Reading, Always Reading.

As anyone who has lost a parent is aware, there isn't a day that goes by that you don't think of the parent that is gone. At least I assume that is the case. You might not have been close to the parent who is now gone but you are still going to think about them. I was very close to my dad, you might have guessed that. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't go through this particular thought process....

Oh man, this is a cool book or website or article or piece of information! I need to tell Dad about.....nope, not going to be able to do that.

I am a voracious reader with what can only be described as a wide ranging interest in things. Currently I am reading The Work of the Dead. HHBL gets worried occasionally when he sees that I am reading something like The Poisoner's Handbook. I don't understand why....although I could now kill him with dry ice if the need ever arose. Don't worry honey! You have NOTHING to fear.......

There has never been a time in my life when I can remember not having a book near to hand.  Even as a young child I would rather have had a book than a doll. On vacation I would rather have stayed in the car than get out and see the sights. In fact, I think the parental units very occasionally indulged that...but only very occasionally.

I KNOW! What is wrong with me. Yes, please, I would rather have that Nancy Drew book than anything in the world. No, I don't need another doll, I need that copy of Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton. Cape Cod, Schmape Cod, I have to finish this chapter. If I had spare change I went and bought a book. If we visited people's homes I was looking for something to read, perusing other people's book shelves to get a sense of the reading life of the home. Heck, I STILL do this on occasion. People without books should be looked at with greater scrutiny is my thinking.

A crisis was, and is, if there isn't anything to read in the bathroom! Horror!! I have been known to resort to reading the backs of the cans of spray air freshener.

Sorry, I have to be real here. When there is nothing in the bathroom that hasn't already been read multiple times, you resort to what you can reach under the sink. That's life.

I come by my love of reading both because my parents encouraged it and because I believe that there is some kind of genetic marker that makes some people voracious readers. My grandparents on both sides were readers. There were a lot of books hanging around at their houses. We often went to Grandma and Grandpa Pringle's house for Sunday dinner and I would spend every moment going through, AGAIN, the National Geographic book on Tutankhamun. It was my favorite book and I was so sad when it went somewhere else other than in my hands when the Grandparental units cleaned out their home. But never fear, after searching and searching I found a copy at Half Price Books. I might have scared several patrons when I saw the book on a bottom shelf, stood in tense anticipation for a moment, slid it off of the shelf, opened it up and then leaped around in joy saying, "It IS the book. It IS the book!"

No one can ever claim I don't take my reading material seriously.

I feel that I am rambling here. There was a topic, I know there was. Reading!

SO, last year I read 68 books. I am too lazy to link all of these so you are just going to have to cut and past into Amazon.

The Romanov Sister by Helen Rappaport

Leningrad: siege and Symphony by Brian Moynahan

A Sword of Storms by George R.R. Martin

Break On Through by Christie Ridgway

An Unschooling Manifesto by Marla Taviano

Life From Scratch by Melissa Ford

War Photography by Thomas Barfield

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

As Always, Julia by Joan Reardon

Coupon Crazy by Mary Potter Kenyon

A Killing Wind by Dan Kurzman

Cove Days by John Jagger

The Last Run by Todd Lewan

Emergency Sex: True Stories From a War Zone by Kenneth Cain

Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter Edmonds

17 Carnations by Andrew Morton

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

Dead Wake by Erik Larson

A Feast of Crows by George R.R. Martin

The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End of Life by Angelo Volandes

Longing by Mary Balogh

Beneath the Surface by John Hargrove

The House on Garibaldi Street by Isser Harel

The Arrangement by Mary Balogh

The Escape by Mary Balogh

Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Something About You by Julie James

A Lot Like Love by Julie James

About That Night by Julie James

Palm Trees on the Hudson by Elliot Tiber

Only a Promise by Mary Balogh

The Wright Brothers by Davide McCullough

Love Irresistibly by Julie James

It Happened One Wedding by Julie James

Touch Me by Christie Ridgway

Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman

In a Far Country by John Talifierro

Rurally Screwed by Jessie Knadler

Suddenly One Summer by Julie James

The Map Thief by Michael Blanding

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

The Finest Hours by Michael Tougias

Mess by Barry Yourgrau

Many A Summer by Scott Hardiman

Ture Love by Jude Deveraux

Brown Eyed Girl by Lisa Kleypas

For All Time by Jude Deveraux

Ever After by Jude Deveraux

Perfect Touch by Elizabeth Lowell

The Bourbon Kings by J.R.Ward

Children of Monsters by Jay Nordlinger

Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

Being Mortal by Atul Gwande

Bones Never Lie by Kathy Reichs

Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs

The Undertaker's Daughter by Kate Mayfield

The Storm by Marla Taviano

Cold Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas

The Queen of New Beginnings by Erica James

The Shift by Theresa Brown

The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose

The Lost Girls by John Glatt

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy by Kate Clifford Larson

The Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes 

Once Upon a Tartan by Grace Burrowes

As usual, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction with a share of romance thrown in. You never know what I might read. And because I am such a nerd, I have an Excel spreadsheet that lists all the books that I have read: Last name, First name, Title, Classification, Content, Finised date, # of pages, where I obtained it and the year it was published.

I am NOT strange! I am just thorough in my wanting to keep track of things.

Plus I might keep a list of the audiobooks I listen to, the movies I watch and the books I would like to read. There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

PFFFFFFFT!

This year I am shooting for 85 books. We will see if I make it.

Summers Used to Be More Fun

Remember summers when you were growing up? The last days of school ticked down, slower than molasses on a cold Cleveland day. The anticipation building because you knew that the day after school ended that three months of freedom began.

Three blissful months when you could do nothing.

Or almost nothing if you were me. I had chores. But when the chores were done……

Reading!!!!

And more reading!!!!!

And perhaps a nap, but only when I was older and understood that naps were divine.

Then out to hang with friends, walk the neighborhood, see a movie, sleep over at someone’s house.

And then there was the cottage. Starting in 1967 it was the focus of the summer. Oh the cottage. And the water. And the skiing. And the ice cream. And the flea market.

And then adulthood came along. And POOF! went the unconstructed months.

