LostSurprise
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Posts posted by LostSurprise
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The photo also includes books from my husband and a two player game that The Boy gave me: Patchwork. Simple rules, interesting problem solving. And a jar of peach/bourbon jam appropriately named Floozie. Think my niece was telling me something?
I really enjoy Patchwork. DH gave me another game by the designer (Uwe Rosenberg) called Cottage Garden which has some similarities to Patchwork.
I read a book in the middle of the night, one I found on NPR's list of the best books of 2016: The Singing Bones by Shaun Tan.
Have you read any of Shaun Tan's other work? I have Tales From Outer Suburbia and it's quirky.
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Mine tend to be later. My oldest will be 18 next month and he has no facial hair (blond and invisible), grows in micro-inches, and didn't have a noticeable voice drop. My 2nd son had a noticeable growth spurt/facial hair/voice drop at 14/15. My 13 year old (14 next month) got blond leg hair in the last year or two but still looks like a 10 year old and doesn't need deodorant. :rolleyes: I make him wear it anyway. Who knows which day that's going to happen.
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Ted Chiang's The Story of Your Life and Others.
I was so happy (and befuddled) to see they'd made this into a movie! I have it listed as one of my favorite books of 2013.
Gaudy Night.
My first Sayers book and my favorite so far.
I finished 52 Week BINGO as well, although I may have stretched it a bit on a few. I found myself fitting things I've read into the formula rather than reading things to check off the square. I think the only one I can think of that I read just for the BINGO card was the book from my birth year.
Female Author: Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End
2016: The Swan’s of Fifth Avenue
Number in the Title: Station Eleven
Dusty:The French Lieutenant's Woman
Picked by a friend~The Fabulous Clipjoint
Historical: Skunk Hill: a Native Ceremonial Community
Revisit of an old friend: Ocean at the End of the Lane
Fairy Tale Adaptation: Uprooted
Birth year: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
Play: Trifles
Picked based on cover: Euphoria
Over 500 pages: Wolf Hall
Free
Classic: The End of the Affair
Nonfiction: Zoobiquity
Translated (French-Canadian): The Song of Roland
Banned: (Contested) Eleanor & Park
Color in the title: Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West
Mystery: Crocodile on the Sandbank
Nobel prize (Rudyard Kipling): Puck of Pook's Hill
Epic: These Is My Words
Nautical: The Soul of an Octopus
18th century: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Arthurian: Rewards & Fairies
Set in another country: Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen
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Amusing:
The Black Purl/String of Purls/Mother of Purl/Cultured Purls
Ewetopia
String Theory
Close Knit
Yarnivore
The New Ewe
Sheep Thrills
My favorite (not super knitty):
Make.Do
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Just a warning: I haven't known a lot of kids under 9-10 who completely grasped Dixit. Many of them found it frustrating.
Bohnanza
Sushi Go!
Mamma Mia
Pit
Saboteur
For Sale
Alfredo's Food Fight
Incan Gold
the original small set of Bang!
Diner
Metro
Escape: Curse of the Temple
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Sushi Go!
Star Realms
Archaelogy
Bohnanza
Saboteur
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With my first child, my favorite OB/GYN was Dr. Gerber. I loved her. Unfortunately, she worked with a practice so the doctor who ended up delivering my first child was her very jerky colleague, Dr. Wiener.
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When my youngest was only eating bread (and mostly banana bread) I would sub 25-40% of the flour with ground oats, oat brain, wheat bran, or a mixture of those. Oats are really mild when ground down and weren't noticeable by him.
I'd sometimes add TVP (texturized vegetable protein, a soy product). That turned out pretty well. Again, subbed for flour in that 25-40% group of the total flour group. He didn't notice it if I kept it under 1/2 cup.
Cutting butter in half doesn't hurt, but I wouldn't go under 1/2 cup. If you do cut it down good add an extra banana or applesauce to help the moisture.
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I've got an anti-spooky read right now to keep things balanced...Eleanor & Park on audio. Great readers. A charming Romeo & Juliet tale set in Nebraska in the mid-'80s.
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I forgot about the Stephen King question.
I read a few in late junior high/early high school because everyone else was. Firestarter. Some collection when he wrote as Richard Bachman. Cujo. Cujo was kind of the last straw. It was so terrible, and boring.
