kmkat and her kneedles

Knitting book destash.

When I started to straighten the bedroom this morning, I discovered the reason my knitting books are topsy-turvy: I have too many to fit on the shelf. 

Time to destash the knitting books.

All are in like-new condition and are linked to their Amazon page. Where there are two links, the second is to the publisher's page because Amazon did not have a picture of the cover.

Confessions of a Knitting Heretic : Tips, Techniques, Projects & Reflections by an Unorthodox Hand Knit Designer & Teacher / Annie Modesitt. $14 + media rate postage.

Domino Knitting / Vivian Høxbro. $14 + media rate postage.

Handknit Holidays ; Knitting Year-Round for Christmas, Hannukkah, and Winter-Solstice / Melanie Fralick. $15 + media rate postage.

Handknitter's Handbook / Montse Stanley (note: my copy is probably 20 years old, bought used on eBay; it lacks a dust cover but is in very good condition otherwise except for slight yellowing of the pages). $10 + media rate postage.

Knitting for Peace : Making the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time / Betty Christiansen. $10 + media rate postage.

Knitting Vintage Socks : New Twists on Classic Patterns / Nancy Bush. $18 + media rate postage.

Mary Thomas's Knitting Book / Mary Thomas. $9 + media rate postage.

Modular Knits : New Techniques for Today's Knitters / Iris Schreier. $15 + media rate postage.

Stitch 'n Bitch : The Knitter's Handbook / Debbie Stoller. $11 + media rate postage.

Vintage Modern Knits : Contemporary Designs Using Classic Techniques / Courtney Kelley & Kate Gagnon Osborn. $20 + media rate postage.

Like I did last time, I set my prices based on cover price vs. Amazon's price. In almost every instance, what you pay over Amazon's price is more than enough to pay for media rate shipping. 

Media rates for smaller packages is at right.  To give you an idea, the heaviest book is the Montse Stanley, which tips the scales at 2 lb 4 oz. Domino Knitting is the lightest at 6 ounces.

PayPal or personal check accepted; if the latter, no shipping until payment clears. Email me if you are interested; click on "About" at upper right and hover over "Email me" to see my addy. 

 

The Game continues.

Premiering April 1 on a cable network near you.

While Andrew was home for Christmas we watched Season 1 on his laptop. Excellent.

I had clued him in on these books a couple years ago, and he had found somewhere on the web where he could download a pdf of the text. He put them on his iPod Touch and read whenever he had a minute or two to waste -- waiting for an elevator, in the bathroom, wherever.

Last year when A Dance with Dragons, Book 5 of the series, came out I emailed him to let him know. He replied that he already had an autographed copy*, acquired when he went to hear George R.R. Martin speak. Rotten kid, taking advantage of all NYC has to offer.

 * "[He'd] already got one, you know." Name that reference.

Go. Sign.

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

 
Ensure that every child in America has access to an effective school library program.
Every child in America deserves access to an effective school library program. We ask that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provide dedicated funding to help support effective school library programs. Such action will ensure more students have access to the resources and tools that constitute a 21st century learning environment. Reductions in school library programs are creating an ‘access gap’ between schools in wealthier communities versus those where there are high levels of poverty. All students should have an equal opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to learn, to participate, and to compete in today’s world.

 

The librarians need 5,083 5,074 5,073* more signatures on this petition…

wh.gov/Wgd

via http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/

* The first number was how many more signatures were needed when I first went to the website. Between then and when I went back after verifying my account via email, 9 more people had signed. Then I did.

Books and reading. And libraries.

I read at least 58 books in 2011; "at least 58" because I know there are a few missing from this list.

 