Tomorrow is the first day of summer and it always hits me right about this time of the year that my summer is going to just fly by.

ZOOOOOOOOOM! It is here and then it isn’t and we are thinking about snow. Sigh.

I am so busy. So, so busy. In January we think about the long and lazy days of summer. We yearn for them here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio. We think about them like a super model thinks about carbohydrates. With undisguised longing.

I love the Frozen Northeast Ohio in the summer time. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to travel. I just want to stay here and enjoy the all too brief perfect summer weather. What I really want to do is just to sit on my back deck, surrounded by my flowers and hosta, minus any deer that might be snooping around….

A lovely glass of ice tea sitting next to me and a book in my hand. Hours of unrestricted time to wallow in a book.

But it just isn’t happening.

Nope.

Nada.

Right now I am having a very difficult time “letting” myself sit down and read a book in the middle of the afternoon. Or in the morning. I might manage a bit of reading in the evening but evening isn’t really my best reading time. There is just too much to do.

There is a wedding to work on.

There is photo editing to complete.

There is gardening to do, both at home and at the Community Garden.

There is a personal project or two that I am so very behind on.

I cook and bake on occasion.

There is cleaning to be done.

Oh wait….you didn’t believe that last one did you? How long have you been hanging around here?

And of course I went to the library yesterday and came home with two books.

I miss my unrestricted summer time.

I Am A Follower of Christ and Yes I Read Harry Potter

Last week a commenter asked me how, as a follower of Christ, I felt about Harry Potter and how I could read them. It wasn’t an antagonistic comment by any means. It was an honest question relating to her desire to decide where she stood in the argument and based on what she had heard/was hearing about HP from co-workers at the evangelical organization where she worked. I thought it was a fair question to ask and one that I would be glad to answer.

The following bullet points express my opinion and only my opinion. You can absolutely disagree with the position that I hold and it will not bother me in the least. This may be a long post and for that I apologize in advance but it just cannot be helped. I have stuff to say. You have been warned.

Let me say, right off the bat, that the Harry Potter series is worth reading just for the pure pleasure and enjoyment that it gives. These are well crafted and engaging books with characters that you love or hate, root for or root against. That is what they are on the surface. They are just darn good storytelling.

But these are books worthy of reading for the deeper and stronger themes that you find in the series, especially in the later books.

Evil:
Let’s tackle the elephant in the corner first shall we. The commenter (who wished to remain anonymous) mentioned that her boss’s reasoning for condemning the books was, “why should you read something that glorifies Satan.” Glorifies Satan? I had to sit and think about this for a time. Did the books glorify Satan? No, they do not. Rather, the books point to the fact that there is evil in the world, that people choose to commit evil, that the evil is corrupting and in the end deserving of punishment.

In no way do the books glorify evil. In fact they point to the stark contrast between what is good and what is evil, emphasizing the good and condemning the evil. Evil is ugly and twisting and harmful. As Lord Voldemort becomes more and more immersed in the dark arts, as he becomes uglier and more repulsive, he grasps and clings to life, sacrificing all who are not useful to him.

The students at Hogwarts learn Defense Against the Dark Arts because they need to know what is evil and dark and how to protect themselves from it, not how to use it. There are consequences for using the dark arts and they are always bad in the end.

The Harry Potter series clearly makes the distinction between good and evil and that choosing either one brings consequences, sometimes painful ones. That sometimes that which is evil is wrapped up in a pleasing package and that discernment and knowing what is right is the only sure way to know what is evil.

Sacrifice:
Harry Potter lives because his mother gave her life for him willingly. And that sacrifice gives him safety from the ultimate killing power of Lord Voldemort. Harry Potter enters the Forbidden Forest at the end of HP and the Deathly Hallows fully and willingly expecting to sacrifice his life to defeat the ultimate evil of Lord Voldemort and save those he loves. And as a matter of fact to save those he does not even know but who will be destroyed by the evil that is Lord V.

If that isn’t a picture of Christ’s love and sacrifice, dying on the cross to save me from my sins and to redeem me for himself then I don’t know what is.

Friendship:
Harry, Ron and Hermione. A friendship that is forged, first through superficiality and then through love and pain and sacrifice. Friendship that doesn’t gloss over faults but works to show that there is a better way to act. Friendship that is deep and abiding and true through good and bad.

James Potter/Sirius Black/ Remus Lupine. A true portrait of friendship. Remus Lupine cannot change what he has been forced to become, a werewolf. But his friends can stick by him despite this and can, with hard work and great effort, change themselves so that they can give him comfort in his distress.

A sub-set of friendship is team work. Lord V would not have been defeated if not for the team work of Harry, Ron and Hermione. The horcruxes would not have been found and destroyed if not for their team work.

Doing What is Right When Doing the Easy Would Be, Well, Easier:
Do any of us think that it was the easy choice for people to fight against Lord V? Would it have been easier just to look the other way and go on about your business rather than standing up for what was right, even when the costs were so high. It would have been much easier. But it would have been wrong.

Actions Have Consequences:
Would Severus Snape have hated James Potter and therefore Harry if James had been kind rather than a bully? Hard to know. But make no mistake, James Potter was a bully and the consequences of those actions are very dear indeed.

Dumbledore’s sister was killed because of his selfish actions. His hand was withered and blackened and he himself was slowly poisoned because he thought he could act on his own.

HP acts selfishly and those actions have consequences that hurt others. His disrespect to Professor Umbridge brings great pain, even though she is a loathsome person who is not worth of respect.

Life Isn’t Fair So Get Over It And Move On:
Harry Potter has to spend his summer holidays with his awful relatives, the Dursleys. No, it isn’t fair or at least that is what Harry thinks. But there are reasons for it that are beyond Harry’s comprehension and that is just the way that it is.

Sometimes you get the punishment for what someone else has done. It happens.

What You See on the Outside Doesn’t Always Reflect the True Person:
Serverus Snape is an unlovable character, and yet he is a picture of true fidelity and constancy at the cost of his own life. He loves Lilly Potter from the moment he meets her, he loves her for  the rest of his life and he protects her son, despite his dislike of Harry. He puts himself in mortal danger to fight against the evil of Lord V.