I went several years making fun of him as a writer based on my memory of Cujo. Post college I was stuck at my SIL/BIL's home with nothing to do. BIL is a big fan and has every novel. Not much else was on the shelves, so I pulled out The Stand (extended '90s version) because it seemed the least horror-ific and read some. He let me take it home because I'd just moved to the area and didn't have anything else to read. I enjoyed that (it has some ending issues) but I was still unsure about King. I thought he could write a decent short story but he was tinny as a novelist.
I think I changed after reading On Writing, The Green Mile, It, and Different Seasons, the process of a decade or so. He's definitely prolific. That can work both for and against someone. He definitely got better after he sobered up. He's not a character writer generally so I don't expect that of him. I don't go out of my way to read him because horror is not my genre, but if I hear enough good things about something I'll give it a try. "The Body" is a beautiful read.
I did give his son (Joe Hill) a try once and couldn't do it.
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I picked up Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke a couple days ago because it had fallen between my nightstand and my bed--oops!--and it's overdue from the library! It's very interesting and engaging so far. I think there was a movie and/or tv series about this book? I haven't seen those.
I read this a few months ago. There were parts of it I liked ok, but I really disliked this book as an ecologist - I disliked the idea that humanity will "outgrow" earth and that the ecosystem and the rest of life is irrelevant, all that matters is human evolution. I tend to think that's a hard sci fi/physics sci fi worldview, and I think I like more "biological evolution" sci fi.
My SIL, who is 50 something, raves about this book, which she read first as a teenager. It was totally formative for her. It's one of those books that might read differently depending when in your life you first discover it? IDK.
I like Childhood's End. It's the idea, more than the execution.
There's a part in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test where Ken Kesey, the author, and others have all-night discussions about the cultural changing cultural viewpoints and religious significance of CE and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
It's interesting the number of other books and shows that have used the ideas from that novel.
Speaking of the writing craft and spooky books... here's a little seasonal serendipity...
Ray Bradbury discusses his writing journey, which started when he was twelve, in an essay titled "May I Die Before My Voices".
It is the forward to The October Country.
I loved The October Country. I read that last October. It was great weekend vacation drive reading.
I listened to Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands on Librivox. The reader was good. Mary Seacole was a Jamaician woman who went to the Crimean to nurse many of the British soldiers she knew in Jamaica. She also spent time in New Grenada (Panama) and did a lot of work with cholera. I liked her style. She was both feisty and very lady-like. Racial issues. Panama/early-American Gold rush stuff. Difficulty with running a hotel in Crimea. Soldier highjinks.
And I'm doing a chapter of Blood Meridian every morning. Yesterday I realized how much it's like Heart of Darkness mixed a bit with the Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away. So much atmosphere. So much creepy gothic hell dream. I have to read slowly because it's not plot or character. It's language, symbol, tone, everything painted in detail.
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Praying for all of you in Hurricaneland.
I'm half way through World War Z. So far, it's been much more engaging than I expected. The format is short interviews with a variety of survivors around the globe, after the war. The distance from the events makes it less intense than if it was happening in the moment. (It's still disturbing) You get many different perspectives, military, commercial, government, child. It's interesting how the power shifts from white collar to blue collar workers, because they are better equipped for survival and teaching practical skills. The author seems to have worked very hard at making the resulting scenario believable.
Have you read any Studs Terkel? The format is similar. I really enjoyed that aspect.
I did read that one, and it was a really tough book. I've thought about the same issue many times. Kevin is a character that has haunted me, as has his mother. Maybe that's what made Shriver's book work better for me? Told from the POV of the mother, I could relate to it a lot more. I feel like John Cleaver's mother, and the other adult characters in his book, are very flat compared to how well developed John himself is. I guess I relate more to the mother character in Kevin than I do to the teenage sociopath in Well's book.
I agree, even though I was the opposite (I made it through the Dan Wells book and couldn't make it through the Shriver book because I didn't like the mother). The Wells book is a pretty basic thriller.
Finished a graphic novel my dh picked up for me from a library sale, another Quebecois. Jane, the Fox, & Me. A good parallel to my own experience, so impactful to me, but the finish was a little simple. Enjoyed. This will by my 3rd graphic novel based on Quebec this year, so I guess that's a thing for me now. :001_huh:
Working on Rewards & Fairies by Kipling. I cleaned out my children's shelf last month (a sad day) and I put the keepers in storage. I'm reading a few I hadn't gotten to yet. I liked the fairy tale/English history/epic poetry of Puck of Pook's Hill when I read it last month. Not as magical as E. Nesbit, but I like the history and poetry.
BTW, Kipling's famous poem "If" is in Rewards...
