Some days, I think, should simply be re-written. Forgotten. Pages removed from The Book and dropped into the fire.
I tried to explain this to a Librarian once, and was threatened with excommunication and confiscation of all of my library cards for being a heretic. Librarians can be scary.
Mind you, some days, I want to be a Librarian too. "Fear me," I would say, and others would tremble as they handed their books back. Naturally, I would only use my Super Seekrit Reference-Finding Powers and my Mighty Data Mining Decoder Ring for good. Also, my cape would look suspiciously like a lace shawl.
Obviously, I digress.
I think what The Librarian didn't understand is that I wasn't implying that it was only the bad days that should be forgotten.
History is tomorrow's spoilers. "Doomed to repeat itself if forgotten" and all that.
On those days when it seems like there is nothing new in the world, nothing exciting that can make me want to do, to create, I curse my inconveniently good memory and beg to forget something that made me insanely happy so that I can rediscover it and be insanely happy about it again.
It's a slippery slope, I know. Remember that episode of Fantasy Island, where the couple wanted to fall in love again, so they were made to forget each other and they almost hooked up with the wrong people? I know I'm the sum of my experiences, of my history, and I like who I am, and I wouldn't erase a part of that. To quote a truth from an otherwise unfortunate movie, "I need my pain!"** Eventually, something else comes along that brings me joy again. I hold out for those moments, because if I lost hope in them, I would surely go crazy.
But still, there are some days...
...some days when I wonder if in order to experience true joy again, we first need to forget what it was like.
*A musing on the pendant What We Do To History, made by elisem.
**And just what does God need with a Starship, anyhow?
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
So many palettes, so little time
This week we finally had a warm enough day, one where I could leave the back door open and let the fresh air in. There are still flowers on the magnolia tree, though they are dropping fast. The wind is helping them along. The forsythia is greening. The lilacs are about to bloom. On weekdays, I can hear the bell of the elementary school on the street behind us, calling in the kids from lunch and recess. Someone is mowing their lawn. Hrm, perhaps we should think about that.
That clover is far too high to be real.
Notice that there are still flowers on the magnolia tree, although they are falling fast. As such, my draft is not yet turned in to Lady S, but it must be soon. I have not yet resorted to glueing flowers back on to the tree. She made a point to remind me on Friday to "not mess with nature." We seem to have developed a strange dialect of floral metaphor for the writing process.
It's still too cool to move Audrey the Indigo Vat outside and open her up for the season. Maybe next week.
Last weekend, DH and I made it to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), and spent a little more than we planned - but only on good things. For instance, two prints and a small, obsessively handmade copy of The Innumerable Obsessions of Purl McGee from artist Willow Dawson, a couple collections from Wondermark, and this poster from Dinosaur Comics, to hang in theTARDIS, er house.
And then in the "Oooh, check it out, they signed it and sketched something for me!" category:
Matt Kindt's Super Spy, in which he drew the top half of the panel of original art that I also bought.
And perhaps our favourite score (for now), one of the last four copies in the building on Sunday of Kate Beeton's Never Learn Anything From History, bought from the lady herself and signed, along with a copy of this print, which makes this Trek-girl very happy. Kate personalized the book with this:
General Brock, from this strip, being all majestic and heroic and shiny before, you know, getting himself heroically killed.
That clover is far too high to be real.
Notice that there are still flowers on the magnolia tree, although they are falling fast. As such, my draft is not yet turned in to Lady S, but it must be soon. I have not yet resorted to glueing flowers back on to the tree. She made a point to remind me on Friday to "not mess with nature." We seem to have developed a strange dialect of floral metaphor for the writing process.
It's still too cool to move Audrey the Indigo Vat outside and open her up for the season. Maybe next week.
Last weekend, DH and I made it to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), and spent a little more than we planned - but only on good things. For instance, two prints and a small, obsessively handmade copy of The Innumerable Obsessions of Purl McGee from artist Willow Dawson, a couple collections from Wondermark, and this poster from Dinosaur Comics, to hang in the
And then in the "Oooh, check it out, they signed it and sketched something for me!" category:
Matt Kindt's Super Spy, in which he drew the top half of the panel of original art that I also bought.
