Feminism and Spirituality

I recently re-read At the Root of This Longing by Carol Lee Flinders.  I'd read it in college, when I'd taken a women and spirituality course as part of my women's studies minor, but I didn't remember much of it at all. 

It's great!  It's all about the author's work sorting out the disconnect she felt between her feminism and her spiritual practices, and how she reconciled that disconnect, realizing feminism and spirituality are not only compatible but mutually beneficial to each other.  The book is divided in two parts.  The first uses the story of Julian of Norwich, a Catholic mystic, as a framework, and the second uses the story of Draupadi from the Mahabharata, the Indian epic. 

Flinders makes points that I'd felt but never been able to articulate.  She summarizes these contradictions as "vowing silence vs. finding voice, relinquishing ego vs. establishing 'self', resisting desire vs. reclaiming the body, and enclosure vs. freedom."  In the first part of the book, she tackles them.  In the second half of the book, she talks about using both feminism and spirituality to drive community action, to make change in the world. 

I loved it so much that I emailed the author to tell her.  She emailed me back the next day!  She was really nice, and recommended other things for me to read.

Should you read it?  If it sounds at all intriguing, yes!

Like Video Games, But Less Fun

Have you heard of Amazon MTurk?  It's this thing set up by Amazon (obviously) where people post tasks they want done that can be completed on a computer (data looked at, links clicked, surveys taken, etc.), and then other people find them and do them.  For money.  Very little money.

I read an article on the Wall Street Journal website that some guy made $10,000 doing this to supplement his income, and how he thought it was a fun way to goof off.  A couple hours ago, I signed up.  I don't need the extra money, but it sounded intriguing.

[Keep in mind, by the way, that if you include my commute I worked a thirteen-hour day today.  Before signing up with MTurk.]

So there were all these little jobs posted, all for just ten cents or fifty cents or whatever, but they were quick and trivial.  I took surveys about environmentalism, I searched Google's Australian site for a dress shop, I wrote a few sentences about my last trip to the grocery store... Nearly two hours passed by without notice (except for pain in my right hand.  I need a more ergonomic computer setup).  I racked up points for doing almost 20 jobs, points that, once approved, will turn into money.

How much money?  Drum roll... $3.49.  Enough to buy the latest episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia on iTunes and still have change leftover for a gumball.

For comparison, when I first finished grad school, I tutored high schoolers in physics for $30 an hour.  An hourly rate SEVENTEEN times greater.

How did someone make $10,000 at this?  Is he just a rotten liar?  If so, I'm sure there are some fascinating psychological surveys he should take.

Anyway, I have no idea why this felt enjoyable and semi-addictive, and now my hand hurts...  But I kind of want to see if there are any new jobs posted.  Maybe I could earn another buck.

Money

Just a re-post of something fascinating that someone else did.  Today's XKCD comic (not really a comic today) is a visual depiction of different amounts of money. Parts are focused on Occupy Wall Street-related income disparities, parts are irreverent (cost to buy the world a Coke), parts are simply informative. It sounds weird, but look at it: Money

Pants Altered

I don't know what's happened, fashion-wise.  I was so convinced for years that flared pants were more flattering than straight-legged.  The flared ankle balanced things out and made one's hips look smaller, the theory went.  But the past couple years, as straight-legs have come back in fashion, it just doesn't seem true anymore.  Or, even if it's true, the advantage of smaller-seeming hips is not as big as the disadvantage of looking not-so-stylish.

I have two pairs of corduroys from Anne Taylor Loft that I love, one in dark brown and one in purpley-maroon (I call that pair my Peter Brady pants).  They fit well, they're in good shape, and most important they're decent non-denim pants I can wear to work.  But they're flared, and they just make me feel like any outfit featuring them isn't really a success.

So, at the advice of my friend Connie, I turned them into straight-leg cords! I laid a pair of straight-leg jeans over them and, using a quilting pencil, traced the sides of the jeans onto the cords.  Then I sewed them!  I think it went pretty well.

Here are the before and after shots.  As a bonus, the "before" photo is an action shot including the aforementioned friend Connie, and the "after" features my trusty sewing machine.

Before:

After:

Socks!

I finished a pair of socks that I'd started knitting in January.  The first of the pair went quickly - I completed the majority of it while on vacation in Atlanta, watching Arrested Development on DVD with a college friend.  The second sock took me much longer.  I got busy and kept putting it down.  But finally, almost a year later, they're done!

They're big, wintery socks to wear around the house on cold Wisconsin nights.  I might also want to try them with colored tights, a short dress, and my blue Converse low-tops.

They're made of self-striping yarn, which I love.  The yarn is dyed to create the pattern - I never had to switch skeins or anything.

Check them out!

Apple Nachos

Today I made apple nachos.  I read about them on a blog somewhere, but I don't remember where.  They are called nachos based only on appearance - there's no cheese or jalapenos.

Cut apples into thin, chip-like slices.  Layer them on a plate.  Drizzle them with melted peanut butter, then sprinkle on chocolate chips, shredded coconut, and walnuts.  Well, those are the ingredients I used.  I think there's room for a lot of variation here, based on your taste and what you have in the house.

Anyway, they were yummy and delicious, a little messy but not too much.  My sister and I had tea and snacked on them.  Having afternoon tea with a treat felt very Anne of Green Gables-ish.

Jonestown/Anne Shirley

Last week I bought a new book, One Thousand Lives by Julia Sheeres.  It's about Jim Jones and Jonestown, the cult in Guyana in the 1970s where over 900 people drank poisoned kool-aid in a mass murder/suicide.  I'd stayed up late last weekend reading about cults on various wikipedia pages, and decided to learn things in a more in-depth way.  The book is based on tons of somewhat recently released documents, including extensive notes by the government and diary entries of people who'd lived at Jonestown.

Yeah, but it was too much.  I did not get further than Jim Jones's cult's relocation from Indiana to Northern California before I gave up.  The descriptions of the ritual beatings of members to punish them for small transgressions was just too much.  I'd been reading in bed and, reaching this, I ran out into the living room where my boyfriend was on his computer.  I threw the book down, and we watched an episode of "Arrested Development" so I could clear my head.  Then we shared hummus and crackers and I read Anne of Windy Poplars until I was ready for bed.  I am really not much different than I was as a ten-year-old.