TITLE	AUTHOR
Case Histories	Atkinson, Kate
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (audiobook)	Bryson, Bill
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (audiobook)	Bryson, Bill
Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir	Burden, Wendy
Fool Moon: Book 2 of the Dresden Files (audiobook)	Butcher, Jim
Grave Peril: Book 3 of the Dresden Files (audiobook)	Butcher, Jim
Heartsick	Cain, Chelsea
Sweetheart	Cain, Chelsea
Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate 1) (audiobook)	Carriger, Gail
Changeless (The Parasol Protectorate 2) (audiobook)	Carriger, Gail
The Alchemist (audiobook)	Coelho, Paulo
The Poet	Connelly, Michael
Cathedral	DeMille, Nelson
Vanished	Finder, Joseph
Dress Your Dog: Nifty Knits for Classy Canines	Fredens, Sys
Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn	Friend, Catherine
The Goblins of Labyrinth	Froud, Brian
The Graveyard Book (audiobook)	Gaiman, Neil
American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition	Gaiman, Neil
American Gods (audiobook)	Gaiman, Neil
Same Kind Of Different As Me	Hall, Ron
Star Island	Hiaasen, Carl
The Knitting Circle	Hood, Ann
Through No Fault of My Own: A Girl's Diary of Life on Summit Avenue in the Jazz Age	Irvine, Coco
Full Dark, No Stars	King, Stephen
Breathless	Koontz, Dean
Iron Lake	Krueger, William Kent
My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black; Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto	Lancaster, Jen
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (audiobook)	Larsson, Stieg
The Stone Angel	Laurence, Margaret
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine	Lewis, Michael
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street	Lewis, Michael
A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3 (audiobook)	Martin, George R. R.
A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1 (audiobook)	Martin, George R.R.
A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2 (audiobook)	Martin, George R.R.
Deception	Mina, Denise
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer	Mukherjee, Siddhartha
21 Essential American Short Stories	Pockell, Leslie M.
Knitting for Dogs: Irresistible Patterns for Your Favorite Pup -- and You!	Porter, Kristi
The Complaints	Rankin, Ian
Theater Geek: The Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor, the Famous Performing Arts Camp	Rapkin, Mickey
Silent in the Grave	Raybourn, Deanna
Vintage Baby Knits: More Than 40 Heirloom Patterns from the 1920s to the 1950s	Rengren, Kristen
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (audiobook)	Robbins, Tom
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry	Ronson, Jon
The Men Who Stare at Goats	Ronson, Jon
Sarah's Key	Rosnay, Tatiana de
The Blade Itself	Sakey, Marcus
At the City's Edge	Sakey, Marcus
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading	Sankovitch, Nina
One Was a Soldier: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery	Spencer-Fleming, Julia
A Dark Matter	Straub, Peter
Shoot to Thrill (A Monkeewrench Novel)	Tracy, P. J.
Moon Over Manifest	Vanderpool, Clare
The Tale of Halcyon Crane: A Novel	Webb, Wendy
Passage	Willis, Connie
Fire Watch	Willis, Connie
Night of the Grizzlies

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Found at: The Eclectic Bookshelf (thanks to Chris for the link)

The 2012 Support Your Local Library Challenge is being hosted by The Eclectic Bookshelf.

The guidelines are as follows:

1. Anyone can join.
    
2. You don't need a blog to participate. If you are a non-blogger please leave a comment with a link (if you review elsewhere) to your review or with the book(s) you read.
    
3. Audio, ebooks (some libraries allow ebooks to be checked out), bound books are ok. I would have included graphic novels, but I don't cannot read those so it is a moot point.
    
4. No re-reads.
    
5. Create a sign up post and post the link in the linky.
    
6. Challenge goes from January 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012.
    
7. Levels:
   * Level 1 - Read 12 library books
   * Level 2 - Read 24 library books
   * Level 3 - Read 36 library books
   * Level 4 - Read 37+ library books
   

I already read at least 50 books/year, almost every single one from the library, so I am not going to sign up for this. But supporting your local library is A Very Good Thing, especially in these days of tight municipal budgets when some folks question the needs for libraries.

I encourage you to sign up for this challenge at whatever level is comfortable for you. Knowledge is a good thing; we all need more of it. Please go forth and investigate your library!

 

Psycho weirdness: a fanblog post.

As some of you may know, I <3 Neil Gaiman and have done so ever since I saw/heard him speak at a library conference in about 2002*. He is thoughtful, kind, brilliant, and a marvelous writer. Plus, although he is British he lives only about 90 miles south of me in a gorgeous old Addams Family-type house that looks like it should be haunted.

He has a lamppost, straight out of Narnia, in his woods.

I read his blogs, both the one on his website and the one on Tumblr. I follow him and Amanda Palmer on Twitter. Does that make me a stalker? Maybe, but I prefer to think of it as being A Dedicated Fan. 

If you have never heard of Neil Gaiman, here is a long clip of him on Craig Ferguson's show last June:

As much as I admire him, though, I have a hard time reading his books. I can listen to them on audio, especially when he reads them. (If you haven't listened to The Graveyard Book, I direct you to acquire the audio version forthwith and listen.) Except for Stardust and Neverwhere; those two are much gentler books. I struggled through American Gods a number of years ago. This year is the tenth anniversary of its publication, and there was a bit of hoopla about it, including a special tenth anniversary edition with 12,000 additional words. I chose American Gods for my book in my book group's November read. We all agreed that it is a strange, many-layered book, and one that we all found intriguing.

Gaiman is also very, very weird, and I mean that in the best possible way.

From An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer:

. 

* After he spoke, my librarian friend and I ambushed him in the hall. She put her arm around him and I snapped a photo. Flashed it right in his face. She has the photo in her office, and I cringe every time I see it, remembering how rude we were to get it. He was far more gracious than we had any right to expect.

