The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

This book is SO GOOD.  I had to put it down for a second just to write this.  I am about two-thirds of the way through it, and it is absolutely un-put-down-able.  The first third, all from the perspective of Jacob, a Dutch clerk living in Dejima, a Dutch outpost attached to Nagasaki, was a little slow.  Good, but a little slow.  Then part two grabbed me and didn't let go.  Now I'm in part three, and I'm dying to see what happens.  I'm nervous about the fate of the characters I've come to love, but David Mitchell is not the sort of author who brings terrible things on his characters just to stir up the emotions of his readers.  I hate manipulative authors like that.  Man, I just want a happy ending for Jacob!  I must keep reading now.

Ottoman!

A friend and I reupholstered my ottoman last night.  It was a sort of test project before we begin on the matching Queen Anne chair.

Here's the before picture.  It was perfectly nice but rather boring.

Here's the after picture.  How stylish!

Here are the intermediate steps.  Hardest parts? Pulling staples out of the original fabric (we eventually gave up and just ripped it out) and sewing the green cording around the legs.

A couple other views of it:

Grand Total

It's January 14th, exactly a year since I started my blog.  I've been waiting till now to do a count on how many books I read in the past year.  Any guesses? Well, here's the answer: I started 50, finished 47, 4 of which were young adult books.  I re-read Prep, but otherwise none of them were repeated.  Most of them were fiction, and several were hotly anticipated (at least by me) new books by favorite authors of mine (like Scarlett Thomas, David Mitchell, and Elizabeth Kostova).

I just finished Scattershot by David Lovelace.  It's nonfiction, about the author and his family struggling with bipolar disorder.  It focused less on the disorder and more on his whole life, and really I wish there had been more details and specifics on events, on what he did when he was manic, on the effects on his friendships, on how he was diagnosed.  I could've done with slightly less of him writing about how it felt to be manic.  But overall it was good.  I like books about psychiatric disorders.

Next, speaking of hotly anticipated, I'm starting The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.  The main character is a 17th century Dutch clerk in a Japanese colony.  I feel cool because I know the correct Dutch pronunciation of the main character's name (Yahkob de Zoot).  Also, more David Mitchell, yay!!!

Prep, again

I re-read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld this week while on vacation.  I just picked it up briefly, and then fell into it (just like I had the first time) and decided I need to read the entire thing again.  It really is a fantastic book.  It's impossible to put down.

Lee, the prep school protagonist, is definitely a well-rounded, realistic character.  Sometimes she was so frustrating I wanted to reach into the book, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her.  She's so passive, such an observer, and so frequently judgmental (and often wrong).  But her thoughts about how high school boys relate and flirt, how people of different classes interact, how adolescent girls often feel, are spot-on.  And the other characters in the book seem so real, as well!  Everyone in the book is a complete, full person.  I buy all of it; nothing pulled me out of the story and said "this is a book, a work of fiction."  That's why it's so hard to put down.  It's less like reading a story and more like immediately falling into someone else's head, into their life.  I recommend it so much.

New Craft

One of my favorite quotes is from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbury. 

"...The world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn- and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb.  So, let us drink a cup of tea." 

I had the idea to cross-stitch the last sentence.  To go with it, as an absolutely awesome birthday gift, my friend Connie decorated a frame for me with tea bag wrappers.  

I've never cross-stitched before.  It's sort of soothing: four corners, just follow the pattern, make an X, make an X, make an X.  I used this free cross-stitch caption maker to create myself a pattern.  Here's my progress so far.

Here's the frame Connie made me:

Happy New Year!

I finished Packing For Mars by Mary Roach.  It was a great read: fun, fast-paced, informative!  The only problem was that I couldn't read parts of it while eating.  The sanitary challenges of being an astronaut are rather disturbing.  On the whole, actually, I was surprised by how much it makes me NOT want to ever be an astronaut, ever ever ever.  I used to think I would LOVE to go to Mars, but for the fact that I'm a little claustrophobic.  Now I realize claustrophobia would be the least of my problems.  I'll leave it at that.

Should you read it?  If you are interested in space travel, or just popular science in general, then yes.  She's an engaging, inquisitive writer.  If you're super-easily grossed out, though, you may want to skip a few chapters.