The Hunger Games Haiku

List of things I’m looking forward to this summer, not in any particular order:

1) In-N-Out (animal style cheeseburger)
2) Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival (I love you Bay Area)
3) California Academy of Sciences (4-story rain forest and Steinhart Aquarium)
4) Garage sales (I love you Bay Area)
5) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (release date August 24!)

Saving my thoughts on The Hunger Games trilogy for another day, suffice to say, I LOVE the series. Amazing on so many levels. I haven’t been so excited for the release of a book since the last Harry Potter.

I’ve decided to try writing a haiku every day, a form I haven’t written since I learned about it in middle school. Not only was I rusty, but I was stumped for inspiration until…I was rereading Catching Fire (Book Two) and in this read, came down squarely in the Peeta Camp. Who doesn’t like Peeta? He’s such a good guy. And nice guys shouldn’t finish last!

So I wrote a character haiku series for Peeta from The Hunger Games as a warm-up for the haiku exercise. Other than keeping to the 5-7-5, I played fast and loose with the haiku guidelines (even by haiku in English standards). No season word. Ok, here it goes, Ode to Peeta:

Peeta the bread boy
Not like pita pocket bread,
but Peter the rock.

Which makes me think of
The “Like a rock” commercial
For Chevrolet trucks.¹

Heaves heavy objects
Icing skills are camouflage
Plus, smooth talker too.

Decorating cakes
Is just like painting face
Katniss is in awe.

¹ See: Bob Seger’s “Like A Rock” ad campaign for Chevy’s pick-up trucks in the ’90s

Stacked Books, Deux

Nina Katchadourian, Shark Journal

I love book art, so I was super excited to find American mixed media artist Nina Katchadourian’s The Sorted Books Project. She goes to collections of both private and public libraries, browses the titles, and pulls a set of books down and arranges them so they can be read in order, top to bottom.

In her own words, Nina writes:

Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies.

The project began in 1993, and yes, it runs along similar lines as Jane Mount’s Ideal Bookshelves series. I have no idea when Jane Mount began her project (I think after). Sorted Books focuses primarily on the titles, while the Ideal Bookshelves emphasize the art of the book spine.

Nina Katchadourian, Shark Journal

See: The Sorted Books Project

Current Desktop, Pretzels

Little Doodles are scribbles by professional illustrator Kate Wilson. I love pretty much everything she draws, but especially the drawings for foodies. (See: anatomy of a sundae, beans, and herbs.) Her fashion art is awesome too – she’s designed for Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Her prints are available at her etsy shop.

And speaking of food, I recently signed up for an account at One Tsp, an online recipe storage box. Until I found One Tsp, I’ve been handwriting recipes into a lined, hardcover Moleskine. I’m still going to keep up with that, but it’s nice having an organized system (tags) by which I can quickly locate recipes.

Anyway, although there is room for improvement, One Tsp is fantastically easy to use. So far I’ve only uploaded a few recipes I found online (you know, in case the blogs ever get defunct or whatever), but the other day I wrote in a family recipe (orange marmalade chicken) and uploaded a picture to go with it.

Good Reads

There are a lot of elements that make up good fiction. I think most of us can probably agree on the big blocks of that make up, but then it all comes down to personal preference. What tips the scale between acknowledging something as good writing, admiring it in a purely technical sense, and becoming emotionally gripped in the story, savoring it for rereads, being impacted by it. It could just be one part, one line, or the entire thing. Whatever it is that elevates that piece of writing, separates it from equally talented work – that block is specific to the reader. That’s what I think, anyway.

Covering Up Books

This came to me through my Google Reader, which I find myself relying on more and more each day. Graphics designer and illustrator Icoeye has come up with some brightly colored book jacket and matching bookmark designs as a way to “expand a book’s space.”

His concepts/illustrations are clean and straightforward, and cute in a clever way. Simply put, they’re literal and fun. I love them, especially the Sherlock Holme’s and pipe bookmark set.

On the subject of book jackets, it breaks into two directions for me. I like book jackets, but only passingly because the truth is, they don’t actually register for me. Other than a few notable ones (whoever does the covers for Andrew Clements books, and Roald Dahl’s), they’re not something I dwell on, or remember, unless they’re hideously ugly. By “ugly” I mean, the cover makes me depressed/uncomfortable/induces eye rolling.

(Incidentally, I do not like the Twilight series covers, and it is very unfortunate that many YA novels since have followed the trend of some ambiguous object drifting aimlessly/languishing on a black background.)

(Actually, there is one book illustrator I know of. John Howe did the covers for Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb, which I am only aware of because a good friend insisted on that I buy the series with the Howe covers.)