I just couldn't bear how terrible Jim Jones and his higher-level followers were.  I had imagined the book would investigate the "why"s of how it happened: why do people join cults, why do things get to that point without the government intervening, why do people do terrible things, etc.  And maybe later on it does.  But what I read was focused on the "how"s and "what"s, in detail, and I just can't handle it.

So more Lucy Maude Montgomery, more Anne Shirley.  Although Anne of Avonlea had bored me a little, I enjoyed this one.  Maybe it was the contrast to One Thousand Lives.  Anne is still a little too perfect when I think about it, but I enjoy spending time with her.  Most people get happy endings in the Anne books, and the bad characters are overly stern or unloving or short-tempered, not manipulative, deceitful speed-freak monsters like Jim Jones.

I caught a cold yesterday, and so spent most of today laying around finishing Anne of Windy Poplars and drinking hot apple cider with cinnamon.  It was a good day.

Apple Crisp

I made a vegan apple crisp tonight, out of the apples we picked at an orchard a couple weeks ago.  They've been taking up precious real estate on our kitchen counter, and their number needed to be whittled down.


I used this recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen.  

Apple Crisp

by IsaChandra

Serves 8

This apple crisp is just perfect. Sweet and crunchy and spiced just right, I like it served warm with Vanilla Bean Soy Cream.

Ingredients

For the filling
4 lbs apples (I use Roma)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple juice or water
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder (cornstarch will work too)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/2 cup raisin (optional)

For the topping
1 cup quick cooking oats (not instant)
1 cup flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup canola oil
3 tablespoon soy milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 F

Peel, core and thinly slice apples. Dissolve the arrowroot in the apple juice or water. Set aside.

Place apples and raisins in the baking dish, add sugars and spices and combine everything well (you may need to use your hands to do this). Pour arrowroot mixture over everything.

To prepare the topping, in a medium bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Add oil, soymilk, and vanilla, mix well. Crumble topping over the apples. Bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

It was very easy and very yummy.  I changed it up a bit - instead of all white flour, I used half whole wheat pastry flour.  I chopped the apples into little chunks instead of thin slices, because I started doing it that way without thinking and didn't want to change halfway through.  I also added a little bit of ground almonds and flax seed to the topping, since I had them sitting around.  And I have no idea what types of apples I used - at least five different kinds, I know that.

The Post Punk Kitchen is maintained by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, who are the authors of my favorite cookbook ever, The Veganomicon.  The Veganomicon is incredible.  The writing is irreverent and engaging.  The recipes are creative, delicious, and easy to follow.  I often like to read it just for fun, while I'm eating breakfast or just sitting around.  In the past I've only wanted cookbooks where every recipe has a photo, but I completely got over that with The Veganomicon. Less photos means more tasty recipes! 

Countdown

I am obsessed with Beyonce's new song and video.  I love it so much!  It's catchy as hell, and the outfits! The makeup! The hair!  I keep watching it over and over.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

How great of a book title is that? I love it.  Cinderella Ate My Daughter is by Peggy Orenstein, the author of Schoolgirls and Waiting For Daisy, both of which I love.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is about, as the subtitle says, girlie-girl culture.  Orenstein discusses Disney Princesses, child beauty pageants, Miley Cyrus, and more.  She tries to sort out some nature-vs-nurture questions, and determine just how harmful or harmless some of these pink, glittery girl things are.  What the book ends up focusing on a lot is consumerism - how much advertisers push things on our kids, and then make the kids' desires for the products seem "natural."

It was fascinating.  It could've been more in-depth, but that isn't a criticism, really.  I think the book set out exactly what it meant to do, examining this part of our culture, and to look deeper would mean to actually read through some of the studies she's quoted.  Which I will probably do.

One problem: it was so hard to put down!  I stayed up way too late finishing it last night.

Now I'm re-reading The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld, another addictive author.

Anthropology of an American Girl

I just finished Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann.  At first I really liked it, but then... Well, if you're interested in reading it, I don't know how to discuss my feelings on it without spoilers, so be warned.

It begins when Eveline is a senior in high school.  Her best friend Kate has moved in with her, as Kate's mother has died from cancer.  Eveline's boyfriend Jack has just returned from a summer away.  Eveline and Jack's relationship felt real to me.  Jack felt real.  An angry young man, a musician, intelligent, isolated in his rich suburban family.  He had insight about the world and yet was also a hypocrite in some ways, cruel at times.  I thought I could've gone to high school with him.

And then there's a new temporary drama instructor, Harrison Rourke.  Eveline falls for Rourke immediately.  I thought she was going to end up embarrassed.  All the signs that Rourke was interested seemed like they could also be interpreted as casual friendliness.  And then after graduation, at a party, she sees him.  They kiss.  They spend the summer together.  She's in love.

It didn't feel real to me.  Rourke seemed like a blank.  Why did she love him? Because he was handsome and intense?

And THEN it's fall.  She's at college at NYU, her and Rourke are over, and she's dating Rourke's rich friend Mark.  Then she's living with Mark, still mourning the end of her relationship with Rourke.  Eventually it becomes clear that she'd gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage, but her and Rourke were already over at that time.  Mark seems like a jerk, and Eveline doesn't love him.  She says she's with him because she's given up on things, because of Rourke.  Or something.

I had a hard time understanding her motives in the second half.  As a high schooler, she was so vivid, an artist in a bohemian family, trying to deal with her best friend's mom's death, with feelings for someone besides her boyfriend, with life.  And then after Rourke, she was a mystery.  WHY not contact Rourke and talk to him? WHY decide to stay with Mark?  Another thing that made it a little tough to follow was the sheer volume of characters.  It was hard to keep track of people.

Eventually their paths cross again, and misunderstandings are put right, and at the very end of the novel, she leaves Mark for Rourke.  But I feel like this book could've been so much better.

Published!

I had another short story published, in the October issue of Stirring: A Literary Collection.  Yay!  Check it out:
Stirring 

Party Down

A few days ago I finished watching the last episode of Party Down, a show that was on Starz in 2009 and 2010.  It's about a bunch of caterers in L.A., most of them wannabe actors or writers.  It is HILARIOUS.

