“People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.”

Dance o' joy! I LOVED The Historian and look! Elizabeth Kostova has a new book out.
(Also, interview with author via Joshilyn Jackson's Faster than Kudzu.)

Also, check this:
A sequel to The Little Princess!
By Hilary McKay!
Hilary McKay rocks, and I can't wait to get my hands on this.

Or, for that matter, this:
That, my friends, is the ninth and final installment of the Anne books by LM Montgomery.
I. KNOW.
I didn't know either.
Turns out I have to order it from Canada because...why? I don't know.

The same stupid reason I have to go through all sorts of ridiculous interlibrary loan or online ordering rigamarole to get Penni Russon's books, instead of just walking into the local bookstore and buying them off the shelf? Publishers in the States are short-sighted and stupid and only want to publish John Grisham's crap books?

*********
*Bjork.

Girls on film, girls on film...

No, not really. A cat or two, lots of brothers, some yarn...no girls. Sorry. Move along.

For Christmas I gave Seg a camera. I didn't follow my gut; instead, I followed the advice of a well-meaning but ultimately deluded salesman, and the camera I gave Seg was craptacular. Until I can stomach the thought of purchasing either a) a digital camera for him, or 2) a new digital camera for me and gifting him with my old digital camera, I have granted benevolent permission for him to use my camera whenever he likes. It sits in its case on the hall table downstairs, and he may use it whenever and for whatever he likes. He doesn't need to ask; he does need to tell me when the batteries die.

I was trying to get a couple of photos of my latest knitting projects, to log on Ravelry and post on Facebook, and when I downloaded my photos, I also downloaded several weeks worth of Seg's efforts. Oh. My. God. People. He may not be the next Annie Leibovitz, but he's awesome and has an amazing sense of humor. I was howling out loud at some of his shots - whole photo shoots of his brothers posing and posturing and playing, and Seg must have just kept snapping away. I will keep him supplied with fresh batteries for the rest of his natural life.

Now, of course, after that build-up, can I post these photos? Nah. They're, most of them, full-on face shots of my guys, and I'm just not comfortable with that level of exposure. I'm sorry. But I can share a bunch of random photos that I asked him to take for me, or ones that feature members of the family whom I can rest assured will never, ever complain about their photo being plastered on the Internets - you know, like the cats. So away we go...

He LOOKS innocent but I assure you, HE IS NOT.

For his birthday Primo received a cool little game called Bananagrams. He doesn't so much dig the game itself as he does arranging the letter tiles on his dresser. There is always a letter of the day, and sometimes, more meaningful messages.

Primo's cat. He's dumb, but now that we've spent a fortune on fixing his cat manparts so he can pee out kidney stones whenever the heck he feels like it, he better stick around. This is the final photo in a veritable photo essay on "Septimus: The Boy Cat Who Pees Like a Girl." (Yes, essentially we paid a buttload of money for our cat to have sex reassignment surgery.)

Some book p0rn for you. Six new ones were my lovely Christmas gift, ostensibly from H, but selected, ordered, wrapped, and unwrapped by yours truly.

This is the photo you can click on to enlarge so you can see the titles. Go on, I know you want to. It's exactly what *I* do when other people post photos of piles of books on their blogs.

And some office supply p0rn for Badger. This was, and I quote Primo, "the second best present ever." If I'd known he was so easy, I might've been tempted to skip the DS. (But, really? Nice call, Aunt D. Incredibly thoughtful and right on the money for my fussy little scribbler.)

THIS is what happens when you allow your child free rein with your camera. (That rat's-nest of hair? Me. The blondie next to me? We call him Oedipus.)

The whole POINT behind this post: my first cowl ever. Knitted for H's cousin's daughter who is in the Peace Corps in Jordan, where apparently they don't heat houses, ever. So, it's kind of cold. This should help keep her warm, and it keeps your hands free, without any fussy scarf knotting or whatever. Knit with James C. Brett Marble Chunky in Denim, on size 13 needles.

Liked the cowl so much, I immediately cast on a second, as a gift for Peg from The Palmyra Sliver, who is in town for work, and with whom I have dined and drunk beer two nights this week. She's lovely, and we felt as if we'd know each other forever. Which weirdly, we may have, as it turns out she lived six houses down from me on my little dead-end street in New Jersey for one year in high school. Knit with Malabrigo Twist in Sotobosque, on size 11 needles.

Unlike my Seg, I neglected to take any pictures whatsoever of said beerfests.

We have decided how sad it is for others that they cannot appreciate our genius.

Does anyone have any idea why I requested this from the library? At first I thought it was a mistake since I picked up Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures (more on this later) at the same time. But I don't think so -- it looks like a book I would like to read. But I have positively no recollection of requesting it or the faintest idea what prompted me to.

Anyone who tells you that bearing and rearing small children does not turn your brain to mush is a liar.

"Every day of her life she would be at some point damp, then drying, and for one solid time, wet."

She was not swimming for fun or exercise or habit. She had never joined a swimming team, not even in high school. It was like the air for her: she was amphibious.
“Wet,” from Passion and Affect, Laurie Colwin

Every Friday night of my childhood, with my aunt and brothers, I swam at a grotty little city YMCA. The water was dark green and murky, and you couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. Afterwards, we would struggle to pull jeans up wet legs and tuck our sopping hair into scratchy wool hats, and go home where my dad would make us big cups of hot tea with honey and lemon. After my aunt was mugged one Friday night coming out of the Y, we switched to a suburban YWCA and my aunt would take us to Wanamaker’s for some candy after swimming.

