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Monday, April 30, 2007

books for April

Ratings out of five; if it's not bold it's a re-read.

1. Persuasion -- Jane Austen, bien sûr -- 5
   • My favorite Austen. Which may make this my favorite book, but that's a phrase I try to avoid because it is inevitably followed by a list. Poor books, they feel bad if they get left out. Seriously, though, Persuasion is biting and romantic and funny and sad and just blissful. I still catch my breath for the letter-reading scene at the end.

2. Villette -- Charlotte Brontë -- 4
   
   • I listened to the Librivox audio version of this (to which I contributed I think three chapters). This is an at-times-heartbreaking book about a young British woman who is essentially orphaned as she reaches adulthood, and as a result travels to the Continent to earn a living in a girl's school. It's beautiful, and especially this time around I really like Lucy -- she's a quiet, unobtrusive woman but she's nobody's doormat either -- but augh the pain. I stop reading it halfway through the last chapter so that I can make believe it ends the way I want it to end.

3. Helpless -- Barbara Gowdy -- 3.5
   
   • This was a truly disturbing and painful book to read, about a girl who's abducted by a, um, very troubled man. The family's pathos, the man's girlfriend's doubts, and most especially the insight into what the man himself and the little girl were thinking and feeling are adeptly handled. I know these people now, and I have a good sense of their surroundings. I enjoyed the author's style (she's new to me). Overall, disturbing and all, this was a good read until right up near the end, when I got the feeling the author took the easy way out.

4. Ten Days in the Hills -- Jane Smiley -- 1
   
   • Well, there it is. My first 1 rating, I think. I really, really tried to get into this book. I did. I gave it pages and pages and pages' worth of my attention, but I couldn't care about the characters or the situation they found themselves in; I couldn't identify with even one facet of anyone's life and I got so, so tired of the long paragraphs and boring dialogue. I really don't care about the angsty lives of wealthy celebrities. I don't. And even if I did, I still don't think this book would have done anything for me. I'm sorry. Maybe in eighty years this will be a classic along the lines of The Age of Innocence, a commentary on the vapid emptiness of the lives of the ruling celebrity class. I will never know, since by that time I will be in a place where I won't care how bad this book was. But I doubt it.

5. Family Tree -- Barbara Delinsky -- 2
   
   • I had never read anything by Barbara Delinsky, but not being a literary snob (well, not TOO much of a literary snob), and finding the premise and cover of this particular book to be interesting when I saw it on the New Books display at the library, and also being short on books for this post for this month, I decided to give this a try.
     
     I agonized over how I would score this book, because the thing is, it's not a bad premise. A white couple -- he a lawyer from an aristocratic New England family, she a nobody who helps run her grandmother's knitting store when she's not doing interior design -- gives birth to a child who shows definite signs of African ancestry. Family issues ensue. It would have made a good short story in the right hands, but as a 400-page novel, it just doesn't do it for me. It's largely the fault of the really... messy storytelling. I didn't like the narrative voice at all; it seems to have been written either by or for fifteen-year-olds in many places. Worst of all, though, was the handling of the race issue. Not politically -- I don't have any problem with that, really. Even when I disagree with an author's main point about the issues s/he presents, as long as they're handled well, I enjoy thinking about things from a different perspective and I generally come away with a better understanding of myself and the issue(s) than I had when I started reading. But The Issue in this book was clumsily handled. The characters (who, by the way, I otherwise didn't find too badly done) mouthed twenty-first-century platitudes every time they spoke; their dialogue was annoying peppered with stupid things that nobody really says ("Are you a bigot?" -- to one's husband -- for example). I didn't want to give up on the book, at first because I wanted to see if it got better, and then because it was like a freeway accident and I couldn't look away, and then because I wanted to see if my first-chapter predictions about the ending would come to pass (they did), and then because I wondered if the author could go a single page without using the word 'race', 'bigot', or 'African-American' (she couldn't). Characters and incidents were thrown into the story for no other purpose than to rather clumsily and obviously advance the secondary theme of Family Secrets and the Havoc They Wreak.
     
