Where have I been? I have been packaging cards. A. Lot. Of. Cards.

Followers of Stickers & Donuts know that I’ve been drawing books for a long time (remember this Bell Jar wallpaper)? Friends and family know I have been stacking books, and taking weird videos/pictures of them, for even longer (no links, too embarrassing). Many years ago, I painted some of the books on my shelves and gave them out to my family as notecard sets for Xmas. I printed these cards on my home printer (ugh!). It’s been years since then, and last summer when I was going through a rough patch a friend saw my old cards and encouraged me to make them look more professional and try to sell them. He thought it would be good for me to have a project to get my mind off other things. It was a lot of work, but he was right! After I got the cards how I wanted them, I started selling them in local book and stationary stores and then on Etsy. Anthropologie discovered me on Etsy (!!!) and my cards are currently being sold in Anthropologie stores!

Not only that, but I just discovered yesterday that my favorite local stationary store, Rock, Paper, Scissors, was featured in the April 2012 issue of Southern Living as one of the best stationary stores in the south (true!). In the blurb I get a mention as a “Virginia artist.” (As an MFA student in fiction writing, I never thought I’d be called an “artist” for my fiction paintings.)

You can buy (or look at!) an 8-pack of my cards featuring four different designs at Rock, Paper, Scissors on the downtown mall in Charlottesville, VA, at Anthropologie stores, or on Etsy.

Thanks for bearing with our absences. xo M

I finally did it, I made my own etsy site: booknotes.etsy.com. I’ve been drawing & painting pictures of books for years (in addition to reading and writing them), so I took my art and made them into little notecards that you can use or frame. As I say on my etsy site, both physical books and handwritten notes seem to be on the decline, but I think the preservation of both is important, and I like that their “memory” can be combined into a single object.

There are currently six different designs (all blank inside), which you can purchase singly or in a 6-pack. All designs are copies of my original paintings or drawings, some colored or edited digitally. If you own a stationary or bookstore give me a shout at: maria [at] stickersanddonuts.com or via my etsy site, and we can talk about wholesale pricing.

This is kind of a currently obsessed post in disguise… but since I’ve got road trips on the brain, I thought I’d unite under a single theme.

1. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. I loved this book, and I think it’s the perfect road trip novel for several reasons: it’s long enough to last you, it is told in smaller snippets (diary entries and short-story-like “interviews”) so picking it up and putting it down is not a problem, and it’s about really road-trippy people. (Check out James Wood’s NY Times Review.)
2. Pack This! I love Knock Knock, and I actually use my Pack This! notepad before almost every trip.
3. Half Pink Hair. I feel like you should either start a road trip or return from a road trip with a new look. I really want this half-pink hair but know that I will mess it up. (Anyone died their hair pink? Half pink? Tips?!) (Found this on Suicide Blonde’s tumblr.)
4. Globetrotter Necklace. I enjoy wearing thematically appropriate jewelry.
5. Bright Backpack! I often carry way too many items for a purse alone, so I just got this Jansport backpack and I am thrilled with it. It’s high quality, has perfect pockets, fits my macbook pro, feels good on the shoulders, and is all of my favorite colors (except blue, but that’s okay).
6. Postcards from Penguin. Maybe you are wondering why I start trips with postcards. This is because I have to address them and stamp them before I leave or else I will never actually send any. (Besides, most local postcards use very ugly fonts.) But the real reason I’m posting these particular postcards is because I AM SO EXCITED that they are coming to America (…in October… but you can pre-order them!… Penguin always puts everything out in the UK first…). There are 100 Book Covers in ONE box of postcards! (We are pretty in love with book covers here at Stickers & Donuts!)

Note: Background for this post from Mike Swanson’s Blog’s Wallpaper collection.

Two Penguin mentions in one week? Maria and Tricia, you both are BATTY.

Clockwise from top: The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, Of the Abuse of Words by John Locke, A Confession by Leo Tolstoy, On Friendship by Michel de Montaigne, The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, Where I Lived and What I Lived For by Henry Thoreau, On Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, Days of Reading by Marcel Proust

Last week, I was at The Book Cellar, passing time before a friendly dinner/ukulele and banjo lessons, and I noticed a glorious rack of Penguin Classics.  The Penguin Classics Great Ideas series features ageless works that have inspired minds and provoked change.  Although the collection includes ideas of questionable integrity (…The Communist Manifesto is not exactly exemplary…), the series heralds ideas of great influence.

