A Work in Progress

The State of the Reading Pile: October

The good news is I am a mere three books away from reading the number of books I read during the entirety of 2015, and we still have three full months of reading ahead of us.  This is potentially going to be a very good reading year (even if the combination/make up of books is not quite what I had hoped it might be).

The bad news is . . . look at these crazy-tall piles of books I have in progress.  Whatever have I been thinking?  Obviously my desires do not match my available reading time.  But then having the time to read everything I want has never stopped me in the past. 

Now the question is as we begin (scary thought) winding down the year.  Do I make a list of books I absolutely want to finish this year, weed out these piles of books of stories I am just not into, and try and whittle down the piles as I cross finished books of said list?  That is what I have done to varying degrees of success in the past.  The end of the year reading dilemma sets in.  Why am I always so distracted by new books and the urge to start whatever whenever I like.  I am absolutely dedicated and tenacious about certain things in my life.  But tell me about a book or invite me to read along and I am more than happy to throw my hat into the ring. 

Since I am not a 'one book at a time' reader, my idea (always) is to pick three and spend all my reading time with them, and as I finish one to add a new (new being one of these in progress books) into the mix.  Sounds easy, doesn't it. 

What can I do to motivate myself to stick with these books and finish them?  Hmm.  Suggestions welcome. 

Midweek Apple Harvest Interlude

Autumn has finally arrived!  It has been several days in a row now of coolish weather, even a little brisk on my morning walk to the bus stop.  It feels wonderful, and in celebration I had a very nice mid-week interlude away from work and Omaha.  I was invited to go to Nebraska City (I went there in July, too) to visit a few of the apple orchards.  It was all unexpected but I couldn't pass it up.

This is the time of year when Nebraska City really comes alive.  It is a lovely little town, very picturesque and in the fall very busy with their AppleJack festival.  I am not fond of crowds so it was nice to go during the week after the festival and when things were noticeably quiet.  Normally you can walk down into the orchards and pick your own apples, but as it was midweek and apparently the harvest was smaller than usual, the orchards were closed and you could only buy apples in the attached store/Apple Barn.

The orchard workers were busy making apple cider.  All behind closed doors of course, but you could peek in through the windows and see the machines at work.  Can you see the cider going through the tube into that huge vat?  I couldn't manage to catch the apples being spit out from the conveyor belt.

But from the outside I caught them as they were coming up and being loaded into the machine.

And here is all the stuff that isn't used in the cider.  A massive mound of skin and seeds, I think.

I actually didn't buy any apples to take home as I have a big bag of my favorites (MacIntoshes) that I am working on and I have been buying apples from other local farms at my local farmer's market.

I did, however, partake of some jams.  I found a nice jar of my favorite gooseberry jam that should see me through the fall as well as apple butter.  I managed to resist the apple donuts, but it smelled apple-y sweet inside!

If you drive in the Nebraska countryside, you will see lots of this!  The corn was still on the stalks, so I think this must be feed corn.  It was breezy out and dry corn makes a very particular sound, which is actually kind of cool.  A swish-swish, rustle-y sound.  I like it.  It is very peaceful and calm (though I can do without all the grasshoppers--hate to think what else is hiding in among all that corn in those fields!).

A few festive photos.  Autumn is my favorite season.  I brought home a mini pumpkin and a little green gourd to decorate my desk and bookcase.  Aren't these gnarly fellows interesting-looking?  So nice to enjoy an (unexpected) lovely fall day!

NYRBs: Modiano, Giono and Teffi

I have NYRBs scattered about my house.  Piles of them.  A lovely row on a shelf in my bedroom with their elegant spines pointing out and a stack sitting on top of those.  I didn't realize this until I went back to create a tab (which you can click on above) listing my subscription books that this is my fourth year of receiving a new NYRB Classic in the mail every month.  They add up and looking back of the wealth of literature, stories, short stories, nonfiction, written in English but a lot of other languages, too, I feel very lucky (and rich even) to have so many of them at my fingertips. 

