CJW: Moving right along… new tangent. Do you read at all?
TLC: A lot of reading. Wow. Right now I’m reading a couple books. One of them is called Built to Last – it’s about start up companies and why they are or are not successful. I usually try to read sort of one spiritual, Christian type book, but I’m also reading a book called Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. He writes for Spin magazine and they’re just essays, thoughts on life and culture. The thing that made me want to read it was the bass player who played on this album [Joseph Digerness on her upcoming release Things You Can’t Stop with Your Hands] had it, and I was just kind of reading it one day, looking through it. This guy who’s not a Christian had read the Left Behind books, just to sort of get his own take on them, and he wrote an essay on the Left Behind books. It was so insightful to see it from a non-Christian’s point of view. I was just like, “I want to buy this book.” He writes about all kinds of different stuff. There’s one about John Cusack (laughing) – it’s a really interesting book. I like the books. And Bonfire the Vanities, I’m reading that again.
CJW: I love the books too. What’s your favorite book?
TLC: Wow. My favorite book – this is Donnie Boutwell, the producer.
CJW: Hi.
TLC: Carla Jean.
DB: What’s your name?
CJW: Carla Jean Whitley.
DB: Nice to meet you, Carla Jean Whitley. Sorry. Continue, go right ahead.
TLC: Sorry. We can move to another room if you need to track something. Okay. He’s going to take the extended lunch. He’s going to take advantage of that even though we’ve got three songs to record today. Favorite book. Wow. The Sunday school answer is (breathy voice) the Bible.
CJW: Barring the Sunday school answer.
TLC: Yeah, barring the Sunday school answer… because I do a lot of heavy reading, I read a lot of in-depth stuff, the books that I really tend to like sometimes are the ones that set me free from that place. So the book that always comes to mind when people ask me that question is a book called Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, by Dave Barry. It is the funniest book – it’s so great! It’s such a breather. It’s great. Oh oh oh – and also – Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.
CJW: (raising voice) LOVE Blue Like Jazz.
TLC: That might actually be my favorite.
CJW: I need to go back and re-read that book, I was just thinking the other day.
TLC: Very few times do I want to read a book again immediately after I finish reading it. That’s what I did with that one.
CJW: It’s so good. I made Alisa read it and then she had to go buy her own copy because she wanted to mark it up.
TLC: It’s great. Hi Garrett!
CJW: Did you read his first book?
TLC: Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance? I’ve been trying to find that. I can’t find it.
CJW: It’s on my night stand right now.
TLC gasps.
CJW: But it’s borrowed from a friend who actually lives in Nashville.
TLC: Oh really?
CJW: I might actually be able to hook you up with a copy there, temporarily.
TLC: That’s great. It’s out of print now.
CJW: Yeah. I started reading the first chapter and (despairing) I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get through it. Because Don Miller abuses semi-colons. It makes me want to cry.
TLC: (gasps) Oh no!
CJW: (high pitched, sounding near tears) He totally uses them incorrectly and it really made me upset.
TLC: I start sentences with conjunctions.
CJW: That’s okay, I do that sometimes.
TLC: And I’m a big fan of ellipses.
CJW: I’m a big fan of ellipses, as long as they’re used…
TLC: Properly?
CJW: Quasi-properly, at least. Semi-colons are my friends and you do not mess them up and he totally abuses them. I’m like, you need a comma there, you need a period there…
TLC: Maybe it’s the editor’s fault! Maybe… he is good and his editor goes back in there and edits them in in the wrong places.
CJW: It partially is, at least! Well I have a friend who’s corresponded with him some, and she says he really is bad about that. But it’s also his editor’s fault because his editor should’ve…
TLC: Should’ve caught it. Mmmhmmm.
CJW: And it’s not even every now and then, it’s constantly.
TLC: Significantly. Wow.
CJW: So I’m going to try to get through it, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to because of the semi-colons.
TLC: Get some white out.
CJW: But it’s not my book, so…
TLC: Oh, that’s right.
CJW: And my friend who it belongs to, he abuses ellipses so he might not realize the abuse of the semi-colon because he’s already got the punctuation thing working against him.
TLC: This and the weapons of mass destruction. It’s just – what’s the world coming to? (laughs) I hear you, though. You know what I hate? My pet peeve grammar problem right now? “Come over to Alisa and I’s house.” (gasp) I apostrophe s, are you kidding me? Alisa’s and my. Not Alisa and I’s. I hate that, do you hate that?
CJW: Yeah. And it’s not as if you would say “Come over to I’s house.”
TLC: (laughing) For real! (raises voice) For real. And everybody’s been taught that whole, you’re supposed to say, “Alisa and I are going to the store” and you are – but not “Come to the store with Alisa and I” – you don’t even say that! Alisa and me! Thank you.
CJW: I’ve got this horrible habit now of editing people in my head when they’re speaking.
TLC laughs.
CJW: I have to bite my tongue. And it’s mostly from this class that I’m doing this for, because we workshop everything. We have to make ten copies of everything we write, and sit around and read it out loud in class, and everyone marks it up. It can be very intimidating because I have classes with a lot of smart people, but yeah. Now I edit everyone. I’m like, “That was unnecessary – you already said that in the last paragraph. So you should’ve deleted it from this one!”
TLC: That’s awesome.