     This story, seriously, as bad as it was, was not completely without good points. I liked a few of the characters, as I mentioned. The baby descriptions were good. I liked the yarn store -- although that is so not my kind of yarn store; any yarn that costs $40 a skein is, um, no, never going to be in my house, I can pretty much guarantee. On the whole, though, I recommend that, unless you're a big fan of the author or her genre, you give this one a miss.

oh, by the way

...I finished reading O Pioneers! for Librivox about a month ago. Or so. It is here: linky.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

meme from maria

I am feeling kind of meme-ish. And still quite sick, with a very sore throat. And plus anything that helps me put off cooking supper is a Good Thing.

The idea of this meme-thing is that you (or, in this specific case, I) go to the IMDB and pick seven or however many of my favorite movies, and then post some keywords from each and see who can guess what the movies are. NO FAIR going to the imdb and doing a keyword search to find the answers.

Edited to add: I'll italicize the ones that have been correctly guessed, because I am so white and nerdy (when my friends need some code, who do they call? I do ht-M-L for them ALL.).

OK, here goes.

1. Death of Wife / Poignant / Senior Citizen / Starting Over / Zoo

2. Sister Sister Relationship / British / Suitor / Estate / Opposites Attract

3. Shock Therapy / Boyfriend Girlfriend Relationship / Loner / Ivy League

4. Correspondence / Deafness / Mother Son Relationship / Single Mother (Kind of an indie movie; stars Gerard Butler and Emily Mortimer. If you don't know this movie you need to rent it ASAP. It's a beautiful movie.) (OK, this is "Dear Frankie", and it's a movie that I recommend to just about everyone.)

5. Romantic Comedy / Ice Skating / Hockey / Olympics

6. Broadway Musical / Anvil / Love / Marching Band

7. Based On Poem / Historical / 1890s / Australian Bush (1982. It's a horse movie.) (You ladies must not have oohed and aahed over "The Man From Snowy River" at slumber parties like I did. :)

8. Arranged Marriage / Synagogue / Ukraine / Father Daughter Estrangement

9. Handicap / Falsely Accused / Left Handedness / Dog / Neighbor / Lawyer / South

10. Composer / Vienna Austria / Domineering Father / Jealousy

OK, have at it.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

shift.

Today I feel... a little better.

Well, except that I actually feel like my sinuses were run over by a truck (there's an interesting mental image). But emotionally, I feel like I've turned a little bit of a corner in the night. Yay for IMing with Jenn and yay for nice cuddles with T and yay for God and hormones and whatever.

Now if I could just get up the motivation to clean the house.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

A Thursday Not-Thirteen Pity Party

Thirteen Some Completely Random (and Mostly Annoyingly Self-Centered) Things I Have Been Thinking. Now with Extra Parentheses!

1. I am kind of disappointed with college (midway through one night class at a satellite campus, mind you). I had kind of thought that the whole grade-school apathy about all things academic would not survive the transition to adult education, and that it would finally be OK to be excited about learning and interested in academics. Not so. Maybe on the campus of a small Eastern women's college with Chaucer seminars and trees in the windows*, but not here. I've heard it said that community college is high school with ashtrays. I'm here to say that it's not. It's junior high with ashtrays. In some ways.

2. I should clarify that I am also rather disappointed with myself as a college student. Not that I'm not looking forward to continuing my education (music appreciation and English 41 next semester), but I have also come to realize that academic apathy is not the only thing to survive the transition from grade school. Some things about me will never change, and one of those things, I am coming to realize, is that I have a hard time self-editing (one of the many reasons I love online communication so) and that this makes me a rather annoying person to have around, on campus and off.