I admit, however, I had to go back and do some searching and pull books from the piles to try and figure out which books came out in which years and more difficult in which months, but I think I now have it all sorted.  If I have read and written about the books I have linked to the post.  Here's the sad part.  I have not been as diligent in my monthly reading as I should have been.  This is why I am now playing catch up on my 2016 books.  2015 was my worst year in terms of reading and 2013 my best, which was also my first year.  I am hoping that this year beats them all, though.  And I will continue to chip away at reading those unread subscription books.  

I think too much time has passed to write properly about a few of my finishes, but I want to mention them here in some manner.  The stories are always worth writing about and sharing and now all the books I have received are sorted by the month and year they arrived.

***

Patrick Modiano's In the Café of Lost Youth (translated from the French, Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue, by Chris Clarke) was my March 2016 book though it was originally published in 2007.  Modiano is the 2014 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature and I am keen to read much more of his work.  This slender novel is a portrait of a woman as told through the eyes of four narrators including Louki herself.   Louki is not her real name but a she has been 'dubbed' (now I can't recall if someone else named her that or she pulled it out of the air herself).  This is a post-WWII story set primarily in a neighborhood café called le Condé where a disparate group of cast-offs, bohemians, writers, posers--your basic 'lost youth' come to sit and watch and be watched.  There is an air about it of ennui, which I guess it is perfect for 1950s-ish Parisian café society. 

The first narrator who kicks off the story keeps a notebook in which he writes about the people he sees in the café--a register of sorts.  And the story builds on it from there.

"At the Condé we never questioned each other about our origins.  We were too young and we didn't even have pasts to reveal, we lived in the present."

Louki's first appearance is in this notebook.  "Louki.  Monday, February 12th, 11p.m."  "Louki with the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket."

". . . if she came to the Condé in October, it's because she had broken ties with some entire part of her life and she wanted to do what they refer to in novels as 'turn over a new leaf'.  Moreover, a clue proves to me that I'm not mistaken.  At the Condé, she was given a new name.  Zacharias, that day, had even spoken of baptism.  It was in a way a second birth."

This is an interesting story-one about memory and identity and how ephemeral they can both be and how very much open to interpretation and retelling.  Not really a story in the way we know it, but still a story about a woman with a troubled past and a tragic ending.  I'm not sure I ever felt I 'knew' her (or any of the narrators really), but perhaps too much time has passed and too much went on below the surface of the story that has now faded away.  It's a moody atmospheric story and from what I understand vintage Patrick Modiano.  After I read this I immediately bought another of Modiano's novels reissued by NYRB. 

***

I shared a teaser of Jean Giono's Hill (translated from the French, Colline, by Paul Eprile) earlier in the year.  It was originally published in 1929.  It was my April 2016 book and the second Giono book I have read this year (after January's start to the new year with The Man Who Planted Trees).  Jean Giono is an interesting man and writer.  His harrowing experiences on the WWI battlefield turned him into a devoted pacifist who saw (had the great foresight) how modern man has and does abuse nature and the natural world.  If The Man Who Planted Trees was filled with hope and light and a knowingness/mindfulness that we should all cultivate, Hill was darker and the natural world far more malevolent.  

Giono's novel is set in Provence sometime before the age of automobiles.  A small hamlet in the French Alps with a dozen or so families and residents live on the hillside.  This hill, this massive geographic formation is a living, breathing 'being'--and calling it a being is not really so far off in this book--is a character in its own right.  Perhaps both the star and villain of the story.  The residents take their sustenance more or less from the hill--they mold it into submission.  But what happens when the most important element--water--stops running?  "Nature in its raw state" is what one reviewer notes in a blurb.  It is a very primal story and one filled with conflict and passion, though not in the warm way we think of passion.  Man's use and abuse of nature.  Are we consumers or stewards is perhaps what he is trying to convey here.

"They [the villagers] arm themselves; they become watchful, on the lookout for . . .  what?  They do not know.  Only that something in this broad terrain may be out to get them for the way they've been treating the land.  Perhaps the hill itself."

One of the hamlet's men thinks:

"The old ways were so straightforward.  There was humanity, and all around but underneath, animals and plants.  And things were going along well that way."

"He can feel the hill--alive and terrible--moving under his feet."

