since *you* were the one who knew about it, Patrick?? I guess the fact that he got beaten so badly absolved him of any potential cheating and that’s why he felt okay shouting out incriminating evidence in the wake of his loss. Whatever, pal. I’m $40 richer, and you lost. 2) I must have missed this in the fine print of my mom’s original email, but apparently the winner of this year’s game is in charge of coming up with a new game for next year. This is great news for me, as I’m controlling and like orchestrating things in such a way so that if I can’t win outright I can at least be as manipulative as possible (on New Year’s I waited until about 2 am, when all my guests were at maximum drunkenness, and then insisted that we play hide and go seek across the three floors of my apartment building. The duplex below me is vacant and unlocked while it’s being renovated which has lead to this weird Clubhouse Syndrome whenever I have people over to my apartment and I get all “the grownups are gone! WHEE!” There were moments on New Years Eve where we were all just collectively screaming for no reason because there was no one around to tell us to shut up. When everyone foolishly agreed to humor me on hide and go seek I forced Emily to stand outside in 15 degree weather to count as the Seeker so that we could utilize the whole building, and then I brought my cell phone with me into my hiding spot so that I could call the phones of other hiders and use the ringtones to direct the seeker towards them and away from me. Cristin Sticklesdoesn’t ‘play’ games, she fucking wins them, thank you very much. Not that I won that game. Though being found was worth it because it meant that I got to watch Margaret appear from a crawl space 9 feet off the ground and Webmaster Kyle crawl out from under my daybed in the living room going “It’s really dusty under there.” I’m worried that 2009 may have peaked early because I’m probably not going to have more fun than that unless I keep my BAC at a steady .15 and that will probably make it difficult to do things like flat iron my hair or, you know, my job), but bad news for the rest of my family since I’m sure the ‘09 game will basically be Calvin Ball (or, uh, Cristin Ball) and adjusted according to my ever-changing whims. At press time I’m considering revisiting an unintentional Christmas Contest of yesteryear–one Christmas when I was in college we wound up playing a weird but amazing Family Trivia game where the question asker would come up with a question about his/ herself or his/ her past and then call out someone to answer it. This was fun for awhile and then it got nasty, which children asking their parents to name one of the 8 musicals they were in over their public school careers and the parents failing miserably, or when I thought it would be funny to ask Cousin Danny to name the first boy I ever kissed and he named my current boyfriend at the time (I was 20. Thanks, Dan).

Feeling invincible after my victory, I immediately take to the drink. By this point we have been sucked dry of the champagne and white wine, so I start complaining to my mom that she doesn’t have any beer that I like. She quickly points out that we still have the $3 box of white wine that I bought at a CVS in Reno because I was so amazed that you could buy boxed wine in a medical pharmacy in a state that allows prostitution. After incredulously confirming that my mom had not, as I’d instructed, thrown it away but packed it in her suitcase and flown it home from Memphis, I tore into the boxed wine and basically drank it in two sips. We won’t get into how the rest of the night went. Mostly because it’s all kind of a blur. I do remember talking about how I was planning on buying a blu-ray player the next day and my mom asking “What’s the difference between regular dvd and blu-ray?” and how that inspired a response of “It’s like the difference between watching porn and having sex” made me so proud of myself that I immediately texted it to 15 people. Also, Matt had brought along Apples to Apples and Patrick later informed me that I told the story of how the first time I played that game, I lost in a round where the word was “sexy” and I played “Challenger Explosion” (shut up, I was going for irony and shock value) and DIDN’T WIN that round and how I’m still haunted by it today. And then I told the story again, and again, and a few more times after that until Patrick was ready to kill me. Then I woke up the next day and there was a half-full bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade on my nightstand table.

And that was Christmas.