And perhaps our favourite score (for now), one of the last four copies in the building on Sunday of Kate Beeton's Never Learn Anything From History, bought from the lady herself and signed, along with a copy of this print, which makes this Trek-girl very happy. Kate personalized the book with this:
General Brock, from this strip, being all majestic and heroic and shiny before, you know, getting himself heroically killed.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Never say never: Headfirst into the dyepot
I have sworn for years, sometimes vehemently, that I would not allow my fibre affliction to cross into the realm of dyeing. It's smelly, it's messy, I don't have room, I don't have time, and I'm perfectly happy with natural-coloured fibre and the occasional purchase of some fancy-schmanzy pretty dyed stuff (main point there being: Dyed by someone else, KTHXSBAI). Frankly, such an activity opens a whole can o' worms for a personality like mine. I anticipate I would very quickly accumulate books and powders and chemicals and more fibre, and be forced to seriously consider planting a dye garden so that I can grow weld and woad and madder and any number of Very Useful Things. Which will force me to get a yard... you see where this is going, right?
I should know better than to say never, though. In mid-September, in and among the Not Writing That Next Thing stress and the Not Preparing For That Conference stress, I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon at a house in Toronto's Kensington Market with four ladies whose company I enjoyed emensely, one of whom has a full-blown medieval dye garden in her little city-sized backyard. And because she is all kinds of awesome, she invited us to come over for a dye party. I bring wool (the old standby Dorset fleece), someone else supplies the dyestuff, knowhow and mess... who am I to say no? And besides, there is that super-secret project I'm helping with, and it's starting to look like we'll need to dye quite a bit of wool for that. Might as well soak in some knowledge of more experienced types, right?
There were several pots of boiling plants and insects, into which we plopped a variety of fibre from raw wool to linen cloth. We chopped up fresh weld, boiled the crap out of it and dyed things yellow.
Do you think it matches my eyes?
We ground up cochineal bugs, boiled the crap out of them and dyed things... um... Not Red.
No, Ford, I don't think anyone will mistake it for your tail.
Actually, we were a little puzzled by this, but not unhappily so. We were going for red, since that's what cochineal is, after all, known for. Red is cochineal's job, you might say. But when we realized early on that we were getting this lovely purple without even trying, no one complained all that much. It went a bit like this: "Oh dear! What a lovely purple! Um, does anyone care? I mean, we could put some tin in here and make it redder, but really, look at this stunning purple! Oh, drat, twist our arms..." I suspect the result was in part due to the pH of the local water, but we didn't test it at the time, so we may never know. And replicating it? Yeah, good luck with that. But far be it from me to look a gift kick-butt purple in the mouth. Especially when it combs up into roving like that.
Finally, we picked some berries from the 1 & 2 year-old madder (the plant roots are used to dye orange-red, but they aren't ready for use until their third year), boiled the crap out of them and dyed things... um... grey? -ish? Sortof? Well, no experiment is really ever a failure if we learned something.
A little skein of the same dorset fleece I've been working through, straight off the spindle and into the dyepot.
There have been a couple more dyeing adventures in the intervening weeks, but they are part of the super-secret-squirrel project. But I can say that 1) boiled spinach dyes a very pale yellow, not green, and 2) we have conquered The Red. We have one pound, and if the weather holds out this weekend, there will be several pounds of bright red wool. I hope pictures will be forthcoming, but honestly, when one is up to one's elbows in a hot dyepot full of saturated wool and crushed bugs, the camera always seems to be the last thing on my mind.
As for my concerns about the eminent stash expansion? Well, it's still a justifiable concern, but so far, I'm not totally out of control:
I should also disclose that there are several ounces each of alum, tin, copper and iron mordants on their way to me. Um.
Although for those in the know, the jar of indigo powder should raise a couple eyebrows. There are plans to unleash it on the weld-dyed yellow wool above, as we begin a quest for a Good Green by way of a Brilliant Blue (having finally conquered Really Red). Perhaps in the spring. I don't think I'll start collecting urine for the indigo vat quite yet, though. In fact, I'm very tempted to try a yeast vat instead - it has to smell better, right?
I should know better than to say never, though. In mid-September, in and among the Not Writing That Next Thing stress and the Not Preparing For That Conference stress, I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon at a house in Toronto's Kensington Market with four ladies whose company I enjoyed emensely, one of whom has a full-blown medieval dye garden in her little city-sized backyard. And because she is all kinds of awesome, she invited us to come over for a dye party. I bring wool (the old standby Dorset fleece), someone else supplies the dyestuff, knowhow and mess... who am I to say no? And besides, there is that super-secret project I'm helping with, and it's starting to look like we'll need to dye quite a bit of wool for that. Might as well soak in some knowledge of more experienced types, right?
There were several pots of boiling plants and insects, into which we plopped a variety of fibre from raw wool to linen cloth. We chopped up fresh weld, boiled the crap out of it and dyed things yellow.
Do you think it matches my eyes?
We ground up cochineal bugs, boiled the crap out of them and dyed things... um... Not Red.
No, Ford, I don't think anyone will mistake it for your tail.