Giono speaks sense and truth and you know in your heart he's right.  I think it is impossible to walk away from any of Giono's writing and not feel something! 

***

Ah, now we come to Teffi.  She writes about her journey, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, from Moscow to Ukraine in 1918 following Russia's Revolution when her contemporaries were all scrambling to get away from the Bolsheviks.  And quite a journey it was.  The pieces that make up this book were published in installments and were translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg.  I wrote about it a couple of times already this year.  It was my May 2016 book, which she wrote as she was fleeing.  A journey that took her years to accomplish and which was meant to be temporary but ended up with her exile in Paris.   

Teffi's journey reminds me a little of Eleanor Perenyi's memoirs, another NYRB Classics book from earlier this year.  What is now a faded world to us, a place that changed irrevocably thanks to war and caused a massive upheaval.  What amazes me is how seemingly nonchalantly Teffi was able to navigate her journey.  It was a journey filled with unknowns. 

"My future was a matter of complete indifference to me.  I felt neither anxiety nor fear.  In any case there was nothing I could do.  In my mind I retraced my strange journey from Moscow, always south, always further south, and always without any deliberate choice.  In the form of Gooskin [an impresario], the hand of fate had appeared.  It had pushed me on my way."

Teffi was hugely popular in her day.  She was much loved by people of all walks of life and could straddle the various groups of people irregardless of wealth (or lack thereof) and politics.  She even had her own perfume and candies (or rather had both things named after her).  She wrote one-act plays, poetry and other short works.  She's known for her satirical and humorous view of life and it is with a good dose of irony that she approached her writing and her life and this journey.  Still, it had to take its toll on her.  Living out of a suitcase, in hotels and even on ships "began to pall".  "A joke is not so funny when you are living inside it." 

She literally lived from day to day, without much of a plan, relying on her friends and rumors and innuendo as to where she could get through to the next city.  Often she was asked to perform her work and she was recognized and assured by others they would help her, though sometimes the words were empty.  Her reputation would often precede her.  The book ends with her still on the road so to speak and I would be curious to read more memoirs of 'what came after', but perhaps it is through her other work that glimpses of her life can be made.  She seemed quite a colorful person and very much a 'character'.   It all very much comes through in her writing and you can tell she is a very careful observer of the world around her (luckily for us).

"With my eyes now open so wide that the cold penetrates deep into them, I keep looking.  And I shall not move away.  I've broken my vow, I've looked back.  And, like Lot's wife, I am frozen.  I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me."

A Little Thread Work: Stitching Notes

Moving right along in my weaving!  I am now working on project #3.  This is most definitely a Learning Piece!  Particularly since I have already messed up the warp (my teachers had to undo the heddle--that interweave of kite string that I use to lift/separate the threads in order to weave), didn't plan correctly for how much thread I would need (hence the dark and light sides) and now have messed up the decorative part you see below.

So, it was my intention to weave a new piece of cloth using the purple and burgundy threads, but those skeins don't go quite as far as I thought they would.  It looks like there is so much thread on the tube, but oops, it finished far quicker than expected.  So yellow tones it is to complement the darker colors.

I did, however, manage to separate the two different colors/tones so that when switching the threads (opening and closing the shed) one color falls to the back and the other is pulled up and open. 

And my teachers are showing me how to create those decorative lacy bits.  The weft (the thread you are weaving with) is woven over and under three threads.  It's not really hard, just a matter of transposing the normal threads you weave through, but I goofed on one of the rows and I have not managed to space the rows out evenly.  Oh well, it's all good.  Considering I have only been doing this for part of one summer and then not on a daily basis, I am still pleased with my progress.  Maybe with my next project  I will try something a little more planned and thought out.  For now I am just happy to be weaving and trying something new.  I think you learn more by making mistakes anyway.  Normally in weaving most mistakes can actually be fixed, though fixing mistakes is a skill in itself.  I wish I could weave more during the week than only on Saturday afternoons, but eventually I hope to set something up at home.  I still do not have my own loom pieces and am just borrowing the sticks, but I'm working on obtaining them!