Draco Malfoy has everything going for him. Wealth, position, looks, power in his small world. And yet he is mean and ugly on the inside, thinking only of himself and what he wants.

Conclusion:
I could go on and on with bullet points galore but I think I am going to stop here with the hope that I have made my feelings clear and concise. Anonymous, I hope that this helps you in your decision on where you fall in the Harry Potter “mix”.

I have to ask my anonymous commenter a question and it may not be one that she can answer. It isn’t asked with any condemnation or snarkiness but I think it is a valid one. Has your boss read the HP series? I do not think she has and if she hasn’t she should. They are worthy of reading.

 

 

 

A 2012 Accounting in Reading

I actually started out making this a blog post about both my reading AND my knitting for the year 2012 but then I decided to do two blog posts. That way come Thursday when I am scratching my head thinking about what I want to write about we can cover knitting. Wednesday being “Semi-Wordless Wednesday” the knitting post will be Thursday for those who are excited about yarn.

And who wouldn’t be excited about yarn?

SWEET! Now on to the books (and audiobooks I think)

I had set myself the goal of reading 80 books this year. And I hit that goal exactly. 80 books.

It isn’t the highest number I have ever read in a year, that was 125 books, but I am not complaining. How did I manage to read 125 books in a year? Did I do nothing else that year? Did I read only Harlequin romances? I have no idea. I could figure it out by sorting the database in a certain way…..but I am not going to do that. Call it New Years Day laziness.

Where were we? Oh yes, books in 2012!

The books are broken into:
Biography – 2
Fiction – 47
Non-Fiction – 31
Audiobooks - 47+

Here are a few of my favorites in the Fiction category for the year:
- The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth: I also watched the movie of this. The book is much, much better. Very suspenseful and interesting to read in this day and age when we rely so heavily on the internet and having knowledge instantly at our finger tips.

- Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James: The only thing I have to say about this is that I read this so that you don’t have to. You can thank me later….and don’t bother to read it. If you need to read a romance novel pick something that is well written. This is not. And I know my romance novels.

- In The Kingdom of Men by Kim Barnes: This was good, if a tad slow at times.

- Bones Are Forever by Kathy Reichs: the latest in the Temperance Brennan series. If you watch “Bones” but have never read the books, put down the remote and get to the library.

Here are a few of my favorites in the Non-Fiction category for the year:
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: I think everyone SAYS they have read this book but they really haven’t. It was completely riveting. And in light of the fact that the Florida authorities have now had the bodies of the killers dug up so that DNA testing can be done on them in relation to a cold murder case my reading of the book seems timely.

- Wild by Cheryl Strayed: I wasn’t sure that I would like this book. I was wrong. I loved it. But then I love books about self discovery.

Don’t Let Me Go by David W. Pierce: This book had been sitting on my shelves for a while. Another book of self discovery in a way. A father bonding with his daughter as she grows into adulthood. Loved it.

Grant’s Final Victory by Charles Bracelen Flood: A wonderful book. And of course I now need to read Grant’s memoirs again. But that will be in 2013

And then there were the audiobooks:
I listened to 47+ audiobooks in 2012. The “plus” is because I didn’t start keeping track of the books until well into the year so I have had to reconstruct as best I can. This is what I have remembered. I will try to do better in 2013.
- I listened through the ENTIRE “In Death” series on audio. That is A LOT of murder and mayhem involving Lieutenant Eve Dallas, her husband the hunky Roark and all the other cast of characters. And I want to start back at the beginning. These I actually enjoy better in audiobook form than reading them.

- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: I LOVED this one.

- all of the Harry Potter books

- My Life Among the Serial Killers by Helen Morrison

-Star Trek : Nemesis

There are more but these were my favorites.

Well! Now I can reset the Excel spreadsheets for 2013. For some reason that always makes me happy.

Yes, I know I am odd. Deal with it.

An Interesting Invitation

I managed to go to the library today and NOT walk out with a pile of books. I walked out with only the book on tape that had come in for me (Celebrity in Death)….

And maybe one tiny, paperback book that was in the free pile.

Another copy of Anna and the King of Siam to add to the collection. Paperback copy with a lovely picture of Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr on it, printed in 1968. Have I mentioned that I have a collection of this particular book? I have a feeling that I have mentioned it but maybe I haven’t.

Fine, I will go over the particulars then. Margaret Landon, author of the above book, was my aunt. She was my Grandma Amsler’s oldest sister. Therefore I grew up with this book. Believe me it was a frequent topic of conversation. I have a signed copy with accompanying letter telling me how Aunt Margaret came to write the book (a story in itself I can tell you!). I have copies for each of the girls if they want them. But I didn’t have a paperback copy so I zipped it off the free shelf and into my bag and away I went.

Not that I really NEEDED a paperback copy of the book but, you know, it was FREE.

I arrived home, unloaded the car and then remembered to pull the book out of my enormous satchel purse and set it on the counter in anticipation of putting it on my book shelves.

Just as an aside, for those of you who hoard collect books, doesn’t it just give you a warm and fuzzy feeling to bring back your latest “acquisition” and to slide it onto your shelves?

It does right?

Right?

Fine, back to what I was saying. I picked the book up and sort of rifled the pages and I thought I saw something stuck in the book.

Hmmmmmmm, what is that?

I opened the book and pulled out a piece of poster board weight paper.

Well now, what an interesting invitation.

This edition of the book was printed in 1968, during the heart of the “swinging sixties”. I am going to bet that this book hasn’t been opened or read since then. The piece of paper itself is actually hand lettered I realized after closer examination. And someone (I hope it is a someone not a something) has chewed a corner off of it. Was some hippy handing these out on a street corner or a college campus? My mind is bursting to know the answer to this question!!

Can someone please tell me??

Please??????

This is just an added bonus to the whole bringing a free book home excitement.

I have tucked the suggestion back in the book and carefully stowed the book on the shelves. And when the progeny have to clean out all my books when I am finally gone and they donate this book to the library perhaps someone else will find the note.

For some reason that just tickles me.

I really do lead a boring and sad life.

PBS Our Time is Almost Done

In 2008 I discovered Paperback Book Swap, or as it will be known for the rest of this blog post, PBS.

