We’ve been reading this book for only slightly less time than we spent reading Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (about five years). (Which, by the way, we highly recommend!) We’re a massive John McPhee fan, not least because he’s always writing about the most random things, like one, particular tennis match (Levels of the Game); the Swiss Army (La Place de la Concorde Suisse); or the Pine Barrens (The Pine Barrens). Who wouldn’t love a writer who dedicates an entire book to the Swiss Army? He is honestly just the most perfect, precise writer—it’s like a class in how to write non-fiction.

The one problem with this book, which is a series of essays investigating Alaska, is that it was published in 1977, so many of the hot-button debates in the book have been resolved, which undermines some of the book’s tension. (Message to 1977: Nobody actually ends up moving the capital out of Juneau—the debate takes up a significant portion of the book.) But even in that case, there are just so many interesting little asides—about the history of various state capitals, in that case—that it’s worth reading just for the ancillary stuff. If you like Bill Bryson … it’s definitely not a perfect comparison; Bryson is way funnier, and McPhee is more reserved. But they’re both amazing. And like we said, if you’ve ever wondered how to write the perfect New Yorker essay, there’s few better places to start than here.

Coming Into the Country by John McPhee, $11.56

This is just to say that if you have not yet picked up a copy of Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist, you just simply must, and as soon as possible.

We know—we’re late on this, but bear with us. (Many books are even better long past their debut date! Especially when they have covers hand-silkscreened by the author!) We once worked at an honest-to-goodness fashion magazine, the kind with Ukrainian models and English photographers and weird, mime-style poses in unwearable clothing selected for the stylists by the advertisers. We love magazines, just love them, but we’ve found that there are lots we just can’t read anymore—a few mainstream fashion magazines in particular. We just cannot believe in any of it anymore: the underfed models, the insider-only columns, and the inevitable profiles of utterly undeserving and uninteresting socialites and heiresses. We’re not making any news here, but if they are what “fashion” is, we truly and absolutely want no part of it.

There are other examples of a counter-argument but our current favorite is The Sartorialist book. (Just like the second edition of the Nylon street-style book, hurrah, which we’re working on!) We like the website just fine, but it’s better to be able to rip out the photos and put them on your wall—as a reminder that it’s not just models and socialites who are eligible players in the art of looking stylish. (Or, for that matter, the white and the under-25, which is an equally reprehensible limitation.) It’s not the world we live in. It’s not a world we’d ever want to visit. The one we’d prefer is the one we see in Schuman’s book: multi-cultural not for the outmoded purposes of political correctness but just because it is true—because this is the world we inhabit. Multi-generational because people should not be forced into obsolescence after whatever age the obsolescence-cut-off seems to be— 25, 35, 50. We don’t even like to use the “multi-” words—the words of an unpleasant past being used to describe a document that exists, and is documenting, a newer and better world.

That’s part of what we love about this book: It’s democratic. Certainly, it’s democratic within a certain milieu—many of those pictured will know how to properly pronounce “Hussein Chalayan,” and Schuman himself has said he had trouble convincing certain, often underrepresented women to let him photograph them: “When I am shooting on the street older women and larger size women often say “no” to my request to shoot them. Actually, much more than any other category of people I shoot.” (That’s, obviously, not Schuman’s fault, but a natural—and pathetic, and regrettable—result of the condition described at top.) There are few pictures here from outside the world’s fashion capitals, none from Africa—which we have been covering more than any other place in the world lately, because we love it, or at least the parts of it we have been to. It’d be great to see this world through Schuman’s literal lens. Until he works on that project, though, we are well satisfied with this book. It gives us hope: that what makes us (read, in this case: “women”) interesting, even and especially in this style/fashion context, is not limited to our genetics and our age—that it is about our eye, our creativity, our time, our talent, our hard work. (This reminds us of that Ugly Betty scene where Betty’s is laboring over putting a look together for her prototype magazine, and Marc just swans in and does it for his own in a flash. Schuman, we’re sure, would be open to both approaches.) It’s not (necessarily) about class or clout. It’s the American dream, goddamn it, or one of the best examples the fashion world has had the good fortune to muster, and we, from the bottom of our hearts, salute it.

We struggle, with, we believe, many other people, with not throwing money away on things we don’t need and paying bills in a timely fashion. Personal finances is, one might say, a bit of a bete noire for us, if we understand the term correctly—almost to the extent that we switched our TV to SVU when Suze Orman showed up on Oprah today. However, we are persevering, and picking up all sorts of useful tips—like the fact that Suze’s new book is a free download (for the next week) on Oprah’s website.

We’re pretty sure we’re not the only ones who are completely freaked out—and ah! as we were writing that, Suze just said the biggest problem with finances was people freaking out!—by money these days. Strangely, Suze is calming us down a bit. (We are liking this tip where you pay off your highest-rate credit card first, and then pay that off, and then use both to pay off the next one, and so on.)

Anyway! Free download. We recommend it.

Ah! We just got home to discover the world’s most exciting delivery on our doorstep: an entire box of Sew U: Home Stretch books. We love both this book and the original, not least because the co-writer, Eviana Hartman, is one of the most awesome people we’ve ever met. We are convinced that by the time we work through this book we’ll be ready for our true destiny on Project Runway. The fact that this is a gross error in judgment should not dissuade anyone from enjoying this book.