I'm still pottering away at my needlework, too.  I have actually been making progress on my Quaker heart and I hope to have the motifs finished by the end of this coming week.  You can see the first one I made using a variegated red thread with beading on the outer edge.  Curiously the pattern calls this the back, but it seems more like the main side to me.

I stitched this first one all the way back in 2010.  Since then my initials have changed.  I like the nice warm colors of this second Quaker heart.  Orange and pink with a dash of red. 

Here it is in all its glory!  I hope I will have enough thread (I have no idea where I bought it.  I found it in one of my stash bins) to finish the back stitching and stitch words I plan on putting on the sides.  I will finish it as a "mattress cushion" and I am still contemplating which words I will use on that outer edge.  As my initials and the year will already be on one side, I can put something else on the outer edge. 

Do you remember this?  Spring feels so far back now.  I sort of fizzled a bit on it, but I do plan on finishing it at some point.  Winter was finished and is waiting for its three companion pieces. 

I sort of started the Summer sampler, but now I am going to re-purpose that piece of linen (I need to order more to have enough for all three samplers).  Autumn is my favorite season, so I think I will pick out the few stitches that went into Summer and jump right into Autumn.  I love the crows and the little squirrel and Mr. Scarecrow (who apparently is not really doing his job . . .).  The weather finally seems to have started cooperating after several rainy days, yesterday was cool at last.  It may be safe to pull out long sleeves and sweatshirts at last.  And I think I need to work on my Autumn sampler as a nice celebration!

Yes, but what's your notion of life?

I love it when you are reading something good and come to a part that just clicks.  It resonates with something in your life now or something you, too, have experienced.  Isn't this one of the reasons we all love reading so much?  After a little hiatus, I have once again picked up Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel, which was written in 1929 and was my June NYRB subscription book.  I am trying to go back and work my way forward again with my NYRBs.  I've finished reading Teffi's Memories (and do hope to catch up on writing about it and some of my other recent finishes).  The Walser (this month's book) is perfectly dippable, so I try and read one or two (or even three) of the short works each day while picking up those other books I've missed.  I hadn't quite engaged enough with Grand Hotel so it was easy to set it down.  It is good, but it is a story that calls for more steady attention, which I finally gave it and now feel a good rhythm going.  It is one of my main reads each day and this passage caught my interest in particular.

This is a bit from a conversation between two guests at Berlin's Grand Hotel.  The story moves about from person to person giving glimpses into their lives, their hopes and desires and disappointments.  I can see them all and feel what they feel.  Such a cast of curiosities.  So, here is Dr. Otternschlag, a WWI veteran, and Herr Kringelein a bullied and beat down clerk who discovers he is ill but hoping to convince those around him and maybe most of all himself that his life is filled with dignity still.

"He knew little of life, but now he wanted to get to know it.  He wanted to know life as it really was.  That was why he was here.  'But,' he went on, 'where is real life?  I have not come on it yet.  I have been to a casino, and here I am sitting in the most expensive hotel, but all the time I know it isn't the real thing.  All the time I have a suspicion that real, genuine actual life is going on somewhere else and is something quite different.  When you don't belong to it it's not all so easy to get into it, if you see what I mean?'"

"'Yes, but what's your notion of life?' replied Doctor Otternschlag.  'Does life even exist as you imagine it?  The real thing is always going on somewhere else.  When you're young you think it will come later.  Later on you think it was earlier.  When you are here, you think it is there--in India, in America, on Popocatepetl or somewhere.  But when you get there, you find that life has doubled back and is quietly waiting here, here in the very place you ran away from.  It is the same with life as it is with the butterfly collector and the swallowtail.  As you see it flying away, it is wonderful.  But as soon as it is caught, the colors are gone and the wings bashed'." 

Written in 1929 by a German woman and dropped into the mouth of a middle age doctor in Weimar Germany.  And now here I am thinking much the same thing.  What will happen to these characters?  Will they find what life really is?  I'm looking, too. 

I'll be reading on this weekend.  I hope you find some happy surprises in your reading this weekend, too.