Another big accomplishment of mine over this holiday season was convincing Emily to take NJ Transit out to visit Glen Rock for the first time. After years of hearing Jordan and I tell stories about our hometown I think she probably thought it was one of those weird planned communities, like that town Celebrationnear Orlando where you have to sign a waiver to always be happy and where they have rock-concealed speakers that pipe in the sound of birds chirping so it can always be pleasant. That’s actually not for off. Sometimes I’ll tell stories about our town assuming that everyone else grew up in a similar Norman Rockwell painting and I get some strange looks. I only recently found out that most people have stores that are open on Sunday and are allowed to park their cars in the street overnight, both of which are strictly foreboden where I come from. Em had the astonishing good fortune of visiting on a day designated as Customer Appreciation Day at the only bar we have, so we took her there. I don’t give them enough business to deserve any kind of appreciation, but my dad more than has us covered for the year. And they totally delivered in terms of I Was Born In A Small Town/ And I Live In A Small Town/ Probably Die In A Small Town/ That’s Probably Where They’ll Bury Me-ness, Johnny Cougar-style. We couldn’t move 3 feet without running into someone my dad knew and I think over the course of the evening we were in the presence of 8 members of my graduating class but my count could be off– the memory blurs as time goes on. Em eventually told me to stop introducing her as “my friend from work” as that was a devaluation of our relationship (point well made) and I quickly explained that I had been doing so because if I only said “friend” someone would start the rumor that we were lovers. Within 5 minutes of that explanation we overheard someone admonishing a well wisher for saying Happy Holidays with a “Fuck that. We say Merry Christmas here,” so you can see that I had a point as well. Later on I realized I should have just given Emily the name of someone we had gone to school with and introduced her as that person to see if we could get away with it all night– with some careful planning, I bet this is more than possible, and I look forward to orchestrating it for my 10 year reunion next year. We also got caught up in a conversation started by one of my dad’s friends where people started vehemently debating who the most beautiful woman to ever live was (Dad initially went with Cleopatra and Peej initially went with Mary Magdalene, proving that no matter how much I study during the off season I’ll never be able to out-nerd those two so I might as well just concentrate on my shoe collection) in which I was unilaterally mocked for my love of Jackie Kennedy. At least I didn’t go with Poppy Montgomery (DAD), as stirring as I’m sure her performance in Dead Man On Campus was. This segued into the Who Was The Most Attractive Man Of All Time fight during which I disgraced my dad by explaining to the table that in college, my friends would play a game called I’d Bang where we’d come up with a weird category and then try to name people that qualify in it that we would sleep with (Fictional Characters I’d Bang, Guys My Dad’s Age I’d Bang, Historical Figures I’d Bang At The Height Of Their Power, etc).

After we were done at that bar we decided to go to a town .6 miles away to go to another bar and see more people we went to high school with and were faced with the epic problem of how to get there. I’m having this issue living in Brooklyn, as well– I step out my door and automatically assume that there will be cabs there. Ruined forever by those years on the upper east side (in more ways than one). We eventually landed on the obvious choice of calling my mom to ask her to pick up her 23 year old son, 27 year old daughter and friend, 31 year old son and friend, and drive all of them to another bar knowing that they will eventually roll into her kitchen at 2am and eat Christmas leftovers with their hands. And she actually did it, and seemed to enjoy herself. At bar #2 I started giving people my business card so that I could make American Psycho jokes that wouldn’t go over very well, Emily continued to get hit on relentlessly by GR natives, and my brothers and I had a series of conversations that will cost me thousands of dollars in therapy as I try to erase them from my consciousness. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Dressed up as Santa in Grand Central Terminal with two thousand of my jolliest buddies. Merry Christmas!

And so–  here’s what Many Trusted Professionals say qualifies as a Great Book, followed by some of the ones I loved over the last year. Off you go:

Part I. It’s My Job To Think About Books All Day So I Know What’s Up: Media, Publishing, and Bookseller recommendations

NPR’s roundup of books that make great gifts, as chosen by bookstore owners. I hadn’t heard of that Economist Book of Obituaries, but now I want it like woah. Way to mix my morbid fascination withrituals surrounding death with my obscure fascination with How People Choose To Represent Themselves And Others When Space Is Limited (this is why I read the classifieds section before any other part of the newspaper, and why I’m so into the twitter feeds, facebook statuses, and online dating profiles of others. It’s purely academic, I swear).

If you live in New York, McNally Jackson has their holiday tables up in the store. If I weren’t so madly in love with a certain children’s independent bookstore in my hometown that gets all of the credit/ blame for me winding up in publishing instead of living on the streets or working at US Weekly or something, this would be my favorite bookstore in the world. They are brilliant in their book selection, and they have fantastic author signings all the time. One of their employees, whose campaign to bring an indie bookstore to Ft Green I blogstalk all the time, recently did a round-up of her favorite books of 2008, and not only does she have excellent taste in books, she’s also hilarious in her category choices (“Favorite Book Featuring Vampires and Teenagers…” and it’s not Twilight! You had me at hello).

