AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

[10 Tuesday] Books are better than cookies

There are tons of books I love, though I'll admit that between having a baby and going back to school if it isn't a board book or a textbook I don't really have time for it. I feel weird apologizing for having a baby when every day with him is one of the most awesome experiences of my life. So, in honor of parents and babies everywhere, here are my list of books (of the chewing variety and beyond) that have stayed with me.

1. Your Personal Penguin. This is the first book I remember reading to Q, and we read it to him nearly every night. It was also one of the first books where we got a definite response. I started to read and he turned his head in a beeline towards me. Super sweet.

2. Continuing in the penguin theme, And Tango Makes Three. My husband bought this one from the UU bookstore after service one day because he knows I like penguins. It is a beautiful story and definitely one that encourages acceptance. Not a board book, so this one needs to be held with long arms to prevent incidental chewing.

3. The Fairy Tale Tree. This is a book I read incessantly growing up. It's a huge collection of fairy tales from around the world widely ranging in length. It has both small paintings inside and fold out pages with pictures. It was published in the 1960s, so I was ecstatic when I was able to find a copy for us via bookfinder.com (only go there if you are brave or have more willpower than I).

4. Serendipity books. I borrowed a lot of these from the library growing up. I don't remember all of them, but I remember Leo the Lop and The Muffin Dragon. We don't have any of these yet, and I don't really know how easy any of them are to get.

5. The Velveteen Rabbit. A lot of the books I read to Q I know he isn't really ready for. They are chapter books or just long. I read this one to Q while I waited for my last dental appointment, which was a bad idea. Stories that make you cry just don't need to be read in waiting rooms.

6. Nancy Drew. The old ones where the words were longer than two syllables. I also liked the cross-over books with the Hardy Boys. Other mysteries I enjoyed were were the Bobbsey Twins and the Hollisters. I loved books that involved twins.

7. Witch Week. It is part of the Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones. I love Diana Wynne Jones's books, but this is only one of the Chrestomanci books that I read growing up. I was in middle school or junior high, and it really spoke to the outcast me I was at the time.

8. Le Petit Prince. This is the first book I ever read in a language other than English. I originally read it in French and then later read parts of it in Japanese. I have also watched it in French. It is a wonderful story, though I'll admit that I have never read it in English (link is to the French PDF). Of course, reading it in Japanese was a much harder process, which is why I've only read parts (see also, I have read parts of a random book on stress control in Japanese, because all it takes to get me interested is Japanese).

9. The Westing Game. I cannot explain why I loved this book so much, but even now as an adult I love to reread this story. I love the characters with their quirky habits. While I loved Turtle and still do, I also really like Sydelle, because at one point my mom and I were learning shorthand together. 

10. This one is kind of a tie. Biting the Sun is a utopian distopia. I read this a few years ago, and it gripped me with its story of how being able to do whatever you want eventually falls flat and something a bit more concrete is desirable. Snow Queen was one of the first science fiction stories I remember reading. I haven't read it in a few years, but I loved the play between technology, wealth and corruption and the two clashing cultures. I haven't read it in years, but it is one of the titles I periodically reread.

Weeding more books

This week's 10 for Tuesday is things you always have in the car. We don't even have a car, so instead of either that or the stash sale (yarn has been piled on the daybed in the craft room but not photographed) we have the next installment of book culling theater.

This latest round is mostly non-fiction books, including some of my science textbooks. It doesn't include my CRC, because I'm such a geek that I still love that book. The remaining books are all being donated at the beginning of February, so you have about a week to take a look and let me know which ones you want.

And while you are doing that, I will be over here knitting my fingers off. Knit, knit, knit!

party! in a heatwave

Oh, ice cream. This past week I was home, making ice cream and playing Word Realms (beta!). I was supposed to get so much done and I did. I made 18 ice creams, sorbets, frozen yoghurts and granitas. And then on one of the hottest days of the week, people gathered and ate. It was super hot, so cold ice cream was more appreciated than ever!

Now, I operate fairly well on deadline, but more than 2 deadlines and my brain goes explody. I had ice cream and two knitting projects, so really the only thing that happened was ice cream.