My Aunt K taught every single one of her numerous nieces, nephews, and smallfry relations to swim. Some of us took to it like, well, like fish to water. I took courses and swam races and qualified as a lifeguard; I feel as if I have been swimming for my whole life. I am as comfortable – possibly more so – in the water as I am on earth. In the water I feel sleek and strong and confident. Probably because in the water I AM. I can swim for an hour or two at a time. I think I must have been some sort of fish in a former life. Often I have wished for gills (a la Kevin Costner in "Waterworld"). How lovely would that be, to swoop and swim and stroke underwater without having to come up for air? Bliss.

I swam a slow, easy crawl, out to the float and past the markers. I felt my body move easily through the water. I was a fish, a whale, a creature that belonged in water. There was perfect sympathy between me and the lake…It was wonderful and terrible. I had never swum so well, I could not bear to stop. Life gives few moments of such ease…I was not going to stop. My happiness, for the moment, was boundless. I thought of Mr. Jacobowitz – I pretended he was swimming next to me like a big, friendly seal. I savored the silver taste of lake water in my mouth and swam, arm over arm, to the destination before me.
Geraldine Coleshares, in Goodbye Without Leaving - Laurie Colwin

At summer camp, we would get up at 5am to swim some mornings. (If you could churn out a half mile or a mile, you earned a badge and some serious street cred.) Often we were allowed to swim after evening vespers, too. This in addition to any lessons we had in the morning, and afternoon free swim. Sometimes, instead of the pool, we would take out the canoes and jump in the creek.

I swim outside, in the outdoor city pool or friends' pools. Four hundred miles inland, I yearn for the ocean, and when I am near it, I can't bear to not be IN it. I love swimming at the gym, where the pool is surrounded by windows, when it’s cold and snowy outside but warm and steamy inside.

When I am stressed or sad or angry or depressed or whatever, I get in the pool. I usually swim lap upon lap, front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke. I kickboard. I float. I dive. Chlorine cures most ills (including my yearly winter sinus infections). I emerge from the water cleansed, spent, and totally calm. Usually pretty happy, too.

But when the sun cuts through the atrium and the steam rises up from the pool, the water takes on a bright, edgy haze and I lose myself. I watch my shadow crawl across the tiles below and don’t feel the pain of doing as many as 50 sets although all the other Dolphins bitterly complain. All I feel is the sweet shuddering relief with each breath I draw and the relentless silence of my mind. I don’t mention these bouts of timeless love of the infinite universe to anyone…
Pip, in Swimming, Nicola Keegan

Nicola Keegan’s Swimming is a disjointed book – it examines a teenaged life through the lens of a swimming pool – there’s a lot left unexplored and unsaid, and Pip Ash is not an endearing character. But I respect her toughness, and I empathize with her love of swimming, and the water. She was born to be in water. It is the only place where some things make any sense at all.

After all, we spend the first nine months of our lives swimming round in a warm little amniotic paddling pool. I guess some of us never really let go.
***************
"Wet," from Passion and Affect - Laurie Colwin

Haiti

Remember how the Europeans said in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, "Today we are all Americans"?

Today we are all Haitians.
Except most of us have more cash.
Pray - donate - do what you can to show you care.

Mother in law...Mother in law...She worries me so...

Katy asked me a bunch of questions that I never answered. I am sorry, Katy, especially since the first question might have required more urgent attention!

What is the best advice/number one suggestion you would give for dealing with a mother-in-law that not even her son particularly likes and lives about 2000 miles away?
Even if your husband doesn’t especially like her, she did give birth to him. She gets a point or two just for that, right? So, be sure to send Christmas and birthday cards. When/if you visit, just grit your teeth, bring a nice hostess gift, and try to relax as much as you can – it won’t last long. And, most importantly, be grateful she’s 2,000 miles away.

I hope this helps. In-laws are tough, even if you adore them.

How did you know what to name your babies when they were born?
My oldest son is named for my father who died when I was a teenager. I always knew that if I had a son, he would be named after my dad. I THOUGHT we were going to nickname him Sam (as my dad was), but it didn’t fit: my fussy little guy is the perfect Simon.
Our second son was named in honor of John Lennon. H denies this now, but we even considered, very briefly and stupidly, Lennon. I lobbied a bit for Maxwell, since “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is my favorite Beatles song, but there are way too many Maxes and I am glad we went with Jude.
Our third son is named for my father-in-law, but he is never ever Jim; he is James or Jamie. We thought his name would actually be Angus James, but he didn’t LOOK like an Angus at all, so we reversed them and now we’re glad we did.
The fourth – heck, we were fresh out of names. We just liked Luke. It had always been a contender, and it’s time had come. Besides, Lukifer is the perfect nickname for him.
You just KNOW when a name fits a baby. Seriously. It sounds nuts, but you do.
And now we return to our regularly scheduled baby pseudonyms, and will never speak of this again.

Why don't we live in the same neighborhood? Would I still think you were cool if we lived near each other?
We don’t live in the same neighborhood because you skedaddled out of Pittsburgh upon graduation and I stayed and now I am married to a Pittsburgher so will more than likely never leave. As for the second question: I dunno, maybe. I hope so. We could hang out and knit together...

What is your opinion of rain? Did having kids change your feelings towards precipitation?
I love rain. It gives me the perfect excuse to be lazy.
I have actually always loved rain. Bright sunlight can give me migraines. (But for that matter, so does change in the barometric pressure.)
But having kids makes you think about weather differently. For example, this crazy snow we’ve gotten this winter, while delightful, wreaks havoc with my plans for myself when the chilluns are in school. Due to snow delays and closings, my kids have been home a good bit, and on top of the snow, it’s been frigid, really too cold to throw them outside for any length of time. However, I do get to take them sledding and skating, so that’s fun. I guess I am realizing that, with my little guys around now, I prefer snow precipitation to rain precip.