It stars Adam Scott, who's currently on Parks and Recreation playing Ben, Leslie's love interest.  Henry Pollard, Adam Scott's Party Down character, is a failed actor whose one big moment was on a beer commercial yelling "Are we having fun yet?"  He's deliberately given up his attempt at an acting career, and so has taken a job working for Ron Donald, an old friend.

Ron, played by Ken Marino (who I know from The State and Wet Hot American Summer, both hilarious), has a dream of managing a Soup R Crackers, a fictional soup and salad restaurant.  He's intense and strange and he tries way too hard.  It's great.

Henry's on-and-off love interest is Casey, an aspiring comedian played by Lizzy Caplan.  She's funny and sarcastic, and sometimes hurts Henry so thoughtlessly it's hard to watch.

The other members of the catering team include, in the first season, Jane Lynch, who left the show when Glee got big.  Megan Mullally joined cast in Season 2.  Both women are so funny.  There's also Martin Starr as sci-fi nerd writer Roman, who is really a pretty awful person.  In my opinion that's so much funnier than if the weird nerdy guy turned out to be sweet.  Roman's nemesis is Kyle, played by Ryan Hansen, an aspiring actor/model/musician.

Each episode takes place at a single event that the Party Down team is catering.  This includes a funeral, a sixteen-year-old rich girl's empty birthday party, an orgy, and Steve Guttenberg's 50th birthday (he plays himself).

It is really, really funny.  And the final episode was just perfect.  You should watch it (if you aren't offended by bad language).  It's currently on Netflix Instant Watch, although I guess their contract with Starz is ending so I don't know for how long that will be true.

Also, in news of today, Ozzie Guillen has left the White Sox.  I'm very, very sad.

Google Search Terms

It's time again to share my recent Google search terms.  You'll see a theme or two develop:

• dogtoberfest
• puppy video
• origins of universe
• how many galaxies are there?
• when will new parks and rec be on hulu?
• how many hairs are on a greyhound?

South of the Border, West of the Sun

I finished another Haruki Murakami book today. South of the Border, West of the Sun.  This one was certainly smaller in scale than Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  It's simple, actually: Hajime had a friend in his youth named Shimamoto.  They bonded because she was an only child, like him, which was rare in the early sixties in rural Japan.  He loved her, although nothing romantic ever happened between them.  When he was twelve, Hajime moved away, and the two friends did not keep in touch.

Now Hajime is nearly forty, with a wife and two kids.  He owns a pair of successful jazz clubs.  He loves his wife and thinks of himself as happy.  Then Shimamoto reappears.  Hajime's intense friendship with her resumes, kept quiet from his wife.  But Shimamoto is mysterious, and does not let him in on many things going on in her life.  She disappears for months at a time, and will not tell him why.  He wants to know, but really just wants her in his life, and so does not push the issue.

I should stop my summary there, before I just type out the ending.  But, in what is apparently typical Murakami fashion, not all the answers are given.  In fact, I found that frustratingly few of them were.  In the two other books of his that I read, I didn't see this as a weakness, necessarily, as the material was so dense that leaving some threads still tangled seemed okay.  But here, I wanted more.

I have another book of his out of the library that I'm going to start next.  We'll see what I think.

Twin Peaks

My boyfriend and I watched all of Twin Peaks this summer.  It was great.  A lot of people say it declines in the second season, but we still loved it.  Even the ridiculous plotlines like Noreen's super strength or Ben Horne thinking he was in the Civil War were entertaining.  Any given episode could make me laugh and yet leave me afraid to go to sleep when it was over.  Really, I enjoyed just about everything except James's little film noir subplot.  And Bob is about the scariest villain I've ever seen.

If you don't know about Twin Peaks, here's a quick summary: Laura Palmer, a seemingly-sunny teenage girl, was murdered.  Agent Dale Cooper, played (fantastically) by Kyle McLachlan, comes to the small Northwest town of Twin Peaks to investigate.  Twin Peaks is full of weirdos, some neutral or good, like the log lady (a woman who carries a log with her everywhere, and tells people the messages it gives her), and some a whole lot more sinister.

So I loved the series.  Then we watched the movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.  It was a prequel, made after the series ended but taking place in the days before Laura's murder.  I was not so impressed.  I thought it would wrap up loose threads.  It did no such thing.  AND a different actress played Donna, one of the main characters.  I wanted to say "Laura, what are you doing, that isn't Donna!" as if a malevolent trick was being played on her.  I'm glad I watched it, because I wanted to be completist about this, but I don't want to re-watch it.

Case Histories

I just finished Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.  It's the first in a series of mystery novels about Jackson Brodie, a British private investigator.  It was great, absolutely engaging.  Besides an unsolved murder in Jackson's family past, there were three separate mysteries woven into the novel.  I don't read tons of mysteries, so I don't know if this is common, but it seemed unique to me.

Jackson is a divorced forty-something with a young daughter, still bitter over some events in his past.  He used to be on the police force, but now he has a small private investigating business, just him and a cranky secretary.  The cases he takes are small, usually involving cheating spouses, but suddenly he has more work than he knows what to do with: a child gone missing thirty years earlier, a young woman stabbed by an unknown assailant, and the daughter of a murderer being sought by her long-lost aunt. 

What I liked was that the book was not totally plot driven.  I really felt like all the characters were real, separate people.

What I really kept thinking is that Jackson ought to hang out with Frank Mackey, the Irish detective from Faithful Place by Tana French.  He also is divorced, has a young daughter, is bitter, etc.  Really the only difference is that Jackson is from northern England and Frank is from Ireland.  Was Tana French inspired by Jackson Brodie? They certainly aren't so similar that it feels like she was ripping Kate Atkinson off - more that Jackson and Frank are from a certain, common mold.

Anyway, it was a good book, I recommend it, and can't wait to get the next one.

Diary of an Emotional Idiot

I just finished re-reading Diary of an Emotional Idiot by Maggie Estep.  I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and loved it, but haven't re-read it in a long time.  It's still great. 

Zoe has snuck into her ex-boyfriend Satan's condo, and is hiding in his closet.  While she waits for him to get home, she takes us back and forth through time, describing how she got to this point.  The details of her life as a junkie, of her various friends and boyfriends and neighbors, of her jobs ranging from cleaning the bathroom of her drug dealer to working in a cardboard box factory to being the receptionist at a dungeon, spill out achronologically and addictively.  I couldn't put the book down.