My flavors this year included:
Gin and tonic granita
Whoopie pie ice cream
Fleur de lait ice cream
Mimosa sorbet
Basil ice cream
Mango lassi kulfi frozen yoghurt
French toast ice cream
Apple crisp sorbet (bars)¹
Eggs Benedict ice cream
Taro sorbet
Rice gelato ice cream
Strawberry sorbet with balsamic pearls
Pop rocks ice cream
Salted caramel ice cream¹
Bittersweet chocolate sorbet
Milk chocolate ice cream¹
Raita frozen yoghurt
Roasted peach pie ice cream

While most people had favorites, I think the losers were pretty obvious. The taro sorbet needed to be more like an ice cream with a coconut base. The rice gelato was delicious, but needed more time to soften. The apple crisp sorbet was also pretty hard, but we cut it with a knife and ate it like a bar cookie (would have benefited from a crust).

The winners were a little harder to pin down, because there were a few more choices. The strawberry sorbet was a joy to scoop and the balsamic pearls were a beautiful visual touch. The two ice creams from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for the Home Cook (my newest cookbook thanks to my husband) were also easy to scoop and very tasty despite the oddity to me in the method². The dark chocolate sorbet was really popular amongst the chocoholics, and my husband's favorite was whoopie pie.

Mine? My favorites were the raita frozen yoghurt and pop rocks. The pop rocks ice cream was the orange popsicle ice cream from the Perfect Scoop with chocolate covered pop rocks. My nephew was so upset that he didn't just have pop rocks to eat. I probably am a bad person for finding it funny, but it was such a silly thing to be upset over that I thought it was hilarious.

Because of the heat, people faded a lot faster. That meant some of the ice creams didn't come back for a second time. So, the granita and the peach pie are gone. There are so many ice creams left, that I might not need to make ice cream for months!

Other than leftover ice cream the best thing was getting to see so many people. There were people who made it who didn't get to come last year, so it was great to see people that I don't normally get to spend time with!

Ice cream photos (slideshow in Flickr, some are from last year because I'm too lazy to make another set)

¹These ice creams were from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for the Home Cook.

²Jeni's method for most ice creams involves heating milk and cream or other dairy until boiling. After it has boiled for a while you add a slurry with cornstarch (or tapioca starch, which I used) and boil till it thickens. Then you add it to cream cheese. All of those ingredients, including corn syrup, are designed to bind up the water, so the ice cream won't get icy. It works, and it tastes mostly the same but not as rich as a custard based ice cream. However, it meant I didn't go through more than 2 dozen eggs, so it was awesome.

Science Fiction (ooh, ooh, ooh)

Last week was a good reading week for me. I finished 2 books and am a decent way on a third. One of the books was fairly standard paranormal fluff. A fun read, but not hard and thematically not interesting to write about no matter how much I enjoyed reading it.

The other book? Well, it was a book for knitters, sewers, and spinners. Of course, that was provided that you like science fiction and the distopian novel.

Yarn, by Jon Armstrong (© 2010), reads like the bastard love child of 1984, Zamyatin's We, and a bevy of fashion designers. Instead of the government controlling the lives of the people, it is a mega corporation, encouraging the population to endless consumption and reveration of the corporate state. While it isn't all bad, the crimes and horrors are omnipresent. The world is a giant mall with saleswarriors and tourists and "fashioning."

What made this story an interesting read for me was the timeline. The main thrust of the story takes place in about a day, maybe two. However, interspersed between the current action are the memories of the past, giving a lie to the beauty and freedom of the place, showing the hardships and horrors in both a stark light of reality and a rosy glow of memory.

It wasn't a hard read, though neither was 1984 or We, but it did make me think a little bit harder about consumption and the control of our lives and politics by the companies we use.

Oh, and it is a little alarming to me to see the back of the book use the term fashionpunk. Really, we have novels about probably everything.

[10 Tuesday] i love books

I don't really make any bones about how much I love young adult literature. The problems are often both simpler and more realistic for my life and it is a great area to find strong female role models. There is dialog and action and are not overly angsty.

While it isn't the only thing I read, it does comprise some of the best things I've read and most of the books I reread on a regular basis. So, here is my list in not necessarily a particular order.

1. Tamora Pierce. I have to say that I love pretty much everything she has ever written (White Tiger, I'm looking at you). When she was at World Con in Boston a few years back, I actually brought book 4 of my favorites series for her to sign (I didn't want to inundate her with books). The Keladry books are definitely on the top of my list: strong willed, hard working girl fights bullies and protects people. Also a favorite is Will of the Empress. Daja's story in WotE is lovely and bittersweet, and is gracefully done.

2. Sorcery and Cecelia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot. I love the letter story format, which I think makes this book work really well. It is definitely better than the sequel. It also has a feel of a more active and fanciful Jane Austen.