Anyway, the contest: comment below with the item you’d most like to make on a sewing machine. (We want to make a purple coat just like this one on Carla Bruni.) We are actually going to choose a winner tonight and then present the winner by YouTube. Very exciting! Sort of exciting.

Sew U: Home Stretch, $17.15

This is so odd and full circle-y, but the exceptionally lovely Punky Style is giving away a copy of a book … that we wrote. All we could offer is the Word doc, so that is a better deal. Check out her post here—and above, we debut the new paperback cover. Please love it as much as we do.

So we’re writing this from the Johannesburg airport, which is shocking us by (a) charging an obscene amount for wi-fi and (b) for having a much better bookstore than JFK. (Why must the NYC airports be sooo crap, is what we’re wondering, as always.) We are, in all truth, reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, a book that has been kicking our ass more or less constantly for the last six months, but we will soon be taking up again Dark Star Safari, appropriate reading material for the African continent, as it’s about Paul Theroux’s trip from Cairo to Cape Town. (Why can’t we think of a concept for a travel book 10% as good? It’s making our brain explode.) Anyhow, if it’s not exactly what we’re reading at this very moment, it’s what we wish we were reading. What about everyone else?

Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, $14.35

Read rest of story…

Books! Our friend, Jen A. Miller, has a new one out, and if you’re thinking about visiting the Jersey Shore—and of course you should be—you will obviously need to pick up her new book: The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May. We talked to her about one of our favorite places on earth—and then, if you’re anywhere near the Manayunk Brewing Company tomorrow—Saturday—stop by for her signing!

How would you explain the Shore to a visiting German tourist?
"The shore" is a cluster of barrier islands that has been the traditional vacation spot for Philadelphians since the 1800s. The same thing that drew people back then still draws people now: the escape of the beach. But obviously the area has changed—there’s a lot of dining, shopping and just things to do that don’t directly involve the beach. It’s also the birth place of boardwalks, which is where you can walk along the ocean without getting sand in your feet (and the place most people go way over their calorie budget for the week let alone the day).

What’s your favorite meal on the Shore?
I love having dinner at the Blue Pig Tavern at Congress Hall in Cape May. The lobster mac & cheese is such a nice twist on a classic kid meal. You can also cap off dinner by hitting the Brown Room at Congress Hall for drinks in a very Gatsby swank setting (lots of brown leather and zebra print) or, if it’s a Saturday night, head down the Boiler Room for live jazz.

I also have to tell you about Upcakes from Dixie Picnic in Ocean City. Genius: take a cup cake, cut off the top, flip it upside down, and ice all over. I even had an Upcake Party this spring. Must. Have. More. 

What was the most surprising thing you discovered while working on the book?
How many people who don’t live in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area love the shore and will travel from all over for that week on the beach. I started putting the link to my blog in my email signature and got comments about it from people as far away as Europe. It seems that if you’ve visited once, you always have strong ties to the area (see? Not all of NJ looks like the Newark airport!)

If you had to live in one Shore town and never, ever leave, what would it be?
Cape May. I was there in January to do a photo shoot (at the top of the Cape May lighthouse—very cold) and could see living there year round. After Atlantic City, it’s one of the most year round open towns. It has a different pace in the off season while still drawing visitors. Plus you can watch the sun set at Sunset beach—not something you can get much on the east coast.

Where’s your favorite shopping on the Shore?
There’s a shop in Stone Harbor called Suncatcher & Mimis. Back when I was in my tomboy phase, I’d shop surf wear at Suncatchers, but once I realized that, hey, I might like girlie stuff, I’d stray over to Mimis. The best part is that they’re all in one building, so you can wander from store to store. Actually, the even BETTER part is "The Attic," which is in the same block and has the odds and ends from Mimis that either didn’t sell, or they only have one size left. The stuff is great, and the longer you wait in the season, the better the deal. On Labor Day Weekend, everything is $20, whether the original price was $350 or $100. I stock up every year.

While All the King’s Men continues to mock us, we’ve moved on—physically, if not emotionally—to an old favorite: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It has one of the best opening sentences we’ve ever read: "On Friday non, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." Oh! And it only gets better from there. It’s really very short, and a fast, easy read. Plus it ends with lines Tony Blair read at the memorial for British victims of 9/11. It is one of our very favorites and we could not recommend it more highly.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, $11.65

We’ve been trying to make an argument for tiaras as day wear lately. This Rashida Jones photo from Timeless Tiaras, we’re thinking, is the closer we’re going to get.

So we finally, after like nine million years, finished The Sportswriter, which was occasionally so depressing it made us just want to die in like every part of our soul. (The ending almost brought it around.) It’s one of those books we’re pretty sure just sits in the back of your head until it attacks you, in a moment of (your) weakness, until you’re crying on the floor.

So next up! We have The Sportswriter’s sequel, Independence Day, in our mom’s car, but for the moment, we’re keeping our distance. In its stead, we’re going to one of the nine million books we own but have not actually read—in this case, All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. It’s in keeping with our pledge to only read books pre-1950 (just scraping in, at 1946). Other than that, we’ve been rereading the same eight opening pages for three years, but we’re ever-hopeful we’ll get a bit farther this time around. It’s on our list, anyway, so we are resigned.

As always, we’d love to know what you’re reading.