What struck me this time is how 1990s some of the details are, which I loved.  It was published in 1997, so this makes sense, after all, but it's interesting, since when I first read it I certainly didn't notice this.  She talks about girls wearing itty-bitty backpacks, and alternative rockers, and tongue-piercings, and Nine Inch Nails. 

It's so odd how in the present everything feels normal, and the music you listen to and the clothes you wear aren't cultural signifiers of a particular time, illustrating things about that era.  They're just the stuff you like.  It's normal.  But then fifteen years pass and things stick out as symbolic, or funny, or nostalgic, or whatever. 

Anyway, Maggie Estep is awesome, and I can't wait to get my hands on some of her other books.

The Book of Air and Shadows

I started reading The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber a couple days ago.  But I'm done.  I only got about forty pages into it.  It was alright, but it wasn't good and life is finite.

My first warning sign was in a blurb on the back which touted it as being better than The DaVinci Code.  I didn't really want to read anything that it would make sense to compare to The DaVinci Code.  But I started it anyway.  I'm not even 100% sure what it was about.  It started as a tale told by a man hiding out from some bad people, explaining how he got into the situation.  It's made clear an old, rare book was involved.

In the next chapter the perspective jumped to a man named Crosetti, a web manager for a rare book shop in Manhattan.  This was the chapter with the damning sentence, the one that made me set down the book for good.

"Crosetti was working on a particularly tricky bit of hypertext markup language at the same time as he was thinking these amusing thoughts."

No one on Earth says "hypertext markup language"!!!  It's HTML, and furthermore, it's not even used as much anymore.  And this book is only a couple years old.  The sentence just looks like the result of a non-computer-programming author googling "what language is the internet in?" or something.  Actually no, I just googled that question after typing it, and it doesn't produce any useful results.  But you get my point.  His non-expert status is so obvious, and it shouldn't be, when the character is meant to be a programmer.

I may run out to Borders tomorrow.  There's one in the area that's still open, I think.

Swamplandia!

The exclamation point is in the title of the book, but I think I would've put it there regardless.  I just finished Swamplandia! by Karen Russell yesterday morning.  It was excellent.

Ava Bigtree is thirteen.  She lives on an island in Florida where her family runs the Swamplandia! theme park.  Ava's a budding alligator wrestler, like her parents and brother, and her mom Hilola is the star of the diving show.  Ava and her brother Kiwi and sister Osceola (Ossie) have grown up on the island, home schooled, rarely on the mainland.  The tourists seem like they're part of a different culture to them.

Ava's mother's death from cancer starts out the book.  It leads to Ossie's obsession with ghosts and seances, and to Kiwi's fixation with giving up the struggling theme park and moving to the mainland.  Ava tries to deal with both of them, and with her father, Chief Bigtree, who refuses to recognize the financial trouble the family is in.

Kiwi leaves, and gets a job at a rival theme park on the mainland.  After that, every other chapter is from his point of view, as he learns to deal with his teenage mainland coworkers and tries to save money to help his family.

Then Chief Bigtree leaves, on a business trip.  Once Ava and Ossie are alone on the island, Ossie's stories of her ghost boyfriends grow more all-encompassing, and more frightening.

Ava's situation on the island once her and Ossie are alone makes up the bulk of the book, minus Kiwi's mainland chapters.  It's riveting and intense.  Sometimes I resented the intrusion of the chapters telling about Kiwi's job as a janitor, his misadventures and social problems.  But I think the book needs them.  To have the intensity of Ava's story unadulturated would've been rough.  This way, when I read it before bed, I could make sure to end on a Kiwi chapter, so I wouldn't be too scared.  (One night I didn't, and started to wonder if perhaps my boyfriend was himself a ghost.  You can't be too sure...)

Should you read it?  If it sounds at all appealing, yes.  Karen Russell is a fantastic author.  I can't wait for her next book.

Sunnyside

I finished Sunnyside by Glen David Gold a couple days ago.  I expected to love it, since I loved his first novel, Carter Beats The Devil.  But surprisingly, I didn't like it for the exact opposite reasons that I did like Carter.  Gold made Carter the Great seem like a real human being, fallible but likable and ultimately a good man.  Gold's treatment of his three protagonists in Sunnyside is a little cruel, I thought.  The bad things that happen to them seem like they're done for a larger narrative point being made, rather than being things that could actually happen which in a certain context have additional meaning.  Also, two out of the three men (an army private and Charlie Chaplin) are not good people.  By the end of the book, they have had little or no development into better human beings.  I didn't like spending time with them.

Finishing it was a slog, but I didn't hate it. Lee Duncan, the third protagonist, also an army private, was actually a character I liked.  He was kind of naive, and a little obsessed with fame, but he was interesting and I could care about him.

Oh yeah, and the author's note at the end of the book ends with a reference to climate change.  Climate change references depress me.  I do what I can.  I'm aware it's a problem.  Having it sprung on me in an unexpected place like that got on my nerves.  Maybe the note will make some people more aware, make them change their behavior.  Or maybe not.

Anyway, I'm done with it.  Should you read it?  I've read a lot of good reviews of it, but I'd stay stick with Carter and then wait for his next one.

Broken Glass Park

I read Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky last week.  It was translated from German, and is about a teenage girl, Sacha, whose family moved to Berlin from Russia.  Her mother's ex-husband, Vadim, murdered her mom and her mom's current boyfriend about a year before the beginning of the novel.  Sacha has two goals: to write a book about her mother's life, and to murder Vadim.

Vadim is currently in prison for the murder, but she makes plans and is ready to wait till he gets released.  When a local paper publishes a sympathetic interview with him, Sacha goes to the office to speak with the writer.  This leads to her introduction to the editor of the paper, a complicated man named Volker, and brings more changes into her life, some bad and some good.

Sacha and her brothers and sisters live in a tenement apartment, with a distant cousin as a guardian.  Sacha is intelligent, sharp and sarcastic, but clearly in pain, fighting the overwhelm and horror in her life.  I wish she could be friends with Doria, the protagonist of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faiza Guene.  They seem like kindred spirits.  Doria is a teenaged Moroccan immigrant in a Paris tenement, living with her mother.  Her father has left them for a second wife back in Morocco, and she's dealing with that abandonment along with larger issues of racism, classism, and sexism.  Both girls are wounded but fighting, not accepting of their situations.