I read a great deal. If you haven’t already figured that out then you haven’t been hanging around here all that long. Bookstores call me name in the dead of night. I frequent more than one library. Half-Price Books is a great place to spend a day. 

And back in 2008 I didn’t own a Nook or an ipad. I owned books, just books. A LOT of books. Books in boxes. Books on shelves. Books in piles. And by 2008 I had actually weeded out many of the books that had moved with me from childhood to college to marriage. But I had so many more and I didn’t want to just give them all to the library. I had already been doing that. I was looking for a way to put these books to good use.

And then a friend pointed me towards Paperback Book Swap and I was hooked. Seriously hooked. I mean who wouldn’t be. You listed books on your “Book Shelf” that you had available to swap. You put books on your “Wish List” that you wanted to aquire. And then you watched the magic happen. Emails poured in with people requesting books that I had listed. All I had to do was print out the mailing label, wrap up the book according to their directions, affix the label, mail the book and watch my pile of books diminish. I had to pay the mailing cost but it was “covered” at the other end by someone who was mailing something to me. After the book arrived at it’s destination the recipient would log into PBS, tell them that the book had arrived and I would be awarded one “book credit” that could be used to order a book from someone else.

Easy peasy!

I am sure that the postal workers at my local post office thought I was running a bookstore out of my home. I was always going into the post office with a stack of books to mail out.

And then emails started arriving saying that someone had the book that I was looking for and would be sending it. And books started arriving here at Chez Knit. It was like Christmas all year long. A book from PBS, stop the presses what could it be!!!

This went on for quite awhile. I would get a book from PBS. I would read it. I would “re-list” it if it looked like a book that someone else wanted and when the email came I would send it along.

A convoluted version of a library with the Post Office in the middle.

But slowly, over time, the “outflow” of books I was sending and the “inflow” of books that I was receiving became skewed. There was a lot more outflow than inflow. The books that I seemed to want were more obscure, books that I was looking for to add to my growing collection of knitting books or something else that I was studying. And I also had a bunch of credits that were piling up. Credits never expire, they just sit there until you need them. At one point I had 127 credits available to me. That is WAY more credits than I was going to use if every book on my Wish List became available all at once.

Finally it has occurred to me that my time with PBS is drawing to a close. The books that I currently have on my list come up for swap so rarely that it isn’t even worth it. With the exception of three books that I put on the list this year all of the books that sit on my wish list were put there between 2008 and 2010. And none of those books are going to reach me soon that is for sure. Even after 2-4 years my queue position is such that it might be another 2-4 years until I actually get to the head of the queue and have a chance to get the book. I have slowly been taking books off that list, requesting them at the library and just enjoying them that way. There are some books that I will eventually purchase but not many.

I am slowly whittling down my credits by requesting books that are already available. Classics mostly. And when I get down to a level of credits that I feel comfortable abandoning I will be done. I love books. I love to have books around me. They soothe me and make me happy. But I don’t have to collect every book. And with my turn towards a more minimal life style I just don’t really want to have to worry about PBS any longer.

It was fun while it lasted.

Rant Ahead. Fasten Your Seatbelts.

Today is one of those days. Those late summer, mid-August days full of warmth and gentle breezes and the song of the Cicada when I really just want to sit all day with a book and read.

One of those days when I greatly resent that my brain tells me that I have other things to do. Other adult things to do. Other more insistent, goal oriented, work related things to do. That really it isn’t a good or productive thing to do, to sit down with a book and read all afternoon you because that is just really not “doing” anything, not “accomplishing” anything.

This is what I would like to be doing today. But I need a cup of coffee to go with that large helping of books please.

There are tomatoes to can. There is yard work to do. There is ironing to finish. There are sweet pickles that have to be completed. There is a boat load of scrap booking flotsum and jetsum that I am weeding through. There are a MOUNTAIN of work related things that need to be done, like yesterday really. So much to do in a finite amount of hours. And the “world” would tell me that I should do those things rather than read a book.

And I don’t like it. And I resent it. And sometimes I think that perhaps I should just go with my gut instinct for the day and read. Reading is a vital thing for me. It has been a part of my life and makeup for as long as I can remember. The constant when other things were in flux. If I had a book to read then I could handle just about anything else.

LONG car ride to Colorado or Maine or Florida? I have reading material so I am set.

Days of medical testing at Mayo Clinic and needles as far as the eye can see? I have LOTR with me and Gandalf can keep me occupied.

Scary plane ride in a thunderstorm? I have a book to read so all is good.

Barfing my guts up at a museum in Mexico City (or Peru or Africa) and then laying down on a bench. Got a book so I am good.

Endless hours waiting in the car to pick up one or the other of the progeny. Got a book with me so take your time.

Other than sleeping or knitting or photography the thing that I like to do the most is read. I fight a battle just about every day to squeeze in reading time in a schedule that is often packed to the gills with other things.

And I resent it thank you very much.

Well, now that I have gotten that out of my system I am going to go back to reading one of the 15 books that came in to the library for me…..all in the space of two days. But first I think I had better finish the Super Sweet pickles so that LaurenLeap doesn’t get mad at me.

But then I am going back to reading FOR SURE.

Eleven Reading Questions

Blame Stephanie over at So Many Books. These questions are totally her idea, born out of another meme that she was “commanded” to take part in.

This is not a meme so don’t worry that I am going to ask any of you to participate. Unless you want to that is. And if you do then just put that in the comments so that I can go and stalk your answers.

But I digress.

Here are Eleven Reading Questions and my answers.

1. What is the first book you remember reading? Hmmmmm, I would have to say that the first book I remember reading would be Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Don’t you wonder how many children remember a Dr. Seuss book as being the first one that they read. I also remember my mom reading me Bambi at bed time. In fact, I still have that book

2. What book on your shelves have you owned the longest?
I have a copy of An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott that I have had for as long as I can remember, at least since the age of 7 or so. I don’t know where it came from or who it came from. All I know is that it is beloved, ragged, worn, well read.

3. What is the oldest book on your shelves in term of when that particular edition was published.
I have a leather bound set of Charles Dickens that dates from 1890. They are lovely.

