German goth interior desin shop.

This store has everything, from black aprons with skulls on them, to skull sponges for the bathroom, and lots of lovely decorations and accessories.
http://www.dark-interior-design.de/shop/

maddiekat this is why you should be practicing German!

House of Leaves and The Whalestone Letters by Mark Z. Danielewski

I read House several years ago on the recommendation of a girlfriend.  I enjoyed it a lot the first time and I have to say I enjoyed it even more the 2nd time around. The "post-modernism" or whatever it was I highly approved of. The first time reading I was intriguied by the story of the house and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was happening. This time I was more comfortable with the house being pure fiction and figuring out exactly how much was being made up and what was really going on.  The structure of the book is amazing, the pacing is reflected so well in the meandering text and the it has the best use of footnotes I've seen in fiction.
This time I read the letters from Johnny's mother after the main story.  I remember as I was falling asleep having finished it all I understood what it was all about and what was happening and why. How it all reflected into his mother and then of course in the morning it was all gone.  But a very good book which will hopefully make for an interesting bibliogoth meeting in an hour!

The Story of the Stone Vol. 2 The Crab-Flower Club (Hawkes translation)

Vol. 2 is the "happiest" volume in the series. The poetry club is started and there is a lot of time sitting around the garden composing poetry and drinking wine and tea. It does start with the burying of the flowers, which is one of my favorite parts of the story. Bao yu starts off rather unbearable, totally over the top with his maids, shortly after feeling this is when Bao Yu is beaten by his father to within an inch of his life and this seems to have a good influence on him. Li Wan also stands out as an interesting character in the novel. As the classic good widow she comes across as young, intelligent and fun. Other highlights for this book include the infamous visit of Granny Liu to the garden, (which I have to say I really preferred the Wangs translation of) the reading of novels and Bao Chai's rebuking of Dai yu, Xue Pan being beaten up by the actor he thought was gay, and Caltrop's interest in poetry and inclusion in the garden. Definitely one of the most charming of the vols. Unfortunately also the one my teacher didn't have in Chinese and all the poetry really seems to loose a lot in translation.