Also on the indie side, here’s where you find a composite list of best sellers across independent book sellers, as well as search for stores near you.

If you’re looking for something more impersonal, the Times also recently did its yearly You’re Not As Literate As You Think You Are, Loser list. Every year this comes out and I think it’s going to be some benchmark by which I can prove how much more well-read (better-read?) I am than most people, and every year I fail miserably. Last year I’d read one of them (the Harry Potter) and this year I read half of one and listened to half of one on audio. For someone who works in publishing, I feel like this is the emotional equivalent to buying one of those Nascar stickers for the back of the car I don’t own instead of picking up the latest Newbery winner. I should be ashamed, but instead I’ll just lie and tell myself that they must have bad taste. It certainly can’t be because I only read books aimed at 14 year olds. But wait– they also picked their 8 favorite children’s books, so if you don’t want to take my suggestions you can always go with theirs. And maybe find another blog to read in your free time. And if you want to see what their book reviews are buying as presents this year, that’s here as well. And if you can’t deal with 100 books, they narrow it down to 10 for you (which looks a heck of a lot like the Knopf catalog. Well played, 20th floor!).  

I’m way more comfortable with this Top 100 list, which covers ‘83-08. And was compiled by Entertainment Weekly. What can I say. I’m also way better at the People Magazine crossword puzzle than I am at the Sunday Times one.

Speaking of Publications I Love For Their Crosswords Among Other Reasons: NY Magazine also has really good taste in books.

USA Today also has condensed lists for Kids Books, Gift Books, Holiday Books, etc. I love anyone who pulls David Sedaris’ Holidays On Ice out from the backlist, and has David Shannon in their Kids Book section. If there’s a male in your life between the ages of 4 and, uh, 35 or so who has the attention span to handle reading a picture book, you should get them No, David!, which is now and will always be one of my favorites (and a favorite of The Fee, as well, I believe).

Publishers Weekly picked their best of the year back in November- I particularly like their kids’ fiction choices and, you know, they’re PW so they probably know some stuff about books.

Part II. It Is Also My Job To Think About Books All Day But Here Are Some I Would Love Even If It Weren’t: What I’m Buying For People This Christmas

I know- Way to break new ground, Cristin, no one will ever know about that massive best seller unless you blog about it! What a revolutionary. Still. I know if you read a lot you’ve probably already burned through this at lightning speed the way the majority of my friends have but if not, HOLY GOD IS THIS BOOK GOOD. Part of me doesn’t even want to get into the premise because I know I’ll never do it justice but when has that ever stopped me before so here you go: A dictatorship now exists where NorthAmerica used to be, and each year its districts compete for food (and serve this unending penance at the hands of the government for the failed uprising against the capitol years ago) by offering two teenagers from each district, chosen through a lottery, to the hunger games, which are both televised national entertainment and a 23/24thschance of violent death for the contestants, as the only way to win is by BEING THE LAST PERSON ALIVE. So all these 16 year olds are running around KILLING EACH OTHER. When I first heard about this book I was like “there’s no way they actually die– I’m sure they all get into the games and then there’s some loophole that allows someone to win without getting blood on their hands, like how Harry was able to kill Voldemort without actually casting a killing spell.” But they totally do. Kill each other, that is. And it’s awesome. It’s awesome because the author created this world so perfectly, down to the corporate sponsorships that the contestants can get from doing things that drive ratings (like killing each other. Or making out), that you find yourself wondering how you would react if you were in that situation, which is a situation I think I can safely say that I will never find myself in (Hello, Fate, I’d like to tempt you! Why don’t you swing by Sunset Park and rip me out of this state of complacency by forcing me to hunt people for sport?). After I finished this book it was all I could talk about for days– not just how great the book is, though I certainly had plenty to say on that topic, but what I would do if I were in the Hunger Games. Workfriends Jen & Sarah had the unfortunate luck of having lunch with me the day after I finished it and all I could talk about was how I didn’t think I would have a problem killing people if it came down to it. “I could do it. I could kill the two of you if you were in there with me,” I kept repeating over and over oh-so casually as I ate my buffalo chicken wrap in our office cafeteria. “I’m bigger than you are, and you’ve seen what happens to me when I decide I want to win something.” Jen and Sarah were appropriately taken aback by this, but I think that’s just because they didn’t have the lunch table conversations that my friends did in high school. As a point of follow up, the next day I asked High School Friend Jordan “Hey, do you remember that time in high school where we spent a week talking about whether or not we’d be physically and emotionally capable of killing a deer with a hammer?” and without a second’s worth of hesitation he went “Yup.” (Before you call PETA on me, you should know that my answer then, as it is now, was as follows: If the deer was threatening my life or the life of someone I loved, or even didn’t hate, and if we were in a confined area and the deer was robotically attacking, zombie-style, and showed no signs of retreating or abandoning his cause then, yes, I think I could kill a deer using only a hammer. But I wouldn’t like it). Stop looking at me like that, you know that you’ve played the Ridiculous Hypothetical Question Game before. If no one ever played, the world would be without How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In A Fight, and that’s not a world I want to live in.