Actually, we were a little puzzled by this, but not unhappily so. We were going for red, since that's what cochineal is, after all, known for. Red is cochineal's job, you might say. But when we realized early on that we were getting this lovely purple without even trying, no one complained all that much. It went a bit like this: "Oh dear! What a lovely purple! Um, does anyone care? I mean, we could put some tin in here and make it redder, but really, look at this stunning purple! Oh, drat, twist our arms..." I suspect the result was in part due to the pH of the local water, but we didn't test it at the time, so we may never know. And replicating it? Yeah, good luck with that. But far be it from me to look a gift kick-butt purple in the mouth. Especially when it combs up into roving like that.
Finally, we picked some berries from the 1 & 2 year-old madder (the plant roots are used to dye orange-red, but they aren't ready for use until their third year), boiled the crap out of them and dyed things... um... grey? -ish? Sortof? Well, no experiment is really ever a failure if we learned something.
A little skein of the same dorset fleece I've been working through, straight off the spindle and into the dyepot.
There have been a couple more dyeing adventures in the intervening weeks, but they are part of the super-secret-squirrel project. But I can say that 1) boiled spinach dyes a very pale yellow, not green, and 2) we have conquered The Red. We have one pound, and if the weather holds out this weekend, there will be several pounds of bright red wool. I hope pictures will be forthcoming, but honestly, when one is up to one's elbows in a hot dyepot full of saturated wool and crushed bugs, the camera always seems to be the last thing on my mind.
As for my concerns about the eminent stash expansion? Well, it's still a justifiable concern, but so far, I'm not totally out of control:
I should also disclose that there are several ounces each of alum, tin, copper and iron mordants on their way to me. Um.
Although for those in the know, the jar of indigo powder should raise a couple eyebrows. There are plans to unleash it on the weld-dyed yellow wool above, as we begin a quest for a Good Green by way of a Brilliant Blue (having finally conquered Really Red). Perhaps in the spring. I don't think I'll start collecting urine for the indigo vat quite yet, though. In fact, I'm very tempted to try a yeast vat instead - it has to smell better, right?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
So, a sheep walks into a baaaahrn...
Sunday afternoon was... interesting. I spent it, along with four other women, up to my elbows in wool and sheep shit. I kid you not. One of my local SCA cantons has come into a huge amount of freshly-sheared fleece. Dorset cross, in case you're curious (the "cross" is an anonymous donor, meaning the farmer has no idea). Twenty full fleeces, 3-4" staple, white, nice crimp, roughly 5 pounds each, not a premium spinning wool, but very usable (and hey, fleece is fleece)...
...and chock full of lanolin, dirt, grass, suint and poop. Lots and lots of poop.
And occasionally, a blueberry. Nature is funny that way. The herd is kept for meat, not wool, and apparently grazes in and around an orchard.
We're keeping about half of the fleeces between the group of us and making a summer canton project out of learning how to process a full fleece from scratch. It's amazing how many long-time spinners have never dealt with a fleece straight off the shearing-room floor. I doubt I'll do this every year (the farmer is possibly willing to make this a yearly thing, but in the meantime I'm going to look into options for sending it out for processing), but several of us agree that it's a good thing to know how to deal with, and do at least once.
The remaining ten fleeces we're trying to sell, with any extra money (beyond paying the shearer) going to the (non-profit) canton. But we figured they would be easier to sell if we got rid of some of the crap, so we spent Sunday afternoon very lightly skirting them. Being DIYers in an organization of DIYers (historical re-enactment), we didn't remove all the short cuts, like belly and leg fur, or even all the poo-tipped locks, which would normally be pulled out or cut off in a thorough skirting of a fleece instended for spinning. We figure even the unspinnable wool can be used for something once it's washed up - quilt batting, pillow stuffing, whatever - we'll leave that to the end user. We just pulled out (by rubber-gloved hands, thankyouverymuch) the really nasty stuff, and then weighed them. And even some of the really nasty stuff is going to be used, since one of the women figures it will make excellent fertilzer.
It took five of us four hours to skirt and weigh them all. Laying each fleece out one at time on a large, covered picnic table, 10 hands simultaneously decended into the wooly muck and began their work. We talked, we laughed, and we were exhausted by the end. I cannot believe we didn't take any pictures on Sunday asevidence blackmail documentation. Even a pic snapped on my cell phone camera would have been better than nothing, but did I think of it? Ah, well.