If I were eight (and for some reason these books were appropriate for eight-year-olds) I would totally have me and a friend pretend to be Sacha and Doria, and we'd go off and have adventures.

Carter Beats The Devil

I just finished reading Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold.  It was fantastic! It's about Charles Carter, a popular magician in the 1920s, being suspected of murdering President Harding.  (Yes, it changes history a bit.  A surprisingly small amount, though.)  Carter's childhood challenges, his besting of the cruel Mysterioso, his rise to fame: all of it is entertaining.  It's an almost 700-page book that went by in a flash.

One of the things I appreciated most was that Carter, although flawed in many ways, is a good guy.  He generally tries to do right by people.  He's kind to animals.  In fact, kindness to animals is a major, reoccurring theme.  I can't handle even fictional animals meeting sad ends, so I appreciated this.

Side note: Glen David Gold's wife is novelist Alice Sebold.  I can't imagine being married to someone in the same exact field as me! I think it would be really tough to deal with competitiveness and jealousy.

Kafka on the Shore

I understand my friend who said, of the two Murakami novels she'd recently read, that she preferred Kafka on the Shore to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  I just finished Kafka and it was great.  A young man leaves home, running away from a curse/prophecy and hoping to find information on the mother and sister that left him when he was little.  Kafka ends up (and "ends up" is the right term, as he just seems to fall into this position) working at a private library in a town far from his native Tokyo.  The elegant, mysterious Miss Saeki is his boss.  

Alternating chapters follow Nakata, a simple-minded old man who uses his ability to speak with cats to help locate lost pets.  He learns that cats are being abducted by an evil man in a silk hat and tall boots.  This discovery leads him down a dark path that eventually crosses with Kafka's.

Kafka on the Shore is slightly more straightforward than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  At the end of the book, I felt like I knew what happened, mostly, whereas in the other book I felt like I understood about 50% of what eventually transpired.  It also crammed in less side topics and strange secondary characters.  That might make it the better book.  But ultimately I think I slightly prefer The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. That may be simply because its protagonist was someone easier for me to understand.  Kafka, as a fifteen-year-old, is different enough from me in age, but his thoughts seem somehow more opaque.  I had a lot of little questions about him I really wish were addressed ("why do you believe in this curse? did you have any friends in tokyo? what are your memories of your father?" and a ton more).

Still, that doesn't mean I didn't love the book.  Haruki Murakami is definitely my obsession of the month, and I'm going to pick up another book of his tomorrow, most likely.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

I thought I'd mention a book I read a month or two ago, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Alison Hoover Bartlett.  It's the true story of a book thief, John Gilkey, and the bookstore owner-turned-detective, Ken Sanders.  Sanders helped catch Gilkey after he committed a string of thefts of rare books in the late nineties.  The author, Bartlett, talks in depth with both Gilkey and Sanders, and ultimately finds herself involved in the story as well.

It's a quick, intriguing read, and a window into a world I'd never thought about.  (I love to read, but rare book collecting had never occurred to me.)  I wish it could've been longer, though.

Should you read it? If the topic interests you, yes, why not?

Something less twisty and intense

I took a break between Murakami books to read something lighter and more straightforward.  Thin Is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel is a memoir about Frankel's attempt to free herself from her lifetime of dieting and body image issues.  I enjoyed it.  It's light-hearted but also honest.  Frankel didn't have a horrible eating disorder or shocking history to write about (though that's not to say there aren't sad, difficult things that she dealt with and discusses in the book), but that doesn't mean she has nothing to say.  Her observations are funny and keen.  One line I enjoyed is when she points out that dieters think of certain foods as bad or evil.  "Putting 'cupcake' in the same category as 'Osama Bin Laden' is just wrong."

I really, really hope she is still managing not to obsess about her weight.  It's so tough in our culture.

Haruki Murakami, Chicago Diner

So the unthinkable has happened, in that it's been so long since I've updated that I can't remember all the books I've read, and therefore can't record them on here.  I might try anyway, at some point.  For now, let me say that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is fantastic.  I just finished it.

Toru Okado's cat has gone missing.  His wife asks him to look for it, since, because he's unemployed, he has time.  She also asks him to consult with a psychic recommended to her by her brother. Toru's meeting with the psychic is one of the first very strange things that happens to him.  Soon he's getting phone calls from a mysterious woman, discovering a dry well by an abandoned house, and searching not just for his cat but for his wife.  This book is almost impossible to sum up.  Crazy stuff happens.  I was riding the L in Chicago while reading it, and kept putting my hand to my mouth in shock (though surely I wasn't the strangest-seeming person on the L).

I bought another book of Murakami's, Kafka on the Shore, but haven't started it yet.

I'm in Chicago currently (reading on the L and whatnot) and I just need to mention the Chicago Diner.  My boyfriend and I ate there tonight, and it was SO GOOD.  It's an all-vegetarian, incredibly vegan-friendly restaurant.  I had a homemade sweet potato veggie burger with avocado, lettuce, and a mango-pineapple sauce on a whole wheat bun with a side of roasted veggies with pesto.  Deliciousness!  And the menu is just a beautiful thing to read - choosing that veggie burger was tough.  My boyfriend got country fried "steak" with mashed potatoes and the same roasted veggies and pesto.  Also incredible! He also got a super-yummy vegan milkshake and I got refreshing blackberry iced tea.

If you're near Chicago, go there.  If you're not, well, maybe you should be.

Back to it

Ooo, it's been awhile since I've updated, and I've read a lot of books.  Most recently I finished a young adult book called Celine by Brock Cole.  It came out in 1989.  It was recommended to me by Claire Zulkey, the author of another great young adult book that I read last year, An Off Year.

Celine Morienval is a teenage artist living in Chicago with her step-mother (who is only six years older than her).  The book covers about a week in her life, as she goes to a terrible party, destroys some of her art and begins a new project, befriends a little boy and gets a crush on his father, and deals, just a little, with how hurt she is that her actual mother doesn't want her around.  There's a lot in it, it's messy like real life, and it's awesome.

Now, I'm going to play some softball.

Some books

I've read a bunch of books lately.  Going back a few, I read Unbearable Lightness by the actress Portia de Rossi.  I've read several memoirs about eating disorders before, but this one really stood out. I hadn't expected it to; since it was written by a celebrity, it didn't have to do much to get a lot of sales. But Portia de Rossi does a great job of telling her story!