I hope that all helps. I’m sorry it took so long.
And now I am going to bed with a chocolate croissant and The Birthing House, which might be very creepy or very silly, I haven’t decided which yet.

I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.

My little brother knows me far too well.
A big box from Amazon arrived yesterday containing everyone’s Christmas presents from my brother and his wife.
The boys received really neat games.
H got a book about the failure of big business (he and D discuss the strangest things but hey, I am just happy *I* don’t have to talk about them).
I received this delightful and attractive little tome:
I love this kind of thing; these bits of arcane knowledge about the natural world make me feel...empowered.
I think in another life I would have made a perfect midwife-healer sort of character:
1. I am superb in a crisis.
2. I have a stomach of iron.
3. I generally want people to leave me alone.

And the thought of using feverfew to ease my migraines, or lavender to destress, is intriguing to me. Especially if it works.
I feel positively medieval deploying my little bottle of Rescue Remedy.

Many of the most sympathetic characters I enjoy in fiction are midwife/healers.
Or, as the more skeptical in their lives term them: witches.

Although I came to Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice and Matilda Bone as an adult, I also would have loved them as a junior high schooler.
The novels of Alice Hoffman are rife with these witchy women, replete with their profound knowledge of plant lore and the supernatural: the Sparrow women in The Probable Future, Seventh Heaven’s Nora Silk, and most famously, Gillian and Sally Owens in Practical Magic.
Sarah Addison Allen’s lovely Garden Spells follows in the Practical Magic vein, and Claire’s use of her horticultural expertise is blended almost seamlessly with supernatural elements.

Other midwife/healer characters in literature I love include the reserved yet ferocious-in-love Dora Rare in Ami Mckay’s The Birth House; the stubborn, wily, and fiercely independent Hannah Trevor in Margaret Lawrence’s Hearts and Bones; and the more relaxed and intuitive Misha in Lillian Nattel’s wonderful River Midnight.

I’d make a great witch.
Equipped with all the right books now, too.

Веселого Різдва і з Новим Роком

Tomorrow is Ukrainian Christmas.
Because I am half Ukrainian, and my boys therefore are a quarter Ukrainian, we observe this tradition, just as my mom did when I was a child.

The Christmas tree remains up and decorated until tomorrow evening. All the other decorations and lights have already come down but leaving the tree up is nice, and I find that there are no tears from the boys upon ceremonial observation of this last vestige of the Christmas holidays. (Note the traditional spider web ornament.)

I baked a snickerdoodle coffee cake. It’s not grain pudding, true, but it’s also more likely my guys will enjoy this more.

I have a couple of books to wrap up for each boy: a coloring book, a couple novels I think Primo will like, that sort of little thing. I know they hope each year I will cave and get them a BIG gift, go out with a bang as it were (requests have even been made this year for Nintendo games), but I resolutely observe my personal imprint upon this tradition and give them books.

My mother used to cook halupchi for dinner on the day; I am thinking stuffed eggplant might be an acceptable substitute in these near-meatless parts.

It may be a little silly, this haphazard celebration of what should probably be a solemn holiday, but it keeps me in touch with my heritage, and I feel I am honoring my relatives and ancestors whom I admire and love, and it wraps up the holiday season nicely, in a low key way. It precludes that dreadful feeling of “Oh, all the nice stuff is over now!” and lets us down gently.

Khrystos Razhdaietsia!

"It’s the sort of novel Laura Bush might curl up with in the White House solarium if it were not about Laura Bush."

How does someone who seems like a nice, down-to-earth, NORMAL woman like Laura Bush wind up married to George Bush, and as First Lady of the United States?

I didn’t know what to expect from Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel American Wife; I actively disliked her other books. But from the first page of this one, I was drawn in and kept engrossed. I know it’s a novel but I still felt that American Wife slowly revealed to me in perfect, sense-making clarity who Alice Blackwell, and by extension, Laura Bush, was. I mean, there has to be something more there, than just some robotic, plasticine Stepford FLOTUS. I can sense it, and I don't think I am the only one.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I was not, am not, and never will be a George Bush fan. I mean, look at the man - he's a buffoon. He's a child. But I like Laura Bush. I probably disagree with much of her politics, but I think she seems like a nice person. Maybe too nice a person to hang out with me, even. And I don't know how someone like her, someone with a quiet sense of class and decency, winds up with someone like him.

In addition, the fact of the matter is that I want the President of the United States to be smarter than me – and I’d be shocked to find out that George Bush is. But it would not especially surprise me to find out that Laura is at least as smart as me.

And of course, the fact that she’s a librarian immediately conjures kindred-spirit leanings.

The book reveals a quiet, moral, intense, and very private woman to the world. One with whom I found myself sympathizing. One whom I admired and liked and wanted to defend. But I think the most amazing revelation in the book wasn’t how I came to feel about Alice/Laura, but how through explorations of and meditations on Alice’s thoughts and ambitions and opinions, I came to understand Charlie Blackwell/George Bush a little better. This honest take on Charlie Blackwell’s political clumsiness, a quote almost at the very end of the book, explains perfectly just about everything I don’t get about George Bush and his presidency:
“Being president is for him like taking a ninth-grade English test on The Odyssey, and he’s the kid who did most of the reading, he studied for an hour the night before, but he’s not one of the people who loved the book. Besides, he’d always rather crack a funny joke in class than offer a genuine insight.”
(American Wife, p. 525)

Sittenfeld has written a stellar novel, one which I didn’t want to put down, and one which cast some light on the perplexing leading players of current events. If she doesn’t exactly solve the puzzle, she gives us a few useful clues about how to perhaps approach the solution, making me eager to both see what she comes up with next and to enthusiastically recommend this book.