Bookish Eye Candy: Reading Rooms

I can't resist . . . I have to share this link with you.  Bookish eye candy for your Thursday evening.  I came across this today: Reading Room: A Catalog of New York City's Branch Libraries.   If you are in New York City, please go see this exhibit for me and report back!  It opens today and runs through the first week of January at the Center for Architecture.  Apparently photographer Elizabeth Felicella photographed all 210 branches of NYC's Public Library system.  She is an architectural photographer and the exhibit looks amazing.  I wish there was an exhibit catalog to purchase, but I cannot seem to find one. 

Yes, libraries really are great!

And since I am here (I was going to 'take today off' from blogging), this Life of a Book article/interview is interesting, too.

Just Another Linky Wednesday

It feels like summer out these days!  Except the bees are out in full force.  'Tis that time of year.  I can't berate them since I love honey, but I do wish they would not feel drawn to my lunch every afternoon.  I complain about the heat, but what am I going to do when I can't sit outside for lunch anymore? 

Sorry, just a little aside there.

This bequest has been a topic of conversation at my work for the last day or so.  I guess when you don't earmark money for particular projects or wishes an institution can use it for whatever purpose they see fit.  Now I personally would have liked to see more money go towards the library or directly to students, but well . . .

Did you know it is National Translation Month?  I didn't, and here we are halfway through September already. I'm doing my best to read broadly and works translated from other languages.  At the moment I have books translated from Japanese, Spanish and German on the go.  I just finished one originally written in Russian and will be adding a 'catch-up' NYRB book so perhaps another German translation?   Not too bad a showing, I think.  I wouldn't mind picking up a book translated from a language I have never 'read' before.  Maybe some language from a country in Africa?  Ukrainian or Tajik or something?  Hmm.

Have a drool over these photos (and article) on Paris's Shakespeare & Co.  I know I did. 

Ah, yes, the age old question of just what we mean by 'women's fiction'.

Back at the beginning of the year I said I want to reread a favorite book.  Well, I think it might be a Clare Chambers novel after all.  Or maybe Eva Rice.  And I think I will start reading it tonight.  I am in need of a 'comfort read'.  It's only Wednesday (no, hey, it's already Wednesday!), and it has been one of THOSE sorts of weeks.  I need something familiar and happy and escapist, but well written, too.  And I know I can depend on both Clare and Eva!

But on the upside of life I have a (albeit small) Amazon gift card to spend.  What should I buy?  (What a loaded question!). 

A new season of Poldark is set to begin here on PBS.  Serious eye candy in more ways than one, don't you agree?  I told myself I was going to read the books before watching the TV adaptation, but as I have only read the first book and the first season covers the first two books and here we are moving right along . . .  Maybe that won't happen and I will just throw all caution to the wind and watch the show.   In an alternate universe someone who looks just like Aidan Turner (with matching accent) would be my significant other (or at least close friend).  But in this universe I will content myself by watching him as Poldark.

Dang.  Now I want to go pick up the second Poldark book. 

I personally have a thing for stories about doppelgängers, so I was interested in this article.  A few books I have read are mentioned and a few more I have not, so now it is time to explore (maybe I should order one of those books I have not yet read with my gift card . . .).   And I have mentioned having and wanting to read one of Daphne du Maurier's novels this RIP season, so maybe it will be The Scapegoat after all.

Did your city make the top ten best cities for books list?  Omaha didn't.  Sad to say, no surprise to me there . . .

Teaser Tuesday: Villain

Part of the reason I am so drawn to books translated into English is the desire to really feel transported to another place, another culture.  For some reason Japan has always felt particularly foreign to me.  Maybe this is due to the fact I have read so few books written by Japanese authors or with a Japanese setting.  The Japanese language holds no familiarity for me either.  I can understand a tiny bit of most romance languages.  I've traveled to Europe and have read lots of books set there.  I am more familiar with European culture and history, but Japan is an almost unknown quantity.  So Shuichi Yoshida's debut crime novel, Villain, is proving to be a very tantalizing look into a place that is utterly exotic.  I think if I traveled there I would feel very much at swim and maybe a little disoriented by it.