3. My husband has been losing a lot of weight (on purpose; he's not sick. He and a couple of other guys at work are having a competition). I think he's down 20 or 25 pounds now. He looks great. I, however, am moving slowly in the opposite direction. If I'm not careful, we'll meet. Oh good Lord no. But the thing is, I KNOW what I need to do (move myself around more and stop stuffing my face) and it is basically the direct opposite of what I actually end up doing.

4. Perhaps related to the above, my gut (ha ha!) is telling me that said husband, who has adored me wholeheartedly for the past fourteen years, is getting tired of me. He SAYS he's not; he says the change is due to a really stressful situation that has nothing to do with me. I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm tired of myself.

5. There is a really stressful situation going on that has nothing to do with me, no doubt about it. A ministry that one of T's closest friends was starting with another family has fallen apart due to interpersonal conflicts and a whole lot of divisive, ugly stuff that grieves God whenever it happens among His children. (Remember how there was this mass exodus of T's friends in the space of a year and a half or whatever it was? One of them is back.)

6. A really BIG problem with me is that my prayer life is zilch. I read the Bible for our weekly chapter summary and that's it. I am completely unenthusiastic about Sunday morning worship services**. I am beyond the point of worrying about this sense of apathy, and have become almost completely, um, apathetic about it. Then I was reading a post at Maria's (not THAT post) about prayer and it kind of zinged me. When was the last time I just sat and prayed and told Jesus I loved him? I can't even remember. The zing is a good sign, I think. I think it's a sign that the wet-newspaper feeling hasn't grown so deep yet that it can't be penetrated with a bit of effort. The problem that still remains is that I need to gather myself and actually make a bit of effort.

7. I am once more completely out of contact with most of my Really Close Girlfriends. It's appalling what happens when people get, you know, lives, and stop using instant messaging.

8. And lastly (criminy, talk about being sick of myself, after a post like this I think I should throw myself off a bridge as a service to mankind), I am ever so ever so tired of absolutely always having juuuuust not quite enough money. Supposedly, in a few weeks, things will be much better. Considering that we've been telling ourselves that for basically the entire duration of our marriage, I am not holding my breath, concrete reasons to believe it this time or no.
   

* for a more thorough exposition on the topic of Chaucer seminars and windows with trees as the epitome of the unattainable educational dream, see Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman.

**It doesn't help that frankly they never have really excited me at the chapel we've been attending for, oh my gosh, seven and a half years; I came from a home church where everyone was elbows-deep in Scripture every day of their lives and the worship was seriously Spirit-led, to this more typical, polished, mechanical Sunday-Morning Church Service where the pastor does the talking and the people do the sitting (except, of course, when the people do the standing for the really repetitive singing). I truly love the people, though.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Reply to a post at Maria's place

Well, you know, it's been a long time since I had a lot of activity here; might as well stir up some controversy, no?

Maria wrote a post about firearms ownership as it relates to the terribly tragic Virginia Tech shootings yesterday:

Warning: Unpopular opinions ahead. Proceed with caution.

I'd heard rumors of the VT shooting before I left for work this morning, but didn't have time to really look into what had happened until I was at work and was able to read the different news stories that you linked to. Thank you for the links. What a horrible, horrible tragedy. I felt like crying when reading what had happened. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to sit in one of those classrooms and see your classmates be shot down around you.

I think the worst thing was that he didn't just shoot to shoot - he shot to kill. He locked the doors so people couldn't escape, and made sure to shoot people not just once, but two or three times each. For some reason he'd just clicked.

Horrible!

And this is one of the reasons why I am SO glad that Denmark doesn't have as liberal a weapon law as the US does. In Denmark you can only buy firearms if you can prove that you have a reason for needing it - e.g. if you're a hunter, member of a shooting club or something similar. I know people who own riffles for hunting, but nobody who owns a gun. Not even police officers are allowed to carry guns when not on duty.

The US weapon law is one of the reasons why I would never move there.