This book is amazing, and I look forward to it winning a Printz and will be suitably outraged if it doesn’t.

Is Kind of Like: The Handmaid’s Tale + the Uglies books + The House of the Scorpion

But Is Really More Like:a WWE Battle Royale Pay-Per-View special + The Road + The Most Dangerous Game (one of my favorite short stories of all time and yes, it annoys me that Vince Vaughn is referencing it in his 4 Christmases trailers with his “I’d rather be stuck on an island with some deranged billionaire hunting me” comment, as much as I love the Vaughn) + The Giver on an Outward Bound trip.

Is Good For: Anyone between the ages of 13 and, let’s say, 60. Maybe not for your grandma and maybe not for any young relatives that still put Lisa Frank unicorn stickers on their homework folders, but should be inhaled and loved by anyone else.

You know how you have that one friend from college who will occasionally write these emails to you and 5 of your other best friends from college and you read them and think “god, she should write a book?” Now make her even funnier and an even better writer and put her in the city where you live working in the industry that you work in and give her a book deal. You should hate her, right? On paper, I should hate her a whole ton. Instead, all I want to do is be her facebook friend and call her up every time I do something ridiculous like when the time warner guys came to give me cable and asked where the jack was and I said “I don’t know, don’t you have something that, like, detects it? Like one of those things the Ghostbusters use, except for cable?” I think there’s a significant difference between loving a book and loving a book while wishing you had written it, and for me I don’t frequently run into that second combo, but this was definitely a book that I loved enough to read twice in the first weekend I had it, and a book that I was envious of. I don’t think there are enough contemporary female essayists writing something other than criticisms (I’m trying to name some now and coming up with zilch. And no, I don’t count Chelsea Handler. Fine, Sarah Vowell. I’ll give you her. But then I’ll take her back because I love her and can’t live without her) and it makes me enormously happy that this book showed up and it wasn’t stamped chick lit (it’s not) or dismissed as not being literary (it is) just because the writer has ovaries, isn’t writing fiction, and opens the book with a story about her collection of toy ponies. This is going to be one of my favorites for a long time, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Is Kind Of Like: A nonfiction Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing + a less pretentious Chuck Klosterman.

But Is Really More Like:A keenly observant and slightly hyperactive love child of Dorothy Parker and Nora Ephron.

Is Good For: Chicks in your book club, chicks from your sorority, chicks who just moved to new york, any chick who has made you be her bridesmaid.

When teachers tried to get me to read historical fiction in elementary school I was generally like “Whatever, lady. If I wanted to learn something I’d ask my dad to recite the presidents in chronological order AGAIN for me. Don’t try to fool me into learning about something just because you know I love reading. You hang onto that My Brother Sam Is Dead and that Number The Stars and I’ll be over here with The Westing Game or any number of these assembly-line series books about girls and ponies, thankyouverymuch.” This is an attitude that has remained relatively unchanged up until this day. Fiction is for reading and nonfiction is for learning, unless you count the 80 or so books I have about pirates and dinosaurs since those count as proof that learning and enjoying are not mutually exclusive. For me, anyway. I shouldn’t have even brought up the historical fiction thing, I should have just gone with what I always say about this book which is that it’s like the authors wrote it as a valentine to people who love books and who love reading and that in a world where there are painfully few instances of pure joy (among which I count the song All I Want For Christmas Is You, cherry JellO, and finding money in pants that you haven’t worn for awhile, but you might have a different definition and I can respect that) this book is absolutely one of them without being cheesy or at all grating. And it did make me learn things without realizing that I was learning, which I grudgingly admit is more of a bonus than a drawback. I knew exactly nothing about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands and it’s such a beautiful story that I almost didn’t notice what an important piece of history it was covering.