And if I haven’t convinced you, maybe Maureen Dowd can.

I know I'm not getting this right - this book was eye-opening. It was riveting and I can't believe how much I liked it. And how much I liked Alice/Laura, despite her ridiculous husband.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! and gie's a hand o’ thine! And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught, for auld lang syne.

As I write this, it is snowing again.
This makes me inordinately happy. Even though last week’s snow is grey slush and the grossness prevents me from wearing my new Uggs 24/7. I must put on the wellies when I go outside. But still snowflakes bring out the little kid in me.

The boys are downstairs squabbling.
The baby's diaper needs changing, and I have already mopped the bathroom twice this morning.
H is STILL home.
I generally am not a wife who complains when her husband works a lot (as is usually the case) or when he’s home on vacation. And it’s not his presence, precisely – it’s simply that the holidays, and all of us home, and some protracted bouts of various gross illnesses have me longing for routine and a clean, decluttered house that smells of something more pleasant than Clorox.

And I was forced to pry the D key cover off, and now I look like I am typing everything on the white trash equivalent of a normal laptop.

And it’s only the first!
Hmmm. Perhaps it is going to be a looooong year…

So. Enough of that. [Moving briskly to another subject, perhaps accompanied by a hand clap of some authoritative sort.]

(Hmm, it isn’t all bad – I did have a delicious dream last night about Robert Pattinson and pirates. Seriously. Not all bad, indeed.) I mean, it's hard to be wholly pessimistic when RPatz looks at you like THIS.

Last year I took an almost unprecedented-for-me step of NOT keeping track of my reading activity. The tracking and tallying of books was cramping my reading pleasure, and there’s just no list or analysis or spreadsheet worth that price. Of course, I am not and never have been a linear, organized sort of reader. I more often than not have two or three or six books going at once, and I finish or not according to whim. I do NOT feel compelled to finish a book merely because I started it – life is too short. Uber-librarian Nancy Pearl’s rule of thumb works well for me: you read the first 50 pages, and if you aren’t engaged, put the book down.

However, while I read what I wanted when I wanted, willy-nilly, and in fact, actually sacrificed some reading time to my newfound knitting passion, I miss being able to talk about the best book I read in the past year, or the worst, or the most compelling mystery, or whatever. I still maintained my “Books I want to check out” list, in spreadsheet form this year. The problem with it being a spreadsheet living on my laptop is that when I most need it – at the library or bookstore, usually – it’s unavailable. But the little purse notebook always seems to get lost or destroyed. I am toying with the idea of maintaining the list on the Notes tool of my primitive cell phone. Perhaps more on this later.

This morning I dug out the few old blank books in which I maintained my TBR list and various reviews, and without much forethought took my new favorite Sharpie and my favorite blank book – a nice, thick number with a black leather cover and a tidy elastic band to keep it all together - and inscribed “2010” in bright blue across the first blank page.
Under it, the title of the book I finished last night – yes, this is cheating, but it was a GOOD book.
Under that, in pencil for easy erasing, the titles of the six – SIX! – books I am currently reading. This reckoning will take place every few weeks, just to give me a loose idea of what I am reading (and finishing or not finishing). The pencil lists are informal and will not be erased or updated, but as each book is finished, its title will be added to the list with the blue Sharpie.

That’s the plan.

I am not going to promise to blog every day. It’s just not a feasible undertaking what with my four small annoying children and/or my husband’s grumpy looks every time I flip open my laptop.
I am going to change my tag strategy and probably be much looser about post titles/quotes. Or at least their attribution.
But I will try to post more regularly.
And be as interesting as possible.
I also promise not to discuss any bodily fluids requiring Clorox clean up after this post.
I think those are resolutions I can keep.

Happy 2010, and may the new year and new decade bring you peace, love, and lots of great new books.

They're coming to take me away, haha...

Badger has cause me to consider doing Blog365 in 2010.

Perhaps having to churn out stuff rather than agonizing and pretending to craft could serve my blogging well.

Or not.

I don't know.

At any rate, happy new year and drive safely tonight.
Thanks for being my Internetty friends.

PS I may just quit writing altogether if I can't fix my defunct D key...

Merry Christmas to all...

I am feeling a little melancholy this Christmas Eve.
I am missing my parents.
I am missing my stupid big brother.
I wish my little brother lived closer.

But I have my boys, and H, and my friends, both real and Internet.
I am healthy, my boys are awesome, I got to sing lovely carols this afternoon, and after I play Santa, I plan to curl up in bed with a mug of hot tea and a creepy vampire novel (Let the Right One In).

A peaceful and joyous Christmas to you.

Love, BB

"I don't want a lot for Christmas..."

I should be
wrapping
baking
vacuuming
packing
knitting.

But last night, I picked up the new Harper Connelly.

So I am reading.

And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing right within your heart.

• Am currently burning the 28 CDs of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander to my computer. I assume it will make some lovely listening while I knitknitknit.
  
• However, I also am enjoying listening to Anna Karenina via LibriVox. I have tried to READ AK any number of times; the listening is much pleasanter.
  
• All this audio goodness is to help me knit the four baby hats my husband asked me to knit for baby-having coworkers. He asked last week. He wants them before Christmas.
  
• It was a good excuse to go buy yarn I might not otherwise: a pale pink alpaca/silk blend, and some gorgeous Malabrigo silky merino.
  
• At least one of the hats I am knitting is the pink ruffly dealio in here.
  
• It's already so adorable I could scream.
  
• I am also knitting the umbrella edge beanie in here. I am just not sure in what color yet, although I have some gorgeous soft turquoise-y blue Malabrigo worsted lying around...
  
• I am reading actual real live hard copybooks. I swear.
  