I'll get some pictures of the fleece itself soon enough, though, since three of the buggers now reside in my in-laws' garage. My mother-in-law, who is possibly vying for sainthood, is going to help me wash them in a week or two. One lady washed a few handfuls of one of the dirtier fleeces Sunday evening and carded it, and I spun a test rolag Monday evening. It washed up to a lovely white, medium-coarse wool, and spun nicely on the drop spindle. Like I said, it's not premium spinning wool, but it will do just fine.
In other news, that Next Written Thing that was supposed to go to Lady S on June 1? There's apparently nothing quite like a good, ultra-low-tech day filled with sheep shit to reset my brain. I am - finally - writing it now.
Notice the use of progressive aspect there. Don't die of shock please.
It's now a race to see if I can have something coherent written by the time Lady S, having just returned from a week abroad to an office full of crazy busy, notices that I am maybe hiding from her and emails me to see if I'm alive and, um, weren't you going to give me something "the day I got back", that being Monday?
I have not yet found the book, but then, it appears I'm still obsessing about it. That, and I haven't returned the library book either.
...and chock full of lanolin, dirt, grass, suint and poop. Lots and lots of poop.
And occasionally, a blueberry. Nature is funny that way. The herd is kept for meat, not wool, and apparently grazes in and around an orchard.
We're keeping about half of the fleeces between the group of us and making a summer canton project out of learning how to process a full fleece from scratch. It's amazing how many long-time spinners have never dealt with a fleece straight off the shearing-room floor. I doubt I'll do this every year (the farmer is possibly willing to make this a yearly thing, but in the meantime I'm going to look into options for sending it out for processing), but several of us agree that it's a good thing to know how to deal with, and do at least once.
The remaining ten fleeces we're trying to sell, with any extra money (beyond paying the shearer) going to the (non-profit) canton. But we figured they would be easier to sell if we got rid of some of the crap, so we spent Sunday afternoon very lightly skirting them. Being DIYers in an organization of DIYers (historical re-enactment), we didn't remove all the short cuts, like belly and leg fur, or even all the poo-tipped locks, which would normally be pulled out or cut off in a thorough skirting of a fleece instended for spinning. We figure even the unspinnable wool can be used for something once it's washed up - quilt batting, pillow stuffing, whatever - we'll leave that to the end user. We just pulled out (by rubber-gloved hands, thankyouverymuch) the really nasty stuff, and then weighed them. And even some of the really nasty stuff is going to be used, since one of the women figures it will make excellent fertilzer.
It took five of us four hours to skirt and weigh them all. Laying each fleece out one at time on a large, covered picnic table, 10 hands simultaneously decended into the wooly muck and began their work. We talked, we laughed, and we were exhausted by the end. I cannot believe we didn't take any pictures on Sunday as
I'll get some pictures of the fleece itself soon enough, though, since three of the buggers now reside in my in-laws' garage. My mother-in-law, who is possibly vying for sainthood, is going to help me wash them in a week or two. One lady washed a few handfuls of one of the dirtier fleeces Sunday evening and carded it, and I spun a test rolag Monday evening. It washed up to a lovely white, medium-coarse wool, and spun nicely on the drop spindle. Like I said, it's not premium spinning wool, but it will do just fine.
In other news, that Next Written Thing that was supposed to go to Lady S on June 1? There's apparently nothing quite like a good, ultra-low-tech day filled with sheep shit to reset my brain. I am - finally - writing it now.
Notice the use of progressive aspect there. Don't die of shock please.
It's now a race to see if I can have something coherent written by the time Lady S, having just returned from a week abroad to an office full of crazy busy, notices that I am maybe hiding from her and emails me to see if I'm alive and, um, weren't you going to give me something "the day I got back", that being Monday?
I have not yet found the book, but then, it appears I'm still obsessing about it. That, and I haven't returned the library book either.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
My inner librarian is annoyed at me
I am missing a book. This book. The one I talked about buying here and using here and took a picture of within recent memory. I've been tearing the house apart now for 24 hours looking for it, with no luck. I've upended Rubbermaid bins full of wool. I've shelved several stacks of other books hoping it was buried underneath something. I've cleaned a bit.
OK, maybe this isn't entirely a bad thing.
But still, no sign of that blasted book.
I don't actually need the book. I haven't used it since late last year, although it is a decent "learn to spin" starter book that I recommend to people and would prefer not to lose, but is entirely replacable if I do. The real issue is that I had some loose papers tucked inside it - handouts and documentation about sheep breeds and their history that I got from someone who knows far more about them than I do, and I would really prefer to NOT lose that.
So, not as though I have anything better to do (um, except write that thing for Lady S by next Monday, the thing that you were going to have for her on March 1, then April 1, then May 1, then June 1...), I am now retracing all my steps from last night and looking through the things I've already looked through thoroughly three times for this goofy-ass little bookbecauseitisdrivingmeinsane.
