November / December update

The last movie I watched...
The Princess Switch (Netflix)

As much as I love my parents, one of my favourite times of the season is when they disappear off on holiday for a few days and leave me home alone to indulge in one of my guilty pleasures: cheesy Netflix teen rom-coms.  The Princess Switch actually ticks my brother's guilty pleasure box too, in that it doubles as a made-for-TV cheesy Christmas movie; hopefully he won't be disappointed that I watched it without him.  If you haven't seen the trailer for The Princess Switch, the premise is basically The Parent Trap, except instead of separated twin sisters, the protagonists (both played by Vanessa Hudgens, star of wholesome teen Disney movie High School Musical and less-than-wholesome teen exploitation movie Spring Breakers) are mere doppelgangers - one is a baker from Chicago, the other a Duchess days away from marrying a prince.  The set-up for the switch is quick and clumsy - baker Stacy's whole back-story is dropped on us in the first scene, nobody in the kingdom knows what the Duchess looks like because she's "camera-shy" - but the film still has its charm, containing all the sweetness of an old-fashioned Disney princess movie.  A lot of the story was predictable, but it took me a while to work out just how the romantic pairings were going to fall and how the fairytale ending would play out. 

On my record player...
The 1975 - Give Yourself A Try/Love It If We Made It (2018, Dirty Hit)

The 1975's third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, came out this week.  I haven't yet been able to decide whether I like it or not, although I suspect it'll grow on me, as my copies haven't arrived yet, but the special edition of their Q Magazine cover with a 7" of the first two songs they released from the album has arrived so that's currently on my timetable.  If you haven't heard them yet (where have you been?!), Give Yourself A Try is a noisy, fun powerpop song about Matty Healy's inner turmoil, and Love It If We Made It is a shouty protest song about the global turmoil surrounding him.  Basically, he's managed to cover every subject in the modern world on 2 sides of vinyl, which is pretty impressive.


My November 2018 playlist:

1. thank u, next - Ariana Grande
2. Corrine - Black Honey
3. World In My Eyes - Depeche Mode
4. Only Shallow - My Bloody Valentine
5. Here And Now - Ride
6. Palisade - Mineral
7. Your Silent Face - New Order
8. Herjazz - Huggy Bear
9. The Drowners - Suede
10. Brass In Pocket - Suede
11. Da Da Da - Elastica
12. Sincerity Is Scary - The 1975
13. Having A Blast - Green Day
14. The Ghost In You - The Psychedelic Furs
15. A Change Of Heart - The 1975
16. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme - The 1975

This week in my journal:

My theme this week is sort of a 'teenagers gone wild' thing - there's some freakishly-dressed young people appearing on a 90s talk show, Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord getting high outside in her pyjamas, and the goth girl skating in platform shoes (which I'm very envious of). 


I usually mention the last book I read on here too, but I've now spent about 4 months wading through The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and still have 100 pages to go, so I'm not ready to talk about that yet.  However, instead I can offer...

The last book I listened to...
The Letters Of Sylvia Plath (BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week, 2018)

I'm a huge fan of Sylvia Plath's letters, so I was delighted when Radio 4 did a second instalment of her words as Book Of The Week last week, this time focusing on the later period of her life when she had finished studying and met Ted Hughes (her student years and first breakdown were covered earlier in the year).  Her letters during this period are mostly upbeat and loving: she has a supportive husband, her poems are being accepted for publication and she becomes a mother.  Towards the end of the week, however, things take a dark turn when she uncovers Ted's adultery - the anguish in the letter that opens Friday's episode is gut-wrenching.  She simultaneously is lost and feels that she can't go on, and has days when she realises she must pick herself up and start a new life without him.  The last letter is from right before her suicide aged 30 and is heartbreaking.  I know I've blogged about this before, but I wish she'd carried on and was able to see how much of a hero she is to the women who followed her. 