I know that "Guns don't kill people. People kill people!" All very true, but 'people who kill people' might have a harder time doing so, if they didn't have a gun readily available. There would be fewer passion crimes if the murderer didn't already have the weapon in his/her house, ready for use. It wouldn't stop shootings - obviously not, as some people will ALWAYS know how to get hold of firearms illegally - but my opinion is that it would limit them.

In Denmark there hasn't been a single shooting at schools. Not. A. Single. One. Metal detectors at schools? Unheard of.

In the US 30,000 people are killed by gun wounds every year.

I think those numbers say it all really.

(If this post came across as horribly condescending then I'm really sorry. It wasn't my intention to sound all "Nya-nya, Denmark rules and US sucks", because I KNOW we have our problems as well. I just wish more people would realize what a bad idea such an unrestricted weapon law is, and act accordingly. *sigh*)

I wrote a comment, but then I discovered that LiveJournal has a 4360-character limit for its comments space. Who'd have thought? ;-) So I'm posting my comment here. Never say I'm not a brave individual.

I want to make clear that I have no intention of making light of the shootings at Virginia Tech AT ALL. What a terrible, sad day. Also, I may as well copy Maria's disclaimer: Unpopular opinions follow. Proceed with caution.

A few points to consider:

EDITED TO ADD point zero, after some research:

0) That 30,000 figure is not precisely accurate for the purpose intended, in that fewer than half of those deaths were homicides. In 2001, for example, there were in fact around 30,000 gun deaths, but nearly 17,000 of those were suicides (the vast majority of which, in all likelihood, would have happened regardless of the availability of firearms). Only 11,348 were homicides, and that figure likely includes gang violence.

1) The population of the US absolutely dwarfs the population of Denmark (or pretty much any European country, or Canada. The population of Canada, for example, lives in California. The population of Denmark lives in Maryland. The population of the U.S. is roughly sixty times that of Denmark. Those 30,000 gun deaths (see point zero above) represent less than one hundredth of one percent of the US population; a similar extrapolation on the population of Denmark would be 500 deaths. Not that you have 500 gun deaths, necessarily, just to show the difference in scale. According to a San Diego State University study on comparative criminology, the murder rate in 2000 was 4.03 for Denmark and 5.51 for USA. Yes, the US is higher, but it's not exactly the huge difference you might expect.

2) That population is a mish-mash of people from around the world, with widely different ideas about life and what is important and what is OK. This makes for more conflict than you see in more homogenized (yes, I realize European countries are becoming less so, but not to the degree that the US has been basically since its inception) nations, where (in Denmark, for example) 84% of people share not only the same religion but even the same denomination.

3) The U.S. has a gang problem. Not saying that this guy was from a gang; it's likely he was just a guy who cracked and decided to take a bunch of people with him when he went. But the gang problem elevates our gun crime numbers, and these are people who would have guns no matter what laws you made against them.

3) Law-abiding people who own firearms (btw, you have a rare language mistake there. Rifles are guns, although firearms is a more general term; I think you mean 'handguns' when you say guns) use them to prevent crime at a rate higher than that at which guns are used to commit crime. But those stories don't even make the local news in large cities, let alone the international news. If, for example, my husband or a person like him, with his legally-possessed handgun and his frequent and careful firearms training, had been legally carrying it in that school building (unless the school has a specific anti-firearms policy, which, um, really worked, didn't it), the shooting spree would have likely ended a lot sooner. And that's just this example. The number of home invasions, rapes, assaults, etc that are prevented by trained citizens owning and carrying their own firearms is not quantified in gun crime statistics (especially in the most frequent cases, in which the defensive weapon is not even fired), but it should be, to present a more balanced view. No, I do not want legislation to take away my right to be able to protect myself and my family by a means that can, if properly used, equal the force that may be used against us.