Is Kind Of Like: One of the few books written for adults that you could call “charming” without a hint of irony.

But Is Really More Like:If Ann Patchett wrote a historical fiction love letter to every book club, ever.

Is Good For: Everyone. Seriously. My 9 year old cousin saw her mom reading this and promptly burned through it (though she is a bit advanced for her age in the literary arts. Not uncommon to my family. Just sayin’). Particularly good for mom types and for anyone who refers to their spare room as “the library” instead of “the den.”

I went on an essayist kick this summer that grew out of my EB White obsession that showed up after this New Yorker article and the all Things Considered segment on Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web that you should not listen to at work unless you want your associates to walk in on you crying to a radio show that’s describing how White narrated the audio for the book himself and how it took 18 takes for him to be able to record the scene where (SPOILER ALERT) Charlotte dies because he was crying too hard, hypothetically speaking, of course. That NPR segment lead me to the EB White New Yorker collections– one of which, about the death of one of his farm animals, also made me cry like a baby–which lead me to other New Yorker writers from the 60s which, at the suggestion from a reading friend who has never steered me wrong, landed me at Calvin Trillin. This is a short book and a quick read that would have been even quicker if I wasn’t flipping it over every 15 or so pages to stare at the picture of the couple on the back jacket to try to figure out who this woman was that she was so desperately loved by everyone in her life, and who this man was that he not only knew exactly how lucky he was to have had her, but was able to write about it so well. Also, it took me awhile to get through because I was crying through most of it, and because I kept putting it down to give myself mental space to think about things he had said. He talks a bit about how hard it is for a lot of male authors to keep writing after they’ve lost their wives, and how he realized after he lost his that everything he had written was an attempt to try to continually impress her, even long after they’d been married, and how it was hard to write anything when she was gone and he no longer had that goal. It’s beautiful and sad and hopeful and I loved it.

Is Kind Of Like: If Don Draper on Mad Men stopped screwing around on his wife and admitted to actually having feelings for her.

But Is Really More Like: Reading the eulogy your grandpa wrote for your grandma, as long as your grandpa was James Thurber or Mark Twain.

Is Good For: People who think that subscribing to the New Yorker makes them better than people who don’t; People who have been in love for years; People who have just gotten married; People who either believe or want to believe that there is more good than bad out there.

And now, for something completely different! You know how that majority of entertainment consumed by women in their twenties is actually intended for 16 year old girls? No, really. I’m not just saying that because I have yet to graduate to a 10th grade reading level. Everything that we get fanatically obsessed over, ironically or not– The OC, Michael Cera, texting, paranormal romance novels about The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name between teenyboppers and Draculas, Veronica Mars, Americas Next Top Model, Facebook, Gchat–was meant for the at-least-a-decade-ago version of us. We’re all regressing. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I just think we need to acknowledge it, face it head on, and relish in it. I mean, let’s just belly flop into a pool of teensploitation and not think any less of ourselves for it. You own 10 Things I Hate About You on DVD and VHS and sometimes, when you think no one else on the subway can see your iPod screen, you don’t immediately skip over that Fall Out Boy song. Don’t be shy now. Come on in– the water’s fine!

I love these books. They could crank out one a month and it wouldn’t be fast enough for me. This is another book that unintentionally made me learn things (you’ll be hearing from my lawyer, Ms Godbersen), as after I finished the first one all I wanted to do was read Age of Innocence and anything I could get my hands on about the Astor family. Here’s all you need to know: it’s Manhattan in 1899 and there are rich socialites running around ruining each others lives and reputations. Like Pride and Prejudice but cattier in a million awesome ways (and, fine, 85 years later and an a different continent).

Kind of Like:Trapping Paris Hilton in a Libba Bray novel.

But Really More Like:If Edith Wharton came back to ghostwrite (heyo! dead author puns!) Gossip Girl.

Good For:Your friend who only recently busted out “Have you read any of these Twilight books? They’re soooooo good!;” Anyone who doesn’t stare at you blankly when you say “dan and serena;” Anyone who can tell you what newspaper publishes Page 6; Your friend who got drunk and threw up at her own debutante ball.

