I read another excellent book: Until Tuesday : a Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him by Luis Carlos Montalván. I think I probably requested it because it was about a dog, but it turned out to be about so much more. Nonfiction, it is about the author's Army tours in Iraq, his multiple injuries, his treatment by the VA hospital system during the Bush administration, his PTSD, and how his service dog saved him. Montalván's worldview and personality is so totally different from mine, but his eloquence and sincerity helped me understand how someone can be proud to be a soldier.
And, of course, there is the dog. Tuesday is the beautiful golden retriever who daily saved Montalván from the effects of his PTSD.
From the book:
"The defining state of PTSD is not fear. That's a complete misunderstanding. The defingin state of PTSD is hypervigilance. Psychologists describe it as the flight-or-fight syndrome because PTSD is essentially the superarounsed state normal people enter when thay are suddenly in danger, the one whre the blood rushes to your head, your muscles coil, and your breathing slows. You are in survival mode, ready to fight or flee for your lifte. For ordinary people it only lasts a few seconds, but for combat-scarred veterans like me, hyperarounsal was a near-permanent state.
"...I felt exactly the same way. Most people walked down the street oblivious to the world around them. I could see it in their eyes, and I was both jealous of the mindless sense of security and appalled by the carelessness. I analyzed everybody I passed, watching the expression on their faces, their body language, the way they held their hands. I took note of the way they dressed and the places they looked. If a person glanced at me twice, I locked onto them as a potential threat, and I remembered that not just for a the five minutes but for days and weeks as well...
"...Most veterans like me don't suddenly think we're in combat or have visual flashbacks like movie scenes. I experienced the feeling of being there: the adrenaline the hyperarousal, the awareness of imminent danger. My mind jumped at every movement in an upstairs window, calculating the probabilities, while my eyes scanned doorways, parked cars, and garbage bins. Especially garbage bins. They were always overflowing with bottles and wrappers, the perfect place for an improvised bomb."
I highly recommend this book.
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Younger Son was here this weekend. He and Smokey worked on Da Yeep on Saturday; it is possible that we may be able to plow the driveway. ::cheers!::
On Sunday Smokey and Kiera The Teenage Helper worked on sorting and packing model trains, so YS didn't have much to do. All on his own he decided to straight the mess that is the entryway.
Before.
After! Percy approves, and so do I!
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We like to give the dogs bones to chew on. One bone each, and they are good for hours days. On Friday Smokey decided to pick up the bones that were scattered around the living and dining rooms.
Find :: and go seek. Yeah, I know that's dumb, but it's what my mind came up with.
* * * * *
I am not currently reading the two books I want to talk about today. I finished one on Thursday night and the other Saturday afternoon. But they both stuck with me, so I want to talk about them briefly. I have been having rather a dull run with books lately, so it was nice to read two back-to-back that grabbed me.
This one, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, is probably going to get some mixed reviews, and I can see the flaws in it, but I still found it fascinating. It is a bildungsroman, but unlike most coming-of-age novels, this one follows the characters until they have college-age children of their own. If you read the reviews on Amazon, you can get an idea of the plot and the themes. The one that struck me was the jealousy, the feeling of never having as good a life as your friend(s), and wishing you were in their family. I remember that as a child, although now of course I know that no family is as wonderful as I imagined others to be when I was 10. The author examines the some of the characters' feelings in depth, which rang true to me.
The other book, the one I finished yesterday, is The Dinnerby Herman Koch. Once again, the Amazon reviews can tell you a lot about the novel. I found it fascinating -- started it at 9:30 Friday night and forced myself to put it down at 12:30 because I needed to go to sleep, however unwilling I was not to keep reading. It is dark, satirical, disturbing, a bit mysterious as snippets of information about the characters are slowly revealed. Set in the Netherlands and originally written in Dutch, it was translated to English in 2012.
As always, I have no idea where I got the recommendation to read these -- I request books from the library whenever someone mentions them favorably -- but if it was one of you, thanks!
But first, let me show you what happens when a book-lover and avid reader gets a little carried away requesting books from her library system.
Those are the books stacked by my bedside. There are seven more that got cut off at the bottom of the screen.
These are the books I have on request:
This morning I realized this was madness and froze all my outstanding requests. Should have done that a week ago. Then I might have a prayer of actually reading that stack by the bed.
I may have mentioned that John Sandford's Prey series of police procedurals are my favorite over all other mystery/suspense/procedurals because his characters are so darned intelligent yet understated. Yesterday I picked up the latest one, Silken Prey, at the library. I am on page 94 of this 400+ page potential bestseller and have found three --three! -- errors that should have been caught in the editing.
1. "Rose Marie's husband opened the door; he was holding the Times in one hand and a piece of jelly toast in the other."
What, he has three hands? How did he open the door with stuff in each hand? If he put something down to answer the door, why are both hands still occupied?
2. (sorry, don't remember what this one was so I cannot look for it}
3. "I've got a cabin on the Wisconsin side of the St Croix [river], north of St. Croix falls."
It's St. Croix Falls, dumbass. The falls are there, but the name of the village is St. Croix Falls.
The Prey series is still my favorite, editorial nit-picking aside. I'll let you know if that changes.
Edited to add: On the very next page there was another one. After correctly detailing the protagonist's highway route from St. Paul to St. Croix Falls via I-35 and US Hwy 8 through Chisago City, Lindstrom, and Center City, the author mislabels the highway leading north from SCF, calling it Hwy 82 instead of Hwy 87. There is only one highway leading north that the character could have taken, so why bother to disguise it? I think it is another goof. (Elder Son was a fact-checker at the NYU student newspaper during his undergrad days. Now we all know where he got his nitpicking ways. When I read the sentence in #1, above, to him he asked if the character had a foot-operated door. Yep, the acorn does not fall, etc.)
Kym posted recently about August fun days. I thought that sounded like great idea -- some fun every day.
But the more I thought about what constituted my idea of fun, the more I realized that I already do that every day. The proof is that every one of these -- except the last one -- already had a category and photographs on the blog.
(Knit.) Read and re-read and studied and analyzed the Snicket Sockspattern until I finally figured out how the leg pattern works. It's not all that hard, but I had put the pattern on my iPad instead of printing it out and that meant I could not compare the written instructions side by side with the chart -- had to keep flipping back and forth. When I bit the bullet and attempted to print out the chart, my husband's computer (the only one with a functioning printer at the moment) locked up. So I went back to flipping back and forth between screens and eventually it all clicked.
Attended our lake association annual meeting, gave my report on doings in county government. (I am the county board rep on our lake association board.)
Knit. Started a simple ribbed hat with the skein of Knit Picks Swish Bulky that was left over from my hat and scarf. This turned out to be the perfect thing to knit while watching the above movies because I didn't need to keep my eyes on my knitting, thereby freeing them to read the subtitles.
Made a dandy dinner that took less than 10 minutes of actual prep time. Stir-fried chicken with jalfrezi sauce over brown rice with steamed asparagus. One more thing out of the pantry, one more thing out of the freezer.
Began cleaning my office. My first goal is to clear a path wide enough to use a walker easily, in preparation for my recovery from the hip replacement. Once that is accomplished -- probably today -- I will begin dealing with the clutter around the edges.
Played many rounds of Word Seek with Smokey. He worked this weekend (nights as always) so he tended to fall asleep after two or three games.
Did NOT knit on the deck. Not quite warm enough. Yet.
I celebrated my own Mother's Day yesterday -- spent pretty much the entire day in my recliner reading, watching Netflix, drinking coffee/soda/wine (as the day progressed), and knitting. This is Smokey's weekend to work (always with the night shifts) so when he is home he is tucked up in his bed with two dogs and a cat and a box fan for white noise. Today I might be productive. Hard to say, really.
Reading: A few weeks ago I read a piece in The Nation by Deborah Kopaken Kagan about her experiences as a woman author and how she was demeaned by the publishing industry. I was so inspired/enraged by her experience I clicked over to bn.com and bought all four of her books to read on my iPad. (I also clicked over to her website and sent her an email telling her what I did; she emailed back that it made her cry.) Anyhow, I want to recommend her books. She came from an ordinary middle-class background, graduated from Harvard, moved to Paris, worked as a photojournalist covering a lot of gritty stuff (ex., she went into Afghanistan alone during the Soviet-Afghan war), eventually married, had three kids, started to write. The woman has lived more in her 40-odd years than a dozen other other people put together. I highly recommend her books, especially Shutterbabe (memoir) and The Red Book (fiction). Her collection of essays, Hell Is Other Parents, is pretty damned good, too.
Yesterday's book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. I had read the first 60+ pages in fits and starts and was not particularly engaged by it, but yesterday I decided to give it a chance to pull me in. Which it did, in spades. Protagonist is a quant who specializes in the odds of disasters; the 3-person consulting firm he works for makes him rich. Then a real mega-disaster hits New York City -- essentially Hurricane Sandy plus Katrina -- and his life changes. Some of the scenes were lifted straight out of the news stories of Katrina. Good book, four out of five stars.
Knitting: I am enjoying having several projects to hand at all times. A hat, a pair of socks, the top-down set-in sleeve sweater, a scarf of the same yarn as the hat. They are strewn about my chair in various stages of doneness. When I sit down there is the delicious feeling of What shall I pick up this time? Project monogamy, begone!
Stuff: Remember the humungous external hard drive? I have moved most of my data files over to it and gone into my most-often used programs to direct them to that drive for files. Two programs have me stumped, though: Excel and iPhoto. I can deal with the former, but iPhoto is being a bugger. I have searched through all its menus and preferences and cannot find a place to tell it where to store its files. My internal 160GB hard drive has 76GB of photos. It would be nice to get them all moved and backed up. All suggestions welcome. (I started to email Younger Son yesterday to ask him but got distracted, had to reboot, lost the email, yada yada. So I'm asking y'all.)
No photos popped into my head to illustrate today's post. Here, in honor of Mother's Day, is a gratuitous one from 1984 of me being a mom to Elder Son.
I got to thinking about John Sandford and his Virgil Flowers novels because I noticed a new one had come out, Mad River. Love John Sandford, love Virgil Flowers. Maybe not quite as much as I love Lucas Davenport of the Prey series, but close. Couldn't remember which of the books I had already read so I requested all of them (five plus the newest one) from the library. Have been reading them one after the other, kinda like 350-page potato chips. Just started #4 AND got the email that the newest one is waiting for me at my local library.
Heaven.
Edited to add: the reason I like Sandford's novels and characters so much is that they are the most intelligent but down-to-earth ones I have read, amen.
* * * * *
Speaking of books.
I sit on the board of trustees of the regional library system, which is currently embarking on its [latest] long-range planning process. Members of the board were tasked with visiting all the libraries in their respective counties and chatting with the directors about the services they get from the regional system. On Friday the other board member from our county and I visited four municipal libraries and had four wildly varying discussions. Wildly varying in a good way, mind you -- their experience in the library system ranged from 1 to 29 years and their education/library size/community demographic varied almost as much.
It was an interesting and informative and fun way to spend a day. Which is good because next Wednesday we are going to do it again with four different libraries.
* * * * *
I liked the yarn I knitted the fingerlessgloves out of so much (it's been sitting in my stash since 2007, why haven't I used it before?) that I decided to make myself a hat from it, the Twisted Toque from 60 Quick Knits.
Fail.
Sorry, I should have taken a photo to show how terrible it looked. If you scan the projects in Ravelry you may notice that on some, the non-stockinette portion of the hat sort of... sticks out. Mine looked like the one in the link but much, much worse.
Ribbit.
In hindsight, I think the problem was that the pattern was written for Cascade 220, which is a light worsted, and I knitted it from a plump worsted. Perhaps if I had gone up a needle size all would have been well.
But we shall never know because I am NOT knitting that pattern again.
So there.
Not that I am bitter or anything...
* * * * *
(something I commented on another blog that seemed so revolutionary and astoundingly awesome that I had to include it here)
The possible long-term effects of global warming have been endlessly reported upon, but the day-to-day effects have been downplayed. I have concluded what the latter means for us in the northern latitudes is that our weather will change more quickly than we are used to. The past few weeks, with fronts blowing through seemingly every other day, are what have convinced me of this. Makes sense meteorologically, too -- globala warming is basically just more energy in the atmosphere = more volatile weather.
Kinda fun, actually. Every morning is a new surprise. Can I go into town minus hat/scarf/boots or will I need long underwear and three pairs of socks?
* * * * *
Have any of you been watching House of Cards on Netflix? I started last night, got annoyed in the first 30 seconds*, so annoyed in the next three minutes* that I stopped watching. I eventually went back and am now ready to start episode 2.
But it is not nearly as good as the British original with Ian Richardson, imnsho. I blogged about that oncetwice before. When Kevin Spacey delivered that line -- You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment -- I actually groaned. He is a great actor, don't get me wrong, but this whole thing seems kinda flat compared to the original.
I will continue to suffer through it, though ;-)
* They broke a primary law of good writing/movie-making: show me, don't tell me. When FU kills the dog, that is showing; when he expounds to the camera to give every bit of background information we may need, that's telling.
My Ten Many, Many Favorite Mysteries. What can I say? Mysteries have been my preferred reading since discovered #1, below.
Agatha Christie. We had many of these in paperback when I was growing up.
I started reading them when I was about 12. Have read them all, many more than once.
Dorothy Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey was awesome, but Harriet Vane ROCKED! Have read them all multiple times.
P.D. James. Another classic. Have read them all. Twice.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Ditto, but more than twice.
Other authors whose books I used to seek out: Dick Francis (horse racing & murder), Lilian Jackson Braun (cozies; "The Cat Who..." series; Koko and Yum Yum and Qulleran), Donald Westlake (murder/crime mixed with humor; not a series, just a book a year... forever), Elmore Leonard (best writer of dialogue EVAH), Emma Lathen (murder mysteries about banking and finance -- how could I not read them all?), Sue Grafton (A is for [etc.]; the R book was so boring I gave up on her), J.A. Jance, but not any more. I have Moved On.
Patricia Cornwell. She deserves an entry all to herself. Her first five or ten books were excellent, but eventually those morose and self-destructive characters got boring. And depressing.
What I read now:
John Sandford. Lucas Davenport Prey series is my hands-down favorite of all time. Also the Virgil Flowers ("That damn Flowers.") series and the Kidd series; excellent. Then Sandford wrote an espionage novel (don't remember the name). It was so awful I couldn't believe it was the same guy writing. He needs to stick to crime. But a new Prey or Flowers or Kidd book is always cause for rejoicing.
Jeffrey Deaver. The author who can pack the most plot twists into the last fifty pages of a book.
Tana French. Go read one of her books and you will be hooked.
Kate Atkinson. Ditto.
Steig Larsson. Of course.
Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell. Books written under the first pseudonym = excellent. Books written under the second = excellent but so unnerving I can only read one every five years or so.
P.J. Tracy. Techie mysteries set in Minneapolis.
Carl Hiaasen. Humor, satire, and murder in south Florida. There is a lot to satirize in that locale, and he does it masterfully.
Jonathan Kellerman and Fay Kellerman. I have read all the Alex Delaware books, but I like her Peter Decker/Rina Lazurus series better.
Susan Wittig Albert. Herb-themed cozies set in the Texas Hill County.
Others where I read one book and liked it enough to seek out others by the same author: Markus Sakey, Chelsea Cain, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dennis Lehane, Tess Gerritsen, Harlen Coben, Alex Kava, Nelson DeMille, Greg Iles, Terri Persons (set in MN).
Others I read, but this is the B-list: good enough to invest the time to read but not stunning. William Kent Kruger (all set in northern MN), Janet Evanovich (Ranger or Morelli -- you choose), Lee Child (Jack Reacher is every man's fantasy alter ego, imnsho).
Others I prefer to consume in audiobook format: Michael Connelly, Stephen Cannell, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
I could go on (and on and on) but I won't. ::collective sigh of relief::
During tax season I didn't read much, but I did listen to several audio books.
Before I went back to work I read a couple mystery novels by Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? They are in the Jackson Brodies series and set in Scotland. The weird thing is that as I read that last one, I knew I had seen it on PBSMasterpiece Mystery. And I had, just didn't remember that the main character was Brodie. Atkinson is an excellent writer; the first book of hers that I read was Case Histories and was recommended on someone's blog. (Whoever you are -- Kym? CarrieK? -- thanks!)
First, I finished listening to all five books (so far) of A Song of Ice and Fire. Started that endeavor in September, finished in February. What a trip!
After that series, anything else was a bit of a let-down but I soldiered on. Cuz I am brave like that.
First came The Amulet of Samarkand, the first book in the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. Fun book, dry humor, magic and demons abounding. I didn't realize until after I finished, but it is a YA book; I think that speaks to the fact that it is an intelligent YA book ;-) I have the second book of the trilogy, The Golem's Eye, from the library but I'm having trouble ripping it to my iTunes -- disc 13 of 14 keeps locking up my computer. DRM? Perhaps...
(Which reminds me, I need to delete Amulet from iTunes. I don't *steal* audiobook contents, I *time-shift* it to when I want to listen.)
Next was Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. I probably won't continue with the series. It was a good story but I know I missed a good three-quarters of it because at least that much was in 1800-ish nautical terminology. Learned a couple new words: there were specific sails called "royals" and "lateens". I have since used that second word in Boggle. Someone who is more conversant with maritime jargon than I would love this series.
I started The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett (#2 in his Discworld series) but somehow didn't get hooked into the story, so I put it aside and listened instead to Good Omens by him and Neil Gaiman. That one was a lot of fun.
I listened to Pavane by Keith Roberts, an alternate history set in late 20th-century Britain where the Roman Catholic church rules the world and has done so since Queen Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588. There is no electricity, only steam power, and long distance communication is accomplished through a network of human-powered signal towers. Interesting concept, well-written.
Real history came back in Eric Roberts's In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, an account of the Dodd family, whose father was appointed ambassador to Berlin in 1933, only a few months after Hitler came to power. The intimate and detailed descriptions of Goehring and Goebbels are fascinating, as was the entire audiobook.
After tax season was over I continued to listen to audiobooks. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett was... awesome, the best book I have read/listened to in a long time. If you haven't read it, do so. My book group is going to read it in September, and I will read the analog version then.
Right now I am listening to A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century by Barbara Tuchman. I have wanted to read it since I saw her interviewed on the Dick Cavett show when the book came out in 1978, but I also knew that I probably would get bogged down and lose interest. Audiobook is the way to go in such a situation! I must confess I do not listen to every word, just drift along with the reader. I don't care about the specifics of which count married his daughter to which king's nephew, but I love getting a mental picture of what life was like then, both for the nobles and for the commoners.
Last week I downloaded the Kindle edition of Ann Shayne's book, Bowling Avenue to my iPad. When I started reading I thought it might be a little too much chick-lit style for my taste, but then I got hooked. Next thing I knew it was 2am and I was halfway through the book, loving the characters and the story and the setting. I can recommend that one unreservedly.
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 5,0835,074 5,073* more signatures on this petition…
* 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.
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.
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.
No re-reads.
Create a sign up post and post the link in the linky.
Challenge goes from January 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012.
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!
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.
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 ofDoom Delightfor 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.
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.
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.
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.
Winterdance: The Fine Magic of Running the Iditarod / Gary Paulsen. This is my favorite book EVAH! It is funny, spiritual, and amazing.
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.
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.
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.
The Tortilla Curtain / T. C. Boyle. We read this in my book group several years ago, and it still haunts me.
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.
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.
The Exception / Christian Jungersen. I wrote a post about it. Have read it twice. Disturbing.
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.
The Stand / Stephen King. My favorite of all his books.
I keep a list of the books I read each year, and a few years ago also started keeping a list of the ones I started and gave up on. For the first time ever, my list of "Did Not Finish" is currently longer (10) than the ones I actually finished (9). As might be true of any such list, the DNF is more reflective of my mood when reading than it is of the quality of the books. Right now, while doing taxes and consequently brain-dead after 8 pm, I find that it is the rare book that I can actually read and comprehend. I have finished only one book, a thriller, since I started work on February 7. Apparently a job is the enemy of literacy -- in my case, anyway.
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A friend emailed this to me, and it touched my heart. Googling revealed that it was first published here.
Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.
During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.
It's utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."
Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.
We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.
There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.
Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.
And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.
They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.
Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.
Thank you again for your care and Love of me,
With Love in return, to you all, Anne
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You may have read / seen / heard about the gas main explosion in Minneapolis on Thursday. I missed it entirely, having been back in Wisconsin for meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If I been in Minneapolis I would most certainly have known about it; the site is about 1.5 miles from our house.
Caution: this video was made, apparently, by a young man with a limited vocabulary; his commentary is definitely NSFW. But it is the best video I found on YouTube. After the young man's initial comment, he spliced in some audio from a local radio station, which includes an announcer who doesn't know how to pronounce Nicollet (NICK-o-let, not Nick-o-LET).
If you don't want to watch the video, here are some choice screen shots of cars that were parked close to the site.
The melted stuff reminds me of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the Ark of the Covenant and the Nazis' faces melt.
To orient you, here is Google's shot of the area looking north toward downtown. The orange star marks the approximate site of the blast, the orange arrow points to the tree that is no more, and Cub Foods, a large supermarket, is outlined in red. Our house is somewhere off to the upper left. I think the man who took the video was standing on Nicollet Avenue, initially up between 58th and 59th Streets, and later, after the fire was out, near 60th.
The freeway at the right , I-35W, is one of the busiest in the country, and the explosion occurred near the end of the morning rush hour. It is amazing, considering the neighborhood, that no one was injured.
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.
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.