Censorship.

Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill. It was eerie. The DC groups were practically screaming, "this bill is the worst we've ever seen and we can't stop it" -- while everyone else had barely heard of it.  The consensus?  We needed to wake people up.Well, yesterday the Internet woke up. *You* woke the internet up.Check out these numbers and screenshots. To everyone who wrote their rep, made calls, posted to Twitter and Facebooks -- and especially to everyone who ran the modal and blacked out their logos, you are courageous and you made history yesterday.  You just took the first step to combine the web's largest sites, its strongest communities, its staunchest defenders and billions of users into and unbeatable force for stopping censorship. The scary part?  We still might lose.   Though growing fast, our coalition still isn't strong enough. The bill is backed by an unholy alliance of Hollywood, its unions, drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce.  They are pouring money into it, and they've been working on this for years.   Yesterday, big players like Tumblr, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing, and even 4chan came out strong on our side.  Now it's your turn.  We've got to dig in and go viral. Can you add a "Stop Censorship" message to your blog, Tumblr, Facebook, or Youtube pages?  Click here for the code.

.

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From: Fight For The Future <info@fightforthefuture.org>

Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:18:58 +0000

To: M*** J***

Subject: Uh oh. You woke up the Internet

Last week there was a small meeting at Mozilla to discuss SOPA, the Internet Censorship Bill.

It was eerie.  The DC groups were practically screaming, "this bill is the worst we've ever seen and we can't stop it" -- while everyone else had barely heard of it.  The consensus?  We needed to wake people up.

Well, yesterday the Internet woke up.  *You* woke the internet up.

Check out these numbers and screenshots.

To everyone who wrote their rep, made calls, posted to Twitter and Facebooks -- and especially to everyone who ran the modal and blacked out their logos, you are courageous and you made history yesterday.  You just took the first step to combine the web's largest sites, its strongest communities, its staunchest defenders and billions of users into and unbeatable force for stopping censorship.

The scary part?  We still might lose.   Though growing fast, our coalition still isn't strong enough.

The bill is backed by an unholy alliance of Hollywood, its unions, drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce.  They are pouring money into it, and they've been working on this for years.   Yesterday, big players like Tumblr, Mozilla, Reddit, BoingBoing, and even 4chan came out strong on our side.  Now it's your turn.  We've got to dig in and go viral.

Can you add a "Stop Censorship" message to your blog, Tumblr, Facebook, or Youtube pages?  Click here for the code.

 

If you ran "Stop Censorship" or the "Contact Congress" splash on your page yesterday, we humbly ask you to keep it running until this bill is dead, and to find more people who can.  We understand if you can't, but the bill is just as bad as it was yesterday -- so we've got to ask.

Click here to get the code to add to your page.  It's easy.

Yesterday was amazing.  There will be more, we promise.

Homes Wilson 

Fight for the Future

AmericanCensorship.org

* * * * *

Speaking of censorship, here is a Salon article about saving some of the 5,000 books confiscated by the NYPD. (Was confiscating the books censorship? Discuss among yourselves.)

* * * * *

Edited to highlight CarrieK's comment from below: "Those would be bills: S 968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 -A bill to prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes and H.R. 3261: Stop Online Piracy Act."

You can send your support or opposition to S 968 to your senators and representatives here, and your support or opposition to HR 3261 to your US representative here.

I'm back (again).

We spent nine days on the North Shore (of Lake Superior) in the mini-mini-motorhome, returning on the day before Labor Day, and it was glorious. I have some photos but am currently too lazy to upload them. Be assured, though, that I knit my little fingers to the bone -- finished three projects (photos to come), started two more (ditto) -- and had a great time doing it.

Before we left home, however, I bought myself a little prezzie.

It all started when I read a Gizmodo post abuot how the Motorola TouchPad was such a great deal for $100* (originally $400+). I was in WI when I read it and Smokey was in Minneapoils, so I emailed and sent him on a quest to buy me one. It turned out, however, that Motorola had recalled all the unsold ones from Best Buy the week before. There were none to be had. ::sob::

After much thoughtful consideration I decided that an ebook reader that was compatible with my library's ebooks would do the trick, and a trip to Wal-Mart and $139 plus tax later I had one of the El Cheapo Nooks in my hot little hands. 

[digression] I tried to find a photo online of the aforementioned El Cheapo model, but nobody puts a picture of THAT poor thing online. All I could find were color Nooks and Nooks whose screen didn't quite look like mine. So you will have to settle for the image above; inadequate, but accurate. [/digression]

I immediately bought the tenth anniversary edition of American Gods by Neil Gaiman from Barnes & Noble, my choice for my book club's November read, and downloaded two ebooks from our library consortium. It turns out  that there is a very limited selection of ebooks from the library, but I did manage to find a couple that appealed as vacation reading. (Cathedral by Nelson DeMille and My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster, for those of you who are counting.) 