On the other hand, I like the idea of having some uniformity with books; it appeals to the part of me that regularly feels compelled to launch week-long cleaning blitzes. Plus, it would be a way of getting rid of the unattractive book covers.

See: the rest of the collection!
See Also: Faceout Books

Breakfast

Breakfast in Shanghai, before I left: homemade French vanilla cake, strawberries, chocolate crackers.

Current Desktop, Jane Mount

New year, new desktop! This time, featuring one of the shelves from the Ideal Bookshelf series by Jane Mount. The painting I chose is her children’s literature bookshelf, which has titles like Winnie The Pooh, Pat the Bunny, Goodnight, Moon, and The Little Prince.

What Jane has to say about it:

For a while, I’ve been documenting people’s bookshelves as a form of portraiture; you can actually learn a lot about folks by their books’ covers. Now, I’m working on a series of “ideal” bookshelves: sets of favorites—mine or someone else’s—amalgamated in a picture, even if they don’t usually live on shelves anywhere near each other.

Lunchtime Sweethearts Pouch

When I need to take a break from writing (or, at the moment, grad school applications), I clean my room. After an exhausting three days of cleaning, I am now officially tired of cleaning my room. It took me two days to clean the bookshelf, and another day to clean the dresser and drawers under my bed. For the most part this means going through tons of paper (I saved everything: movie ticket stubs, airplane boarding passes, homework from 6th grade, my earliest attempts at writing stories, stickers, sketches + drawings, scribbles from class, notes to myself, post-its, magazines, newspaper articles, etc.) and recycling it. This afternoon I took everything out and vacuumed the drawers.

Since I’ve been putting off tackling the closet, and I wasn’t in the mood to cook/bake, I decided to do something crafty.

It’s not done yet, but I’m calling this the Lunchtime Sweethearts Pouch. Put all your ziplocked cookies, pasta salad in tupperware, bento boxes, etc. in it.

Gingerbears

The Christmas celebration finally arrived at our household. We opened gifts before dinner and made gingerbread bears after. I got books for Christmas, of course: Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott from my sister, Cindi; Harlen Coben’s newest Myron Bolitar book, Long Lost, from my brother Paul; Dad gave me Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Sadly, I did not reclaim the title of Best Gift-Giver this Christmas; that’s a tie between Cindi and Paul. Which means I have lost out two years running now :( But! I definitely won Best Single Gift, which was a 36-page Snapfish photo album for the parents. To say it was a massive hit is an understatement. That’s right, siblings! Still got it.

Anyway, Cindi brought back a gingerbread making kit. Yes, it comes from Crayola (of all companies! I had no idea Crayola made such things, but yay!), and it had two sets of directions (for adults and kids) on the back. I’ve never made any sort of gingerbread before, but I love it – the spice of cinnamon, the soft chewy goodness. Generally speaking, I love all Christmas food, especially peppermint/mint.

After we squeezed vanilla frosting out of a bag, we painted the gingerbears with the Crayola provided edible watercolors.

The eyes are all wonky because I stuck the sugar eyes onto the frosting not knowing or noticing that they came in different sizes. We made six gingerbears, and I did not pair up the eyes right for a single gingerbear.

Now, the box says we can make 8-12 bears. But they only provided us with 10 eyeballs. What is up with that, Crayola? Did you think the kids couldn’t do the math? Even I can do the math! Anyway, so instead of having a sightless bear, we decided to make cyclops bears. Then I realized the cyclops eyes in fact resemble bear noses and mouth. Okay, in a very vague way, but still.

We’re saving the gingerbears for when we watch Up! I am an open-minded person, and will, at the very least, admit to exceptions and such – but there are three issues on which there is no compromise. If you’ve know me, you know what they are. One of them is Pixar vs Everything Else, or more specifically, Pixar vs Dreamworks.

Red Bean Pastries

Around the time I was tired of working on applications, and my sister was sick of studying for her Princeton finals, we both started craving for these red bean pastries that Mom used to make when we lived in California. I remember juggling the hot golden pastry ball from fingertips to fingertips, blowing on them, holding them outside the front door and waving it around in the air, and still burning my tongue because I could never wait to eat them.

The recipe, transcribed into my Moleskine for recipes. (Being a recipe book, my handwriting is much neater than what it usually is.)

Adapted from this recipe, which made flat pastries, but the ones Mom always made were round golden balls, so that’s what we went with. Instead of sandwiching the red bean paste (which we made, instead of buying a pre-made pack as recommended by the recipe), we just folded up the edges into a ball.