3. Pride and Prejudice. I decided after getting about halfway through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that I needed to read the original first. It did take me a long time to get through P&P, but it was worth it. I think the beginning is a bit slow, but I love seeing the intelligent lines thrown to the women in the group at a time when it was just not common.

4. Dark Lover by JR Ward. This was the gateway drug that Chris sent me over a year ago as an entry into m/m romance. This one is a straight up m/f paranormal romance. A bit steamy, but the intimate portions of the story are not just added on to give readers a little hot flash in their day. It was good enough that I read 3 or 4 more of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. 

5. Among the Living, the first Psycop novel by Jordan Castillo Price, is what I would suggest to people looking for to read something in the m/m genre. Many of the m/m stories I've read since reading Dark Lover have been unfortunately heavy on the sex and light on the plot. This is not one of those books. I love that the sexuality of Victory Bayne is just another part of the story and not the one that is most important.

6. A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer. This is two of my favorite genres (and one of the reasons I love the Tamora Pierce books so much too): a coming of age and school story. This one is set in the backdrop of turn of the century mystical Europe. I love how Faris, who is a strong willed and tempermental grows. The story at its essence is about how personal responsibility is the greatest thing anyone can have, but it isn't heavy handed.

7. Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones. This was a book I first remember reading in grade school. I never found the other books in the series until I was an adult, but this one was one that I read and reread growing up. I bought it a few years back, and while it didn't age as well as I had hoped it is still a fun, very quick, read. 

8. But We Are Not of Earth is another young adult novel I read while still in grade school. Jean Karl's book was a favorite of mine. Unfortunately this book is out of print and while used copies can be found without too high a price, new copies can be very pricy.

9. PC Hodgell's God Stalk is a book I can blame on my friend Sarah. She introduced me to PC Hodgell and we would bemoan the fact that she finished her dissertation between God Stalk (1983) and Dark of the Moon (1987) and the third book, Seeker's Mask (2000). That was a long time to make us wait, but it was worth it. The story of Jame and the god-ridden world she is in is still fascinating to me.

10. Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. I love his writing. i cannot always read it, but this one was very readable and hilarious! Now Lamb? Lamb I never finished because it was so sacrilegious that I expected lightning to strike me down for enjoying it. 

There are plenty of other books I could have added to this list like Where's My Cow? or Tuesday or... well, I'm going to stop now.

raising a glass to 2011

I'm not one for making resolutions. I do it, but I don't expect them to stick. They either are too specific: Lose 10 pounds by my anniversary (imminently doable), too vague: be nicer (see? so vague), or too ambitious: exercise every day.

This year I have a few projects in mind.

1. The 2011 M/M Romance Challenge. 15 books, 12 months. Imminently doable. Most of these books will be ebooks (umm, maybe all). 

2. The Perfect Scoop. It's my favorite ice cream cookbook. I have probably made about 20% of the recipes (umm, or not, my math gets a bit fuzzy). I would like to make all of the recipes this year. Ice cream is one of the go to desserts in our house, and David Lebovitz is my ice cream idol. 

3. Use the library more. Our public library offers both print books and ebooks. Just this week I went to Pandemonium Books for Maggie's newest book release party. I was looking through the stacks of books when a new book caught my eye, but I didn't know the author. Instead, I finished the library book I was reading and saw the book at my library the next day. Now I get to try out a new-to-me author. If I like her books, then I will be happy enough to buy them. Yatta!

My library has a reading history and a value calculator, and I would love to see mine reflect my love of books more than it does now. It is easy to let the day to day life and knitting push aside books for a while. Invariably, that results in a book reading binge of old favorites. I don't want to think about how many times I read all of my Tamora Pierce books this year (I'm betting the number was at least 3). 

That's it. Three items. Not too much to intersperse between my knitting, other cooking, and getting back to running with our handy dandy treadmill.

a brief break

There will be more ice cream (I haven't nearly exhausted my photos), but I wanted to talk about my newest tech toy. 

I got the Kobo for my birthday in June, and I've been using it for just over a month now. While it is not the fanciest or the fastest ereader on the market, it was what I was looking for. All I want to do is read. While it would be great to read my Japanese books, I don't truly need it. I don't read them often enough without a vocabulary dictionary and a kanji dictionary nearby to justify an ereader for that.