If you know of any other sites for  free, Nook-compatible books, please sing out in the comments. Thank you in advance.

* I have since read that Motorola was surprised to discover what a great demand there was for a $100 (or $150, if the buyer wanted 32G instead of 16G of memory) tablet computer. They rethought their previous decision and subsequently decided to offer a few more TouchPads at the clearance price. In October. We shall see. In the meantime, I've got my Nook to keep me warm read.

 

Amusements.

To me, vacations are a time to knit and read. How can I stand the excitement, you ask? Don’t try this at home, folks – I’m a professional.

Reading.

 

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Feed by M.T. Andrewson
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend
Vanished by Joseph Finder
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman*
CO₂ Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge by Tyler Volk
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy by Alfred W. Crosby 
Earth, The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn
Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pipeline to the Pump by Lisa Margonelli

Heh. Can you guess what I was obsessed with when I chose my vacation books?

So far I have read Vanished (suspense novel, supremely mediocre) and Night of the Grizzlies (nonfiction account of two 1967 fatal grizzly attacks in Glacier National Park; recommended by soxanne; glad I didn’t read it before we went to Glacier last year) (headline in Thursday's local paper: Man Killed in Grizzly Attack in Yellowstone National Park. Eeep.). The top three paperbacks are all sci-fi, the other is probably horror; all excellent, non-demanding amusement. I started The Compassionate Carnivore – by the same author as Hit by a Farm – before we left home. It is a nice blend of humor, introspection, and ethics; I might be able to handle it. The others, mostly nonfiction, may be too much for my vacationing brain.

On the audiobook front, so far I have listened to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larssen. I had read or listened to all of them before but wanted to do it again in one continuous string; #2 and #3 are really one story. Then I listened to A Study in Emerald read by the author, Neil Gaiman. That was a short one, less than one hour.

I just finished Grave Peril, #3 in the Harry Dresden series. I heartily recommend listening to the audios of this series. The read has the sexiest voice on the planet, plus he reads them as though he were telling the story over a beer the day after it happened. Much more enjoyable (again, imho) than reading them.

* Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I grabbed a book from my stash -- in the dark -- and a headlamp to read until I got sleepy. This was the one. Friedman is such a wretched writer and egoist that I made it to page 32, skimming large parts, before my eyelids drooped. Success!

Knitting.

I brought along enough knitting projects to sink a battleship.

The Lace Shawl of Doom  Delight for BGFE.

 

This is coming along swimmingly. I have finished the first chart and am ready to start on the border. That simple statement belies what lies ahead, though; the pattern warns that most of the knitting is in the border, plus chart 2 is altogether different and appears far more complicated than chart 1. Stay tuned.

Fast Forward, for the Red Scarf Project.

 

This is currently about two-thirds done but was put on hold when I took up the Lace Shawl of Doom again. Nice pattern, nice yarn – I’m using Louet superwash merino worsted left over from my kimono sweater.

Palindrome, also for the RSP.

 

Notice how well-defined the cables are? Not. The yarn is Drops Alpaca Sport, luscious stuff but not at all suitable for good stitch definition. I have since frogged that effort and am instead doing a mistake rib pattern that works much better with the yarn. It is also nice mindless knitting :-)

 

Actual color is somewhere between the two photos, orangey-red like the second but darker like the first.

Sock for me.

 

This was to be my fall-back project, the one I would carry into restaurants, etc. Instead the mistake rib scarf has become the take-along. That’s okay; I’m not dying to have the socks done. Yarn is some OnLine Supersocke 100 Circle Color that was on sale at Webs last year.

These last two projects got packed to come along when I was apparently on drugs and in a fantasy daze, thinking how awful it would be if I ran out of knitting projects. The chances of either of them even getting cast on during this tripe is roughly... zero.

Yarn for a narrow Montego Bay scarf for me.

 

Worsted weight silk from Alchemy.

Yarn for Braided Glory for me.

 

I was thrilled to match this yarn with a pattern. The yarn is 1600+ yards of Brooks Farm Acero, a sport/DK blend of superwash wool, viscose, and silk. It is not enough to make a sweater for me and has been yearning for a pattern for several years. I think it will be perfect for this shawl, although the pattern will use only about half of it. I am not wild about wearing shawls, but this one seems like it will stay in place without fussing.

As I typed that, the vision of a short- or three-quarter-length sleeved lace cardigan came into mind. Lace takes less yarn than stockinette, right? And I am now lace-qualified, right? I may need to investigate that. I have some other, not-enough-for-a-sweater yarn in my stash that would work for the Braided Glory, actually better than the Acero. Stay tuned.