September shopping - so far

Here's how my current obsessions are manifesting themselves:

My vibe at the moment is very 90s mixed with modern internet goth.  I've started browsing through Wish and adding things to my basket throughout the month and then clicking 'Purchase' on the last day, which means that I get little surprise parcels from myself at the end of the following month.  The set of pins in the picture to the right are a Wish purchase, and so is the crystal necklace.  I'm disappointed with the necklace - it has a chip where the silver coating has come off and the 'crystal' part has kind of melted into the silver next to it which shows that it's definitely just plastic, plus it's much more translucent than I expected it to be.  However, it still reflects the light and I'll still wear it regularly.  I'm much happier with the pin set, I was worried that they would be really poorly made and illegible but they look just like the photo.  My favourites are the ghost and the 'Ugh.' heart which reminded me of The 1975's song of the same name.  I'm going to put the banner with "Sure. Fine. Whatever." on something I wear at work to point to when I can't be bothered answering someone's silly question. 
I found the Empire Records patch at Pie In The Sky in Edinburgh which has a wide range of patches, pins, band t-shirts and other cool stuff.  A lot of it is really pricey (they had some great Jarvis Cocker pins which were £8.50; other pins and patches in there are up to £20 each) but this one was £2.99 and will fit right in on my denim jacket which I've been embellishing all summer.  I was surprised to find it there because Empire Records is a totally underrated movie. 
They're all sitting on a checked background courtesy of some 'cosy' leggings I bought in Primark.  Their approach this season is apparently 'all tartan everything' - I'm not a fan of patterned trousers so I avoided those and went for the leggings instead, which I can wear under a skirt or short dress to keep warm this winter.

As everyone who knows me knows, I can't resist an armful of books, and I picked these ones up on two trips to my hometown charity shops.  Sylvia Plath is one of my favourite people of the 20th century; I've read The Bell Jar multiple times, along with her Letters Home and some of her poems, but I've never come across a copy of her Journals until now.  As much as I recognise her poetic genius, it's her letters and journal entries that enthral me the most - I don't believe there has been anyone who has written about the day-to-day experience of being a young woman as well as Plath did. 
I picked up the Oasis book to fulfil the '2 for 99p' offer that allowed me to take home the vintage copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover.  I like Oasis but they aren't my favourite of the Britpop set (more on Britpop later); I get the feeling that the best book about them would be one that the Gallagher brothers took turns writing so that it had the maximum amount of petty sibling drama, but we'll see. 
Persepolis is different to my usual reading material in that it's a graphic novel but I've heard so many interesting things about it over the years that it feels like something I should get round to reading.  I'm also looking forward to devouring the Jim Morrison story in No One Here Gets Out Alive, which I've passed over so many times but finally decided to purchase.
Finally, I can't resist old Penguin copies of classic books, even if they're falling apart, which is why I came home with a 60s edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover.  I do already have a copy as part of a DH Lawrence compendium, but this paperback is going to be much easier to handle as long as I don't lose any pages!  I also picked up a 70s copy of Franny & Zooey in the hope that I enjoy it more than The Catcher In The Rye, which I thought was a little overrated.

Now on to my favourite band of the summer, Elastica.  Even though they were active from approx. 1993-2001, I've been obsessively devouring any Elastica material I can find over the last few months.  They are the most underrated and overlooked of the Britpop 'big five' despite being the coolest of the bunch - there weren't and still aren't enough bands with three cool girls up front.  I'm currently collecting their discography on vinyl so pictured are this month's acquisitions: the 7" of their single 'Connection' and a promotional soundsheet of 'Vaseline'.  I think the soundsheet is particularly cool - it's a US item similar to the flexidiscs that used to occasionally come free with magazines over here but pressed onto a sheet of acetate rather than being disc-shaped.  I've listened to the first Elastica album so many times this summer that I feel like I know every single second of it so it's cool to have found pressings of two of my favourite songs from it. 

To jump briefly back to clothes and from one set of iconic ladies to another, I picked up this blazer in Primark yesterday which, like most of the clothes in there at the moment, reminds me of the girls in 'Heathers'.  I took it into the dressing room expecting it to look terrible on me but instead I fell in love with it and will be wearing it to work all the time from now on.  I now have a conundrum though: do I go to work on October 31st dressed as Wednesday Addams or Veronica Sawyer??

