Busy Day Ahead

I woke up early to do one thing, which didn’t work out, so I’m aiming to do this, and not run out of time for it later…

From 2009:
64. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

I am pretty sure I heard about this book when it first came out, and was interested, but never got hold of a copy, so when I found it on my DH’s shelves I was quite pleased. There are three main characters: the original Oxford English Dictionary, Professor James Murray, its major editor, and Dr. William Chester Minor, an American Civil War doctor who had come to Europe in the hope that the change of scene would help with his mental illness, but who ended up killing a man and being detained at Broadmoor for over 20 years. As a highly educated man with enough income for a large library and a wish to be useful, he was one of the most prolific contributors of early quotations and usages of words for the massive reading project necessary to the first edition of the OED.

All three are fascinating topics, although the major protagonist is Minor. The book is sympathetic to his plight without excusing his negative actions and their terrible results. It simply allows his positive actions to speak for themselves as well.

I nearly forgot…

More 2009 books read:

62. The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett

A good few of the coming books are Librivox versions of books I read (generally many times) as a child and/or teenager. This was one of my favourite FHB novels, in many ways because it’s so much less well-known than A Little Princess (although that one is the favourite), The Secret Garden or Little Lord Fauntleroy. This is far more a ‘boy’s book’ than those, with just one woman (who’s a baddie) who shows up more than once. Unfortunately, listening to it as an adult I couldn’t stop thinking how dozy Marco is about things that should have been obvious (especially for a character usually portrayed as very intelligent), when as a child I think I just ignored that dopiness!

63. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

I’m glad I now know this book, but it isn’t going to become a favourite of mine for rereading, I don’t think. Perhaps I’m just in the wrong mood about it now, so long after listening to it, but I know governesses often got mistreated, and I get the picture that they were supposed to work wonders on spoilt brattish children whom they weren’t allowed to discipline in any manner, and I don’t think I want to revisit the story. Agnes isn’t a badly drawn character, but I’d had enough of her teaching experience by the end.

Don’t Give Up

I don’t feel so much like blogging today. But that’s part of the point of NaBloPoMo, isn’t it? To do this as part of a greater goal, and thus stay in a habit I like having. I got something back today that had been missing for four months or more. I did NOT expect to know what ever became of this thing. It was sent from country A to country B five months ago, where it was undeliverable. After a month in country B it was apparently sent on to country C (where we are), but it didn’t arrive, even after another month. There is no indication on the envelope, other than that it was marked with the first delivery attempt in country B being a week after it was sent from country A, and it then being marked for ‘return’ a month later. Where it was for the four months it took to get to our local post office in country C can only be imagined. We are just thankful to have got it back. And I’m glad to be inspired too!

60. Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

I very rarely read abridged books, but I came across a free audio version of this book via Getting Loopy, where it was highly recommended. I’d still like to read the full book, but haven’t managed to get hold of it. It’s mostly discussing the internet economy, where websites (including blogs like this one), podcasts (like Getting Loopy) and far more make content available for free, often using the services of other sites, programs and content freely provided (like WordPress). The book is about commercial free provision, where economic benefit is to be gained other than via initial subscription, but is also of great interest to those of us who are here for the joy of it. (That’s another reminder to myself!) The audiobook is well read by the author.

61. What Dress Makes of Us by Dorothy Quigley

This is the kind of book (the what-not-to-wear kind) I’d rarely even browse through, and would certainly never buy, and yet I was intrigued at a version from 1897. It’s witty as well as informative (as social history these days, rather than as practical advice, although some of the basics haven’t changed all that much). If you’re listening on a computer (rather than on a portable device while busy with your hands) it’s worth having a browser window to the Gutenberg text, as that includes the pictures, which are referred to regularly.

Doing what I want

Okay, I think part of the reason catching up with the booklist (what there is of it) is taking so long is that it is so long since I read some of those books. So maybe I’ll just tell you about this year’s books for now instead. (All 6 of them so far…)

The first four are Librivox audiobooks. For now I’ll leave out number 4, as it’s the sequel to a couple from 2009 that I haven’t discussed yet.

1. Miss Pim’s Camouflage by Dorothy Tennant, Lady Stanley

This is a propaganda wish-fulfilment novel about World War I. Specifically, Miss Pim is the middle aged and unfortunately female (considering she has the soul of a general) scion of an English military family, who feels limited in doing her bit for the war effort by simply growing vegetables and joining local committees. One day she discovers that with a simple movement she can become invisible, and under the guidance of her local vicar she offers her services to the War Department and is sent behind enemy lines to spy on the dastardly Germans. Usefully she speaks fluent and nearly accent-less French and German and gets to do all sorts of helpful things, including telling us all just how terrible the Imperial Germans are. (This novel basically suggests the WWI Germans were committing Nazi-style atrocities on a vast scale, which doesn’t sound like history as I learned it.)