Once you decide that you’re getting everyone books for Christmas (which you were all planning on doing anyway), you’re going to run into the “Yeah, I don’t really read,” response from a lot of people. The first thing you should do is get new friends and relatives, because that is bullshit. The second thing you should do is retaliate with “oh, is that so? Well, I know of PLENTY of books that don’t require reading. Except in the most literal sense.” And then you give them this book, and then they flip through it laughing while you dance around them going “Oh, yeah? Who doesn’t read now??!? How’s THAT TASTE??” I love this book. I love the blog it came from, and I can’t think of many books that I love as much as the blogs they were based on that I already loved (notable exception, of course, for the Kittehs). The blog, and the book, are exactly what they sound like: an examination of things white people love. Making you feel bad about not going outside. Bad memories of high school. Arrested Development. David Sedaris. Girls With Bangs. Halloween. Really, I have never so enjoyed being reduced to a punch line, and I think it’s because he’s right, at least in his Identification of Generalizations As They Apply Directly To Me. Because, come on. Who am I to deny that I love Public Radio and Playing Children’s Games As Adults? No one, that’s who.

Kind of Like: If Chris Rock had gotten a degree in cultural anthropology from Yale and then taken a job writing for Slate.

But Really More Like: The outline Michael Jackson made for himself before he got that skin lightening surgery.

Good For: Anyone under 35 or terminally hip aging hipsters.

It’s not too frequently that my Book Club really Throws Down about something– we’ve been together for… 5 years? Is that possible? Jesus. I should get them a gift. Anyway. We read this one this year and pretty quickly fell into three different camps: People who had never worked in an office setting who didn’t really get what the big deal was; people who worked in stressful office settings who got enough of the drama at their job and didn’t want to encounter it in fiction; and the rest of us, who had days at the office that made us say things like “sometimes, I genuinely hope that there are hidden cameras following me around” or “when the Waiting For Guffman People make a movie about publishing, I really hope they call me in to consult.” I think a lot of us have had moments among coworkers that are so ridiculous that you find the one person who you know thinks it’s ridiculous as well and as your eyes meet for half a second you have to think of dead puppies to keep yourself from laughing out loud, as that would be unprofessional. This really has nothing to do with Your Job and everything to do with Jobs In General. (Unless you’re like me and earlier this year you decided to play a game where you picked an idiom to use unnecessarily over and over in meetings just to see if you could make one other person eventually pick it up– in that case, you’re asking for it. And yes, 6th floor, this was why I was prefacing my opinions with “I’m no doctor, but…” for all of April. Would it have killed one of you to use it ONE TIME so that I could have felt victorious? No. No, it wouldn’t have). I don’t like it when people say “It’s like a book version of The Office!” because, well, yeah, it’s hilarious in that “Oh, my god, that’s exactly how my department reacts when someone puts out cookies or bagels” but it also shows something that I had never really thought about before in its depiction of how the people you work with know you in a way that’s completely different from people you’ve never worked with. And it’s not necessarily better or worse or more or less important than any of your other relationships, the ones you had more control over entering, but it still shapes your life for 8 hours a day at least– more if you’re not one of those self actualized people who can Leave It All At The Office. Since reading this I’ve frequently found myself thinking about the version of themselves people choose to project at work (why are there 8 potato heads in my office but no photographs of anyone?) and the versions that wind up getting out there unintentionally (why do people I’ve never spoken to before at work know about the pirate fascination?), all of which is handled wonderfully and subtly in this novel. It’s a really interesting writing style and narrative choice and it makes you feel smart to have read it.

Kind of Like:The screenplay your intern was working on while you thought she was updating some database you hadn’t touched for six months.

But Really More Like:Jonathan Safran Foer gets a sense of humor and a temp job.

Good For: People who love their jobs but recognize that there is inherent and unavoidable humor in spending 5 days a week in what basically amounts to an ant farm; Literature snobs (though they may have already read it); Dudes who have read and enjoyed at least one work of fiction in their adult lives.

