Couches are my favorite. I like to put my feet up and balance my laptop on my lap. And then balance my coffee cup on the cushion beside me or on the arm of the couch, which drives people insane because they’re sure I will spill it, though I never do. I like having a lot of things balancing all around me while I write. I also listen to music. Often, a certain record or band becomes the sound track of a book, though I never really plan it.
16.Gender Blenderby Blake Nelson
-“It was the second time that day that a strange dog had helped Tom out.”
-“Jeff came strutting down the steps wearing a new-looking Brooklyn Beats sweatshirt, a white visor, and bright yellow Etnies skate shoes.”
17.The Human Stainby Philip Roth
So I skimmed the last ten pages, sue me!
In our culture, I am considered a child. I do not feel like a child. I look at myself in the mirror and I want to lead a revolution. I want to tear my society down to the ground and start over. But maybe every seventeen-year-old thinks that.
I am in no way ready to get back to school. I would like a few more days to smoke in hookah bars and sneak in to Appleseed Cast concerts through side doors and grow my leather jacket collection and reread Blake Nelson’s Girl for the fourth time.
So, obviously I’m a bit obsessed with the 90s at the moment. My current read (Everyone Loves Our Town, a history of grunge) is ace; so absorbing that I am almost believing I’m in early-90s Seattle. It’s a disappointment every time I look up and see noughties Leicester around me, I can tell you. As a result, I’ve been collecting things to maintain my delusion that I’m a flannel-wearing teenager in America circa 1992 just that bit longer.
In my ‘to read’ pile I have Girl by Blake Nelson, a novel about a teenager discovering alternative culture in Portland, Oregon in the early 90s. I read it years ago (having bought it for about 10p in a charity shop in South Africa) and loved it because it reminded me of My So-Called Life. The recent publication of a sequel, Dream School, has prompted me to do some re-reading. Also in the stack are the memoir by Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh, Rat Girl (published as Paradoxical Undressing in the UK), and Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life.
You don’t see those moments coming, you don’t know it when they’re happening, but latter, as the plainness of life being to show itself you realize how important they were. You understand who really changed you, who made you what you are.
In the days when you were hopelessly poor I just liked you more.