2. Ophelia, the Rose of Elsinore by Mary Cowden Clarke

This may be part of a series of novellas about the apparent girlhoods of Shakespeare’s heroines, but it’s decidedly not for children. Abuse of all kinds is implicit in this one. Some of it is interesting in relationship to the Ophelia of Hamlet (which is also at the end of the 2009 list), but some of it has not very much to do with that at all.

3. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

It was interesting to finally hear the actual story/play of this. (It’s a well-edited-together group reading of the play.) I’ve never even seen My Fair Lady, but it’s one of those stories one simply will hear discussed. This was both more thoughtful (in the early story) and less (in the later one) than I had anticipated. I do like the Professor’s mother far more than I like him.

5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

It’s been years since I read this, and I remember liking it more than some of the other Austen novels. This one is far more about ethics, I think, than are, say, Emma or Pride and Prejudice, and I like the way most of the characters are given the opportunity to grow over the course of the novel. In particular, that the castigation is really for those who fail to fulfil that opportunity, more than for their lack of morals in the first place. (I think all the young people we get to know at all in this book are shown to have had inadequate parenting.)

6. Invitation to Go by John Fairbairn

And this is the one I really wanted to get to discussing today. We got to talking about Go last night, and how I wanted greater clarity on the rules and strategy, so when I couldn’t sleep I ended up spending much of the night and most of the morning reading this clear little book, including working through its examples and problems on the board. I need a whole lot more practice (soloing, playing the game with my husband, and really preferably playing with someone with more experience) to be any good, but this did give me a lot more confidence to see what’s going on, after the event at least!

Still on last year’s books…

Of course, by this date in 2008 I was nearly up to this number already, and here in February 2010 that’s the book number from 2009 I’m up to discussing. Just to confuse things nicely…

58. Hooked for Life: Adventures of a Crochet Zealot by Mary Beth Temple

I’d wanted to get this book since Mary Beth started talking about it on Getting Loopy, and especially since I started hearing good things about it from other crocheters online. I didn’t see my way to getting it until mid-August however, when I came across it in a bookshop while on honeymoon. It was perfect for the short attention spans of honeymoon travelling, as the essays and anecdotes are short, funny, and very true (as a crocheter). It’s a nice quality paperback, too, of a good size for fitting in to hand luggage. Not that that’s among my usual book criteria, but it helped at the time! I read it cover to cover at the time, and likely will again, but it’s also fun to dip into.

59. Fuzzy Bones by William Tuning

This was an alternative end to the Fuzzies trilogy (which I read in total before this one), when it was still thought H. Beam Piper’s original third novel would never be found after his death. It takes quite a different tack from Piper’s, introducing several new characters with outside views of the Fuzzies and what should happen to them from Piper’s Zarathustra humans. Tuning admits far more of the seedier side of life (one of the new characters is introduced in the very first line as a “whore”, although while no-one denies what that means, it isn’t explicitly gone into either) than Piper does, as well as extending his one book over a year or more, where for Piper the whole trilogy takes place over 3-6 months. It definitely works, but I do prefer Piper’s own book.

Alquerque Board

Tapestry Crochet Alquerque Board

This picture might be a bit big, but I want it usable for anyone who’d like to use it. This is the chart I used for the Alquerque board on the back of my DH’s tallit bag (which I still have to do the top of). I’ve uploaded it on BGG as well, but thought it should be here. It’s using Carol Ventura’s Tapestry Crochet graph paper (available free on Ravelry) for right-handed in the round work.

Distractions

I should be posting my book reviews. Goodness, I should be reading! However, I seem to be in a variety of other fun and interesting places online instead… Ravelry obviously, and Facebook (obviously for those who read this through there, although I amn’t going to link to that profile from WordPress) – not that I’ve been so active on FB lately, and a Jewish site I amn’t going to link to at all. And then today my dear DH got me on to his favourite site, affectionately known as BGG. Let’s see what this little widget of theirs does:

Nothing apparently, as it doesn’t appear to be working (for me at least). It should tell you what board games I’ve played recently, but seeing as I’ve only told it about one so far (Tigris and Euphrates) that isn’t entirely accurate. It’s a beginning however.

Still working on the crochet projects I can’t discuss, and doing some other useful stuff.

A really local LYS

So how did I miss it up to last night? Absolutely no idea at all…

To be clear, this place is absolutely next door to one of the three supermarkets we use (and probably the one we use most often – one other’s next to the post office, so convenient when we go there, and the third has some things the others don’t) and at 90 degrees from the entrance, so RIGHT THERE. My only excuse is that they also sell hats, and those are more prominently displayed outside.