There are currently four series of Great Ideas.  Each series is composed of twenty works, and has a striking color scheme.  My favorite aspect of Great Ideas is the brilliant typography and cover designs (that angled square in the cover to Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus is THE BOULDER THAT SISYPHUS HAS TO PUSH UP THE MOUNTAIN – !!!).  This might be a superficial declaration, but book covers this beautiful make even the most frighteningly heavy books exciting to read.

PS: HAPPY WEEKEND!

1. LADY GAGA’S BAD ROMANCE. I know, I know — and yet, she does write her own songs, and she has her own sense of style (the wheelchair/invalid dance in Paparazzi?!), and you can play this song over and over if you’re caught in a bad roma-roma-ramma… etc. Oh, and the monster dance moves? Go ahead, watch the video now. I’m breaking out my monster claws at the next party.

2. PRESIDENTIAL FLASHCARDS. Go to the “One Spot” at Target where everything is a dollar, and get this set of Presidential Flashcards with a prez portrait on the front and fun facts on the back. I spent yesterday memorizing all of the presidents in order. I’m sure that will come in handy… never. (Whose the dude with the cool hairdo in the pic above? ANSWER BELOW.)

3. BIG LOVE. Rumor has it, the fourth season just began, but, as an HBO-less human, behind on the times, I just finished the first season ($26). There is a voyeuristic thrill in watching this rendition of modern-day polygamy, which, according to this one time I flipped on Oprah, still happens outside of crazy, fundamentalist-Mormon compounds. Oh, and it stars Gennifer Goodwin as one of the wives, and Amanda Seyfried as one of the daughters.

4. PENGUIN DELUXE CLASSICS. The covers of the Penguin Deluxe Classics almost make we want to read books I loath, such as Ethan Frome, which has its very best heartbreaking/hysterical scene immortalized on the cover. Many of the covers instead immortalize scenes in comic strips, including Chris Ware’s (you should know him) cover for Candide:

5. TRUE BLOOD (watch the trailer!). So, I was totally not on the vampire bandwagon until I watched the first season ($45 on amazon.com, but I think it’s on sale at Target!) of True Blood (the second season didn’t do it for me, so I didn’t finish it, but I still recommend the first) about a near-future world in which Vampires have come out of hiding to attempt to peacefully co-exist with humans (and have hot, naked HBO-sex with them). Sookie (Oscar winner Anna Paquin! Love her!), a minding-reading southerner, falls in love with Vampire-Bill (hot, but pale). Best of all, it’s produced — with some episodes written and directed by — Alan Ball, Oscar-winning writer of American Beauty. Finally, the title sequence runs like a music video about redemption and sin (read about it on Wikipedia):

ANSWER: William Henry Harrison! If you can’t remember anything about him, don’t worry, he was only president for thirty-two days!

A good year. Some favorites…

1. Favorite short story: “My First Fee” by Isaac Babel
Links: The Complete Works of Isaac Babel on amazon.com ($30)
Text of Isaac Babel’s (great) short story “Guy de Maupassant”

2. Favorite album: Up From Below by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Links: Up From Below on amazon.com ($10)
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros on MySpace
Song “40 Day Dream” Live (youtube)
Official Video for “Home” (youtube)

3. Second favorite short story: “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff
Links: T. Coraghessan Boyle reads “Bullet in the Brain” on the New Yorker Fiction podcast
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff, amazon.com ($11)

4. Favorite gift: Aerial 7 Matador headphones
Link: Aerial 7 Matador Headphones, amazon.com ($50)

5. Favorite novel: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Links: Lolita by Nabokov, amazon.com ($11)
Great Review of the Novel from The Second Pass

6. Second favorite novel: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Link: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, amazon.com ($10)

7. Favorite TV Show: In Treatment
Links: In Treatment Season 1 Trailer (youtube)
HBO’s Offical In Treatment Site
In Treatment: The Complete First Season, amazon.com ($55)
In Treatment- The Complete Second Season, amazon.com (for pre-order, $55)

