A Tense Subjunctive

Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page (Bookshop Sessions)

Allison — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:59:52 +0000

I’ve had sort of a love affair with Mumford & Sons for a while now; but, discovering this video today has been my favorite internet discovery in quite some time.

British men playing folk instruments in a bookshop.

Does it get better? Obviously not.

Stereotyping Readers by Their Favorite Authors

Allison — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:34:24 +0000

Lauren Leto, the genius behind Texts from Last Night and Mom’s Messages, has done it again with the hilarious series “Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author.”

I laughed so hard, I nearly peed myself while reading this list. Was that too much information? Probably.

Here are my favorites, and the ones that hit a little too close to home.

J.D. Salinger

Kids who don’t fit in (duh).

Stephanie Meyer

People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv <3 <3.

J.K. Rowling

Smart geeks.

Jack Kerouac

Umphrey’s McGee fans.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Girls who didn’t get enough drama when they were younger.

Jonathan Safran Foer

30somethings who were cool when they were 20something.

Chuck Klosterman

Boys who don’t read.

Chuck Palahniuk

Boys who can’t read.

Leo Tolstoy

Guys I want to date.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Guys I want to sleep with. (The difference between the two Russian authors lies in the fact that I think the Underground Man is sexier than Pierre Buzukhov).

Ayn Rand

Workaholics seeking validation.

Jane Austen (or Bronte Sisters)

Girls who made out with other girls in college when they were going through a “phase”.

Anne Rice

People who don’t use conditioner in their hair.

Edgar Allan Poe

Men who live in their mother’s basements. Or goth seventh graders.

Ernest Hemingway

Men who own cottages.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

People who get ARM mortgages.

Cool bookshelves you can actually buy

Allison — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:21:48 +0000

I have no idea where to put a bookshelf in the shape of an infinity symbol or the United States.

I begun a multi-hour journey looking for bookshelves that were a) not so conceptual you’d need to wear a beret while stocking it with the works of Derrida and b) actually available for purchase.

Behold, my findings. When I build my book fort, that last one is totally going in it.

Made by: Graham & Green
Cost: Single- 42 pounds, Double 75 pounds
Buy them here

Made by: The Hub Belfast
Cost: 175 pounds
Buy them here

Made by: Office Depot
Cost: $70
Buy it here

Cost: $150
Made by: Ifurn Furniture
Buy it here

Greetings and Salutations!

Allison — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:05:53 +0000

Books are my life.

I’m not saying this in the way that other people throw around “music is my life” or “art is my life”– the way that implies life wouldn’t be worth living without these things.

While this is true, I mean this in the very real and not at all figurative sense. You see, I work in publishing. If people didn’t write books (even really crappy ones) I wouldn’t get to do necessary things like eat or make minimum payments on the student loans on which I spent getting a degree in reading books.

Last night as I reserved a copy of the newest Chicago Manual of Style from my favorite local bookstore, I realized it was the first time I’d given my phone number out to anyone other than the Chinese takeout place in ages. I left the store with $50 in signed books that I had no intention of buying five minutes before seeing they were signed copies.

I have a problem: a very serious, very nerdy problem from which I have no hope of recovering. Case in point, I just used a semi-colon in the same sentence in which I refused to end a sentence with a preposition.

Born of my fantastic nerdiness is A Tense Subjunctive, a place for all things bookworms love.

The subjunctive tense is used to “express wishes, commands, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or statements that are contrary to fact at present.” Thank you, Wikipedia. Could there be a better way of describing all the wonderfully beautiful things about life, love and language? Probably not.

And after all, nothing stresses out language students like the subjunctive tense. If I were you? If I was you? Does anyone even know?

My friend suggested I name the blog “ColonP,” after our propensity to use the emoticon entirely too much. It was so clever! It was brilliant! I was in love! It turned out a quick Google search of “colon p” revealed more information about colon polyps and urinary problems than about punctuation.

For fear of misinterpretation, I quickly made an executive decision to rule out all formal usages of the word “colon,” semi or otherwise.

Welcome to A Tense Subjunctive, dearest nerds and bibliophiles. This page is ugly right now, but it will get better. I promise.