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description= A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;
description= A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;
description= A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;
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Text of the page (random words):
es together to make a nice sash without any wrong sides it should be long enough to wrap around my waist twice before tying it off and we all wonder when those skills our moms taught us will come in handy so that was my day in the city of literature and here i sit at my blog typing away and knitting madly instead of reading i can t wait to see what they do for the festival next year posted by melissa ward at 11 12 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels book events new yarn 17 july 2010 iowa city book festival 2010 saturday the iowa city book festival was bigger and better this year this is what happens when your city is designated a unesco city of literature only the third in existence after edinburgh and melbourne audrey niffenegger kicked off the shambaugh lecture series by reading from her fearful symmetry and then taking questions the organizers allowed for about 40 minutes of questions which was great audrey talked about how she came for a workshop at the iwp summer session and at that time the time traveler s wife was plotted thematically after workshopping ttw she restructured it more along claire s life chronology and then it made sense she also talked about her visual artwork and in response to an audience question said she purposely gave claire an art preference style type that she herself wouldn t have to make so claire could be conceptual and readers could imagine what they liked she also said she liked to ground her books in reality as much as possible using real places and modelling her characters on real people since her plots all center around a very unreal concept ghosts time travel etc she signed books afterward and i took jackie s copy of ttw to have it signed for her great audrey quote i m decadent but i m not that decadent when asked if she reads purely for pleasure she s currently reading an advance of a book about coffins death rituals or something like that she says it s very good i did some knitting while hogging my seat in between discussions i missed ash from english major s junk food when she presented her picks out in the lobby she posted her picks here on her blog jane smiley spoke next and let me tell you she is a riot she did her doctoral work at the ui and taught at isu so the audience was filled with people she knew from around town her daughter lucy silag is in the iww she read two passages from her new book private life including one about a charcter named pete who was inspired by a russian man who bid on the right to be a character in her book a racing thoroughbred charity benefitted from the auction she told a lot of funny stories about living in iowa city or working at iowa state she pled the 5th when asked if moo was based on isu she said that moo was inspired by the idiosyncracies of the land grant university great jane quotes wikipedia is great for authors because it s often wrong characters must have a point of view and you can have a favorite horse because the other horses don t care she also signed books after her talk now i bet you re wondering why there s only this picture here my computer crashed and lost all the pictures from this day none were terribly dear but it makes me mad just the same so i have author quotes instead of pictures after getting a thousand acres signed i wandered around among the vendors publishers and groups set up outside i didn t last long because the heat and sun started bothering me so i retreated to the bagel place for lunch and something cold to drink i went to the yarn shop instead of back to the festival i know naughty i was looking for something to use to knit the dna helix pattern christina wants me to teach her when we re at conclave i found some pretty noro kureyon at the knitting shoppe i was captured by this single odd ball skein i m thinking one won t be enough for a cable knit scarf so i found two skeins of this other colorway and there s enough overlap between the three that i can put the odd ball skein between the other two and make a scarf yay and then i had to go to work boo but i had a lot of fun at the book festival whoah my bad i had dublin listed as a city of literature it s not i meant edinburgh scotland and it was the first one thanks to lizzy for catching that one posted by melissa ward at 11 52 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels book events new yarn 16 july 2010 a gathering of days a gathering of days by joan w blos is a book i never heard of until i hunted down the list of newbery award winners for my project an imagined diary written by a young teen girl in early nineteenth century new hampshire it won the newbery in 1980 so i should have run across this as a child but it was never put forth as something i should read i loved this book i m pretty sure i would have loved this book as a child too because it fits with my laura ingalls wilder and caddie woodlawn interest i have no idea how many times i read the little house books the structure of the diary makes it very easy to read and blos introduces many themes that are only tangentially touched on by caddie and laura the loss of a parent the loss of a close friend slavery however there are many similarities school lessons learning to quilt caring for the household trading for household goods in the big city catherine has a very real voice she doesn t sound like an adult stuffed into an adolescent character catherine s age appropriateness is important because blos made the language structure authentic to the time period it sounds a little like a jane austen novel in that the sentences are formally structured now i having posted a rant about why austen bronte and etc are not old english think it is wonderful that a children s author wrote a historical novel reconstructed diary that has time period appropriate language it doesn t hurt anyone to read formal english blos also provided an afterword in my edition where she briefly described her research for the book her work is greatly appreciated because the reality of the book wouldn t have felt right without her research i wish i d read this as a child alongside my laura and caddie i would have appreciated it far more for catherine s story rather than her research or use of language stupid grown up brain vocabulary a long list since this is a historical novel virtues receipt as in recipe silhouette ruefully sere lows as in cow bound boys vagrant teaze parlours recruiter thrashed foolscap capacious satinette cassimere simper abated divers ermined inclement cyder trasnpired nubbly turpentine indenture buttery plausible adamant presume tinker as a job type cyphering durable chagrinned scruples suffices exhortation arable sirup contrivance quirky foiled shewed abcedenarians bundling mooning not that kind mince pie pedlar dispossess d lead plummet forfeit chaises hessians traffick muslins tansy comfrey peaked as in sick dimity loquacious flouting bantam harangueing contrite naught blaspheme ps catherine knits stockings as does her friend cassy matty who is seven or eight is learning to knit stockings so all y all who think that knitting is that hard it s not you just need patience posted by melissa ward at 4 23 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels newbery project newbery vocab stuff i read 15 july 2010 dear mr henshaw there are very few beverly cleary books i haven t read dear mr henshaw is one of them i m not quite sure why it never appealed to me as a kid it probably has to do with the main character being a boy i remember reading the henry books and thinking they were ok but not as good as ramona dear mr henshaw won the newbery in 1984 making it next up on my newbery project quest paul zelinsky did the illustrations pretty cool leigh botts is a grade schooler who moves to a new school when his parents divorce one of his school projects is to write to an author so leigh writes a letter to his favorite author mr henshaw mr henshaw occasionally writes back and leigh begins a correspondence and keeps a journal addressed to a pretend mr henshaw the whole book is told through letters and journals so it reads very quickly even for a kids book due to the amount of white space i did like dear mr henshaw leigh is a great character for boys to read he isn t the cool kid he s the new one someone keeps stealing his lunch and his dad never calls or visits when he promises he is pretty ingenious though and his correspondence with mr henshaw leads him to learn a little bit about himself but ramona is still a cooler character what can i say i love the cat commercial and dancing in three way mirrors and i have no idea why cleary didn t win the newbery for ramona quimby age 8 vocabulary a shorter list and occasionally a time period dependent list mincemeat kids i e goats sugar beets gondolas semi truck related vocational shrubbery reefer not the pot kind the trucking kind canapes quiche curry halyard composition nuisance fictitious mimeograph wrath herb tea pimples posted by melissa ward at 4 22 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels newbery project newbery vocab stuff i read 11 july 2010 happy golden anniversary to kill a mockingbird to celebrate the occasion i will be re reading to kill a mockingbird because it s high time i did so i will also be reading scout atticus and boo as a companion piece i read tkam in junior high for fun i was just browsing through the public library one day and found it i thought scout and jem were kind of ornery that atticus was brave and i remember being just outraged that someone would accuse someone else of a made up crime just because that person was black i m pretty sure i ve said elsewhere that i was a naive child high school and college beat most of the naivete out of me i was never assigned tkam for school and i did watch the movie adaptation but for whatever reason i never got around to reading it again yay for books to read over again posted by melissa ward at 3 48 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels stuff i read 10 july 2010 a vintage affair isabel wolff s new book a vintage affair is a nice book to read while lolling around on the beach or in my case the porch swing the writing is easy to digest but without too many cliches to dirty up the water a vintage affair is a book for project runway devotees vintage couture galore label dropping a serious eye for style are a major selling point for main character phoebe phoebe is also of an appropriate age for her work experience she is in her early thirties so it s nice to see someone who is more real person than early twenties wunderkind however there are too many story threads the story of mrs bell and the blue coat is a nice parallel to phoebe s paralyzing level of guilt regarding the death of her friend emma then there s the ex fiancee that phoebe broke up with when emma died there s a reporter phoebe meets who seems like a really nice guy as well as an economist investment banker who comes complete with obnoxious teenage daughter one of the guys is the rebound oh the banker has a family estate in the south of france conveniently located near the town pheobe visits to buy vintage clothes phoebe s parents are breaking up because her academic anthropologist dad was caught shacking up with a documentary filmmaker and knocking her up there s a psychic and a superstitious dressmaker after a while it seemed really odd that all these people with odd problems situations wound up together in one 250 page book a vintage affair was a nice diversion from children of the new world and bel canto but i kept wishing the narrative would stop introducing more threads because it seemed unlikely to sew them all up in time for the last page of the book posted by melissa ward at 10 26 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels stuff i read 08 july 2010 open your eyes i found this novella via a recommendation by paul goat allen science fiction fantasy afficionado and reviewer extraordinaire open your eyes by paul jessup was listed as one of paul s best sf fantasy novels no one s read shortlist i was at loose ends one evening so i sat down fired up the nook and read away jessup blends a number of sf elements into the story of ekhi found stranded in her ship and the odd assortment of characters that find her on their way to compete a shadowy mission space opera and cyberpunk a little phillip k dick and 2001 a space odyssey people can back up their souls humans interact with ai to pilot spaceships bodies can be rebuilt reanimated when seriously injured and a mysterious linguistic virus threatens the lives and sanity of the crew jessup s use of language is vivid both descriptive and spare at the same time he doesn t waste much time on exposition to explain the novella s world to the reader hurrah so we jump right into the story when ekhi s lover goes supernova literally it s very cool i haven t been reading much sf lately so open your eyes was a great change of pace moral of the story if paul goat allen says it s good it s good posted by melissa ward at 10 44 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels stuff i read 07 july 2010 literature by women is reading bel canto this month the literature by women group travels to south america with ann pachett s bel canto come join us i have to confess to a little fangirl pride i am a huge fan of renee fleming so i can identify with mr hosokawa s reverence for roxane coss who incidentally is modeled after renee fleming renee came to sing in iowa city in 2006 and i waited around after her performance to get my cds and book signed i did try very hard not to drool all over her and i m sure she s used to nutty fans by now posted by melissa ward at 10 58 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels music notes 06 july 2010 eclipse i used my holiday monday effectively by going to see eclipse with some friends i didn t go to the midnight release this time since jackie who is the only friend i have who would want to do that was out of town happily a matinee showing allowed grown ups to watch eclipse without wanting to strangle all the irritating tweeners eclipse was the book i liked best out of the series and the movie adaptation is the best so far the book has the tightest plot and timeline and that helped because the movie didn t drag as much as new moon did the screenwriter stayed pretty close to the book at least as far as i can remember since i didn t re read the book before hand so all the major points of the novel are in the movie i did like the way the film followed the new vampires in the city something the book didn t do but since we all knew the storyline anyway i didn t really miss the suspense and i really liked bryce dallas howard s performance...
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