4) In nations like Australia, where there have been relatively recent laws banning ownership of firearms, the crime rate (gun crime rate included) has gone up. The guesswork is taken out of it for the criminals; there's much less fear on the criminals' part of encountering a person on the other side of that door who can defend himself and his possessions. In states where gun laws are made less restrictive, the crime rate goes down (Arizona, for example, is still experiencing a very interesting downward spike in violent crime rates beginning in the mid-90's when their carrying regulations were made drastically less restrictive).

5) Out of curiosity, what's the crime rate like in Switzerland, where every male of legal age owns a firearm and is trained to use it, and everyone knows it? (edited to add: I just found a very interesting article on this very subject.)

6) You make light of "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but 'like all bromides, it's absolutely true' (never thought I'd quote LMM in a firearms-rights debate). A firearm is a tool. Sometimes that tool is used in crimes. Crimes are already banned, so the point of banning the tool that is sometimes used in them is a bit lost, especially when it's only the law-abiding who would turn in their guns, leaving a HUGE number of firearms still at large and in the hands of, well, the non-law-abiding, by definition.

7) Furthermore, to get into the Constitutional aspect of 'banning' guns: the Constitution of the US, written by men whose personally-owned firearms had, less than a generation previously, won them their independence, contains explicit protection for ownership of arms by "the people" (not "the states" or "the militia"). Reading the founders' writings, you see that they included this protection not for hunting or even for self-protection, but as a protection against tyranny. Not that the American public has the fortitude to use them in such a way nowadays, and not that the anti-gun lobby cares about what the founders intended, but it's an important point.

Maria, I used to hold your position. I used to say that if banning guns would save ONE LIFE, wouldn't that ONE LIFE be worth it? But this position doesn't make logical sense, because of the lives that are saved by firearms.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

three things

Thing I don't understand: Knitted food. I mean, more power to you and no offense intended if you're into that sort of thing, but for me personally, well, I'd rather make real food. Which I can then eat. It just seems like forty years from now, the grandchildren of this generation's knitters will be going through their grandmothers' attics, find knitted bagels with lox, and laugh uproariously. (note: LT says it would be nice for a centerpiece, instead of just using fake fruit. Not that you'll see a centerpiece any more complicated than a Styrofoam cup of wildflowers at OUR house -- in fact, I'm having a hard time figuring out where he has ever seen a fake fruit centerpiece -- but I digress. And I stand by my attic statement, regardless of LT's opinion.)

Thing that annoyed me: T went to a going-away party last night for one of his coworkers. It was held one of the two swanky restaurants in town, all California cuisine, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil for your bread instead of butter, and $15 for the very absolute cheapest thing on the rather limited menu, and such things. We ate there once a few years ago when it was new, and pretty much made a solemn compact never to return. Roped into violating this compact, T ordered the aforementioned least-expensive item on the menu and drank water. Which ended up being a complete waste because the other people ordered filet mignon and wine and who knows what all else and then dumped everything into one check and divided it up. So T ended up paying $42 for his $15 item. Oh well, it's only money. It's not like there's a shortage of that or anything.

Thing that made me laugh uproariously and yet also as subtly as possible: C's latest poem. I'm pretty sure she would short-sheet my bed if she knew I was sharing this with all of you, and I may delete this bit later once my regular readers have had their opportunity to enjoy it, but I just can't resist. This is what comes of C riding home in the car whilst thinking about recent history lessons on the French and Indian Wars, I guess.

Seat Belts (And the Indian)

by C

If you were in a car
and in that car you were driving far
If you did not wear seat belts and you stopped suddenly
out you would fly
the world flying by
An Indian comes out of a cave
And says I'll scalp you to the grave
(A) You just play and have fun
(B) You run
Answer (B), you run and yell
that Indian will surely go to Hell
Seat belts are important
Especially for infants.

This public service announcement brough to you by the "Wear a Seatbelt Or Get Scalped" ad campaign. No Indians were harmed during the production of this poem.

Monday, April 09, 2007

and IT is also finished!