Pardon me, please, if I am staring.  That's a little how I feel as I immerse myself into this unsettling world.  The nice thing about a book is I can literally be like a fly on the wall.  I can look into this story and even gawk a little but not worry about how or if my reaction is registering in a curious way. 

So, the set up . . . I know there is going to be a murder.  And I am, at the moment, being introduced to the victim.  Normally a reader is sympathetic to the person who is murdered even if their presence is only after the fact.  Sometimes they are already gone before the story even begins.  So what happens if the victim is being introduced and they are not terribly likable?  I might even already have met the murderer, too, but we're still building up to that moment.

She, the victim, is a young woman.  She's an only child.  An impatient daughter with not so much time for her parents.  She lives in housing provided by her work, though her parents would have wished she would have stayed home and simply commuted to her job.  She's not cruel, or not much, anyway. But she lies to her friends.  Two other young women who also live in the same building and work the same job make up her small group of friends.  She pretends Keigo, a young man she met, is her sometimes boyfriend and has come up with an elaborate story about their relationship.  She takes a perverse pleasure in pitting one friend against the other in a way that makes life easiest for herself.  And sheds the best light on herself.  Her name is Yoshino.  And while she tells her friends she is meeting her 'boyfriend', she is actually going off with another young man she met through an online dating service.  Her dates, the few she has had, consist of meeting at a love hotel.   You get the idea, right?

So here we are, setting the stage for the story, creating a picture of Yoshino and throwing in a person or two who might potentially turn out to be our murderer. 

"Yoshino was proud that she was the only one Keigo had asked for her e-mail address when they'd met in the bar.  And that pride had led her, when Sari had first asked  if he'd sent her a message, to suddenly lie: 'Yeah, he did.  I'm going to see him this weekend.'  When the weekend came, she had her two friends check her hair and makeup, and they gave her a cheery send-off as she left the apartment.  The white lie she'd told ballooned into something out of her control, and she wound up taking the Nishitetsu line back to her parents' home to kill the day there."

Needless to say I am quite curious to see where exactly this story is going.  Am I going to feel sympathy for Yoshino?  Does it matter ultimately?  One of the things I like in particular about this story is how descriptive Yoshida is in his storytelling.  Even though I know nothing about the place, I still feel like I can create an image in mind when he talks about places and streets and all the things special to Japan that we do not have here.  It is a different kind of education--one that is both new and interesting and it is all wrapped up in a mystery.  This is a crime novel with a psychological slant to it.  I'm wondering why so much attention is being paid to the cost of things in this society.  We seem to be told quite often how much something costs.  Now I must look up what a Yen is worth.  And then there is the food.  Gyoza are dumplings and Yoshino and her friends have just gorged themselves on them.  I'm glad she enjoyed her meal as it might well be her last one. 

RIP-ping Right Along: Reading Notes

It was another blogger who said "I can't stop starting new books" and boy, am I doing the very same thing at the moment.  It's the fault of it being R.I.P. time.  It's like having an open invitation to start books in honor of fall and appropriately suspenseful and ghostly tales, which are a favorite of mine at any time of the year but especially now.  I love Autumn even if it has still been toasty warm and stormy of late.  (Summer started early and seems to be going on and on and on).  Since I seem to be reaching mostly for my most atmospheric stories at the moment, here's a little run down of the books I have been escaping into. 

Fiercombe Manor.  Don't you love it when publishers change titles depending on where they are published.  In the UK Kate Riordan's novel was published under the title The Girl in the Photograph.  I suppose that now that I am slowly getting into the story either could work.  I happen to have the UK edition of the book (I wanted it in paperback back when I ordered it--it has since been released in paper in the US, too).  I have to have at least one proper ghost story for the season and this fits the bill quite nicely.  Her writing reminds me of Simone St. James, who I have read and very much enjoyed (and who knows, maybe tomorrow or later in the week I might pick up one of her unread books that graces my shelves at the moment).