4. If you could meet a character from any book, what character would you like to meet? Anne Elliot from Jane Austen’s Persuasion

5. What no longer living author do you wish were alive to write just one more book? Rumer Godden. I remember the first time I ever read In This House of Brede. I was hooked and I have never looked back.

6. Where is your favorite place to read?
Oh this one is EASY. And if you have been hanging around here for any length of time then you know the answer…….

Big Red!!!

7. Do you like to snack when reading? Unfortunately sometimes. What I usually have beside me is a large glass or mug of something to drink, usually coffee or tea.

8. Do you read with music playing or the TV on? Rarely if ever. The music can be something that has no words with it, say classical or jazz or just piano. But if there are words involved then it interferes with my concentration. And the TV always interferes with my reading.

9. Has the internet shortened your attention span and made it harder to read books as cultural critics claim, or is your ability for sustained reading as good or better than ever? No I don’t think so as far as the internet is concerned. I still manage to read 100+ books a year. What has intruded into my sustained reading is more just “life” and feeling somehow like there is something else that I ought to be doing. I am trying to get over that ridiculous feeling.

10. Do you belong to a book club.
Yes I do. But I have been a bad girl and have missed the last two meetings. Shame on me. But I had a good excuse I promise. And I had read both the books.

11. What book or author haven’t you read yet and are always saying you’d like to get around to it “someday”. Oh that is a long list, almost too much to contemplate. But I guess, if I had to pick one author, it would be Eudora Welty. And if my friend Amy ever sees that previous sentence she is going to come all the way from Arkansas and beat me senseless. She loves Eudora Welty that much.

OK, I want you to let me know what your answers would be. I love to see what everyone else’s “reading life” is like.

Forgotten Bookmarks

We all know that I read more than is necessary for a woman. It makes me uppity and a good person to have around for Jeopardy.

One of the things that I love is old books from used bookstores. Well loved books. One of my dream jobs would be working in a used bookstore just processing the books.

Michael Popek has my dream job. Who is Michael Popek? He is the man behind one of my favorite blogs

Forgotten Bookmarks

I seriously love this blog. I have been reading it since 2008 and I have to say that the first time I stopped there I was hooked. And amazed.

Amazed at some of the things that people have used as bookmarks and then forgotten about. Everything from combs to letters to utility razor blades!

And now he has a book highlighting some of the best ones. This is not a blog post that is sponsored in any way by any one. I just wanted to tell you about the book.

It fascinates me.

I had to wait a LONG time before it finally showed up from Paperback Book Swap. It just seemed right that I would get it as a used book. But it didn’t have any hidden bookmarks.

That would have been just too good to be true.

And you can bet that every book that I donate gets checked before it goes out the door.

2010 Books in Review

FINE! I lied when I said I was done with the review posts. So sue me.

Really, don’t sue me. We had someone bring a frivolous lawsuit against us once and it was painful….and very, very expensive…..and took forever (2 stinking years) to get resolved. And even though we had done nothing wrong and the judge, in the end, dismissed the suit that didn’t mean that we didn’t have to pay 2 years worth of legal bills and……

Bitter much Deb?

But I digress.

I might have mentioned that I like to read. And I also like Excel. And years ago I started to track all the books that I read.

I know, I know, I am odd and weird and obsessive and whatever the adjective that you want to add. I just like to see what I have accomplished in any given year reading wise. And it also prevents, most of the time, my reading of a book that I have already read.

And so, I thought I would share the year end results with you and tell you some of my favorite books that I read this year. I know that you have been dying to know.

In total I read 99 books this year. That was one shy of my goal. But I am not beating myself up about it because it seems I had a fairly busy 2010, busier than I thought actually. I will make the goal this year I am sure.

This was the year of reading Fiction. In total I read 72 books in the Fiction category. Some good, some real stinkers. And I long ago decided that if I got 1/2 way through a book and I really didn’t like it then I had permission to stop reading and go on to the next book on the list. There are just too many books that I want to read for me to waste my time on a book that I really just want to chuck against the wall.

I also read a total of 27 Non-Fiction books. These covered a wide range of topics like: Vietnam POW, Medal of Honor recipients, WWI, female serial killers, homeschooling, living off the land, knitting, WWII nurses, Hurricane Katrina, traveling, the Civil War and so much more.

Of the 99 books that I read 42 were in “ebook” form. Oh how I love my Nook. LoveLoveLove. I can get ebooks from the library and read to my hearts content.

And last I read a total of 32,027 pages both paper and electronic. Not too bad.

Some of my favorite reads, in no particular order were.

Surviving Hell by Leo Thorsness
The Stars in Their Courses by Shelby Foote
On Hallowed Ground by Robert M. Poole
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
The Devil’s Rooming House by M. William Phelps
On The Beach by Nevil Shute
The Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches by Janet Tronstad
How to Knit a Love Song by Rachel Herron
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
In the Company of Others by Jan Karon
The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
The Long Way Home by David Laskin
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
Last Words of the Executed by Robert K. Elder
American Nightingale by Bob Welch

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what I read, just some of my favorites from last year. Who knows what I will read this year? Although I can tell you that I just downloaded George W. Bush’s new book.

Now I just have to find some time to read.

Good Books Deserve Good Bookmarks

This whole house on the market thing sometimes brings upheaval that almost does me in.

I can live with my furniture all in strange places. I can live, for the moment, with artwork I hate on my walls. I lived for 8 months with Big Red stored in the garage.

I can (barely) live with my books being packed in boxes.

But I just couldn’t live any longer without my bookmarks.

Bookmarks Deb?

Bookmarks?

Yes, bookmarks.

If you are going to read a book you need to have a bookmark. Yes, you can turn down the pages but why would you do that? What has the poor book ever done to you? Turning down book pages always seemed to me like bending the poor little books fingers back.

Oh that book will remember your place alright, all the while nursing it’s poor little bent pages.

Anthropomorphizing the books much Deb?

But I digress.