Today I really truly finished the not-very-rough rough draft of my history paper. yay! It's no Ireland report though. Nary a shamrock, more's the pity. It's SO GOOD not to have that hanging over my head. Except now I have no excuse not to fold all that laundry that's waiting for me. Sigh.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

IT IS FINISHED

Is it sacrilegious to use that phrase about a knitting project this close to Good Friday?

Nah, not when the knitting project is as monumental as this one, anyway.

(ZOT! That's me getting struck by lightning the next time I go outside.)

OK, on with the picture:

(you can click to see it larger)

It came out bigger than I thought. When I would hold the pieces up to Claire, it seemed as if the thing would be too small. Also, the shoulders are wider than I thought because the neck is more scooped than I thought, so the sleeves are a bit long. It'll fit her as she grows a bit, but it'll be sort of short in the midriff by the time her arms and shoulders are long/wide enough to fit it better.

It was a lot of fun to make, though. The weaving in of all the ends (ugh stripes) actually took longer than sewing the pieces together. And I still need to figure out if and how I need to block it. I mean, it's a cotton sweater; it will be worn and washed, so any blocking I do wouldn't last anyway. Experienced knitters, please help.

I recommend this project (the pattern, without stripes on the body and with simpler stripes on the sleeves, is here, although I resized it for C; the largest size they have is smaller than she is) for beginning knitters, since I am one and I managed it. :) This was a great project to help me learn to increase, join, and "pick up and knit", none of which I had done before (well, I've increased and joined in crochet projects, but... nevermind). Also, the cotton (Lily Sugar N Cream) is really easy to work with, and (especially bought on sale like I found it) cheap enough that you don't worry about wasting a ton of money if things go wrong.

Books for March

I am late with this again. Sorry.

I have a feeling I did some re-reading this month but I can't remember those specifically, only the three new-to-me ones, which are:

1. Eggshell Days -- Rebecca Gregson -- 3
   • I found this kind of randomly and accidentally on the library shelf, and the title and cover image were appealing, so I checked it out because hey, it was free (yay for free libraries!). It turned out to be a pretty good book, about a group of British friends -- I wonder how many books there are about groups of British friends? I wonder what the percentage is of books that are about groups of British friends? -- who all move into one very large, very old Cornwall house together. Two of the friends are not-terribly-happily married to each other and have kids; one is a single mom who's secretly in love with the fourth and last friend, who's brought his girlfriend along on this adventure but only on weekends. The story verged on the soap-opera-ish at times (complete with a "who's the child's father and it's not who you think" storyline), but overall it was an enjoyable read. It actually reminded me more of the pilot of a weekly TV drama-comedy than a soap opera. Verdict: OK for a nice light read, but nothing to rave about.

2. Twelve Sharp -- Janet Evanovich -- 2.5
   
   • I feel an obligation to keep reading this series, because I started it, and because honestly I want to know what happens with Stephanie and Joe. But otherwise I'm kind of over the whole thing. The books aren't bad, it's just that they're so much the same.

3. Love Walked In -- Marisa De Los Santos -- 4.5
   
   • The lovely and kindredly (a word that isn't really a word unless you were kind of in on the creation of it) Kat recommended this book to me, for which I am so very grateful. Any book with one main character whose heroes are Anne Shirley and Sara Crewe, and another who sees her life through Katharine-Hepburn-tinted glasses, has got to be right up my alley. This is a sweet story, but it's not saccharine; it's a romantic-comedy, in a fresh and satisfying kind of way; it's an orphan story for the twenty-first century. The adult heroine, Cornelia, semi-adopts the child heroine, Clare, who happens to be her boyfriend's daughter, when Clare's mother disappears and the boyfriend/father turns out to be a less than ideal dad. The love story ends up being more maternal than romantic, although there's plenty of romance thrown in too. I recommend this, even though I was a bit lost at some of the more obscure movie references Cornelia made (Clare never once left me behind with the child orphan books, though; what does that say about me exactly?)