Back to the music and the pile of CDs I've bought this month.  See what I mean when I said I had a 90s vibe going on at the moment? 
At the start of the summer I began reading the book 'The Last Party' by John Harris, which gives a history of the Britpop era and how it contributed to the election of Tony Blair.  The book covers Oasis, Blur, Suede and Elastica, which occasional mentions of Pulp, Menswear and a few other stars of the time.  I've been listening to Suede since I was about 6, when 'She's In Fashion' appeared amongst the boybands on a compilation I got free with a magazine.  Their self-titled debut album is what I've been listening to on the rare occasions that I'm not playing the Elastica album and this month I felt ready to graduate to their 1994 follow-up, Dog Man Star.  Unfortunately, the only song on it that really resonates with me is the beautiful 'The Wild Ones', so I probably won't spend much time with it before moving on to the next album in their discography.  (A Suede side-note that I have to mention - their singer Brett Anderson wrote the most wonderful coming-of-age memoir, Coal Black Mornings, this year and I got to meet him at the Edinburgh Book Festival last month. It was magical.) 
I'm almost ready to graduate to the 2nd Elastica album too, but not before listening to their 6 Track EP which came out just before.  They changed their line-up a lot between the two so I'm interested to see how the music sounds.  I have, however, listened to Weekend Swingers, which is a bootleg I picked up on eBay.  It includes a 1994 festival performance, 2 of their Peel Sessions and some other demos and live bits and pieces.  I was worried that the quality was going to be bad but thankfully the sound is really good and so is the live show that makes up the first half of the disc - I wish I could time travel to see them play!
It was while I was browsing the Elastica section of eBay that I came across the soundtrack to Gregg Araki's 'Nowhere', a film I've written about before on the blog that is one of my favourite obscure movies.  I had no idea that both Elastica and Suede had songs on the soundtrack and I ordered it straight away - I wish finding a DVD of the film was that easy. 
I've also finally managed to pick up the first two Oasis albums.  Even though I said they weren't my favourite of the Britpop bands, it's undeniable that they had some really good tunes, most of which are on these two CDs.  I picked up Pulp's 2001 album 'We Love Life' out of love for Jarvis Cocker, Mazzy Star's 'She Hangs Brightly' out of love for their song 'Fade Into You', Bis' 'Vs. The DIY Corps' EP out of love for Scottish indie and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's self-titled just because I've heard they're good.  Reviews to come someday when I've had time to listen to them!

A couple of magazines since I've been in Edinburgh: Bust is a feminist-leaning magazine that I found very charming and interesting when I first bought it, so I always have a look to see if there are any interesting features when I see a copy.  This month's cover star plays the lead in 'Crazy Rich Asians' which I'm planning on seeing soon, plus there are pieces on cults, Michelle Wolf and Tumblr culture which are all things I'm interested in.  

I also bought Dazed because M.I.A is on the cover.  I saw her documentary Matangi/Maya/M.I.A yesterday and found it incredible so now I'm on a mission to read everything I can about it. 

One final music item to finish off: I haven't talked about Depeche Mode in this post but I still love and adore them as much as I did at the start of the year.  I've collected most of their vinyl now so I don't spend as much time in the Depeche Mode part of eBay as I used to but I had a look the other day and caught a copy of Black Celebration on cassette about to end with 0 bids.  I put a bid in expecting someone else to be watching it, but nobody was and I won.  As luck would have it, the same seller had also just listed the Suede album which I also ended up winning.  I keep a cassette Walkman in my desk at work to listen to when I have nobody in the office to speak to - or when I need to drown out the people who are talking so I can concentrate - so both of these will be joining the collection in my drawer.  