This story oozes atmosphere.  It is one of those parallel-stories novels set in 1933 and 1898 with an emphasis more on the more 'contemporary' story.  Fiercombe Manor, I suspect, is going to be just as important character-wise as either of the two women who are destined to have a connection.  Alice Eveleigh comes to Fiercombe to hide her pregnancy.  She tells the little fib that her husband was killed in a motor accident and so is too fragile emotionally to stay in London.  Her mother was friends with Fiercombe's housekeeper so it seems like the perfect solution.  Fiercombe is one of those massive old manor houses that is dark and foreboding situated in a grounds that is not particularly sunny and bright and hard to get to.  And things are just not quite right with the house.  Among other things Alice's watch seems to have stopped (and no amount of winding will make it work).  And there is a painting of a former owner whose eyes seem to watch Alice no matter how she tries to ignore him.  Alice has yet to find that photograph of the girl, but as she has been snooping around a bit (what else is there to do in such a great house where she is meant to be resting?), but I think it will be soon!

My other main RIP read is Elizabeth Peters's (actually she is writing as Barbara Michaels here) The Crying Child.  The book was published in 1971.  It doesn't feel dated, but it has that aura about it somehow.  So, I am going to say this, but I don't mean it as a criticism in any way . . .  There is something a little formulaic about her novels of romantic suspense.  They have a similar set up and I expect this will follow the same trajectory as other books by her I have read.  These are escapist reads for me--pure, unadulterated enjoyments and the reason I often turn to her is simply because I know what to expect and I almost always want what I know will be a fun, uncomplicated but comforting read.  She can pretty much always deliver.

So, Joanne McMullen is living in California making her own way in the world of advertising, scraping by is more like it despite her family's wish she would remain closer to home and take up a job in the family business.  Not her family exactly, but her sister happens to be married to one of the wealthiest young men on the east coast.  They live in a family home on the coast of Maine.  Actually on one of the remote islands off the coast.  Yes, more atmosphere here.   Her brother-in-law, Ran, is worried for the sanity of Joanne's sister, Mary.  She has gone through several pregnancies ending in miscarriages, but her latest pregnancy seems to be stable.  Now, however, Mary is hearing the wailing of a child and disappears at night in search of this missing baby.  Ran fears she has perhaps gone over the edge in her grief so he sends for her sister to come and give her support.  Enter taciturn young doctor, Will, who is attractive but maddening.  And you know Joanne is going to fall for him.

I should be able to make quick work of the Michaels novel and so have already added something a little different to  my pile.  I was all set to start the first Lew Archer novel by Ross MacDonald that I just mentioned here a few days ago, but as I was digging through my bins of mystery novels, I came across a crime novel by a Japanese author, Shuichi Yoshida, Villain, which I had heard many good things about when it came out in paper (and so had to have it and has been waiting patiently for me).  I've been wanting to read some Japanese Literature and thinking about starting something, so it just seems the right book for the right moment.  One of the blurb describes it as "a ripping good story of murder and secrets".  It has a ghostly mountain pass and is set in part by a desolate seaside town.  "A chilling and seductive story of loneliness, desperation and murder."  This is Yoshida's English language debut novel and it looks quite promising.

I've still got novels by Ottessa Moshfegh and Anthony Quinn which are peripherally related to my RIP reading as well as two novels by Daphne du Maurier set aside and a library book out by Alex Marwood, all of which I am at least thinking about.  My only disappointment at the moment is a lack of short stories of a ghostly variety.  As a matter of fact not posting about short stories on Sundays regularly means I have gotten lax in my short story reading, so I need to do something about that. 

I can recommend a very good podcast to you, however.  It is somewhat disturbing even while it catches your interest and holds you glued to your earphones.  It comes via Sarah Weinman whose newsletter I subscribe to (she also recommended Ross Macdonald somewhere along the line).  APM Reports offers excellent investigative journalism in the form of podcasts.  I am three episodes into listening to In the Dark, which is about a child abduction case in Minnesota that went unsolved until just recently.  Jacob Wetterling, an eleven-year-old lived with his family in rural Minnesota until he was abducted in October 1989.  The killer was living very close by and had gone undetected for almost thirty years.  Madeleine Baran has been investigating just what went wrong in this police investigation.  Why the perpetrator was allowed to live freely for so many years.  It is fascinating to hear her piece together all the steps and what was done wrong when the crime was first committed.  True crime stories are always more than just a little disturbing.  I've listened to the first three podcasts and am waiting for the next installment.