Of course, we all know that the only way it's going to show up is if I stop looking, right?
*sigh* Maybe I should take that one book back to the library that I've been holding on to for an excessively long time.
Library karma is a bitch.
OK, maybe this isn't entirely a bad thing.
But still, no sign of that blasted book.
I don't actually need the book. I haven't used it since late last year, although it is a decent "learn to spin" starter book that I recommend to people and would prefer not to lose, but is entirely replacable if I do. The real issue is that I had some loose papers tucked inside it - handouts and documentation about sheep breeds and their history that I got from someone who knows far more about them than I do, and I would really prefer to NOT lose that.
So, not as though I have anything better to do (um, except write that thing for Lady S by next Monday, the thing that you were going to have for her on March 1, then April 1, then May 1, then June 1...), I am now retracing all my steps from last night and looking through the things I've already looked through thoroughly three times for this goofy-ass little bookbecauseitisdrivingmeinsane.
Of course, we all know that the only way it's going to show up is if I stop looking, right?
*sigh* Maybe I should take that one book back to the library that I've been holding on to for an excessively long time.
Library karma is a bitch.
Monday, March 20, 2006
My first meme. I feel so cool.
I got this from Stitching Readers board that I frequent. Hey, why not?
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, * the ones you won’t, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
*Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling
(One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
*Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
*The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
(The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold)
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
(The Secret History – Donna Tartt)
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
*Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
*Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
(Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides)
(Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
*Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
(Atonement – Ian McEwan)
(The Shadow Of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
*The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
*The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert
-------
Some discussion: I've noticed that not many people in the BB thread that I got this from have books listed as "on my shelf" (underlined) as well as "might read" (italicized). I have seven! What does this say about me? Hmmm... I've been buying books with good intentions since high school. Catch-22 was recently purchased and I'm reading it right now. Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm were from high school reading lists where I had to choose from a short list to do a book report. I bought several books and decided later. Both have been started. Slaughterhouse 5 has also been started - it's in a Vonnegut hardcover anthology, from which I read Cat's Cradle. Cryptonomicon caught my eye several years ago at the local SciFi bookstore in Toronto, Bakka. Their store tradition of employees writing little reviews on index cards and thumbtacking them to the shelf under the book is one of the many reasons why I love the store, and has helped me find at least two new "favourite authors" in recent years. The book sat on our shelf for months, until one day my husband asked me why I bought it. I told him it had a good review at Bakka, and I figured he'd read it and tell me what he thought about it. So he did. :) The copy of Dune on our bookshelf came with my husband.
Most of the starred books are ones I have tried and couldn't get into, particularly the Jane Austen, both Brontes and Hemingway. I've tried a few times with Hemingway and even own a couple others (For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises), but just couldn't get into any of them. The Bell Jar, Brave New World, Kite Runner and Geisha are undoubtably excellent books, but there is only so much "heavy stuff" that I can take, so I'm drawing the line somewhere!
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, * the ones you won’t, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
*Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J. K. Rowling
(One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
*Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
*The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
(The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold)
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
(The Secret History – Donna Tartt)
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
*Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
*Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
(Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides)
(Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
*Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
(Atonement – Ian McEwan)
(The Shadow Of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
*The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
*The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert
-------
Some discussion: I've noticed that not many people in the BB thread that I got this from have books listed as "on my shelf" (underlined) as well as "might read" (italicized). I have seven! What does this say about me? Hmmm... I've been buying books with good intentions since high school. Catch-22 was recently purchased and I'm reading it right now. Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm were from high school reading lists where I had to choose from a short list to do a book report. I bought several books and decided later. Both have been started. Slaughterhouse 5 has also been started - it's in a Vonnegut hardcover anthology, from which I read Cat's Cradle. Cryptonomicon caught my eye several years ago at the local SciFi bookstore in Toronto, Bakka. Their store tradition of employees writing little reviews on index cards and thumbtacking them to the shelf under the book is one of the many reasons why I love the store, and has helped me find at least two new "favourite authors" in recent years. The book sat on our shelf for months, until one day my husband asked me why I bought it. I told him it had a good review at Bakka, and I figured he'd read it and tell me what he thought about it. So he did. :) The copy of Dune on our bookshelf came with my husband.
Most of the starred books are ones I have tried and couldn't get into, particularly the Jane Austen, both Brontes and Hemingway. I've tried a few times with Hemingway and even own a couple others (For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises), but just couldn't get into any of them. The Bell Jar, Brave New World, Kite Runner and Geisha are undoubtably excellent books, but there is only so much "heavy stuff" that I can take, so I'm drawing the line somewhere!
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