At this point, I pretty much consider it my life’s work to get to make sure that everyone I ever speak to knows how much I love this book (something for you to look forward to, Ms Dental Hygenist and Mr Guy Who Sells Me Bananas From A Street Cart). Last week at the office I got to talkin’ zombies with someone I hadn’t known was a fellow zombie enthusiast, and I got so wrapped up in talking about how much I loved this book that I started re-reading in that night. This is another one where I felt bad for the people around me as I was reading it because all I could stand to talk about was zombies. Someone would mention gas prices and I’d go “My favorite image in World War Z is when he describes the abandoned cars on the highway and how some of the infected had died and regenerated behind the wheel, so as you try to take the highway north to safety you realize that it’s dotted with cars containing zombies pressed up against the windows drooling at you because the damage to their brains has rendered them unable to work the car door handles. And thank god for that, you know?” Or when I first moved into my apartment, whenever someone would come over I would open with “Just off the top of your head– if there was a zombie attack, what do you think I could use as a weapon? I’m trying to figure out if I need to buy something or if I already have something that would serve in that capacity.” (Answer: Fire extinguisher). Some time last year I was freaking out about a first date and one of my friends gave me the gentle advice of “Maybe try to go a whole night without bringing up the zombie thing.” That is what this book does to you. Everyone should read it.

Is Kind Of Like:Exactly what the subtitle says it is- an oral history of the zombie war. Badass.

But Is Really More Like: The Things They Carried + Shaun of the Dead.

Good For:Anyone. In particular, anyone says “The original, or the one with Mekhi Pfeifer?” when you say you’ve just bought Dawn of the Dead on DVD; Anyone who saw Evil Dead: The Musical during its all-too-brief stint in NYC; Anyone with a specific interest in military history or tactics; Anyone who saw Cloverfield in the theaters.

I was going to end on that note, but I’m having way too much fun doing this– will hopefully do Part II next week. In the meantime– buy some books!

ETA:

There is a lot of seriously awesome hair in this video. And Frank McCourt talking about his other favorite indoor sport besides reading. Woah there, cowboy.

Time Warner is (allegedly) coming to connect my apartment to the outside world this afternoon. I don’t think this bodes well for my social life, considering how hard it’s been over the last 18 days to step outside the place and that was before I had access to constant House and Law & Order viewings. I can only imagine what a reclusive loser I’ll be once I Behold The Power of HD DVR, which Jordan claims is going to change my life. Does Gossip Girl even come in HD?

You know when people have blogs that are cool and then they have a baby, and all of the sudden all they do is talk about the baby? I’m not saying that they become LESS cool, just that it becomes very baby- centric? That’s how I’m about to get with this apartment. Particularly once I can stop stealing spotty internet connections from my neighbors and get a connection that allows me to move furniture two inches, take a picture of it, and then put the picture on the internet and ask people what they think of the rearrangement. FOR EXAMPLE:

Here’s my fake fireplace. (That is, however, real wood next to it. It was there when I moved in, but I’m totally into it, so it stays). This is down at the end of my living room that connects to my kitchen (near where, as you can see, the Bastard Turtles will live once I bring them in from NJ. I brought their spare tank in already because I think I’m going to have to separate them once they arrive in the 11232 to keep them from starting a gang war).

Since getting everything set up, I’ve become consumed with what to do with the space in front of the fake fireplace. I can only think of one answer– get a fake bearskin rug.

I know that this is hilarious NOW– but for how long will this continue to be hilarious? I’m tempted to say “forever.” Whenever I near a moment where I think it’s not hilarious anymore, I can always light the candles in my fake fireplace and lay on my fake bearskin rug in my underwear and pretend I’m in a bad ski lodge porno or something, and it will instantly become even more hilarious than before. Right? Thoughts?

But then this stupid Hot N Cold  song came out and I went and effing downloaded it, even though I know it’s bad for me. I would never call myself a feminist because I think that once you start doing that you have to start killing your own bugs and opening doors for yourself and buying your own dinner and I’m not ready to give up in those arenas just yet, but there are some people out there creating things (ahem, Stephanie Meyer) or merely existing (ahem, Sarah Palin) in a way that I think is generally bad for women. And Hot N Cold is one of those things. The opening lines are “you change your mind like a girl changes clothes/ and you PMS like a bitch I would know,” and I can’t even tell you how many things are wrong with that. Wait, yes I can. You’re saying that changing your mind and being emotional are both inherently female qualities and that both are bad. Thanks, Gloria Steinem. I also had a real problem with her cover of Like a Virgin at the VMAs where she changed the words to “Like a Jonas/ With your promise ring next to mine” because, come on, who rags on the Jonas Brothers like that? They’re just a bunch of sexually nonthreatening teenage boys trying to preserve their virginity, when did that become a crime?

Still. I rock out to Hot N Cold all the time, but it makes me want to beat myself for liking it.

I emailed Cousin Erin today saying that I had found her christmas present  already- I don’t know why someone thought it would be a good idea to make a Katy Perry doll unless, like Erin, they were planning on getting two of them so they could force the dolls to make out while playing I Kissed A Girl in the background.

Bubble Wrap Calendar! Holy God! I want this so hard!

This was my easily my favorite state, and one of the few places I can see myself going back to. Not that I didn’t love everywhere we went (though, wait, I didn’t– I have nothing good to say about Nebraska), but while I was glad to see everything that we did, each day was another brick in my I’m Never Leaving New York wall. I missed it so much it was physically palpable, as pathetic as that was. In high school, when we found ourselves in a typically boring setting (grocery store, CVS) Jordan and I sometimes played a game where spent the whole trip acting like That Guy Who’s Reminded of His Exgirlfriend By Everything He Sees (“no, it’s nothing… it’s just… she loved lentil beans. She ordered lentil soup once at Friendly’s and when I asked her how it was she said it was ‘alright….’ I just wish she were here to see these lentils. They would have really made her happy.”) and I eventually started feeling like that about New York everywhere we went. When a woman randomly came up to my mom and I in San Francisco and gave us directions that we hadn’t asked her for all I could think about was how that never would have happened in New York and that I couldn’t wait to get back there. I had the same cliched “Nice place to visit, but…” reaction to every place we saw. After about three hours in Wyoming, though, I was emailing my boss about something for work and tacked on “…not that any of this matters, though, since I’m moving to Wyoming to compete in the Miss Frontier Days pageant and marry a cowboy.” She didn’t respond.

Cheyenne is covered in these big boots, each of which are decorated differently (this one is, I think, poker themed), like the apples that popped up all over NY that time or the mermaids that are in Virginia (VA beach? Norfolk?). We took this picture outside of the museum that’s devoted to Frontier Days, which we now know is a massive week-long rodeo and general hoedown in Cheyenne that’s visited by ten thousand people every year. This museum is pretty much the best advertising that they could have because afterwards my mom and I were like “Maybe next year we can come for the rodeo! How great would that be?” which is not a thought I’ve ever had before.

Know that that is, my friends? A surrey with a fringe on top. Rodgers and Hammerstein never lie!

The lobby of the museum houses the buggy collection, complete with creepy faceless dolls who are taking the long ride to nowhere:

And even Tom Selleck stopped by:

I’ve never really had trouble controlling my discretionary spending, but that was before I spent two weeks visiting about 18 different museum gift shops. I had a lot of trouble in the one for the Frontier Days museum and am now the proud owner of various things including a set of christmas ornaments featuring Santa riding a bucking bronco. I have a particularly difficult time when faced with their book sections, and can’t say no when I’m faced with tomes such as:

Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West.

I thought the fact that I was buying over $50 worth of useless crap would be enough of a distraction for the high school girl who rang me up (who mentioned to her coworker in passing that she had gone to high school 30 miles away from her house, which made me rethink my Wyoming relocation plans) but she zeroed in on this in a second. “I read this one, it’s SO good,” she told me. Which put me in kind of a weird place, because my instinct was to say “Oh, if you thought this was good, you should try Sin in the Second City, which is all about turn of the century whorehouses in Chicago” but that would have made me THAT GIRL, right? That Girl who trolls museum gift shops for books about hookers? Right? No one likes that girl.

After this, we went to a Cowgirl themed museum/ gift shop where we spent just as much time and money and where I found Meg’s birthday present. It’s going to take her awhile to grow into them and I don’t plan on making buying her consignment birthday presents a regular practice, but I couldn’t resist.

My #1 Rule of Meg Presents is that I won’t buy her anything that I wouldn’t wear myself, if it came in my size, but these guys took it another step (heyo!)- I covet these boots like you would not believe, to the point where I’m fairly sure I’m going to wind up buying myself a pair before ‘08 is out. This worries me a little since it means I’ll probably have to start wearing jeans, as I don’t approve of the Boot n Skirt look unless you’re at a theme party, but I’ll cross that bridge once I get to it.

via Jen!