If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winningsAnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!I picked up Blood Meridian and perused the part I read before. I've decided to make note of words I don't know (Spanish, English) but not stop. That's what got me last time. I call this my Umberto Eco strategy (since that's they only way I make it through an Eco novel). :rolleyes: There should be a term for the vocabulary drag on a novel when you have to keep looking things up.
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The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (Not really sure how spooky this one is, but there ought to be at least a little blood in a chamber, I'm guessing, and it will count for my fairy tale adaptation for BaW Bingo.)
I read some Angela Carter earlier this year and really enjoyed her. She can pack a punch, so I stopped after one book of short stories, but I look forward to that one.
For my spooky book, I've decided finish Cormac MacCarthy's Blood Meridian (the evil, evil, so much bloody evil choice) or Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove (the come on, you only have 1 more story left choice).
Recently I finished:
The End of the Affair (I was fooled by the '90s movie, this was more than a ill-fated love story...it even had some good lines I should go back and copy into my notebook.)
Lost Worlds: rewriting prehistory ice age mariners archaeology kind of thing (more information dense than I was expecting and well explained but needed a different organization I think)
Struggling with:
The Master and the Margarita (I don't dislike it, but struggle to make myself read it. I'm about ready to return it and try again later.)
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It's not unusual in the Midwest to have an extra toilet or block shower in the the basement or utility area (washer/dryer). This is most likely if it's a 1 bathroom home. I think it was planned to help with the bathroom overflow of a small family home. If you were desperate enough, to the basement you go.
We have both and they are right across from the canning kitchen...no extra walls and toilet is a tiny concrete closet with saloon doors. Thank you 1950s.
My grandmother had her utility toilet on a platform next to her washer. It had a flowery green shower curtain you could pull in a circle around you. It always gave me the creeps but my Grampa kept all his soda in an old latch pull fridge down there so there were snacks.
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Go to the JCPenney website. Several brands of men's jeans start at 26" waist and and have up to a 36" inseam.
Back in the day ('90s) my youngest brother was a 27x34 in high school (yeah...he's now a 29x34 :rolleyes: ). My mom would call Penneys and they would order his size and have it delivered to the store. They just wanted to know someone would actually purchase the size. It was never in stock otherwise.
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I am a reader, always have been, and remember well the curiosity and mental craving that started me reading at age 3/4. I was not surrounded by books. We had one tiny bookshelf which was mostly filled by my father's accounting textbooks. Now I have shelves and shelves. When dh and I got married, Bro2 shook dh's hand and said, "congratulations! Now I never have to move her books again. Thank you."
My mom isn't a reader. She's very good with her hands and fills her time with making things.
My dad will read but always has to have an practical reason to read something.
Siblings:
Bro1: Never was a reader. Considered it a waste of time. Very intelligent. I'm not sure if it was the books available in grade school or how slow reading felt to him, but it didn't click. Now, as an adult, Bro2 got him hooked on Robert Jordan and other monstrous fantasy novels. I'm not sure I would call him a reader (he lacks some of the craving of a reader IMO), but he does read at least a few books a year.
Sis: Never was a reader. Very social. Too busy. But her daughter is a huge reader. I love buying her books.
Bro2: Six years younger than me. I read to this kid for ages. Is a reader. Loves fantasy and light science fiction. At least several books a year.
Family:
DH: Wasn't a reader when we met. Asked me to recommend 2 books he had to read before we married. (Be still my heart.) Loves to be read to. Has concentration issues but has found he likes to fall asleep reading. Slow progress. Sort of a reader.
DS1: Early reader but usually can't be bothered.
DS2: Reader!
DS3: Very active and social. Started out hating reading but I believe I've brought him around. Picky about books. Needs external motivation.
DS4: Cognitive disabilities but loves to be read to.
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Perhaps the water content of the honey was different than the sorghum? That combined with a drier atmosphere or a slightly off (basically any non-weighing measurement) flour measurement would mean a denser product in general or a longer kneading time to get the same result.
If it seems a bit dense while I'm kneading, sometimes I'll incorporate a little water and let it sit. Do you do an autolyse? Sometimes that time really helps prepare the dough for easier kneading.
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I made some baby things (dress, blanket) and have some finishing details left.
I started some yoga socks for walking around over the summer, a pretty easy 3K/1P ribbed pattern to use up some old sock yarn.
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The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Gaimin)
The Martian (Weir) Ok, main character swears...for humor. He is stuck in on a planet alone and it's part of his coping mechanism but if that's a trigger for your group ignore this one.