Ten on Tuesday, the reading edition.

Oh, boy, books and reading! This will be fun.

Ten Books I Would Recommend To A Friend

1. Winterdance: The Fine Magic of Running the Iditarod / Gary Paulsen. This is my favorite book EVAH! It is funny, spiritual, and amazing.
   
   
2. The Prey series / John Sandford. Best, most intelligent police procedurals I have ever read. Characters and dialog are so real you can see and hear them in your mind. Set in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and regions within driving distance. Start with the first one and read them in sequence because there is real character development.
   
   
3. Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer / Siddhartha Mukherjee. I read this recently and found it fascinating. It reads like a suspense novel -- I didn't want to put it down when I got sleepy because I wanted to know what happens next.
   
   
4.  Ripped : How the Wired Generation Changed Music /  Greg Kot. Another fascinating read for anyone who occasionally -- or frequently -- downloads music or obtains it in some non-DRM manner.
   
   
5. The Tortilla Curtain / T. C. Boyle. We read this in my book group several years ago, and it still haunts me.
   
   
6. Five Quarters of the Orange / Joanne Harris. Same author wrote Chocolat. I loved this book, set in rural France during WWII. Have listened to it twice and read it once.
   
   
7. The Song of Fire and Ice series / George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones, the first book, is now an HBO series. I have listened to the audiobook -- four of them, very long -- twice. Book five is due out... soon. Medieval fantasy, but with richly developed characters. I adore this series, will probably listen to it again later this year.
   
   
8. The Exception / Christian Jungersen. I wrote a post about it. Have read it twice. Disturbing.
   
   
9. Infidel / Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An Ethiopian woman's story of how she ran away from her homeland and a forced marriage. Author is now a member of the Dutch Parliament.
   
   
10. The Stand / Stephen King. My favorite of all his books. 

Free reading.

Three stories from the Bordertown series.

Free.

On the net.

Go.*

Read.

(Image at right shamelessly lifted from the linked page in hopes of luring you over there.)

* This has been a not-paid-for advertisement written in hopes of winning one of three [purportedly magical] prizes.

Things that make me say, Hmmm. And stuff.

From today's Interweave Knit's daily email:

How can ebooks be all gone? They are not physical objects that exist in a limited number. I think what they mean is that the 70% off sale will end on a specific date, but the books will not be *gone*, just more expensive.

* * * * *

 

Do any of you ever wear your socks and high heels together? Have you ever seen ANYONE actually do this? I live out in the sticks where a clean flannel shirt and bib overalls counts as Sunday best, so I may be a bit out of touch.

* * * * *

This one doesn't make me go Hmmm but it did make me laugh.

* * * * * *

Aren't these just the cutest things you have ever seen?

Found via knithacker.

* * * * *

I got a package from Amazon today. Lost one of my Yak Trax a couple weeks ago so had to get some more. These are glow-in-the-dark!

And of course had to add a book from my wish list in order to get free shipping. Fiscally responsible, that's me!

Googlausten.

Today is Jane Austen's 235th birthday. Happy birthday, Jane! 

Thanks to @amycrea, who tweeted this.

All Hallow's Read.

A new tradition, invented exactly a week ago by Neil Gaiman (pictured at right), is All Hallows Read. Stephen King and Joe Hill (SK's son, also an author of scary stuff) and The Huffington Post are already totally on board with it. 

NG says:

I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during the week of Hallowe'en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy.

A book-giving holiday! A new book-giving tradition! Awesome! Of course, as authors, Gaiman and King and Hill have a vested interest in promoting the sale of books, but NG specifically says "...new books or old or second-hand..." so I forgive them completely. Besides, my take on Gaiman, having heard him speak and read his blog faithfully and heard/seen him interviewed many times, is that he is a genuine and humble and thoughtful person who is more interested in getting people to read than in selling his own books. So there.

Somewhere on his blog I read a comment from a person -- a mother, I think -- who said that one year she bought a sh!tload of R.L. Stine books at Goodwill or some such and handed them out to trick-or-treaters. More awesomesauce!

We don't get trick-or-treaters here in the rural woods so I cannot partake of that last idea, but I am thinking deeply about what scary book I can give to whom.

How about you?

 

Good reads.

I have had a good run on reading lately. Three Four really good ones in a row. My books; let me tell you them.

Ironically, since I don't particularly care for historical fiction, two of these beauties were set in 14th century England -- priests, The Plague, and everything.