• I am totally in love with Lillian Nattel's River Midnight. Engrossing and complex and human. LOVE this book.
  
• I want to own this, as I will reread it.
  
• I also started Kate Jacobs' Knit Two last night. Oh, how I want to love these books, like I love Gil McNeil's Beach Street books.
  
• But I don't. They are cold and detached. I don't LIKE any of the characters. She's like Jennifer Chiaverini with all the schmaltz but none of the redeeming heart.
  
• I am doing my own Christmas shopping, mostly at Persephone Press. Will keep you updated on my selections.
  
• I am also buying myself a lovely pair of chestnut short Uggs boots.
  
• I think.
  
• Unfortunately, all the Amazon packages flowing into the house these days contain gifts, not goodies for me.
  
• I bought H this and this for Christmas. Just today.
  
• Our tree is bought and up. It's easily nine feet tall, and smells gloriously like oranges. The tree guy says this is typical of Douglas fir trees.
  
• Outside lights are up, framing our front door, and the rest of the decorations will go up this weekend.
  
• Baking for teacher gifts will commence this evening. I am leaning towards lemon slice.
  
• Kim gave me the world's best lemon bar recipe ever. I think they're festive enough for Christmas gifts...
  
• The boys completed their shopping at the school store, and all mysterious packages are sequestered in my bedroom.
  
• I hear we may get a few inches of snow this weekend.
  
• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
  
• THIS is more like it.

All the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not.

We got out the Christmas books today.
Seg is sprawled on the living room floor, engrossed in The Littlest Angel.
Primo couldn't wait to get his hands on Four Sides, Eight Nights.
And Terzo keeps looking at the book that plays "Jingle Bells."
Requests to have The Polar Express read out loud tonight have already come.

H is bringing a tree home tonight.
I have most of my shopping done, and the boys' lists, carefully annotated, have been mailed to the North Pole.
Caroling in the churchyard is this evening.
I have started thinking about what to bake for teacher gifts, and have already gorged myself sick on cookies at least once.

So why do I still feel like this guy?

Whether your quiver is large or small, you are welcome.*

Oh dear.
I miss you all.
But what with H’s expanded hours and the Fourth Child Who Is Kicking My Butt, I am lucky I have enough brain power to even read, let alone blog about what I’m reading. Bear with me, I will try to do better.
Um, right after Christmas.

I just reread Gil McNeil’s The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club in preparation to read its sequel Needles and Pearls. Not yet out in the US, it was sent to me by a kind friend who sort of accidentally ordered it from a UK bookshop. Equally as charming as the first, the plot takes a couple unexpected turns, but it still qualifies as feel-good reading, and it inspires me to knit more.

I am thoroughly and surprisingly enjoying the weird little novel by Jonathan Miles, Dear American Airlines. Begun as a letter of complaint to the airline during an unexpected and extended layover in O’Hare Airport, Bennie Ford meanders through his life, his relationships, and his personal epiphanies. It’s an odd conceit for a novel but it works, and Bennie is a complicated but sympathetic man.

I also finished Tom Perrotta’s The Abstinence Teacher, but since I read it, weirdly concurrently, with Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, I think I will save my thoughts about that bizarre juxtaposition for another post.

Moving onto Raffaella Barker’s autobiographical Come and Tell Me Some Lies and Lillian Nattel’s engaging The River Midnight.

My husband asked for my marked-up copy of the Persephone Press catalogue, so I am anticipating some lovely, dove grey volumes among my Christmas gifts.

And I just requested a buttload of YA novels from the library today, after catching up on Jess’s blog.

I am going to die before I get to read everything I want to, aren’t I?

*******
from the Quiverfull website (www.quiverfull.com)

"I...uh....you, you can't do - - - I mean, you just....what do you think...you can't...!" *

Oh, dudes.
The cookie mall.
I hate the cookie mall.
Not that I have ever BEEN to the cookie mall.
But I have to bake for it tonight, and I don't want to.
I WANT to curl up in my cozy bed with my new copy of New Moon and bone up on the Volturi, and then move onto my new copy of Eclipse, to refresh all the vampire's back stories.
Shut. Up.
It's been a loooooooooong day.

At least I am not watching "Twilight."
Again.

************
*Bella, as living proof that vampires make you stupid

"The water is your friend. You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move. "

Our big old house is most decidedly not haunted. BUT: when we first moved in and I would wander about at night after the boys were asleep, I often felt a warm, benevolent presence. I assumed it was 1) my overactive imagination, or 2) the previous owner who had died a very modern and apparently pain-free death from old age at a local hospital and not in our master bedroom. Either way, it was, as I said, benevolent, and eventually, once it became clear that we were staying and taking good care of the house (far better care than he had been able to, for that matter) and seemed intent upon populating it with lots of raucous and messy little boys, the benevolent, warm presence dissipated. After all, with all the mess and chaos around here, who has time anymore to wander round the halls wallowing in a ghostly presence? Not I. I need my sleep. And apparently, so did Henry (the previous owner).

I FINALLY finished The Little Stranger after I resorted to carrying it with me all day and reading it in completely non-creepy places like my pediatrician’s waiting room and the lobby at the gym. Because I found if I read it at home, especially last week when H was out 4 of 5 nights, I kept hearing all sorts of noises – noises I couldn’t seem to just blame on the cats, and the boys were all asleep. I would hear footsteps and rattles and snorts and all sorts of deliciously, horrifyingly creepy odd noises. So I was forced to stop reading it by myself, in my old, drafty, shadowy house. Especially since Henry no longer was around to watch out for me.

So to banish the thought of wet gurgling voices from the laundry chute and wafting cold drafts, I dove quickly into some not so creepy reading.