It's written in-the-moment, rather than reflectively, looking back.  Instead of saying to the reader "this is what I used to do and think, isn't it nuts/sad/shocking/etc.?" she is saying "I can't believe I just ate all these calories, I'm only supposed to eat so many [300, at one point] a day, I feel so out of control, etc." and allows the reader to feel horrified without being told to feel that way.

A lot of her pain came from her semi-closeted existence, trying to keep her employers, the paparazzi, and the public from finding out she was gay.  Working on Ally McBeal was also not a very healthy environment, it sounds like.  Any situation where you're being scrutinized for every pound you gain is not going to be conducive to stability and happiness.

I was glad that she was pretty recovered by the time she was working on Arrested Development, one of my favorite TV shows ever. (Have you seen it? Yes? No? Go watch it now!)  I was also glad I knew in advance that she's happy and healthy and married to Ellen DeGeneres.

I also read Woman Howling Creek, a collection of short stories by Sandra Cisneros.  Some were good, some were less captivating.  Ultimately, I like novels better. It was still worth reading, though.  Even if I didn't always understand her characters and their motivations, their worlds seemed very vivid.

I've read a couple more, but I'll talk about them another time.

Nail Art

I learned a new technique from Bust Magazine's website.  You can get newsprint to show up on your nails!  Here's a pic of how it worked out for me:

Here's the quick version of what to do: paint your nails, let them dry, dip them in alcohol, hold newsprint on them, peel it off slowly, apply a top coat.  It was pretty easy! My friend Connie did graphics as well as words, and those turned out cool, too!

My Borders Score

I thought I'd show off the stack of books I picked up at the local Borders before they closed (sob!).  

I'm in the middle of Woman Hollering Creek now.  It's a short story collection by Sandra Cisneros, the author of The House On Mango Street and Caramelo, two books I love.  This seems bad to admit, since I write short stories and want lit mags to publish them, but I prefer novels to short story collections.  If I find a story I like, I want it to go on longer! I want to know more!

Two More Books

So I bought a ton of books recently, because the local Borders is going out of business (sob!).  I've finished two of them.

I started Real World by Natsuo Kirino first.  It was described as a feminist noir, and was translated from Japanese.  Four teenage girls suspect one of their next door neighbors of murder, and then things get more complicated--or so the back of the book said.  It sounded really exciting and up my alley, but it was not what I'd imagined.

First of all, there's really no question that Worm, the boy who lives next door to Toshi, has murdered his mother.  Beyond that, though, I'd imagined that the girls would be trying to solve the crime.  Instead, they rather randomly, passively support Worm's efforts to get away.  And it's never really explained! I mean, I suppose they sort of justify some of their behavior, but I never, ever felt like Toshi and her friends were in any way like myself or people I've met.  I couldn't understand their motives, and what's more, I didn't care too much about them.  The reader is told differences between the girls (Kirarin is sweet, Terauchi is smart and sarcastic, etc.) but they're never really demonstrated.  It was like "tell, don't show" was the maxim.

The other book I read was An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.  Dr. Jamison is a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, and also has bipolar disorder.  An Unquiet Mind is the story of how she learned to deal with the disease, and how it's informed her work as a psychotherapist.  I find well-written books about psychological disorders fascinating, and this one definitely was.  It balances stories of what she did while manic or depressed, how the disorder is treated, and how it changed her life.  I appreciated that it wasn't just "here is messed up stuff about my life." She actually synthesized her experiences and reached important questions.

Whoa, I just saw my purple Donna Morgan dress on a Burlington Coat Factory commercial, on a woman loaded down with shopping bags from their fabulous sale or whatever.  

Cloud Atlas movie

Apparently the Wachowski siblings (who directed The Matrix, among other things) are going to direct a movie version of the book Cloud Atlas, which I adore.  Tom Hanks is set to star in it, but I don't know who he would play - Adam Ewing (from the first section) maybe? 

You can read the article here

Eagle Cam

My aunt just told me about a live camera feed on two eagles that have had some eagle babies recently.  Their nest is in Decorah, Iowa.  This particular couple has been together for several years and has already raised some kids together.  They seem to have a good thing going.  Bring home a dead rabbit, sit on the kids, fly around - it works for them.

Check out the cam!

A movie and a book

I watched the movie "Mystery Team" tonight.  It's about a trio of eighteen-year-olds who, as kids, started a detective agency in the Encyclopedia Jones mold, and are still running it.  People in town think they're weird, since they're now pretty much adults, but still try to solve cases like finding a missing autographed baseball or discovering who stole a carton of milk from the lunch line.  Then an eight-year-old girl hires them to find out who killed her parents.

Most of the jokes come from the juxtaposition of classic boy-detective tropes, like the enormous magnifying glasses or terrible disguises (mostly just a variety of mustaches), with the sight of nearly-grown men using them.  They're also, in trying to solve a murder, exposed to the seedier side of life, and are either shocked or simply uncomprehending (for example, they dress up in top hats and tails and speak with British accents when trying to sneak into a "gentlemen's club").

It was funny, vulgar, stupid, and entertaining.  My boyfriend said it seemed like the sort of movie that was spun off from a short bit of sketch comedy, and I agree.  But one of my favorite movies is "Wayne's World," so for me that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The plot was very predictable and formulaic, but really I was watching it for the jokes.  I'd certainly watch it again, though I doubt it will become one of my faves.

I also finished the book The Vanishing of Katherina Linden by Helen Grant.  It's written from the perspective of an eleven-year-old German girl.  It was great. Pia, the heroine, falls in status at school after her grandmother dies by basically spontaneously combusting, making the other kids label her a freak.  (That bit alone didn't totally ring true for me.  Some children are cruel, but nearly ALL of them? And for such a reason? I don't know.)  She's left with only Stefan, the most unpopular kid in school, as her friend.

After girls their age start disappearing from town, Pia and Stefan are determined to solve the case. They're aided by Herr Schiller, an old man they've befriended.  As they learn more about local folklore from Herr Schiller and imagine terrible supernatural interference, real life intrudes from the troubles between Pia's English mother and German father.