A few weeks ago I read somewhere on the web -- probably Neil Gaiman's blog, but, really, it could have been anywhere -- that if a non-science-fiction-reading person wants to read a science fiction book to see what all the fuss is about, s/he should read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. Being a person of obedient temperament (hah!) I followed that advice and requested it from the library. Turned out to be good advice; I enjoyed the book a lot. It is set in mid-21st century, from whence an Oxford student is sent back to 1320 via the University's time machine thingy. An epidemic breaks out in the present, paralleling the plague in the past. Willis is a well-known and prizewinning sci fi author -- I had read To Say Nothing of the Dog a number of years ago and enjoyed it, too. Both of these books employ time travel from the mid-21st century to the past, the latter to both 1940 and 1888. Both books are also well-written, engrossing, with endearing characters, and are bouncing good reads.

Next up was Ken Follett's sequel to Pillars of the Earth, World Without End. Follett loves to write gargantuan epics (redundant much, Kat™?) and this is no exception. He doesn't necessarily write great literature, but his books -- and I have read half a dozen or so over the past 40 years -- are always engrossing and highly readable. This was no exception. It is slightly over 1,000 pages long, and I was a bit intimidated by that length, mainly because I have nine other books from the library to read, plus one and a half books for next month's book club, and did I really want to spend all that time on just one book? But I did, and it was good, and I recommend it.

After reading those two books I feel that I am fairly well-informed about the bubonic plague, at least from the view of 14th century folks. Which is not nearly the same as current knowledge, but there it is.

 
Last night I grabbed The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil for my bedtime reading. This was at 11pm or so. An hour and a couple hundred pages later I glanced at the clock and recoiled in horror -- it was 3am and clearly I was not going to be able to finish the book before sleep. Damn, it was so good, and I didn't want to put it down! (But I did.) I awoke at 9:30 this morning, picked up the book, and finished the last 150 pages.

Most knitting novels teeter on the edge of trash, imho, with way too much of "...she fingered the soft yarn and dreamed of wearing a beautiful shawl in a meadow of daisies yada yada yada" and not enough of plot development, decent writing, character development, and, for want of a better word, realism. Not so this one. The heroine is a recently widowed mother of two boys, aged ~5 and ~6; anyone who has every birthed a boy can identify with the constant challenges they present. Realism: check. She takes over a smalltown yarn shop that her grandmother has run for decades and modernizes it (with Gran's full approval -- we should all have such a grandmother). Realism: good enough. There is no claim that she suddenly makes the shop so profitable that she can vacation in the south of France, just that she appears to be able to make ends meet comfortably. She makes new friends, has a satifying one-night fling, knits (natch), and generally copes with life. One could quibble with the fact that this one woman is friends with a network news anchor (female) AND a major movie star (female) AND a world-renowned photographer (male), but one wouldn't want to pick nits about such an enjoyable and otherwise well-written book. Her mother and inlaws and the local PTA president are proper a$$holes but she deals with them all splendidly and satisfyingly.

Several things endeared this book to my heart. First and foremost, the author has completely mastered the art of the sentence that goes on for nearly half a page and reflects a delightful sort of stream of consciousness narrative and whose rhythm is perfectly balanced with sentences of a more conventional length. I found myself thinking in those elongated and looping sentences after finishing the book; much fun. Second, the dialog between the heroine and her friend Ellen and with, really, every other adult in the book, is so charming and witty and warm that dammit! I want her for my friend so I can be charming and witty and warm, too. Third, she meets the challenges presented by those two active little boys so realistically -- often patient, sometimes exasperated, occasionally on the verge of an Atomic Mommie Meltdown -- that those scenes could be part of a parenting textbook.

Oh, as I was writing this post I remembered the last audiobook I listened to -- The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Bryson* is gently hilarious as he recounts growing up in Des Moines, IA in the 1950s. I found myself LOLing in the car when listening. Read it or listen to it, you will enjoy it.

* I am pretty sure I am distantly related to Bill Bryson (by adoption). My adopted mother's maiden name was Bryson and her family was from Iowa. That's enough for me -- clearly, Bill and I are related. Once, before the advent of the internet, I wrote him a fan letter about one of his books -- A Walk in the Woods, iirc -- and mentioned our possibly being related (with the disclaimer that I wanted to make no demands on him, just to be able to brag about our distant cousinship in casual conversation). He actually wrote back, thanking me and saying he had forwarded my letter to his brother, who was the family member interested in such things.

Coming next year to a television near you.

From today's Wall Street Journal (I don't know if the link will work if you are not a subscriber):

Next year HBO will launch "Game of Thrones," a series based on George R. R. Martin's novels about power struggles in a fictional land inspired by medieval Europe.

From the HBO website:

Yee haw! That series is one of my favorite bunch of books EVAH! We don't have cable or satellite, let alone HBO, so I won't be able to watch the series until it comes out in DVD and I can get it from the library ::le sigh::

No pictures. Let's talk books.

Still on vacation. Weather beautiful. Drove through Glacier NP yesterday; glaciers not impressive. Global warming triumphing.

The laptop that might allow me to post photos is working again (yay, Smokey!) but refuses to accept photos from my camera (boo, Microsoft!) or to go online (boo, generally!). I'm typing this two-fingered on Smokey's netbook, sitting at a table on the patio of the campground office and taking advantage of their wi-fi. If you are really, really good I'll post a photo someday of how picturesque this spot is.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the books I brought along. A couple of you asked about them; I deliver :)

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux. I was reading this before I left but was not finding it terribly interesting. It's not a bad book, and it is well-written; no idea why I was so lukewarm. Once I gave up on it, the pace of my reading picked up.
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo. Police procedural translated from the Norwegian. Coincidentally, the NYTimes book review mentioned this author in its recent article about publishers' mad scramble to find more Scandinavian mysteries to follow up on Steig Larsson's three best-sellers. This one was okay, a bit depressing, 2-1/2 stars out of 5.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. Another ho-hum murder mystery, 2-1/2 stars. I tend to agree with the Washington Post review at the linked Amazon page.
The Last Child by John Hart. Another 2-1/2 stars; I had to read the Amazon synopsis to remember it, even though I read it last week. The 13-yo protagonist was not believable to me.
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. Started it, decided I didn't want to read a novel whose narrator is such a loser. But it did seem entertaining; I may try this one again.

Those are the ones I read, or at least tried to read. Still TBR:
Just Kids by Patti Smith. Memoir.
The Innocent by Harlan Coben. Coben's books are always good.
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna.
Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn. Murder mystery set in South Africa in the 1950s.
The Odds by Kathleen George.
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman
Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint  I am just starting this author's books. (Thanks, Chris!) I like his writing  -- urban fantasy at its best.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.

A couple books to help out the vacation knitting:
Knit One Below by Elise Duvekot.
Knitting from the Top by Barbara Walker.

And finally, just for fun -- not. I am the chair of the governing committee for the county-owned nursing home, and I felt the need to learn as much as I can.
Planning for Long-Term Care by United Seniors Health Council
The Complete Legal Guide to Senior Care: A Plain English Guide to Making Sense of the Residential, Financial, and Medical Maze by Brett McWhorter Sember
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Long-Term Care Planning by Merilee Driscoll

There you have it. Now it is time to stop writing about books and go read them*. TTFN!

* For those of you at home keeping score, we have been on vacation for ~3 weeks and have 1 week left. I brought along 18 books and have read 5. What is wrong with this picture?

More random.

Censorship: it's as American as, well, censorship.

From boingboing.net:

"A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you've got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

'Child pornography is great,' the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. 'It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites.'

The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title 'Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?'. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others...

'One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI* and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand,' Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium."

IFPI's strategy on porn.

* IFPI = International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. From their website:

"IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide, with a membership comprising some 1400 record companies in 66 countries and affiliated industry associations in 45 countries. IFPI's mission is to promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music in all markets where its members operate."

* * * * *

I just finished reading this book. It was absolutely fascinating -- I read until 2 a.m. two nights in a row because I was so enthralled.

Markopolos was a quant -- a numbers guy in the securities industry -- who figured out after five minutes analysis (5 minutes!) in 1999 that Bernard Madoff was a fraud, either doing a type of trading that is illegal or, more likely, running a Ponzi scheme. Markpolos's boss at the investment firm where he worked wanted him to reverse engineer Madoff's trading strategy so they could duplicate it. They were losing clients to Madoff and wanted to be able to compete with him. 

From Amazon/Publisher's Weekly:

"Markopolos, the whistleblower who filed five unheeded complaints against Ponzi king Bernie Madoff over nine years, has produced an astonishing true-life whodunit set amidst the personalities, plots, and international intrigue of Wall Street. Having collected damning information on money manager Madoff -- the respected co-founder of NASDAQ who ran the largest financial scam in history -- since 1999, Markopolos's work as a chartered financial analyst and certified fraud examiner, aided by an industry journalist and two colleagues from his days as a derivatives portfolio manager, lays bare the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a tragically inept regulating agency that 'didn't give a rat's ass about protecting investors,' and seemed to consider Madoff 'just another guy cutting some corners.' Realizing he had not one but two powerful opponents -- 'Madoff and this non-functioning agency' -- Markopolos refused to give up, despite fearing for his life and his family; accordingly, he transmits his team's determination and fascination in contagious detail. The hows and whys of Madoff's eventual arrest, Markopolos's subsequent appearances before Congress, and the carnival of press coverage makes a satisfying conclusion to this strange epic; Markopolos also includes complete documentation of his formal submissions to the SEC, plus his recommendations for much-needed reform at the agency."

