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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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sa ward at 4 25 pm 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels music notes 22 july 2010 troubles i started reading troubles when the shortlist for the lost man booker prize was announced in march the siege of krishnapur is on my longlist tbr as part of my booker project challenge but troubles is the first book in jg farrell s empire trilogy so i was interested in reading troubles before siege the final book is the singapore grip conveniently for me troubles won the lost booker prize so i got to read my first booker winner of the year troubles follows the story of major brendan archer and his interaction with an anglo irish family the spencers at their decaying estate hotel the majestic around the beginning of the troubles in ireland troubles is such an innocuous word like a guerrilla style war for irish home rule is the same as a bothersome neighbor who neglects to return the leaf blower archer comes to the majestic to claim the hand of his fiancee angela spencer and winds up embroiled in the idiosyncratic way of life at the old estate it s a bit like a waugh novel the decaying anglo irish aristocracy is a major focus of troubles combined with a wodehouse farce the cadre of elderly english maiden aunts and widows who permanently inhabit the majestic lend a comic aspect to post world war i pre civil war ireland the rapidly multiplying horde of cats inhabiting the majestic they steadily take over the upper floors and varying rooms of the hotel causing guests to change rooms are also a source of hilarity to the reader when the cats venture out to vex the hotel s human inhabitants archer also becomes fascinated with the aloof sarah devlin a resident of nearby kilnalough as the relationship between the english and the irish rapidly deteriorates jg farrell s writing is wonderful and very much worth savoring the majority of the plot in troubles moves very slowly the whole action of the book takes places over eighteen months to two years so there is plenty of time for farrell to develop the characters of archer spencer ripon sarah and all the others only the expected character development doesn t seem to occur the only character we start to fully understand is the major and we see all the other characters through his eyes i really only recall one or two scenes where archer is not present so it was so fun to read a book that really stayed with one character s perspective the few point of view breaks were almost anecdotal in nature so they really didn t interrupt my reading farrell even provides the reader with the newspaper articles archer reads so we always stay with archer s perspective and body of knowledge if i didn t know farrell wrote troubles in the 1960s a time where the troubles were heating up in ireland again i would have thought the original publication was in the 1920s there is a very real time feeling to the novel the feeling of uncertainty that you don t quite know who s a shinner sinn fein if you will make it home to dinner in one piece that is the best kind of historical novel when you can t tell the setting was reconstructed from research and i love it posted by melissa ward at 10 25 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels booker project complete booker challenge stuff i read 21 july 2010 the corrections so i feel kinda like a heel i never read jonathan franzen s the corrections i never read it because oprah said she liked it and i ran full tilt in the other direction never mind franzen didn t want to be on oprah it was too much pop culture tabloid sniping for my taste i wasn t in the mood for pop culture when i was in grad school not long ago i read reading with oprah and the idea that i never read the corrections niggled in the back of my head franzen s novel received the national book award in 2001 so it was probably pretty good hmmm i got to pick the june book for our little booksellers bookclub so i decided to choose the corrections i m really glad i finally read the corrections because it really is an interesting look at a middle class family everyone in this family needs to take their blinders off alfred is caught in the downward spiral of senile dementia he can t relinquish his rigid 1950s derived concepts of family and behavior enid is concerned with the facade of presenting a happy nuclear family to the neighbors gary is unable to acknowledge his own mental and marital problems chip s academic cocoon has burst and he s on a path toward self destruction denise doesn t know what she wants but she knows it s not this this being not her mother every character in this family is completely incapable of having an honest conversation with another member of the family without resorting to gossip spying sneaking around behind people s backs the corrections was hard to get into i realy liked franzen s style but the timeline franzen uses is one of these oddball post modernist ones where you jump back and forth and between characters without a good chronology it took me until about halfway through chip s introduction to understand how the book was structured after that i was good while i both liked and hated i wanted to slap all of them least once during the book the characters i really think franzen did his best when characterizing alfred alfred is an intelligent man a disciplined man who cares deeply for his family even though he really has trouble expressing any deep feelings to anyone as he descends into dementia the vivid hallucinations are wonderfully rendered although it s only a fictional representation the possibility that i could wind up like alfred that we all could wind up like alfred concerned about a roving piece of feces and destined for sedatives and a nursing home is terrifying i really have to re read the corrections because i feel like i missed a great deal on just one reading by the way there is a fantastically hilarious scene where chip is in a grocery store and it underscores just how desperate chip has become in trying to keep up appearances current book in progress bel canto by ann patchett current knitted item blue shawl i am almost done current movie obsession you ve got mail current itunes loop the five browns posted by melissa ward at 11 13 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels bookclub stuff i read 19 july 2010 beth fish reads harper perennial books reviews beth fish is spotlighting books from harper perennial you know the harpercollins imprint with the olive on the spine and oftentimes a nice p s guide in the back it s an imprint i personally look for when i m buying books i m kind of a geek in that i like my imprints to look nice on the shelf when lined up next to each other with their pretty spines i collect other imprints too check out beth fish s introductory post as well as beth fish reads harper perennial books reviews to see what other harper perennial titles are abuzz in the blogging world use the mr linky to link up your harper perennial posts i linked up my reviews to a tree grows in brooklyn the poisonwood bible and it could be worse you could be me i hope to have the falls the moonflower vine a vindication of love and vanishing and other stories coming along in the next few months too and if you have time mosey on by the olive reader harper perennial s fantastic blog posted by melissa ward at 11 50 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels book events 18 july 2010 iowa city book festival 2010 sunday today was the a day in the city of literature portion of the iowa city book festival all different book discussions or book related activities were spread out all over downtown i was having trouble figuring out the times on everything plus parking downtown is a pain on sundays because of the special parking on the street for churchgoers i decided to go to the book crafts event at home ec workshop since there s yarn and fabric there too i could have gone to the bead shop for a book making demonstration i think that s what was there but i really don t use beads much the book craft activity wasn t anything terribly special you could color sticker your own bookmark or accordion book so it was like a kids event we have at the bookstore so i decided to look through the yarn instead i found malabrigo worsted in sotobosque a really beautiful pink brown black kettle dyed yarn it reminds me so much of an iodine clock demo only pink instead of yellow i think i ll make the dna helix cable scarf out of this instead maybe i also came home with some more sock yarn malabrigo sock in primavera pretty no i didn t find any fabric i liked there i was looking for something specific and while home ec has great cotton prints i didn t see anything in the color i needed so i went to jo ann which is turning into wal mart i am not kidding there are ketchup and mustard refillable containers for sale and a bin of cheap flip flops near the door really i understand that people like to decorate flip flops but the containers and other crap are a bit much especially considering it took me nearly an hour to find good quality fabric then i had to find the right color also not easy because the selection of good quality material for dressmaking couture sewing is pitiful if i made quilts i d be in business because they ve got everything under the sun in cotton quilting fabric i miss my hancock fabrics sob i want to go to mood what i really needed was a nice smooth fashion fabric to make a sash for a new dress dress is ready made but the sash that comes with it leaves something to be desired since the dress is such a unique color green i wanted to use a darker shade of green instead of matching directly if i had to i would have used black but i got lucky in the end the dress color is on the left the new hunter green fabric is on the right that will definitely look pretty as a sash i got 3 5 yds so i m going to cut very wide bias strips fuse them with interfacing seam them end to end with flat seams and then sew the sides 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 fit...