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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Literary Tattoos

How often does a simple Google search lead you down a spiraling vortex of inane and ridiculous web pages? We all know what it's like and most of the time there's a certain amount of shame after surfacing from such an internet binge.  But today I found the coolest blogs which made all those shameful, wasted, internet hours worth it (okay, probably not, but let a girl pretend).

Readers of this blog may have some idea that I (your primary blogger, Erin at Ravenna... hello!) have a bit of a thing for Moby Dick.  You may have seen me mention it a time or two, or 17.  It's been an important part of my literary life, and I was thinking I might like to get a tattoo dedicated to Moby Dick.  Thus began my Google search.

I started out looking for images of Moby Dick inspired tattoos, and found some pretty cool stuff.


The above image led me to Pinterest, which is where most of my inane and ridiculous, spiraling, internet vortexes end up. Once I'm on Pinterest I usually lose the thread of my original search because I'm distracted by all those recipes and craft ideas and glitter.  But somehow I stayed relatively on topic and found some seriously cool book tattoo ideas.  Like this one...


When I saw that, I wondered if there were any cool tattoos of my favorite childhood books, Beverly Clearly's Ramona.  And of course there are.


I found that Ramona tattoo along with a bunch of other neat ideas, here. Eventually, my search ended with a couple of great blogs dedicated solely to literary tattoos.  If you have a few minutes, you should definitely check out Contrariwise and The Word Made Flesh.  They're great places to get lost for awhile.  These blogs offer a brief glimpse into the lives of strangers and the literary things that matter to them. It's a bit like looking at other people's book shelves.  Different books touch people in different ways.  Seeing what character or quote or author someone is willing to wear on their skin for the rest of their lives is fascinating.


Also fascinating... Contrariwise has cataloged 95 different people with the tattoo "So it goes" from Slaughterhouse Five.  I'm ashamed to say I've never read any Vonnegut.  But with at least 95 people willing to etch his words on their skin, maybe it's time to take a look.


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