Frame your Favourite Piece of Art.

Books are meant to be read and to be worn down to imperfection. It fills them with character and it embelishes its well loved pages. The books on my own shelf are colour co-ordinated I must admit. Each of them are shown off in their own individually beautiful way.

As people, we take pride in showing off our memories, our loved ones and our own history to the world through picture frames and photo albums. Why not give the same pride to our favourite works of literary art? Sounds odd, I know. Until I found the book lovers book frame from The Gift Corner website. I know it seems redundant to some, but imagine a row a books in their dusty little frames telling the world in their proud little way how they're loved. This is just one of the things I can't resist, the perfect gift for anyone so proud of their books that they've colour co-ordinated them all along their bookshelves. So proud that they embellish them as one would a cherished old memory.

Just thought I'd share it with you.

Find it at www.thegiftcorner.com.au.

Stay Peachy.

Mark it, with Iszle.

Ok, so I have a litte weakness for all things pretty. But proper pretty bookmarks have never truly been my thing. Whist the corners of my beautiful pages have never been bent into utter ruin, I do have a tendency to find peculiar items to mark my page. Countless receipts, gum wrappers and bus cards that find their way onto my bedside table fall victim to my laziness in getting out of bed to find a bookmark and are therefore squashed between the pages of my most recent book. Admittedly, I have been lazy enough to stuff hundreds of dollars worth of birthday money into a book I didn't open again until months later, simply because it was the closest thing I could find. That was a good day.

The reason I bring up this little weakness of mine is simply to show you the most adorable little must-haves that happen to be the only bookmarks I would purchase, should it come to such measures. The scrabble tile bookmark/paperclip by Iszle can be found on my most recent internet love, made it.com.au. For $6.50 each these little tiles will brighten up any book and add a little snaz to your collections (yes I just made up a word).

Find it, on www.madeit.com.au

Other things I found on Madeit.com.au:

SWEET TOOF Journals (follow this link)

"Dear" Journal / Notebook by Anrol Designs (follow this link)

Stay Peachy.

Clothbound Classics: by Penguin

Who doesn't love a good Penguin Classic?

The world owes Penguin Publishing a massive kiss and cuddle for their adorkable editions to the Clothbound Classics range. In my opinion, Penguin not only provides the most insightful bundles of classical literature, but they also consistently coat them in matching covers to add class and a little colorful order to everyone's shelf.

The 29-book set includes the divine storytelling of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Homer and many more. Each hardback cover was uniquely designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith who continuously designs masterpiece covers for a range of Penguin novels, here's a few to drool over..

Penguin's Clothbund Classic's range found at the Penguin Books Website.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Series featured on the Penguin Books Website.

Penguin Poems for Love, selected by Laura Barber. Found on the Penguin Books Website.

The Penguin Books of Irish Poetry, found at the Penguin Books Website.

The Sherlock Holmes Collection by Conan Doyle, found at the Penguin Books Website.

The Great Food Collection, by various authors found at the Penguin Books Website.

Each of these is also featured on the Coralie Bickford-Smith website among many others at cb-smith.com

Enjoy Lovelies.

Stay Peachy.

Vicarious Readings of Summer

When I was little, I would spend my summers huddled away in the back room of my house organizing every book and magazine I could get my little hands on into a neat and tidy library in our book shelf. I knew every book we had and should anyone wish to borrow a book from the shelf I made sure it went back into my tidy little order. How controlling I was. Nowadays, my summer book fetish has dwindled down over the years to a list of books and magazines I desired to get my hands on, in hopes of sitting somewhere huddled in the sun - pretending I could tan - and reading vicariously about the lives of such interesting characters.

I must tell you, I am a slow reader. Normally these lists - while intended to occupy just my summer break - end up being hoarded to next years list alongside a fresh batch of new books. This year's list has been gathered from all aspects of my life ranging from; recommendations from literature teachers, to books I picked up for the sake of buying a book for such a cheap price. Some of them even surprise myself, but I find the most interesting thing to read is a situation completely foreign to me, an experience I have never known. The only way I find to do that is to pick the books airing away from Jodi Picoult and Jane Austen, and towards the fiction writing of twisted minds. So without further delay, I give you my Vicarious Readings of Summer 2011...

♥ Pretties - Scott Westerfield

♥ The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

♥ Perfume - Patrick Suskind

♥ The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson

♥ Far To Go - Alison Pick

♥ Sing You Home - Jodi Picoult

Stay Peachy.

Smith Journal: Man's Answer to Frankie.

I pride myself in being an avid reader of Frankie Magazine. What's not to love? Endless stories about real people with uniquely inspiring lives, creatively designed trinkets discovered from the depths of the world wide web, and most importantly a perspective of the world from every quirky angle. Proud to be different. So how excited was I to find out frankie press were releasing an equally as quirksome journal designed to share the uniquely intriguing elements of our world in one simple magazine? So excited that I ordered the first issue of Smith Journal asap...

Admittedly, this magazine is targeted for men, but I was intrigued and finally impressed with the not-too-shabby first edition of the magazine. It is everything I love in a good magazine. A little taste of word-play always goes down smooth with me and my favorite article by far has to be Jo Walkers 'chew the fat', a guide to everyday's nautical slang and the history of it all. Call me a nerd, but this is exactly the quirky types of conversation I love to add randomly to everyday life. Ever know why they're called hookers? Want to know what the hell chock-a-block really means? I'm assuming we all know what they mean, but try explaining it to someone who's lived in a cave the past century.

Smith has impressed me, but can they keep it up? I think they've got a good shot. I dare any man to pick up this journal and put it down without a hint of inspiration or wisdom attained, even for a moment. I dare them to pick it up and acknowledge the immense amount of substance behind each and every story. We all know you men have just been jealous of our ability as women to pick up a Frankie magazine and read it till days end. And I know you knowledgeable, insightful men out there are just a little bit pleased and delighted at this new bi-annual read.

Let it charm you, it won't disappoint.

http://www.smithjournal.com.au/

Stay Peachy.

An Author's Craft.

Literary minds, creatively obsessed dreamers. The inner workings of an author don’t really thread commonly among the best of them, do they? Each is a unique mind, unique in their perceptions of life, their purpose for words and their expression of thoughts. They’re quite intriguing if you ask me. The connection between a writer and their work is so much more than that of a reader. Sure the appreciation and understanding may be there, but an author injects their unique spirit amongst their characters and paints each detail with an ambition to express even an utterance of their deepest insights. The greatest of them are so beloved because they create a world filled with unexpected details, much like life itself. I admittedly adore children’s literature, simple in the most obvious ways yet daringly complex upon deeper thought. Similarly I love the details concealed within more complex literature, the meanings are open-ended and the perceptions are endless. The construction of the best characters is almost flawlessly detailed to echo qualities of a unique individual, rarely following suit around a cliché. It’s almost as if the writer’s authority over the character’s moral decisions ceases at the creation of the character. Thereafter, the character’s judgement is governed by the details of their creation, or so all the best authors acknowledge.

Stay Peachy.