Howl's Moving Castle (Wynne Jones) fairy tale with strong female empowerment
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (Flinn) nonfiction, foody friendly
Gene Luen Yang has some great graphic novels which you may want to look into. Very appropriate (although the Boxer & Saints is about the Boxer Rebellion and might be too violent...Level Up is great for young adult crisis/American Born Chinese is great for minority figuring out how they fit within the dominant culture/
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Any winners Onceuponatime? Sometimes feedback helps with suggestions.
Oh, and The Avett Brothers. Can't believe I left them off the list.
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Michael Kiwanuka
Nick Lowe
Fleet Foxes
Great Lakes Swimmers
The Jayhawks
The Head and the Heart
The Belle Brigade
The Weepies
The Living Sisters
Band of Horses
Real Estate
Over the Rhine
Darrell Scott or Darrell Scott/Tim O'Brien
Gillian Welch
Sarah Jarosz
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I really don't watch much tv or even mind sex humor and/or scenes, but I joke with dh about how almost any movie pg-13 or higher now has a "mandatory boob scene". It's like they put them in there regardless of plot or how it adds to the show, just because...
Game of Thrones that Audry mentioned is a good example - I had really enjoyed the novels and the show was generally a good tv version (up until recently anyway) but 95% of the sex scenes were just HBO wanting to show sexy stuff. It was a distraction from the story, because every time it happened, my mind said - oh it's HBO doing it again, which is really bad in a story based tv show. And because it already was outside the scope of the story, the way it was done very often didn't fir in in other ways, it looked like sex scenes designed to titillate 21st century Americans, not what I'd expect from a medivalish, fairly gritty and realistic fantasy setting.
in my house we call it pandering to male gaze
IMO, you can tell when a show's ratings have dipped. Even relatively innocous drama / mystery shows. Ratings down? Suddenly you'll see episodes about strippers, prostitutes, escorts, etc etc. and the plot point is exploited through lots of lingering camera shots.
Patriarchy at work. I'm the kind of feminist who rails against this stuff. It's shot in a way to exploit women.
In our house we call it 'the HBO effect.'
Several years ago dh and I had a game where we'd call when breasts would be shown...because they were going to be shown. Nudity that would actually fit within the storyline didn't count. Extra points if they were used as 'sexposition' (sex used as exposition...basically weak writing covered by breasts or other female nudity/sexuality).
I'm not afraid of nudity, but the use of the female body and sexuality to draw/keep male viewers irks me. I don't care how cool the show is...I just won't watch it.
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Laws can be different between state, federal, schooling options, EEOC, etc.
My uncle is legally blind and has been since an accident when he was 2. His eyes and their surrounding muscles were physically damaged. He went to a blind school. His wife is blind. He participated in the Paralympics. He can now drive in the state of Indiana with a newer type of corrective lens which corrects enough for at least one eye. It gives him awful headaches but he enjoys a limited amount of daytime driving. He says he'll never move from Indiana because he couldn't get his license anywhere else in the Midwest. (I have no idea how true that is but it is true he couldn't get a license in his home state.)
He's still considered legally blind and he can't wear the glasses at work or in daily life. They are that disruptive.
So yes, he is legally blind (according to the government, state, his employer, his family) but he can drive, now. (Cue family jokes.) I don't think they even invented those lenses until the late '80s/early '90s.
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I read Anna Karenina in high school, so it has been a long time.
I liked Anna better than I liked Edna from The Awakening. I think I read the two books the same year. Anna's actions made more sense to me, even while I disagreed with her Tolstoy made me feel her emptiness, her surprised passion, her joy, her sorrow. So often other proto-feminist novels (The Awakening and Madame Bovary for instance) left me feeling completely cut off or frustrated with the main character. The counterpoint with Kitty and Levin was a relief to Anna's story, so she never frustrated me too much.
I think the epigraph said it all for me (from the Bible "Vengeance is mine. I will repay."). Human beings have no reason to judge or deal out punishment. Quite often we bring our own punishment upon us. You can see this as a Fate thing or 'what goes around comes around' or even 'we are our own worst enemies.' All of those worked for me in the context of the story.
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Book a Week 2016 - BW52 - 2016 it's a wrap!
in The Chat Board
Posted
I tried to hit at least a few BCE books (archaeology, Linear B linguistics), but other than Wolf Hall, fairy tales, and Alexander Humboldt most things were post 19th century.