I am not usually scared while reading, particularly during the day, but for some reason the end of this book just had me on the edge of my seat.  I said "Oh no!" out loud a few times.  Once I reached the climax, I committed to finishing the book and ignored my phone ringing and everything else until it was done.

I think things wrapped up a little too quickly - I would've liked a little more detail on how things settled for Pia.  But it was overall a great book.  If you like fairytales of the gruesome Brothers Grimm variety, and/or you like coming-of-age novels, you should definitely read this.

Holy Cow!

OK, I totally stole the joke in the title. This is an article about a cow that a sixteen-year-old German girl raised to be like a horse. Luna (the cow) and Regina (the girl) go on long trail rides (sometimes joined by horses), do jumps, listen to commands, etc.

Read about Luna

More Outfits

I thought I'd post some more outfits on here.  Again, they're all from lookbook.  I can officially say I'm spending too much time on there.

Must read more Aimee Bender!

I finished The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and it was wonderful the whole way through.  I felt it ended on just the right note--some closure, some happiness, nothing false or cliched or too happily-ever-after, nothing deliberately vague or downbeat.  I wish there was a series about Rose, the girl who can taste people's emotions, her genius brother Joseph and his kind, smart best friend George.  I don't want to let them go yet.

Read it!!!

Spinach and Tofu Curry

Tonight I made a vegan version of saag paneer, a spinach and cheese curry.  The recipe was my own invention, based on having eaten (non-vegan) saag paneer at Indian restaurants and having looked at a few recipes online and in books.  My version may not have been authentic Indian, but it was SUPER tasty.

Because it was so yummy and not too difficult, I decided to share:

• Make some rice.  You'll do something with it later...
• Press a block of extra-firm tofu, then cut it into cubes.
• Heat some peanut oil in a frying pan.  Put the tofu cubes in, and resist the urge to flip them till they've really browned on one side.  It'll take awhile, so proceed with the rest of the recipe, checking on the tofu every now and then.
• In a different pan, saute chopped onions in peanut oil.  
• Once the onions are pretty soft, add minced garlic and chili pepper and cumin seeds
• About a minute later, add some Indian spices.  I used coriander, turmeric, garam masala and a little cayenne pepper but you can use whatever you have around.
• Slowly add a can of light coconut milk.  Stir it in, let it get hot
• Add spinach! Mix it in, let it wilt.
• Once the spinach is wilted, transfer everything to a blender and blend it all up! It will be a beautiful/terrifying green color (depending on your perspective)
• Probably your tofu is done being fried.  Put the spinach blend back into its pan, and add the tofu.  Mix it all around, make sure it's thoroughly heated.  And you're done!
• What about that rice?  Using the pan you'd had the tofu in (I hate having extra dishes to do), heat some more oil and toss some raw peanuts in. 
• Once they're roasty, add cumin seeds and mustard seeds (cover the pan with a lid till the mustard seeds are done popping)
• Stir in turmeric (not too much, less than a teaspoon) and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice.  
• Now turn off the heat, and slowly mix in your cooked rice (make sure it's not too sticky-together - you want individual grains).  Make sure it's thoroughly mixed, so your rice takes on the yellow color of the turmeric.  If you have some fresh cilantro, get that chopped up and sprinkled on top.  (I was out of it tonight, unfortunately.)
• Tada!  You just made lemon rice to go with your saag paneer!

Here's a photo of our leftovers.  It would've looked prettier on a plate, but that didn't occur to me until I'd already spooned it into the tupperware, and I've already established how I feel about extra dishes being used.  Anyway, here it is:

Again, I cannot stress enough how tasty I found this meal.  My boyfriend and I just went crazy over its yumminess.

P.S. I realize I didn't remember to include very many (if any) measurements.  Don't sweat it.  When in doubt, use a teaspoon or two for the spices (except the cayenne pepper).  Use a nice big bag of spinach. Don't worry over it too much.  It's hard to make these things taste bad together.  They're just too intrinsically tasty.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I began reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender a few days ago.  (I bought it at my local Borders on "store-closing" sale - heartbreaking! I love that Borders!)  It's about Rose Edelstein, a young girl who suddenly realizes that when she eats she can taste the emotions of the people who made the food.  I thought it might be a little too deliberately whimsical, but it's actually played very straight and realistic, if that makes sense.  Imagine being a kid and being able to taste the dissatisfaction your mother feels about her marriage.  Rough stuff. 

As a bonus to me, Rose's older brother and his best friend are really into physics.  I enjoy reading about their problems and projects, though I was certainly never as motivated as them to do extra work!

American Voyeur

Just finished American Voyeur by Benoit Denizet-Lewis.  Denizet-Lewis describes himself as a combination sociologist and journalist.  The book is a compilation of stories he's had published elsewhere in the last ten years, and all of them are in-depth looks at a particular subculture or aspect of our culture.  One piece is about the young married gay men in Massachusetts, right after gay marriage was legalized.  Another is about dry fraternities.  A particularly heart-breaking piece is about two teen brothers who both killed themselves.

Some of them were not too interesting to me (one about young extreme athletes getting sponsorships) but most of them were super interesting.  He gets his subjects to really open up to him, really let him into their world, and it's fascinating.  I wish some of them went on longer, were even more in-depth, but I realize most of these were originally written for magazines and therefore would only be so long.

Denizet-Lewis, for the record, was the first person to write about Down Low culture, black "straight" men sleeping with other men.  

Should you read it?  I don't think I would've bothered to buy it, but I borrowed it from a friend and definitely enjoyed it.  So if you happen upon a copy, open it up!

Also, I still haven't gotten back to any more H.P. Lovecraft.  I'm too scared.

Some outfits

I thought I'd post some pictures of outfits I've worn recently, for fun.  I'm still using lookbook, trying not to be distracted by wondering what random strangers think about my clothes, and mostly succeeding.  It is fun to have a place to post outfits, and to look at other people's clothes.

Apparently I really like that black and gray Urban Outfitters belt...

Lovecraft

I started a book of H.P. Lovecraft short stories a couple nights ago.  Here's the thing about Lovecraft: his stories are really scary! Seriously, seriously scary! I somehow didn't expect it, even though I know he's known for being such a great horror writer. 