Part of my fascination with this story stems from my professional history. I was an auditor for three years and by sheer chance ended up specializing in the securities industry. After that I spent seven years at a regional financial services firm. This was back in the 1980s and things have changed since then, but enough has remained the same that I recognized the industry I was acquainted with. Plus, after I had finished the book, I realized that a number of my tax clients probably had invested for years in one of the funds that had >$1 billion *invested* with Madoff; the head of that fund committed suicide two weeks after Madoff was arrested.

If you have any interest in the world of finance and/or fraud and/or government regulation -- or you just like a good thriller -- you should read this book.

* * * * *

This video brought back memories. Back in about 1987, when #1 Son was 2-1/2, he loved Labyrinth. He must have watched it 50 or 100 times. Srsly.

He would put on a pair of tall black dress winter boots with 1" heels that I had then (the boots were knee-high on me; on him they came up to his crotch) and carry some kind of stick to be a scepter/wand, just like The Goblin King. He would stand in front of the TV and [attempt to] sing along with "the baby song", all the while wiggling his butt and dancing back and forth in an imitation of TGK. I especially liked it when he would yell "Quiet!" at the goblins, right along with David Bowie.

Smokey sent this YouTube video to #1. We are waiting to hear if he remembers anything of those days.

* * * * *

Speaking of sons, #2 Son is, even as I type, hosting the No-Hater Rolling Dance Super Bike Mega Party 2010.0. Perhaps you remember the N-HRDSBMP2K9? Apparently that one was such a success that he is repeating it.

As you can see in the photos in the linked post, one Saturday night in last October he and about 20 others rode their bikes together through light rain and partied and danced (under bridges, where it was dry) until the wee hours. This time? As of some time last week there were already 248 people signed up to attend.

He got a parade permit from the City of Minneapolis, just in case.

* * * * *

On the knitting front, my multicolored striped top-down raglan now has a yoke, two sleeves, and a few -- say, 3 -- inches of body. I will definitely have it ready to wear by next winter. I hope to be able to wear it if necessary when we go camping near Glacier National Park in June.

Currently, I also have the second sock of two different pairs OTN and am having great fun making log cabin felted potholders for the Friends of the Polk County Libraries to sell this summer. I also have committed to at least one hat for a Relay for Life in fund raiser in June. Progress on all projects is being documented photographically. Stay tuned.

Saturday sky and stuff.

That, my friends, is today's Saturday sky as viewed through my OPEN sunroof today. Seeing a blue sky through an open sunroof -- in February -- may not be a big deal in California or Arizona or Texas or Alabama (I'm looking at you, Yarnhog and Cookie and Squish and Carrie and Elizabeth) but it is cause for great rejoicing here in northern Wisconsin. We still have 100% snow cover (except for roads and sidewalks that have been cleared) but the sun was warm enough today to go parka-less. Yee-haw, yew betcha!

* * * * *

Have you read Driftless by David Rhodes? He is a Wisconsin author, and I heard him speak today in a nearby city as the kick-off event for that community's Big Read.

I had just finished the book last weekend, having followed the recommendation of someone in my book club, then got an email on Tuesday announcing today's author event. Serendipity scores! 

I loved this book. Great story, captivating characters, excellent writing. The further I got in the book the more it became evident to me that this author had thought about things. A lot. It seemed that every other sentence had something in it that demanded me to put the book down and spend the next day mentally chewing on it.

The author published a couple books years ago, then spent the last 20 years on a wheelchair as the result of an accident. He said today that it took him ten years to write Driftless. Yep, he thought a lot.

Anywho, I recommend the book. If you read it, let me know what you think.

The event today was held at the St. Croix National Scenic River Visitor Center. The visitors center is a beautiful newish building near downtown and right next to the river and surrounded by native plantings.

 

 

 

There was a good turnout for the event.

 

The author was low-key and friendly.

And, as always, the hand-knits made a good showing.

 

 

Random oddities.

Anamorphic cups.

* * * * *

The *official* version of the National Library Week blurb:
 

The *tweaked*version:
 

* * * * *

Weird titles at abebooks.com:

 

Discovered via qikipedia.

* * * * *

Meet my new wallpaper:
 

Found here via a tweet by CuteOverload.com.

Knitting retreat w/ CPE credit; day 1.

Today I was the Minneapolis Convention Center for the annual tax conference, put on by the MN Society of CPAs.

Besides listening to various speakers, I was doing this:

 

That's a stealth project, finished today. The yarn is STR Raven Clan, Corbie medium weight, US#2 needle, 120 st. I photographed this during the down time between presentations; hence, the iPod with audiobook (A Smile for Own Meany by John Irving; a v-e-r-y long book, but I am enjoying it.)

Tomorrow, who knows?