I picked up Robertson Davies’ The Cunning Man one night last week, because it was handy in a stack by my bed. And the thing about Robertson Davies’ books are that they are so convoluted and dense with details and tangents that often by the time you’ve reached the end, you’ve forgotten all of the beginning and lots of the middle, so he’s perfect for rereading. I am currently three-quarters of the way through and enjoying it just as much as I did the first 2 times I read it.

I also am rereading (albeit unintentionally since I didn’t remember I’d already read it till about halfway though) Mary Kay Andrews’ Hissy Fit. Good, fluffy fun, often with a mild little mystery thrown in. Andrews’ characters are more often than not antique dealers, or at the very least, interior designers or other people who have good reason to frequent antique auctions and estate sales, and considering that the only new pieces of furniture in my entire house are the TV and the dining room table, I find myself sympathizing greatly with them and often wishing I could tag along to the garage sales and junk shops…

Speaking of, I picked up a bunch of books at the local thrift shop last Thursday and immediately immersed myself in Julian Fellowes’ Snobs, which is sort of funny in an abstracted, Thatcher-era England kind of way.

I bought a bunch of books for the boys, including Dave Pilkey’s first six Ricky Ricotta graphic novels, and a pile of Children’s Illustrated Classics.

And also, for me, a weirdly delightful illustrated picture book of the saints, with strange little crayon-y drawings of each saint and a cheerfully obtuse blurb about his or her life (and bloody, painful death, where applicable).
E.g., this lovely little story re: Saint Agnes: "When the emperor saw she was not afraid of pain, he had her clothes stripped off and she had to stand in the street before a pagan crowd."
Or this gem about St Cecilia:
"The judge condemned her to be smothered by steam. But God protected Cecilia. Then the judge ordered a soldier to kill her with a sword. He struck her three times but did not cut off her head. She fell down, badly wounded, and for three days she remained alive." (Does anyone else hear the voice from Austin Powers: "I'm badly wounded..." or is that just me?)
Peaceful little bedtime stories, no? (Of course, when I was a pre-teen, I was oddly obsessed with Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which was available in our church's library for all to read. But this was the same church that loved to detail the torments of hell to grade-schoolers, so take that for what it's worth...)
All in all, well worth the buck-fifty it cost me...

In other news, the dread Christmas shopping is upon us.
But first, Primo’s birthday.
A friend very kindly gave him a Game Boy this summer, but I am discovering that Game Boy games are obsolete and practically impossible to find. All the games Primo really wants are Gameboy Advance games. So I am currently torn between (among?) 1) buying a used Game Boy Advance and the attendant games, 2) buying a Nintendo DS with which all Game Boy Advance games are compatible as well as, obviously, all the DS games, and 3) refusing to buy any game or gaming consoles at all and hopelessly abandoning my children to the outdated 20th century.


***********
* ~Aleksandr Popov

"...the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night..."*

Something Missing, by Matthew Dicks, is a strange and compelling little book - much like its main character. Martin Railback is a thief: he supports himself by stealthily entering the homes of his carefully vetted "clients" and stealing whatever he needs: a half-bottle of laundry detergent here, a box of cereal there, a roll or two of toilet paper, a book of stamps. Things most people would never notice missing. His thoroughness and his obsessive-compulsive tendencies lend themselves to the success of his chosen "career." But after he is almost caught one day, he throws caution to the winds (well, for him), and begins to interfere in the lives of his clients, people whom, after all, he considers practically family. Martin reasons, If he can make people's lives better, why shouldn't he? For a common house thief, Martin is a remarkably likeable and engaging guy, and I was surprised how thoroughly drawn into his story I became.

And now for something completely different:

*************
*I Thessalonians 5:4

"We're never getting off this island, Richard."

Sophie and Kristin asked the most frequently asked question: how do you choose what to read?

I read a bunch of blogs (a quick smattering: Pickle Me This, RubyRed Books, Make a Note). I get reccs from friends whose reading tastes I know and trust (often from their blogs – Jess, Suse, Katya) but also friends from the coffee shop or fellow librarians. Sometimes I just wander the library (usually the library) and pick up whatever looks good – I do this at the bookstore but usually with a pen and paper so I don’t have to BUY everything. Every couple months I run the names of my favorite authors thru Amazon to see if they have anything new coming out. And when I worked in an actual library, it was even easier. Every book that crosses my radar that might interest me gets entered into an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop. But I also have a little notebook I carry in my purse. I have even been known to text myself with book titles.
It’s an organized sickness.

I also find that I must be in the proper mood to appreciate the right book. Which is why I didn’t dive right into the newest Audrey Niffenegger, for example. My brain wanted fast and furious action, and so it was thrilled with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But after that maelstrom of emotion, I was ready for something calmer (albeit just as disturbing). This is why I have dozens of books on my TBR shelves, because you never know what mood may strike at 3am. And sometimes if I am in a slump, I reread an old favorite (Rosamunde Pilcher’s “big books" and Raffaella Barker’s Hens Dancing and Summertime are prime for this).

“…and then of course, there are the problems with follow-through if I actually get something home...”
Don’t let me fool you. For all the reading I do, there are dozens of books sitting on my bookshelves/floor/nightstand, etc. awaiting my attention. More often than not to be ignored for some fly-by-night newcomer…

Paula asked, Have you read The Lace Reader? Did you like it?
I have, and I did enjoy it. I followed it up with The Birth House though and for some reason constantly confuse the two.

sueeeus said...
Have you read Shantaram, and did you like it? (Long, but I liked it for the most part.)
Haven’t read it, and in fact had to go look it up on Amazon, but it looks good. So I will put it on my list.

