The Happiest Hour – 2/21/20

We’re back after a brief hiatus. We had to pack all of our books, move them, and unpack them. In the process, we learned we cannot buy any more books, because we have no more space to shelve them. We also learned that this probably won’t stop us.

Here’s what you missed this week:

Cheers,

EV

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The Happiest Hour – 4/13/19

Spring has sprung, dear readers. NYC is welcoming the warmer weather with some alarming flash rainstorms, which I discovered as I floated across Flatbush Avenue on my way home last night. Give us sun and outdoor patios for day drinking and reading.

Here’s what you missed this week:

  • National Library Week has just finished, and CNN shared a few tidbits about librarians, including (and I quote): “At the end of the 19th century, library work was considered to be too overwhelming for women, and in 1900, the Brooklyn Public Library Association proposed building ‘a seaside rest home for those who had broken down in library service.'” That Dewey Decimal system get ’em every time.
  • The New York Times put together an interactive sneak peek of books being published around the world this year. Come for the expansion of your literary horizons, stay for the flying hardcovers.
  • We fully support Emily Gould borrowing our Time Turner to go back a give dear Sylvie the review she deserved.
  • The biggest literary question of the year will be answered on Monday (and no, the question is not who’s the first person to die in GoT’s final season).

 

Cheers,

E

EVLeave a comment

The Club Hasn’t Heard From Sylvie In A While…

…you know. Sylvia Plath. Our fearless leader. Or, as we call her, that b*tch who tells us what to read and where to meet, but never shows up.

Let’s just say it’s been a while since we’ve had a meaningful conversation with her. We’ve seen plenty of posts about her latest collection of letters on the Bookstagram, receiving high praise (and rightfully so). But imagine our surprise when I opened my LitHub newsletter this afternoon to find this: “LIVING AT SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES’
‘POETICAL’ BOSTON ADDRESS,” an essay penned by a MFA student at my alma mater about unknowingly renting an apartment in the same building Sylvie and that other guy inhabited during their stint in Boston.

The building looks divine on Google Street View. It’s on a quiet, narrow street blocks from the Common, lined with charming bay windows that politely jut out over the sidewalk. You know you would be paying with your firstborn to live in a full-sized apartment in that building, as opposed to the shoebox the author of the piece lives in. While I read this article, I kept thinking: why didn’t Sylvie give us the heads-up first? If there is prime real estate for the taking, should she not have told the Club before letting someone with an astounding mastery of metaphors take up residence? It makes me sick (that she can write better than me, not that she scored a studio in Beacon Hill. You do what you have to do).

So not only did Sylvie auction off that adorable side table (it will always come back to the table), she denied us the perfect space where we could have put it. We’re going to need to talk to her. AM is planning the trip now.

–E

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The Club Checks In With Our HBIC

In our first post, I mentioned that Sylvia Plath runs The Drinking Club With A Reading Problem. How, you may ask? Excellent question. I don’t know.

The club email account is owned by her. Every missive regarding book choice and meeting date is signed by Sylvie. Yet none of us have met her, and she has never attended a meeting (much to MM’s disappointment). We know we should be more mad about it, but we’re not.

We have made contact, and she does promise to add something to our blog soon. In the meantime, here’s a short piece from a writer on his affinity with Sylvie’s work, and how winning her Franco Albini table at the March 2018 auction has deepened his connection.

All I’m saying: if she had told me she didn’t want the table, I would have happily taken it off her hands. It would have looked great in my living room.

 

–E

EVLeave a comment