I read "The Rats in the Walls" right before I went to sleep, or rather right before I intended to go to sleep.  It's about an American man who decides to go to Britain and live in the house his ancestors had.  The man is older, and his son died in WWI, and since he can afford it, he wants to completely redo the house to look as it did in the past (although with modern conveniences).  His family, the de la Poers, had apparently frightened the townspeople quite a bit in the past, as people seem to think his last name implicates him in the hinted-at crimes of ancestors living hundreds of years ago.  Despite the rumors that terrible things happened in the house, he has the renovations finished and moves in.

So far, fine.  I read that bit earlier.  Then, nighttime, I start up again.  And he's just one night in the house when his cats start acting weird.  Acting like they see something.  And then the man himself can see it.  The walls are moving, as if filled with hundreds of rats all running in the same direction.  He can hear them, too.  They seem to be moving towards his cellar...

I don't want to spoil it.  I'll leave you with my reaction upon finishing the story, which was basically "well, shoot.  Now I'm terrified.  Not going to sleep right now..."

Books

A short note: I finished Things I've Been Silent About, and I also read Take The Cannoli by Sarah Vowell.  I read Sarah Vowell's book in a day.  It was a collection of short pieces from NPR and other places.  She's funny and insightful.  I recommend it.

Physics

Two things physics-related:

1. Today is Pi Day!  Pi is 3.14159.... so March 14th, aka 3/14, is the day to celebrate (particularly at 1:59 pm).  In Europe they must not have a Pi Day, since they write the day first, then the month.  I have some pie in my kitchen that I contemplated eating to celebrate, but have decided not to. Perhaps I should measure it instead.

2. I am on the front page of Northern Illinois University's (my alma mater) physics department website!  In their "News and Highlights" section, I'm noted for having some short stories published this year.  It's a pretty cool thing, and not why I would've guessed I'd appear on there when I was a student.
NIU's Physics Department

Azar Nafisi

I'm reading Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi.  She's the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a book I enjoyed the first third of but then lost interest in.  This new (to me) book is a sort of memoir, focusing particularly on her mother and father.  The culture and politics of Iran bleed into the story, but are not front-and-center.  It's so far quite engaging.

I'm looking forward to re-reading Persepolis, a graphic novel memoir by Marjane Satrapi which is also about growing up in Iran.  I read it a few years ago and loved it.  (I also loved the animated film based on it, though seeing some of the events on the movie screen instead of the page made them even more heartbreaking.)  I recommend it highly.

Shopping

The current habit of me and my friends is for them to play New Super Mario Bros Wii while I watch and read Dutch fashion blogs (I'm usually too tired from work to want to play).  Now when I hear the familiar Mario music, I start to think about clothes. 

Probably as a direct result of this habit, I've been buying a lot of clothes.  Over the last week I bought:

1. A maroon vintage late-seventies blouse

2. A pink vintage 1980s dress

3. Blue Converse low-tops

4. A Donna Morgan dress (I'd never heard of her. Got this at TJ Maxx for $40, then read online that it retails for about $180. Yay!)

5. An octopus necklace (This one is en route to me from the Netherlands. I found it for sale on one of the blogs I've been reading. Doesn't the octopus look menacing? Not enough jewelry is menacing.)

6. A pair of silver and maroon fake-cameo earrings.

7. A 1960s red and gold and black velvet dress that makes me look like I should host a variety show.

8. An AWESOME pink Eileen Fisher sweater-jacket. I got it at a sample sale. Apparently it will be manufactured in black, but never in pink. So mine is extra awesome.

Lookbook

Huh. I've been poking around on Lookbook and realized I am older than everyone on there, apparently.  Also, the community in the forums seems a bit intense.  There's a lot of advice on how to get your look "hyped" and get fans.  It seems like perhaps not the best use of my time to worry about what a random fashionable nineteen-year-old in Stockholm thinks of my dress.  I do like it as a place to post photos of what I'm wearing, just for a record for myself, and to show my friends.  But trying to earn approval from strangers is really not something that interests me.

Fashion Website

I joined lookbook.nu, a place to post pictures of your outfits, and look at other people's outfits. I've been thinking about fashion a lot lately. I like to look at fashion magazines like Lucky, but right now I'm more excited by looking at how real people put clothes together than flipping through a magazine, where people are dressed by a designer instead of themselves and advertisers are exerting influence.

New Dress

I just bought a new BCBG dress from Macy's.  It was 60% off, and I am in love with it!  It's perfect to wear to work and feel stylish all day.  It's even cuter on me than it looks on the mannequin. :)

I wore it with black tights, flat black boots, and a little black cardigan.  I also want to try it with something in the opposite style, like big ornate earrings and colorful sandals.

Cross Stitch Finished

I finished my cross stitch with the quote from Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  Here it is:

I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but the green embroidery thread is the exact same green of one of the types of tea bag wrappers that Connie used on the frame.  

I have it in my office, right above where I have my electric tea kettle, mugs, and box of looseleaf tea.

Finished Await Your Reply

I finished Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and it was great.  It's thrilling, fast-paced, and filled with real, true-seeming characters.  It deals with fascinating questions of identity, history, and reinvention, along with affairs in the Arctic, a dried up lake, magicians, and international thievery.  I only wish it could've been a little bit longer.

[Manasa: You would love this book!]

"Vision"

A short story of mine, "Vision," was published in the January issue of Midwest Literary Magazine.  Check it out here!  It's the second one down.  My story is on page 103.

An Old Project

I thought I'd post photos of my first reupholstery project.  I re-covered my kitchen chairs about a year ago.  Like the ottoman, their original state was perfectly unobjectionable, just a little boring.  Also like the ottoman, now they are awesome.

Before:

After!

Await Your Reply

I'm reading Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon right now.  I'm about halfway through it.  It's so good I want to take the book and smack someone on the arm with it, going "How can it be so good?!"  It's described on the back as a literary sort of thriller, which doesn't say much.  More specifically, it's the interwoven stories of three people, which I can see now are all eventually going to weave together.  Lucy is a just-graduated 18 year old who has run off with her history teacher to a motel in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska.  Ryan is involved with some shady dealing I'm not totally clear on - the book opens with him on the way to his hospital after his hand has been cut off.  And Miles is searching for his schizophrenic twin brother in a town north of the Arctic Circle.

It's so good! So intriguing!  It's got a lot of plot, but it's not one of those books where the characters exist to just move the plot along.  I actually care about them, and they feel like real people.

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: