BAP'S Tyrannical Book-Handling Rules.

I am notoriously anal about books. I've almost entirely stopped lending my books out to friends because I feel truly bad about subjecting people to my list of rules and restrictions, which include the likes of these :

• NEVER EVER leave the book lying face down, to the point where the spine bends or cracks. How would you like it if your backbone got bent over itself, you barbarian
•  NO dog-earing. I expect you to either use bookmarks or just go with your memory.
• When you're reading paperbacks, DO NOT flip the book so far open that you bend the spine. It is entirely possible, and not as difficult as it sounds, to hold the book open at an angle that doesn't damage the spine while you read. This rule is negotiable when hardcovers are involved.
• DO NOT take the book with you into the bathroom or shower.
• DO NOT bend, fold, or crease the covers or pages.
• DO NOT eat or drink anywhere near the book. The only acceptable stains are when the pages turn brown with age, not coffee.
• DO NOT take the book with you to school, work, or generally anywhere outside your house where you can drop it, misplace it, leave it behind or otherwise lose it.
• Highlighting, scribbling, underlining, or defacing the book in any way is punishable by a slow, torturous death. Or maybe a smack upside the head. It all depends on my mood, really.

Yeah I don't know how I still have friends after all that, either.

I should probably explain that all these apply only to books that I own. If the books are yours, or if they are a gift from me (and I do love buying books for people ; all future nephews and nieces can look forward to a book for every birthday and Christmas and THEY WILL LIKE IT dammit) you're free to do with them as you please ; drop them in the toilet, lose them at the train station, smear the pages with foodstuff.

Most people I know subscribe to the life philosophy of letting the copies of your favourite books show exactly how much you love them. Torn, creased, folded, stained, falling apart and held together with tape and glue, or the pages bloated because of the one time the book fell in the toilet bowl or when you had to run across the campus parking lot in the middle of a thunderstorm or something. Books that show signs of life, of having been loved and handled and shared and passed around, bearing dozens of fingerprints and coffee-and-chocolate stains and smell like that one brand of perfume you used almost every day when you were sixteen. That's fine. That's great. Whatever makes you happiest, whatever way in which you choose to cherish your reading material, go for it. I say this with no trace of sarcasm.

My own books, on the other hand, look almost exactly as they did the day I got them. Spines intact, no creases or lines on the covers ; still in mostly pristine condition. The only sign that the copies are not actually brand new can be seen in the yellows and browns of old paper. Visitors look at my bookshelf and proclaim that "it looks like no one has ever read these before!", which to me is like a compliment wrapped in a taco of insult. I have read every book on  my shelf at least twice, and many of them are copies I have owned since early childhood. I love those books. I treasure them and I remember how and where I acquired every single one of them. They are my babies. I even keep the books I don't particularly like and will probably never read again because I'm afraid of making them sad if I give them away (I have issues, I'm dealing with them okay).

And I genuinely resent the idea that I (and other nitpicky pieces of shit like me) am somehow less of a book lover because I am too obsessed with keeping my tomes in mint condition to actually enjoy the words, the content. I resent the idea that I am some sort of an incarnation of a demon librarian because I won't allow my books the liberty of relaxing just a little.

Don't judge a book by its cover, but also don't judge a reader by the way they read. Their...readeringship. Methods. Thing. You know what I'm getting at. I still cringe to the very core of my being when I see someone holding a paperback so wide open that the spine cracks and I can see where the pages are already coming loose. But do I see them as barbaric uncouth uncultured Philistines who have no idea how to treat literature and thus are not worthy of the joys and wonders of the printed word? Yes!

NO.

NO I mean no.

No of course not.

How you read and keep your books really have no bearing on the kind of the reader you are. It took me a while to learn this, and to stop judging people who felt no life-defining need to handle their books like the tree pulpy equivalent of cut glass dinnerware. These days, as long as we can sit down over a cup of over-expensive pearl milk tea and totally fangirl over Neil Gaiman's brain and leather jacket collection, we're good. Just keep your unrefined paws off my copy of Good Omens. 


This is post is brought to you by Tom Hiddleston, who thinks reading is totally sexy, especially if you put on a suit for the occasion.

And just a smidgen of lens flare. Ooooh.

p.s All that being said, I do have a thing for old books. Especially the kind you can find in university libraries, with musty pages and cloth-bound covers and check-out cards with return dates from the 1950s stamped on them, and handwritten notes scribbled into the margins. I sometimes go to the library just to sniff them, like a creeper.

"I Want The Whole Damn World, To Come Dance With Me"

Three Four things that made me happy this week.


Cheese-stuffed naan.
I think cheese-stuffed naan has officially crowned itself as my Ultimate Comfort Food for cold rainy days, when you've spent 11 hours on campus (plus the one hour on the stupid bus, navigating the stupid evening traffic in stupid Kuala Lumpur) and you're just beyond tired and your mind is half-blank and you're functioning on autopilot until you can get to your room to shower and then sink into bed with your laptop on your tummy. For those kind of days. Cheese naan is just so soft and warm and fluffy and savoury, and it feeds your soul while also filling your belly. Dunk it in hot dhal and mint chutney, wash it all down with iced coffee. HEAVEN. And it only costs you RM 4.50. I really love the world and the things in it, sometimes.


This song.



I'm not the biggest fan of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, but I have been playing this song on a loop  all week. It's almost - but only almost - the sonic equivalent of cheese naan. It makes me want to run down the street and hug strangers. The accompanying music video is also quite a treat (my favourite bit is the ballet troupe right at the end).


The Hobbit is on my required reading list for the semester.



OH YEAH.
This will make going to the cinema in December to watch The Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey all the more awesome.
And as if that wasn't cool enough, my Children's Literature class will also be tackling Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone. You totally wish you were me right now, oh yes you do.


Tom Hiddleston. 
I thoroughly enjoyed The Avengers, and left the cinema with a suitably unhealthy level of affection for the entire cast, but Tom Hiddleston (who played the wonderfully slimy, petty, tragic, conflicted and whiny Loki) did not ping on my radar until earlier this week. A happy accident of Internetting revealed to me that the man graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Classics, speaks roughly six or seven languages, recites poetry in the most loin-meltingly luscious voice ever, runs the dorkiest Twitter feed I've ever seen, is pretty darned good at impressions (his Owen Wilson and velociraptor imitations are particularly noteworthy). He is not conventionally good-looking by any stretch of the imagination, but he pretty much seems like the sweetest, kindest, most generous, gracious and humble actor and human being in existence, and he deserves ALL the love, ALL the movie scripts, and ALL the awards. I'll just be sitting here, watching him with my chin in my hands and stars in my eyes.
And then there is his laugh.



Hiddleston, it took me a while to get here. But you and me? This love will last forever. I can totally tell.

Can I just add that he also has the most spectacular taste in music? His daily Twitter song recommendations are the stuff dreams are made of.

And why yes, I do totally judge people based on their music taste. Isn't that how it works?

But I Haven't Finished Doing Nothing Yet!

The new semester starts tomorrow, which is also the first day of my FINAL YEAR EVER as an undergraduate. I won't actually graduate until 2014, but it's a pretty daunting thought nevertheless. I don't feel any wiser, or more adult, or more anything that a third year student should probably be at this point in my academic career.

Having said that, I'm pretty excited for my courses this year (Shakespeare, it's been too long, you asshole) but not terribly excited about the idea of having to wake up in the morning and leave the house and move my body to go to places and do things. Ugh. With the exception of the three weeks I spent doing actual work for actual money, the rest of my holidays were a blur of snacking, forgetting to shower, sleeping through breakfast, watching lots and lots of TV and generally exercising 0% self-discipline.

Fortunately, I have stumbled across a wonderful new meme, featuring Coach Taylor of Friday Night Lights fame dispensing academic advice and wisdom in uppercase yellow font. Academic Coach Taylor is here to verbally (memefully?) smack the bullshit right out of you.

See, I can tell this is going to be pretty effective when it comes to dealing with my procrastination, because I am reading everything on that Tumblr page in Kyle Chandler's assertive straight-talking I-refuse-to-take-any-crap-from-your-punk-ass-self voice, and I already feel guilty for sitting here and stuffing my face with chapati while I blog. So guilty. And I don't even have any actual work to do yet! If Academic Coach Taylor can't cure me of the habit of starting essays the day before the deadline, then no one can.

Happy back to school to us poor bastards! And always remember :

Oh Coach Taylor you are such an inspiring man. I still don't know if I want to bang you, or if I want you to be my dad.

Jams For Your Ears, From Me To You.

I think I must be getting old - keeping up with new bands and albums is nowhere near as much of a priority as it was four or five years ago. Back then, I'd reserve at least 2 hours every day after school to trawl through my favourite music blogs, sampling every mp3 in sight and making mental notes to check out at least five to ten new records per week. Today, when I am faced with a link that proclaims "BAND X'S NEW ALBUM IS STREAMING ON X SITE RIGHT NOW OMG SO EXCITING GO CHECK IT OUT!!!!", my response is more along the lines of "oh man do I have to?". And then I go listen to a mixed CD someone made for me six years ago, and wallow in my tragic unhipness.

So this isn't really going to be a favourite albums of 2012 (so far) sort of post, because heaven knows I haven't listened to nearly enough new music this year to qualify making a list like that. Instead, this is a quick and dirty round up of all the wonderful sounds that have managed to make room for themselves in my music library over the last 8 months. I apologize in advance for the lack of sonic diversity (seriously, my kink for white-guy-plays-guitar-and-sometimes-banjo is painfully obvious) but hopefully someone finds something they like here. Have at it!


1. Various things by Tyler Lyle




This guy's music is utterly lush and summery and a wonderfully bittersweet, and EVERYONE should do themselves a favour and listen to him. This song in particular is probably my most-played jam of the year, because FLUTES. Just when you think you're familiar with the standard cutesy indie folk instrumentation of today (ukulele, glockenspiel, horns), Tyler Lyle breaks out the FLUTES, and you were totally not expecting that, were you? As odd as it may sound to have flutes in the mix, the addition is just right ; subtle yet catchy and strangely haunting. FLUTES, man. Tyler Lyle 1 - Everybody Else  0. While you're getting to know Mr. Lyle, do also grab his name-your-price set of live recordings, and don't forget his gorgeous set at Fuel/Friends Chapel Sessions.


2. Roll The Bones  by Shakey Graves



Banjo. Hand claps. That should be enough to sell this to anyone, unless of course banjo and hand claps aren't really your thing (in which case I simply must ask you WHO ATE YOUR SOUL??). Shakey Graves, or Alejandro Rose-Garcia as he is known to his mother, makes wonderfully minimalistic fuzzy folk songs, complete with requisite lyrical imagery of roads and dust and alcohol and death, both literal and figurative. There's something very lonely and yearning about these songs, and I'm quite partial to listening to his stuff in the dead of night when everyone else in the house is asleep.


3. Every Kingdom by Ben Howard



So I don't understand the waves of adoration everyone seems to have for this Ed Sheeran guy at the moment, and I cannot get into that song of his that's on the radio all the time, because of that one lyric about how someone's face or whatever is "crumbling like pastries". I understand that is a simile, but seriously, what is that? It bugs me so much, and the line itself is so jarring that I can't get into the rest of the song. But it's okay, because instead of Ed Sheeran, I have the also-British and very young Ben Howard, who does not compare people's facial expressions to crumbling pastries in his songs. You ruined it Ed Sheeran. Blew it. It's gone. I'm with Ben. Ben's music is smart and lovely and much more dynamic and rich and velvety. His similes are also much classier and do not involve comparisons with disintegrating baked goods. What the hell Ed Sheeran.


4. The entire discography of Joe Pug


How have I not heard of this guy before? How does he not have a much wider and way more devoted fanbase? How has he not yet won ALL THE AWARDS EVER? In a musical landscape full to the brim of young men wielding acoustic guitars and singing poetic folksy lyrics and oozing Americana from their pores, Joe Pug is a godsend. Joe Pug is the real deal. Joe Pug is the boss. Joe Pug is a revelation. Of course, I am nowhere close to actually being American so you probably shouldn't consider me an authority on American folk music. But just trust me on this one. Go listen to everything this man has done to date (that's one EP and three studio albums) and then come back and thank me. Go on. There are the Joe Pug worshippers, and then there are the people who simply haven't heard him yet.


5. The Creek Drank The Cradle by Iron & Wine



Yes, this album is almost a decade old, but I was always intimidated by what I thought was Sam Beam's ENORMOUS body of work, and somehow or other I just decided to leave The Creek Drank The Cradle on the sidelines for a few years. Imagine the delight and frustration when I finally gave it a spin and realized that this album contains my favourite flavour of Iron & Wine - fuzzy, minimal, and often utterly miserable. I couldn't stop replaying Upward Over The Mountain for about three days, and some extensive googling revealed that this track is quite popular in the fan video-making community for the Supernatural fandom. Cue all the fraternal Winchester feelings.


6. Dead Man's Bones by Dead Man's Bones


Like seemingly every other sentient being on the planet, I too, have the hots for Ryan Gosling. So why did I never bother checking out his musical project until very recently? Probably because I was afraid it would be utterly crap, or entirely self-indulgent. Or worse, painfully underwhelming and forgettable. Well, it's not. It's not the stuff of musical genius, but it's not shit either. And it's actually more than palatable. My favourite thing about it all though, is the very smart utilization of a children's choir in nearly every track, which adds a deliciously creepy atmosphere to the record. Well played, Baby Goose. I still want to bang you after all that.


7. I Predict A Graceful Expulsion by Cold Specks


Cold Specks is the stage name for Al Spx, a Canadian songwriter based in London. I am not entirely sure how to classify her music (the "doom soul" tag gets thrown around a lot) but I can tell you that everything about her and what she does is beyond gorgeous, and don't even get me started on that voice. I want that voice. It is magnificent and soulful and rough around the edges, and seems to go right through you, into your bones. What a lady, and what a hell of a debut album you guys.


8. A Larum and Kentucky Pill  by Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit



Johnny Flynn. Songwriter. Model. Poet. Shakespearean actor. Professional pretty person. He is a frequent collaborator with Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling (he even dated some of them in the past, or maybe just Laura, I'm not too sure) and a member of the general folky revival among 20-something musicians in London. While the Mumfords' brand of folk is very much influenced by bluegrass and Steinbeck and the great American Midwest, Johnny Flynn's folk is stubbornly, undeniably English. A lot of that probably has to do with his accent, but there is also the very Shakespearean tone of his (gorgeous, wonderful, literary analysis-worthy) lyrics. I should also probably add that as much as I love Mumford & Sons, this guy is a hell of a better songwriter. To call him the boy version of Laura Marling is perhaps too simplistic and even offensive to the insane talent of both people, but if you enjoy Laura Marling's stuff, you'll definitely find something to like about Johnny Flynn. (As an aside, the 2:40 minute mark of the track embedded above is probably one of my favourite instrumental breakdowns of forever).


9. The Lion's Roar by First Aid Kit



I adore these girls to pieces. Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Soderberg have voices that sound like they came from women far older than their years, and songs that sound like they were written by people who lived lives much longer than theirs. They are shameless about the influences that American folk and country music has had on them, and it shows in every song, in the best way possible. Their second album is a monumental improvement on their debut record (which was already pretty damn great), and they are barely into their 20s. The most beautiful songs they will ever write are still in the future, and I hope they stick around for a long, long, long time. Seriously Sweden, you can stop seducing me now. I've been yours since the first time I ever had those meatballs at Ikea.


10. Hadestown by Anais Mitchell



This is another case of "where the hell has this been my entire life?". Hadestown is a concept album in the style of a "folk opera" based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus loses the love of his life to Death, and must travel to the underworld to reclaim her soul. Is this not the most brilliant thing? The album features a "cast" of vocalists who all play different parts in the myth, e.g Justin Vernon as Orpheus, Ani DiFranco as Persephone and Greg Brown as Hades. It is a swooping feat of 20 songs, dozens of voice parts, styles, and genres, and it's frankly staggering that all of it actually comes together and works as brilliantly as it does. This record is stunning both in concept and execution, and everyone else should just quit or something. Just quit.


Bonus Scottishness

The Speyside Sessions by A Bunch Of Scottish People Including That Redheaded Guy Who Was On Grey's Anatomy For A Bit



This is seriously the best thing ever - a collection of Scottish folk songs recorded by actual Scottish musicians who may or may not have been pretty drunk the whole time. The Speyside musicians recommend that you settle down and listen to these jams with a good whiskey by your side. Aye!