Adventures in Weaving, Part 2

Finally, here is my work on my second weaving project!  I have photos from start to finish, so you can see what I have been learning.  Part of the work I did was at my local museum where I took the class, but it spilled over into the Refugee Empowerment Center as my teachers are Karen refugees from Myanmar (Burma).  My class is officially over now, so the other students and I are planning on continuing to go to the Center on Saturdays to keep on weaving.

This odd looking set of boards is a warping board.  This is what we use to create the warp, which is the structure on which we weave.  So what you are seeing is actually the threads that will eventually be removed.  It is sitting on its side at the moment, but once removed and we begin weaving it will no longer be horizontal as shown.  The large stick on the left will be what is connected to the wall (or some steady structure) that holds the rest of the weaving.  Some of those poles will be used as well and the thread is wrapped around them.

This is a very important piece of the loom.  It is the heddle rod and the kite string (in the future I hope to use something a little less slippery as I had problems with knots coming undone and the thread going wonky and causing problems) is what is separating the threads.  It is woven around every other green and/or white thread and it is what will eventually separate those threads and enable me to weave.  It's one of those Eureka discoveries--so much easier than trying to weave your weft through every other warp thread.

Here is a close up to one of those poles that holds the threads and creates my warp structure. 

Okay.  Here it  all is taken from the warping board and attached to the wall.  Do you see how all those poles now create the loom?  It took me quite a while to wrap my brain around how it all works and how it works together.  I am still learning, but I understand the very basic process.  The stick with the kite string attached is my heddle that opens and closes the threads.  So I can weave the weft thread through and then that nice, big, nicely sanded bar is a batten and it is used to beat the weft thread into place. 

Here is a close up of that heddle rod.  I could have been more systematic in the placing of my warp threads by color and made a nicer, more orderly pattern but as I am still learning I decided to let them go as they may end see how they randomly end up.  I should have taken a photo of the threads open, but there are a couple of photos back in this post.

Here is me working and you can see my heddle rod that has my weft thread I am weaving with.  When creating the warp you use two threads in tandem, but when you actually weave you only use one.  Again I just randomly switched from the green to the white.  The top part of the cloth has a white weft and the bottom a green weft woven in.

And here it is all finished.  The tassles at the end were really a challenge for me.  It took me a couple of hours to do them.  My teacher was showing me and she was so fast and could create them into tight wraps I was incredibly impressed.  What you do is take two sets of two threads separated by your finger and then roll them against your leg in one direction then take the two sets and roll those together in the opposite and make a little tie and the tension of the twists against each other holds them together.  For someone skilled it is pretty easy.  For someone new, like me, it was frustrating.  But for a first try they are not so bad, I think.

This is my one small detail, a fancy design my teacher put in one end and then helped me do on the other end.  It is really pretty simple (though I am not sure I could do it on my own yet) of weaving loose threads through the warp--she used extra sticks to open the warp in a different way that I cannot obviously explain to you here, but it looks nice, don't you think?  I think this sort of embellishment is particular to the Karen ladies in their weaving.  And you can see a close up of the actual weaving and tassles.

This is the whole cloth--I guess we can call it a scarf, though to be honest I am not sure I will ever actually wear it.  It is just a learning piece for me.  But all in all, it is pretty cool and I loved doing it.  It is folded over twice to give you an idea of length--a lot of work went into it!

And this is the first project I did after I took it off the loom.  It has some blue woven in as I ran out of black.  I used a much finer cotton thread (the green and white is also cotton thread, which is what works best for this type of weaving).  I could have created tassles on this one, too (the spun tassles that is), but I just could not face the prospect of doing more last weekend.

My adventures will continue tomorrow as I will be going to the Refugee Center and hopefully begin project number three!  Now to figure out how to get m own loom (as you can see it is something fairly easily cobbled together, though the batten is the most important piece that needs to be well made).

Learning to weave has certainly been a way for me to use my brain in a new way and learn to think totally outside the box.  It feels good to use that "muscle" in new ways, too.