Have you read Fraction of a Whole, and did you like it? (Tedious, but I eventually finished it. Parts made me laugh, but the tedium outweighed the rest.)
I haven’t read it, but and also had to look it up on Amazon. It doesn’t strike me as the type of book I enjoy.

What about The Housekeeper and the Professor? (Loved it.)
This looks fascinating. I think I will get this to read. The premise sort of reminds me of Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room.

And Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime? (Loved it.)
Really liked this. Read it in the “trilogy” of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn and Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark, as suggested by Badger. Who was right, as always.

(I can read 4 books to your 47,212. How on earth can you read so much??!!!!)
I breathe, I eat, I read. Oh, and I neglect my children.

And now for something completely different, but also from Sueeus:
Are you a bar soap or body wash person?
I like body wash. I will be eternally bitter that SoftSoap stopped making their Milk & Honey bodywash. Bastards.

What's your favorite 70s music?
You're not serious? I don’t know. I listen to a lot of hip-hop crap from my zumba classes (Pitbull, Lady Gaga, etc.), and a lot of stuff like Coldplay and Radiohead because my husband digs them too. I don’t actually like music usually. I have noise issues…

Rachel:
I'm not a follower, but I read all your posts...and here in Australia we got AS Byatt's Children's Book months ago. I still have it sitting in my to-read pile, and felt guilty everytime you mentioned not being able to get it!
Feel guilty no longer – I have my very own copy sitting on my nightstand not being read right now too.

mouselegs [I LOVE that name, btw]:
I'm sure I have questions but can't concentrate with all the shouting (school holidays here). Maybe next week, when there is only one shouting, I will be able to think again.
I anticipate not being able to form a coherent thought until mine are out of the house permanently. In like, 20 years.

Jess:
I'm sure you've mentioned this before, but favorite pie and recipe? And is there a story behind having a basement oven?
Coconut custard pie. Yum. Recipe here.
And the story is that when we moved into our house 6 years ago, the upstairs oven had one setting: Broil the Shit Out of Something. Have you ever tried to broil chocolate chip cookies? No? Well, I recommend you don’t. We had brought out old range with us, and we hooked it up downstairs next to the functioning gasline, as an interim measure. Well, the interim lasted till last spring, when I finally got my upstairs oven fixed. I would never try to bake anything tricky like a soufflé in there, but for cookies, roast chicken, etc., it’s fine, and it makes scones remarkably well since they requite such high heat. And that is...the rest of the story. (Did anyone else read those Paul Harvey book when they were young? I loved those…)

Eleanor told me how wonderful my blog is (she’s so sweet, if delusional) and adds: Now that I've taken care of that... a question...If I tell you that I've tried to read the 1st 30 pages of "The Children's Book" 3 times already but kept falling asleep would you still love me?
Darling Eleanor, I would love you even if you told me your favorite book was Lace, followed by Lace II, followed by Flowers in the Attic.

Elizabeth:
1. Where do you store all your books?
Do you keep them all, hand them off to friends, donate, hoard?
I used to be manic about keeping every last one, but in the past few years, I have come to just want the ones I really love or use around me. My very favorites for the most part are in lovely custom-made look-built-in shelves in my bedroom, which were a Christmas gift from H. I have two filled cases in the living room for both my and H’s books. Most of my cookbooks live in a case in the hallway just outside the kitchen. I have a wall lined with shelves on the landing up to the third floor, for all the cheesy paperbacks and travel guides and things that I don’t want to get rid of but also don’t need to display. I have more cases in the third floor office for our computer books and H’s linguistics books and things like that. All my knitting and crafty books are in a smallish bookshelf in my sewing room. The boys each have big bookcases in their rooms for their books, and there’s a bookcase in the third floor playroom for my childhood books that I think they’d like to read someday. In other words, the books are everywhere.
I like to be able to lend out books, and I often buy duplicates intentionally if I run across favorites priced cheaply, so I can give them away. But if I have a book near and dear to me, I usually won’t lend it out, except to Gina.
I usually donate a few bags of paperbacks to our church’s annual book sale, and I sell some at Half Price Books (for example, I just sold all my pregnancy and baby books. And then bought more books with the proceeds.)
Clearly I am a sick woman.

2. Have you thought of writing one?
I have two “novels” sitting in my bedroom right now. One is an outline, a lot of research, and some random chapters. The other is just writing, but it fills about half a notebook. More likely than not, neither one is ever going to see the light of day.

3. How is Flat Edward holding up? Is he going to be replaced by Bill or Eric?
Flat Edward is hanging out in my sewing room. He can never be replaced by any other vampire. However Eric grows close to my heart the further into Charlaine Harris’s novels I get.

4. Did you ever get into the Outlander series?
I read the first one and really liked it (although I admit to some appallment (is that a word?) over the wife-beating scene, and how cheerful Gabaldon was about it.)
But I never read any more. I guess I didn’t see how much more she could possibly have to say, since the first one was like a thousand pages long.

5. My word verification: morusle.
What's the first thing that comes to mind?
Perusal, a small moral or morsel? Am I the only one who plays these silly word games?
I for some reason went to mollusk. So no, you are not the only one. Not by a long shot.

Stomper Girl: Not sure if you read crime fiction (as opposed to True Crime Fiction) but if you do do you have some favourites?
I love Josephine Tey and Elizabeth George, and I like Minette Walters’s earlier stuff. Am enjoying discovering Val McDermid, although she’s very gory. I also have recently discovered Ruth Rendell, who writes psychologically tense novels which just happen to have a perfectly plausible and exciting mystery embedded in them. I am quickly reaching the conclusion that the woman is a genius.