I have a collection of bookmarks. I know, I know…what a surprise, she has a collection of something. Yes, I do. But the thing is….I couldn’t find them. And I was really worried about it. Stupid thing to be worried about but there it is. In the flurry of packing up things and moving furniture when putting Chez Knit on the market I packed up the drawer where I kept all my “reading paraphernalia”. My pencils that I use for marginalia. My page flags. My bookmarks.

But since I am now staging a house staging revolt I wanted my bookmarks back. I needed them to be whole in my reading. Big Red is back where he belongs and I needed my bookmarks to complete my reading happiness. But I couldn’t find them.

I looked in the boxes that were marked “Deb’s Office”.

Nada.

I looked in drawers.

Nada.

And I had almost given up and figured that they would just turn up when we finally moved and unpacked…..and then I found them. In a box that was unmarked and not in the place where all the other “Deb’s Office” boxes were located. A momentary brain fart on my part. Sorry, I said the word fart.

And because this blog post is running on and on and on and on and…..and you all just live for the minutiae of my life, I thought I would show you some of them…………

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I have a bunch of glossy bookmarks from different national parks that we have visited.

  Ummmmmmmmm, Aragorn. Of course I use this one with my yearly reading of LOTR. It is only right and good that I do so.

My sister of the heart, Dottie, gave me this one. It is silver and feathery and I love it.

This one came from India. It was made by a woman who is a participant in a microfinance group. I bought a bunch.

This one also came from India. Indian Air nicely gave it to me when they let me fly from Delhi to Coimbatore. And then I thought they had lost my luggage because my suitcase was the last one to be taken off the plane and brought around to the luggage carosel with a bullock drawn cart. Fun times.

I don’t remember who gave me this one but I love it because it never slips out of the book.

This one came from Turkey. My momma brought it back for me. I love it.

My momma brought these back for me from China. They are so cool, made out of bamboo with little drawings on them.

And then there are these. These are all leather bookmarks. You used to be able to get these where ever you traveled. But I rarely see them anymore. When I do see them I buy one.

But this one….this one is the first. The beginning. The genesis of the collection. And it is still my favorite. It is worn and supple and we will never be parted again. At one time I thought I had lost him for good. I couldn’t find him anywhere and I was bereft. And then one day I opened a book and there he was. Just waiting to be found.

What I love most about him is his smell. He smells like….leather.

Most of the time when I am reading and I have this bookmark with me this is how you will find me, with the book mark folded over inside out and up to my nose so that I can smell it as I read.

And did you notice….

Did you see…..

Big Read is back in my office. Life is good.

I thought about photoshopping out the wrinkles but I am all about realism here at Chez Knit so you will just have to deal with them…and the fact that I forgot to pluck my eyebrows.

And that I have no make up on. Which means that I went to bible study this morning this way. Thank goodness they like me

Please overlook the fashionly challenged person that I am.

Turning Pages

This is what I am doing today. I am reading a book. Well, I am not reading a book in the photo but you get my meaning.

And I don’t have a bottle of orange pop but I really wish that I did because orange pop is one of my favorites.

And speaking of one of my favorites, that dress that I am wearing was one. I think Grandma Amsler made it for me. It had a big strawberry on the front of it.

One of the things that I don’t like about being an adult is that I have a very hard time giving myself permission to just sit and read for most of a day. Ask the parental units, I earned my nickname “Bookworm”. Believe me. But sometimes I just have to have a day where I sit and read and today is it.

Of course, today the sun comes out for the first time in about a week. But I am still going to sit in the sun room and read.

Of course, I don’t have my beloved red chair available at the moment to curl up in. But I am about to raise my hand in defiance again and bring it back in from the garage. The stagers aren’t the boss of me!!!

A Disappointment in Reading (to say the least!)

What do you do when a book, an author, or both, disappoint you? I mean really disappoint you.

Do you continue to read the book although you want to throw it against the wall at high velocity and yell, “Are you KIDDING me!!!”

Or do you just guts your way through it and then chock it up to not liking the book?

At one time I would have done the latter. I would have plowed through a book because if I started it I had to finish it. I was not a quitter thank you very much.

But as I have gone through life and as I have seen my list of books that I want to read grow larger every year I gave myself permission NOT to finish a book. I give it some time, usually until 1/2 way through the book before I decide that it just isn’t working for me. If I get to that point I will move on to something else. My reading time is valuable to me.

Usually, if there is a book that I don’t like I don’t necessarily have a visceral reaction to it. But there are those times……..

Like when I read The Shack. Yes, I know that there are many who love and praise the book.

I. Loathed. It.

And then there is Eat, Pray, Love. Another book that women seem to love and I just really didn’t like.

But both of the above titles were “stand alones” for me. I hadn’t read any other works by the author. I didn’t have much invested in the relationship as it were. I didn’t really care that I didn’t like the book. I moved on.

However, it is a different matter when you read a book by an author that you love and that book is so disappointing that it takes your breath away. And you want to throw up your hands and throw the book and throw knives and whatever.

That is how I feel about Cleaving by Julie Powell. Disappointment just doesn’t begin to cover it.

Most everyone knows Julie Powell because she wrote the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. I knew who she was long before that because I had read her blog for most of the year that she spent cooking through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. I loved the blog. I loved her writing despite her admitted love for the “F” word. So I was excited to read her next book.

Imagine if you will a book that details (in a most boring fashion) her obsession with learning to cut meat in a butcher shop. It sounds interesting but in her hands it so wasn’t. But even more than that imagine a book where she writes ad nauseum about (in more detail than I EVER wanted to know) her affair of more than two years with a man that she knew in college and re-connected with after her fame and fortune arrived. An affair that her husband knew about from almost the beginning but that she declined to stop. An affair that, when it did end…for a time at least, had her sleeping with other anonymous men. Oh and she details THAT as well.

Yes, imagine that. Or better yet don’t. I am not sure if I have ever been so disappointed in a book that I had anticipated so much. I got about 3/4 of the way through and wondered why she had a book contract and who thought this drivel would be good and, and…

if it hadn’t been a library book that I was reading I really would have chucked it against the wall.

It goes back to the library tomorrow. Thank goodness I didn’t actually buy the thing. And now I need to find something else to read that can cleanse my brain of this awful, disappointing piece of horse pucky. I think I just need to re-read The Lord of the Rings for the…..um…….20th time or so. I KNOW that is good.