So leaving the supermarket last night, still slightly frustrated that the pictures in yesterday’s post were being awkward (apologies to anyone who got them on top of each other – this should be sorted now) I happened to glance over and notice balls of yarn hung up outside, so had to go take a look. (It’s not that uncommon for small shops here to have a few balls of cotton and acrylic yarns.)

According to my DH, as soon as I got inside and realised that this was a proper yarn shop, with wool (as well as wool/acrylic mixes), and more than one ball of anything I liked, and even alpaca, I just lit up. Instant mood enhancer!

I was very good, and started (once I’d had a proper look around) with buying cotton for current projects (unfortunately only the ones I can’t tell you about, one being next month’s mystery pattern, and the other a present for someone who might read this) and then they were closing. The gentleman in charge very kindly offered to stay open an extra ten minutes, but I said he didn’t need to. I had what I actually needed for now, and I promised that we live close enough (easy walking distance) that I will be back (regularly)!

I can’t tell you about the projects, but I suppose it won’t hurt to show you the yarn I bought!

So, the flood

I am shocked to realise the flood was nearly two weeks ago, now. Which I shouldn’t be, as it only took us till the Friday after to get the place mostly sorted, and it’s been looking good for about a week now.

On the Tuesday morning, as I was getting ready I could hear heavy rainfall, which wasn’t that surprising. It wasn’t until I got into the front room (about ten minutes before we intended to go out, that I realised the water was flowing inside the apartment, not outside, all over some of the nicest, biggest game boxes, and the biggest, bulkiest dictionaries (ie the things shelved on top of the two bookshelves affected). I screamed for my DH, and started pulling those out of the way, while he went for the bucket, but we quickly realised we’d have to empty both bookcases entirely, and move them, if possible.

The water was coming down really fast, concentrated along a beam helpfully directly above the length of one bookcase, and the side of the other. (Fast enough to fill a decent sized bucket halfway in ten minutes, so we kept having to swap it with our larger saucepans.) Between pulling things off shelves, swapping containers full of water, and desperately trying to get hold of the people upstairs (also our landlords), we were very very busy for the next hour or so. (No time for photos, although there are some later of the aftermath and clean-up.)

Finally, we got through on the phone, the lady upstairs could get home and stop the waterfall, and the panic-work came to an end. By then, we had books and games piled up everywhere, a bookcase in our tiny kitchen (we ate out for two days), and the heaters on for the first time this winter, to help dry out books, games, and furniture!

It took two days to get the bookcases dried, moved, and refilled (we took advantage of having to move the lighter one to place it differently, to try to create more room for my things which are supposed to be arriving this week or next), during which everything we wanted to use had to find a new place, and then another day to buy and have delivered some small plastic chests of drawers so that we could have somewhere to put all those bits and pieces that build up. One of the two bigger ones has my yarn stash and current crochet projects in it (I hope my DH realises it is NOT going to be sufficient once the rest of the stash arrives), and I like the top section having a lift up place for pens, as it works just as well for crochet hooks!

We had to contract our living room table (we had it extended to allow for board games) and move it into the centre of the room, but for now the kitchen has as much room as is possible (not that much), we can get to sleep without climbing over our books (which are newly fully arranged by category, if mostly not yet alphabetised), and we can still both sit at the table while both clothes racks are up (just catching up from the laundry we couldn’t get to do during the clear-up, including all the wet and dirty towels used to mop up the flood). Thankfully the water that came down was all clean, and we took the opportunity to clean the floor under the bookcases while they were out of the way, but with the building work we had a whole lot of dust and dirt to clean off everything.

So all in all, ב”ה it wasn’t much worse. We proved we’re a good team when it comes to unexpected hard work, we got to rearrange things in preparation for my stuff coming, only a few books got wet and those all dried with no sticking pages, none of the games got wet inside, and only two show outer box damage. We even got to save our upstairs neighbours worse damage by alerting them to the flood in their apartment.

Six months in, and we definitely have reason to be pleased with our marriage! (Six Jewish months on Friday afternoon, and six civil months in a few days.)

January, February, March

Well, January’s blogging was practically non-existant, but seeing as I do have quite a bit to write about (last week’s flood and its aftermath, for one; the rest of last year’s books and the first of this years, and even a little crochet, I’m going to try NaBloPoMo again for February. I doubt I’ll make all that much effort to tie into the theme (TIES – sorry for the bad pun), but it’ll be good practice for March, which will be NatCroMo. I amn’t doing a freeform game this year, but I do have a mystery pattern written up. There’ll be more to say on that (I have to test the pattern myself this month, although I won’t be giving out much info on that), so do stay tuned!

Till tomorrow, then…