8. Favorite actor: James Dean
Link: S&D Guide to becoming A Rebel, Without a Cause (including trailer, etc)

9. Favorite song: Skinny Love by Bon Iver
Links: Bon Iver playing Skinny Love live (youtube)
For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver, amazon.com ($13)

10. Favorite historical figure: Napoleon (thanks, PBS)
Link: Empires: Napoleon DVD, PBS Documentary w/David McCullough, amazon.com ($17)

11. Favorite (newish) movie: Rachel Getting Married
Links: Rachel Getting Married Trailer (youtube)
Rachel Getting Married DVD, amazon.com $17

I read E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman for a class this year. It is a kind of disturbing and thrilling fairy tale that I had previously only known through Freud’s interpretation in The Uncanny. While reading it, I faintly recalled that this was the same man who authored The Nutcracker, which also always seemed disturbing, what with that seven-headed mouse and all.

So, I went in my xmas-book-archives and found the fabulous edition shown above. I am obsessed, and anyone who has come to my house in the past three weeks has been forced to look at it. It is a translation of the original text, not some dumbed-down and docile version “for children.” Not only that, but it is illustrated by Maurice Sendak, author of the children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are! He apparently drew the illustrations for the book to accompany the set and costume design for a ballet production.

Detailed illustrations occur throughout the text:

“She is overwhelmed with growing up and has no knowledge of what this means. I think the ballet is all about a strong emotional sense of something happening to her, which is bewildering.” — Maurice Sendak, NPR interview

There are also full-page illustrations, or, best of all, full-page spreads:

During the adventure to the magical capital, there are four beautiful full-page spreads in a row (oh, and a wild thing peeks his head out in one of them!):

Anyway, now that I’ve shown you all that, here’s the bad news: it’s out of print. Here’s the good news: it looks like there are still some old copies for sale on amazon.com in paperback and hardcover.

1. Chicken Skittles from MUJI, £5.95 (football is to soccer as skittles is to bowling)

2. The Africa swimsuit by We Are Handsome, $163

3. Miso Soup Ring by SouZou Creations on etsy, $8.50

4. Candy Bar Bracelet from Dylan’s Candy Bar, $50 (Wish 1.5: That Dylan offered international shipping.)

5. MacBook Pro 17-inch from Apple, $2500 (although a plain old MacBook is much more realistic!)

6. Colour In Dress by Michiel Schuurman, €250

7. Bubble Wrap Calendar from Perpetual Kid, $20

8. ASAP/OMFG Totable from Knock Knock,$10.50

9. PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God from Barnes & Noble, $14.94

10. Kron by Kron Shoes (Amirah also requests the ability to walk properly in heels!)

1. HIC Mrs. Anderson’s Dash Pinch and Smidgen Measuring Spoons from Amazon, $7.50

2. Mammal flash card from the paper flea market, $0.50 (anything from this store)

3. Derek Jarman’s Garden from Amazon, £9.60

4. Bordello Shoes from Babygirl Boutique, $62

5. Dr. Strangelove poster from VinMag, £6

6. City of Glass: Doug Coupland’s Vancouver from Amazon, $17.90

7. Vegan with a Vengeance from Amazon, $12.20

8. Mod Wall Art: Wallter Retro Teardrops from inmod, $42 (gorgeous!)

9. Punk Gardener T-Shirt from DJTees, £18

10. Aarnio Eero Bubble Chair, search here to find an authorized dealer

1. Catcher in the Rye book cover poster from AllPosters, $30 (But you can choose from over 600 other book cover posters here.)

2. TOMS Borges Cordones , $79

3. LOMO Diana F+ CMYK camera kit from Fred Flare, $99

4. Greetings from the Ocean’s Sweaty Face: 100 McSweeney’s Postcards from Amazon, $14

5. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov from Amazon, $23 (Nabokov’s notecards for a novel he never completed. You can punch them out of the book and organize them yourself!)

6. Fleet Foxes from Amazon, $13 (Maria requests it on vinyl, because she wants to get Tricia’s portable record player and play Fleet Foxes on it.)

7. Osborn Design Sneakers, $60-130

8. Buckyballs, $30

9. Cardboard Moose bust from Perpetual Kid, $48 (large)

10. Collocation NO. 14 (NATURE) Print (left and right panels) from 20×200, $20+ (photos by Mickey Smith)