Better Than a Harlequin Romance

For some time I have been checking out the Pioneer Woman blog. I don't remember where I actually found it (isn't that always the way with these darn blogs) but I love it. However, I had never gotten around the reading how she met her husband "Marlboro Man".

I have to say that right now, in my life, I have A LOT of things to do. We have company coming today (Hi Tim and Ardith), I am still getting my act together after being in Utah for 5 days, it is Monday and I go grocery shopping on Monday which means I do my planning on Sunday, the gardens need weeding BAD, cleaning, cooking, laundry......you get the picture. So what do I do for HOURS yesterday afternoon and evening? I sit at my computer and read all GAZILLION chapters of "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels". OK, OK it was only 45 chapters and some of them are short but some of them are long. I was totally hooked after the first chapter. I mean hooked. Ree Drummond isn't kidding when she tells you to have a box of Kleenex and a fan handy!

Let me assure you that there isn't anything in these chapters that you couldn't read to your kids but still the whole story is "fan worthy". You must find the time to sit down and read through the whole thing. I may have to do it again, in fact I know I will.

The Shack

The Shack
William P. Young

Knitting Sticks: 1 (and if I had a zero category that is what it would be listed as)


Well, what to say about this book. First of all, if you loved this book and think that it speaks Christian truth the you might want to stop and go no further. Especially if you are a friend, I don't want to offend you but I can tell you right now that I am not going to write a favorable review of this book and that is an understatement. So just be warned.

I tried to come to this book without any preconceived notions of what I was going to find. It was on loan from a friend who had raved about it, a Christian friend whose opinion I value. She loves this book so much that she has her own copy and then went out and bought several other copies that she could lend to friends. Several people had sent me reviews and commentaries on the book but I hadn't read any of them, I just put them away for later. I did know that people seemed to hold extreme views on the book, either loved it or hated it. Obviously people loved it because at the time that I am writing this review "The Shack" has just entered it's 41st week on the NY Times Bestseller list (not a recommendation in my mind but whatever). Thank goodness I didn't actually pay for the book.

Perhaps it is best to start with a bit of background. There are spoilers coming up so if you are thinking to read the book (please DON'T) then you might want to skip this. The book deals with Mackenzie "Mack" Allen Phillips, the brutal death of his young daughter, his relationship (or lack thereof) with God and a weekend spent in the shack where is daughter died, having been invited there by God who sent him a short note in his mail box. There he meets the Trinity -God represented by an African-American woman, Jesus as a Middle eastern man and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman. I tried to overlook the physical descriptions, I do think that we cannot view God as a white man or as a black man or Indian or anything like that but to have God speaking in ghetto vernacular or what I think of as "slave speak" is just beyond even my formidable imagination. And if that were the only thing wrong with the book I would be happy!

In this book God is too personal and not all powerful. Yes, God is a personal god who walks beside us and loves us but he doesn't cook us greens and then tell us to be careful how much of those we eat so that we don't get "the trots". That was just a ridiculous passage. The book focuses on God's love and nothing else, falling into the "God is love" trap and ignoring all the other, equally important aspects of his nature, aspects that are EQUAL in His nature. To have "love" be dominant is to put things out of balance and put God in an imbalance and therefor not perfect. Yes God is a god of love but he is also a god of justice and mercy and wrath and healing and so many other things. To say he is just a god of love is to diminish who and what he is.

Mr. Young portrays a God who is personal but all too human. If god were as he is portrayed them we would have NO awe of him. That which is treated so familiarly is that for which you loose awe. If we have no awe of God then we have no respect for him, for who he is and for what he has done for us.

Jesus, portrayed in the book as a middle eastern fellow who likes to work with wood (cough, cough), who tells Mack that he is "perfectly human" because he chooses to live that way. God also tells Mack that He never left Jesus on the cross, that regardless of what Jesus "felt" that God never left him. Hmmmmmm. Now, you can tell me if MY theology is wrong but Jesus and God are one, God cannot dwell with sin, Jesus BECAME the sin of the world in order to save us, God could not be there when Jesus WAS sin. God did leave. Look at Matthew 27:46 and Psalms 22:1.

God tells Mack that Jesus healed people "as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone." Hmmmmm again. I might point Mr. Young to Philippians 2:15 and remind him that Jesus is both FULLY GOD and FULLY MAN. Not one or the other but both.

I know that some of you may have read the book, loved the book and are going, "But Deb, it is such a good story. I cried and cried at the caring and forgiveness and love that I found there." Yes, I will agree that you will find those things there. But I think you also need to remember that to base what you think about a book on emotions is a dangerous thing, especially a book like "The Shack" which is dealing with serious matters. Emotions can deceive, you can be overwhelmed by the emotions elicited from the book and fail to give a thorough look at what is being said on a deeper and more theological level. But you are still taking in what the book said, you are still reading and not giving clear thought to these ideas that are just not biblical or theologically sound.

I do have to be honest and tell you that there were some things that I did agree with, only a few mind you but there were some. I would agree that God is a relational god, that He is not to be found in buildings and institutions but in a personal relationship with Him. But what we know about God is what He reveals to us through His scripture and not what we conjure up about him.

OK, I could go on and on believe me. I have PAGES of notes but I think I had better stop. If I had my "drothers" I would tell people not to bother reading this piece of theologically twisted drivel. If you have to read it, read it with your Bible right next to you because you are going to be going, "But wait! that isn't what the scripture says!". And that, in the end, is the most important thing.

If Not Now, When?

I haven't done a book review in some time I realized. It isn't that I haven't read any books lately it is just that I haven't bombarded you with reviews.


If Not Now, When?
Colonel Jack Jacobs (retired) and Douglas Century
Knitting Sticks: an enthusiastic 5

Well, if you have been keeping up with my occasional book reviews then you know that I don't often award a book 5 Knitting Sticks. This book however gets that from me.

"If Not Now, When?" is a memoir of a sort. OK, it is a memoir but a really funny and thought provoking one. Col. Jacobs had me laughing out loud more than once I can tell you.