My favourite books

I love to spend time curled up with a good book and try to find time to read, whether on long train journeys, outside on sunny days, or before I go to sleep. I often pick up cheap books second-hand and frequent the library which means that I acquire books faster than I'm able to read them, so I have a huge list that I'm yet to finish or even open, but before I start writing about those I want to share a few of the books that I've loved.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath 

The Bell Jar is one of those essential feminist books, read by TV smart girls like Rory Gilmore and Daria, that I'm glad I checked out of the University library. It's the only novel written by Sylvia Plath, telling the autobiographical story of a girl who spends a summer working at a magazine in New York and then struggles with her mental health upon her return home, ending up in a mental institution following a suicide attempt. Plath's poetry is great but The Bell Jar is her true masterpiece, giving voice to all the concerns that plague young women in quotes such as this:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

The Bell Jar truly is a must-read book and one that I find myself picking up again and again. For anyone who has already read it, I'd recommend delving into the journals and letters that Plath wrote in 1953, the period of her life that the book covers, for a version of events that hasn't been fictionalised - I found it fascinating to read how much of the story was fact.



Carrie, Stephen King 
I chose to read this book as my personal study novel in English class at school, which meant that I read it over and over for a few months and picked it apart, but I still came away thinking it was a great book. It follows a misfit teen with an overly religious mother who doesn't equip Carrie with the knowledge she needs to survive her adolescence, and as a result she's bullied horribly by her peers. However, they don't bargain on Carrie having telekinetic powers which she uses to get back at those who have wronged her. There are a lot of bad guys in this book, and they meet a satisfyingly bloody end. I'm not a big sci-fi or horror reader so this is the only one of King's books that I've read but it strikes the perfect balance for me between teen girl story and weird stuff. 

How To Be A Woman, Caitlin Moran 
I've been interested in feminism for a long time and I picked up a signed copy (dedicated to a woman called Johanna) of this book in a charity shop not long before I finished University. I was excited to read it, knowing that it was a well-received book and having seen the pilot of Caitlin and her sister Caz's show 'Raised By Wolves', but I didn't expect it to be as good as it is. I had to stop reading it on the train because it was so laugh-out-loud funny, and I was sad to be reaching the end. It covers pretty much every aspect of life as a woman in a hilarious and relatable way, I wish I'd had it in my life sooner. After reading it I devoured just about every other book, interview and TV show that she's put out and I think she's fabulous.

The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins
Having never read Harry Potter or Twilight I wasn't sure whether The Hunger Games was going to be right for me but after hearing my friends and the wider world raving about it I decided to give it a try when I came across a copy right as I was looking for a book to take on a trip. Once I started reading I didn't want to stop; the book has so many cliffhangers that I needed to know what was going to happen to Katniss next. I thought Catching Fire was also great but wasn't a fan of Mockingjay, although after enjoying the movie version I think I'll have to read it again. I doubt there's anyone left to recommend The Hunger Games to but I was surprised by how quickly it became one of my favourites.


Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
I picked up this book in a charity shop in August 2014 because I was familiar with the title (there's a Motion City Soundtrack song with the same name) and it sounded interesting, and I read it at the end of the year. It tells the before and after stories of a model who is badly disfigured in a car accident, losing her boyfriend and model friend Evie and gaining instead the fabulous Brandi Alexander. The book follows a non-linear narrative, flashing back and forward like the flash of a camera, and every few chapters reveals another twist which connects the story in a way I never expected. Often when I read on transport I have to stop after a couple of chapters but I was glued to this book and had to find out what the whole story was. It's not as well-known as Palahniuk's Fight Club but it's a great novel which has made me want to read more of his work.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
Having seen this book quoted and referenced endlessly online it was at the top of my reading list when I finally got a copy in 2012, and I rushed to get it read before the movie left the cinemas. I was won over almost straight away with its references to The Smiths and its charming characters. I've read it a couple of times, although not for a while, and it gets better each time. I also love the movie version, in fact it's probably the best adaptation I can think of, but the book is still king for me.






The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
If you've seen the movie adaptation of this book you'll be familiar with this tragic story, but the movie, though beautiful, isn't nearly as good as the book is. The story is of five strange teenage sisters who commit suicide, as told by the local boys who were mystified by them. The prose conjures up the same hazy glow as Sofia Coppola's screen version but doesn't focus quite as much on Lux (Kirsten Dunst's character) and is so filled with beautiful imagery that I just wanted to go and live inside that world for a while, no matter how sad I knew the ending was going to be.