Julia wants to know:
…do you have a favorite A.S. Byatt book, and if yes, which one is it and why?
My favorite AS Byatt book is The Virgin in the Garden. The characters of Alexander and Frederica develop and mature throughout the quartet, but in the first novel, they are so young and vulnerable, and I love learning something else about them every time I reread. The twining of present day (in the book, 1950s) with historical events, and the way in which Byatt draws parallels, intrigues me no end.

Also, do you like Margaret Drabble as well?
I have read one Drabble (The Witch of Exmoor, about which I remember exactly nothing. I know I should read more, as she is Byatt’s sister and it’d be nice to discover another such brilliant author.

And finally, very interested to hear what you think of The Children's Book. I read it last month and am still cogitating over my reactions.
I haven’t started Children’s Book yet. Trying to read Byatt with 4 children around is like, I don’t know, trying to perform brain surgery in the center ring at a circus. My time will come. For now, owning it is enough.

Beth said...
Have you ever finished a book and then hugged it, or am I the only one who does that?
No, you are not alone. I have been known to sleep with said book under my pillow (Hens Dancing); alternately, I have gotten up out of bed and put said book outside my house or in my car because it could not stay in my house One. Minute. Longer (Salem’s Lot).

Penni said...
Okay, if someone were to hand you a girl baby and a boy baby, what would you name them? (I am name obsessed). Would you keep the babies?
(I am very curious where Penni intends to find these babies...Hmmm.) I am name obsessed too. I own way more baby names books than any one person probably should. I also am fascinated by the psychology of names.
If it were a boy – oof, this is tough. I think I used up all the boy names I liked.
If, God forbid, I were to have another boy baby, I would – all other things being equal and with my husband’s opinion mattering not one whit – name him either Eamon or Mark.
If it were a girl – well, if I’d ever had a girl baby, she would have been Eleanor. So I will stick with that. It was my mother’s middle name, and I think it’s lovely and elegant. (She threatened to come back and haunt me if I ever used her first name, which she despised (it was Elsie, which I think is actually sort of cute…))
And yes, I would keep the babies. I mean, why not? I already have the world’s most chaotic household, what’s two more babies? But someone else would have to sleep train them.

If you had to write under a pseudonym what would it be?
Kate something...something hyphenated. Kate Parker – something.
There. Clear as mud. Look for me: Kate Parker-Something.

What is your favourite thing about blogging?
All the cool people I have gotten to “meet,” some in real life.
And all the cool people whom I “meet” and then get to read THEIR books and talk about them on the blog (ahem). There’s something recursively exciting about that process!

Katya:
Do you like Margaret Atwood? If so, have you read Oryx and Crake? Did you like it? I keep hearing it's awful but feel like I have to read it because I want to read The Year of the Flood which sounds kind of sequel-y.
I usually enjoy Atwood immensely (Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, I even liked The Blind Assassin and most Atwood fans panned it). Her scope and range are mind-boggling. However, I did not especially like Oryx and Crake. I am dreading picking up Year of the Flood, which I fear I must, since I own and have read everything else she has written, because I think I am going to have to reread O&C and I most emphatically do not want to.

I think this might have been asked, but what book have you hated the most? For me it was Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City.
Hands down Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full. I threw it away in an airport garbage can, I hated it so much. I didn’t even want to leave it on the airplane because I couldn’t inflict it on someone else.

ssheers asks the hardest question of all:
What are your five favorite books?
And then she followed with:
Above, I asked you "What are your five favorite books?" Feel free to modify the question any way you want: go ahead and give us your six or ten or 100 favorite books or change "favorite" to "desert island-worthy" or just tell us the five (or six or ten) books that you've read recently that you enjoyed.
I am such a glutton for books, I will answer ALL of these.

First, the easy question, books I have read recently that I enjoyed. This is marginally more difficult than usual because I stopped keeping a list of what I’d read. I find it freeing to not keep track. I was tired of being stressed about something that is the primary love of my life.
So, off the top of my head:
Friday’s Child - Georgette Heyer. Think fluffy Jane Austen.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larson. Riveting, once I got past the first 30 pages of boring financial crap. Lisbeth Salander made it all worth it.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club - Gil McNeil. Add to my list of comfort reading. Sequel comes out in May.
Aunt Dimity’s Death - Nancy Atherton. More comfort reading. Sweet and quiet.
Abide With Me - Elizabeth Strout. One of the most under-recognized authors of the day, if you ask me. (Although she did win the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge.)
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly. Think Caddie Woodlawn tackles the scientific world.
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakuaer. Fascinating stuff. What I plan to have in my hand the next time those nice young boys in black pants and white shirts ring my doorbell. I have some questions…

Also, I am really, really enjoying Audrey Niffenegger’s newest, Her Fearful Symmetry. Like, look forward to curling up in bed and stay up way too late reading it enjoying.

My five, no, six, no TEN favorite books (sort of…I played fast and loose with the “book” concept) (also, please note: I could revise and switch and add and subtract books to this all day long, no joke, AND it is not necessarily in order):
1. Possession/The Virgin in the Garden
2. Satanic Verses
3. Stones from the River
4. Roller Skates
5. The Sparrow
6. Emma & Pride and Prejudice
7. The Sandman graphic novels (Volume 7, “Brief Lives,” is my favorite in the series.)
8. Hens Dancing/Summertime
9. Miss Buncle’s Book/Miss Buncle Married
10. The Cunning Man

My ten desert-island books (see note above):
1. My Riverside Shakespeare
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. The Bible
4. Complete works of John Donne
5. Possession
6. Satanic Verses
7. The Divine Comedy
8. The Sandman graphic novels
9. War and Peace
10. The Michelin Green Guide to Florence

Desert island books differ from favorites because one never knows how long it will take to get rescued – you’d hate to run out of reading material.

I know I missed some questions; I swear it won't take me another week to get to them.