Jack Jacobs is a short, skinny Jewish kid from New York who joined the army, VOLUNTARILY, during the Vietnam war and ended up staying in the army for 20 years. He is, by his own admission, irreverent, cavalier and sarcastic. Just the kind of person that should write a memoir. Oh, did I mention that in 1969 he was awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty". Just a minor thing really and that is actually the way the he treats it. Col. Jacobs says it best in this way, "...every action that is cited for it's extraordinary heroism is merely a proxy for all those forever lost in the midst of the battlefield. Medals won by the living are testaments to the beloved fallen."

What can you say about a man who wasn't sure why they wanted to give him the MOH and then finagled his way back to combat in Vietnam several years after being the recipient. The Army REALLY doesn't like to have their Medal of Honor recipients return to combat but he managed it.

This book had me frequently in stitches and often times reading passages aloud so that I could think through them with more clarity. His views on the current conflict in Iraq are spot on but ones that I won't go into here. You just have to read the book and judge for yourself.

A Book Meme!

I love these kinds of lists. Yeah, yeah, I know I love lists in general. I was the kid that read through all those books with lists in them. I am a book nerd. I am also occasionally a book snob, I am sorry to say. That is probably why I like these kinds of lists because I can say that I have read a fair amount of the books on the list. Not all of them but a fair amount. This particular list came from Percival Blakeney Academy (now what book did THAT name come from? I know, do you?) and I know that he got it from some other blog. That is how these retched things get started. So, this is what you do:

) Look at the list and bold those you have read (films don't count).
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Tag somebody if you like (I don't think I have enough readers to go around tagging people. But give it a try if you want to).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible: I am working my way through this year. Wish me luck.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (a few but definitely not all. The bard and I are just getting to know each other)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce: nor do I have any plans to ever read this one.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French no less, but don't ask me to do that now)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't think that I did too badly on that. I have read 59 of 100. But that just means that I have a ways to go. I had better get started.

His Excellency: George Washington

His Excellency: George Washington
Ellis, Joseph J.

Knitting Sticks: 4


George Washington is so much more that the white haired "Father of our Country". He was both self-controlled and hot tempered. He knew want and plenty. He spent too much and put himself on an austerity program. He was ambitious and humbly aware of his inadequacies. He was our first President and yet it was a job he neither wanted nor sought. In fact, just as an aside, in the times in which George Washington lived it was considered extremely bad manners and "form" to campaign for a publicly held job. Something to think about in this day and age.

I am sure that I had the same general view of George Washington that most people hold. He led the Continental Army during the War of Independence, he was our first President, he lived at Mt. Vernon, he was married to Martha (a paragon of virtue and patience). But if that is all that I ever knew about GW then I would be missing so much. He loved another woman but married Martha. He traveled extensively in the lands east of the Mississippi but he only traveled outside of the US once and that was on a trip to Barbados with his brother. He was the general who led the Continental army but his record of wins in battle was not as impressive as you would think. I am positive that most people in this country have no clue how close we came to never being this country, how desperate the situation was and how instrumental George Washington was in winning the war. He understood that if this new nation were to survive it needed to look westward to the vast uncharted lands that were now available not eastward to Europe. We had to be a new people not a model of the old. He was a slave owner who struggled with slavery. He realized that slavery must be eliminated in the US but did not free his own slaves until after his death. A man of contradictions who was loved when not in office and vilified by the press when serving. Does that sound like anyone else you know.

This bio is the first in my attempt to read through biographies of all the Presidents of the United States. It is in conjunction with the U.S.President's Reading Project which I found in my travels through the blogosphere.

A Thousand Hills

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It

Kinzer, Stephen
Knitting Sticks: 5



By now most of us, I would think, know about the Rwandan genocide which took place from April 1994 through to July 1994. If you don't know at least a little about it, like who was killing who (Hutu killing Tutsi) then shame on you but that is food for another post. This post needs to deal with this really outstanding book that I just happened to find in the new books stack at the library.

A Thousand Hills is a complex book that deals with interconnected themes. Stephen Kinzer does a great job of describing all of the many separate details that led to the genocide. People didn't just wake up one day and decide to kill all of the Tutsi minority (which is how some have described the genocide). Never in modern history had so many people been killed so quickly. The fact is that it was long planned, that the hatred for Tutsi's was long standing and fed daily by the government. The signs for what was being planned were all there but no one was looking, or at least no one who could have done anything.

The book is a severe (and correct) indictment of the larger international community, the UN, USA, France, Belgium and other countries who could have done something to stop the genocide early on. But instead of helping Rwanda and those who were being slaughtered the international community not only turned their backs on what was going on but actively strove to make sure that no help was provided. It is enought to make you sick.

Of course Mr. Kinzer also gives a stark rendering of what happened on the day that the genocide officially began, April 6, 1994 and what followed in those first 100 days when possibly as many as 1,074,017 people were murdered. That is a hard figure to get your head around isn't it. In smaller terms that means that there were about 10,000 murders EVERY DAY, 400 murders PER HOUR, 6 murders PER MINUTE. Just take some time to think about that. And then add that most of the killing happened not in 100 days but in the first 30 days.

But what makes this book different from the other books that I have read on Rwanda and the genocide is that Mr. Kinzer provides us a look at what has happened in Rwanda in the years after the genocide. The changes and the strides forward and backward that Rwanda has experienced can be laid at the feet of one man, Paul Kagame. Throughout the book Mr. Kinzer has woven the story of Mr. Kagame who is the current President of Rwanda. Paul Kagame is a Tutsi who barely escaped the 1959 genocide and grew up as a refugee in Uganda. My job with this book review isn't to give you a blow by blow description of Paul Kagame's life, you will have to read the book for that. But my job is to tell you that without Paul Kagame, whether for good or for ill, Rwanda would not be at the point that she is now. He is strong, autocratic, does not take well to opposition. But his sole aim in life seems to be bringing Rwanda out of where she was and into a state of reconciliation to what happened in the genocide and to what this little country can be in the larger international community. Wether in the end he can succeed with all he wants to do remains to be seen.

The book is well worth the time that it takes to read it and was a great addition to my "Rwanda bibliography."