Post the Seventh - Coffee Talk

I know this is very meta of me, but I’d like to discuss two important points:

1. The titles of my posts
2. The newly added “Quote of the Post” (see right ->)

First: For those who are well-versed in Children’s literature, or just have a vast amount of useless trivia stashed away in your heads, you’ll have recognized the title of each entry as a reference to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Each title in the series begins Book the (insert serial number here), followed by the title of the book. For example, book number one is called Book the First: The Bad Beginning.

Anyway, the reason I decided to pay homage to Lemony Snicket is two-fold: I had just finished reading The Bad Beginning when I started this blog, and I thought the title so clever and catchy I decided to echo it in my writing, AND I think Lemony Snicket’s work is absolutely brilliant. What I like specifically about his writing is the way the narrator interacts with both the audience and the characters of the stories, completely destroying the fourth wall that normally exists between the speaker and the audience or the characters. I also like how he interacts with his own writing; when he uses a word that children are unlikely to have come across before, or, if they have, have never been explained the meaning, he defines it in a way that pertains to the story. What is brilliant about this is that he does it without being condescending to the audience. For example, after using the word "briskly", he writes “The word 'briskly' here means 'quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.'” This tone implies that the reader already knows one definition, but he’s just clarifying for the particular instance in the text. It’s really quite clever, in my non-expert opinion.

Secondly: I’ve added a gadget on the right where I’ll put a different quote from a favourite book every time I add a new post. This is partly for my benefit; I always read books with a pen so I can underline quotes that I think are particularly brilliant or well-written or important or beautiful. I have this dream of taking the time to go through all my books, write down everything I’ve underlined on separate index cards, complete with page numbers and bibliographic information, and filing them away in a quote box. That way, whenever I need a direct quote from an author and I can’t remember exactly where it is in the book, I can pull out my quote box and locate it quickly. (Yes, I am a nerd. Clearly.)

ANYWAY, in an effort to both document some of these quotes and share some of my most favourite words in my most favourite sentences with some of my most favourite people, I thought I’d share a new quote every week. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, and maybe you’ll be inspired to read a book or an article that you hadn’t heard of or been interested in before.

Right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop off campus. I needed to pick up a book so I bused to the nearest Chapters to wander the shelves for a bit and pick up John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines. There’s little else better to do on a rainy, gray day than spend an hour perusing the shelves at a bookstore or library. Whenever I meander through the book stacks, I feel this sense of anticipation and excitement, knowing that there are thousands and millions of worlds that I have access to through the pages of an unopened book, and whatever one I pick has the potential to change my life. Woah.

So I picked up the book and decided to add a maple latte to the mix, then spend some time on my online school work while sipping merrily away. Unfortunately, the internet at this location is sporadic at best, so I decided to work on this entry instead. Coffee, I find, is best shared over conversation with others, and since I know a total of 10 people out of 2 million in the GVR and none of them are here, I figured I’d talk to myself, with the eventuality of sharing it with you.

I must go now and pick up some bread. A classmate, Thea, is coming over for supper tonight and I am going to feed her omelets. One cannot have omelets without toast, however, and I don’t have any bread. So I’m off to find a bakery and then back to campus to do laundry before my night class.

A bientot (with appropriate accents that I'm too lazy to put in),

Jillz

PS - those of you who were concerned about the functionality of my raincoat before: good news! My coat seems to be back in working order, as I’ve worn it all day and I’m dry as a piece of my room mate’s toast.