Approaching the work with art and Tarot

#40days40books entry 35

Jessa Crispin's inspired guide The Creative Tarot is an amazing amalgam of the arcane, the artistic and the delightful. It is as it suggests, a guide to getting familiar with and reading tarot cards for fun and other kinds of profit.

Every card gets its own detailed description along with works from different disciplines to flesh out its definition. Crispin writes from a foundation of respect for work and understanding that the more you put in, the more likely you are to get out - so put in everything you can fit. This book is informative and fun to read. It is also filled with compassion and history and the recognition that there is only so far any one person can go on the coattails (or mystical meanings) of someone else.

Women, generally, tend to be brand loyal. At least, that is how marketing people put it. We find an author, a soap, a makeup line, a department store, and we want to stick with it - we want to find a routine that feeds our lives. You know. Like humans. *cough*

Crispin's book The Dead Ladies Project basically fell off the shelf into my hands, and so, brand loyalty was born. I discovered that she'd written a guide to tarot, and was frankly surprised and also a little dismayed on account of I'd moved out of that phase of my life. I mean, I have the requisite desk in a box that is gorgeous and all, but I'd never done a reading with it. This book was such fun to read, and it offers so much in the way of understanding that work is important and that work is hard that it was not possible to leave the deck on the shelf. So, now there's that fun party moment.

Which lead to probably the best party moment ever. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child released at the end of July (in time for Harry's birthday, natch) and the bookstore threw a party. Because listen, those midnight release parties were a big deal for bookstores back in the day. What fun would it be to live in a world where launch parties were less polite and more magical? Hm.

My roommate saw me reading the book, had me read her cards once and said, "So, you're okay with reading tarot for the Harry Potter party, right?" I love my roommate and so thoughlessly said yes.

And immediately started making notes in the margins of the book about which characters were more like what cards. For an English major, this is like the best honeymoon idea ever - seriously. Not every card got a character because I didn't spend enough time to do it, and will finish it, I think.

I made a very simple 3 card spread that was based on fan fiction themes. And I totally got to tell this little girl about how her summer camp experiences at winning a sport would help her be a good friend in the world. It was like watching someone read a whole book about friendship and volleyball all at once. It was the best. The absolute best.

Jessa Crispin has a newsletter where she writes about tarot, life and other tragedies, and also she is on twitter and has another book coming out in 2017. (but for real, if you like travel, please to read The Dead Ladies Project it is extraordinary)

#40days40books list

To read - June 14th

...in no particular order, and with the promise of a Cliff Approved Movie Idea next time (which I have to say in advance because it broke Lauren a lot)

Sometimes it is not easy to get to everything and also Orlando and also the Tony's and mostly Orlando and words inside about violence and masculinity and horror and tragedy and fear and love and love and love. So, these are the evidence that the world continues, that there is beauty and life in it. This is how I frame tomorrow.

The 10 Most Poetic Cities in the World by Julian Yanover on My Poetic Side

ALA Responds to Orlando days before their conference is scheduled to open there.

Canterbury Tales rebooted with refugee stories of tracking and detention by Alison Flood at The Guardian Books

Harry Potter and the Return of the Midnight Parties by Judith Rosen at PW

Black Girls Can Be Princesses Too, That's Why I Wrote My Books by Mylo Freeman at The Guardian Books

Varney's in Manhattan, KS is closing after 126 years - which is unfathomable to me, especially as we live in a country where there are so few cultural institutions that have survived our tumultuousness that the loss of every one is greeted with heartache.

Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop is crowd-funding moving to a bigger location to provide more services and accessibility. Props to them for focusing on what safety and service means in a different age.

Also, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith came out. This one. Read This One. As Cliff says: "To simply call this book amazing would be to do it a disservice. It's so much more than that. This book serves as a tribute to all of the young, black, marginalized girls, boys, men and women who've unjustly lost their lives and futures at the hands of a system that refused to see them. With this book Mychal demands that you see them."

Ashley Ford is the best.

Jenny Zhang is the best.

Why Hollywood Doesn't Tell More Stories For - and About - Girls at The Atlantic by Anya Jaremko-Greenwold - be warned, do not read this if you are in a place where you cannot get angry safely. Like not at the tea room. Or probably at work. Or if you are feeling a lot of things right now about the dangers of boys being boys and the gross inequality in positions of influence in entertainment and all of the work that it takes to de-colonize one's imagination. Like, basically, be careful reading this if you are a person who is alive right now and feeling things at all. But please don't forget to read it.

June 8th Reading

LGBTQ Lit for Children and Teens Comes of Age from Publishers Weekly:

When David Levithan wrote the YA novel Boy Meets Boy (Knopf, 2003), he faced a precedent in which books with LGBTQ characters were issue-based: focused on the angst of coming out in a hostile world. “We were tired of the misery plot, and wanted to re-write it,” Levithan recalls. “I wanted to write a romantic comedy.”Today, that “misery plot” is no longer the norm and 2016’s children’s books and YA novels depict a wider range of LGBTQ experiences and family dynamics. Increasingly, the central conflict has little to do with being gay.

Yes, please, let's talk about my favorite of the Harry Potter movies, yes! How Prisoner of Azkaban Changed the Harry Potter Franchise and Young Adult Cinema Forever by Kayti Burt at Den Of Geek

It is super important that Hermione Granger is Black. Jessica Pryde writes about why it is important to her over at Book Riot

Sweet Reads Book Store is open in Michigan. You guys. Yesterday it was books and bikes. Today it is books and candy.

Also books and movies and a massive imaginative mural. Because of course! The Bookshelf in Guelph, Ontario

BBC4 is making a documentary about Virago: International Publisher of Books by Women

Beyoncé is not shining a light on African literature - it's the other way around from Ainehi Edoro for Brittle Paper, part of The Guardian Books Network

Bear in mind that Beyoncé is not simply an individual but the meeting point of a set of global cultural forces. If African literature is circulating globally on the crest of this confluence of culture, power, and capital called Beyoncé, we have to be able to intelligently identify the form of the value it generates. But this value can’t be reduced to a case of Queen Bey knighting her African literary flavor of the month with a patch of her cultural estate.

In news from places where I've lived: The Bookloft in Great Barrington, MA is changing hands. Apparently the owners are going to retire, learn to fish and keep running their other bookstore down the highway in Stockbridge. Because booksellers truly do not retire.

The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas and Erin Stead looks AMAZING.