Of course, I have a ton Borders cards that were gifts for my birthday, and I am slowly buying books I'm interested in. But I'm thrifty, so mostly I have been reading free books from the web and library books. Library books for the ereader are terrific. While I am a Quincy library card, part of me wishes I was a member of the Boston Public Library. The Quincy library has gotten about 15 new ebooks in the last week or two, and I'm currently borrowing books 4 and 5 (Outlander and the Graveyard Book). BPL has more than one thousand books in its elibrary, but knowing that my local library is getting more books this way all the time is very reassuring.

Now it is time for me to go read!

a tiny break

I'm making a shrug to go with my pretty dress for the weddings I'm attending this fall (and a Cirque show!), but the book that it was in is both not something I was going to make a lot of items out of nor was it truly within my budget.

What to do?

Interlibrary Loan to the rescue!

When I was working at the library in college, I was in the Interlibrary Loan department. It was a great job with lots of different things to do. One of the best things is that it truly hammers home how many libraries there are and that you do not need to own each and every book. Borrow it from the library, preview whether or not the book is in your style, and if you like it then maybe you can buy your own copy someday. I feel the same way with reading books on my Kobo (which I really should give some review of). I have some free ebooks and some others I bought at low cost that were first books in series and I have borrowed books from the library. All of these have helped me pick a few new to me authors to read, so I'm not rereading Westing Game and every Tamora Pierce novel until I die.

I get to pick up the book I requested on Tuesday, which is the only day I have both do not have rehearsal and that the library is open when I get off work for the next two weeks. Yeah!

Tuesday!

It has been a dog's age since I last did a 10 for Tuesday. Somewhere along the line I got so busy that I didn't notice when I stopped receiving the emails.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the first one back is 10 books on my summer reading list. I just got a Kobo almost two weeks ago (yeah birthday!), and I'll admit that it has mostly been a vehicle for reading the most mind numbing drivel and brain candy possible. Though in a fit of frustration when one of my books didn't load (completely my fault for not wanting to read the instructions), I did read some classic Japanese fairy tales.

1. Silly vampire lit. Think teen and tween lit that is not Twilight, though I might read it on the ereader, but only if I can borrow it from the library. I'm so far enjoying my silly vampire lit via library-sourced ebooks. It's affordable and allows me to dabble in a new author before taking the plunge. I've already read the first P.C. Cast book on my laptop and it was fairly engaging and left me willing to part with a few hard earned dinari and rocks for a bit more.

2. Things Chris recommends. She has a wide and voracious reading habit, and tends to find a lot of free or discounted ebooks. I'm trying to see what the thrift factor of an ereader is/can be, and to that end I'm only buying books that are marked at high discount, are free, or can be purchased with gift certificates.

3. I will probably buy all of the Tamora Pierce books available for the ereader over the next six months or so, and then I will read them all. Even though that is way more than 24 books I expect it will only take me a couple of weeks if I don't have to worry about carrying one or two of them at a time. Sadly, unlike some popular romance/mystery/thriller authors, there is no option to buy boxed 'ebook' sets of the Tamora Pierce books.

4. I am planning to get the Pioneer Woman cookbook for the ereader. It will be an experiment in whether or not I get suitable levels of functionality from an ereader cookbook or if I should just chuck the cookbook idea in favor of the Internet. I already do a hefty amount of cooking via moving my laptop onto the bookshelf in the kitchen and reading the recipe off of it.

I'd have more items that than, but really the books that Chris recommends alone is a few dozen a week. I don't read that fast or constantly, having never learned to either read in my sleep or while I am rehearsing.

a bad influence

I feel like I should be blaming Chris at Stumbling over Chaos for my latest book addiction. I've gotten into ebooks. I don't have an ereader, but I have almost 10 free ebooks (and they aren't all smut!) at this point that are not just public domain items from Project Gutenberg. While I love some of the classics, I don't tend to read them as often, so it is nice to know that I have already gotten a number of books that I can read on my laptop. 

I read Kim Dare's Three Minute Man, which was a really quick read even with the slight slowness of reading it on my computer. I enjoyed this book, though I will admit that I was expecting it to be more like a novel and less like a really cool vignette.

I started Angel's Blood, which I won from Holly at The Book Binge this evening. This will be the longest book I've read on my computer at over 300 pages. I'm reading it with Adobe Digital Editions. 

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the good reviews keep coming for some of the sub-$150 ereaders that are coming out on the market this summer. I've been bringing print books with me on my commute, but I have been finishing each book within about a day, often leaving me without anything to read on the way home. Heck, yesterday was so bad on the train home that I randomly opened the book I had just finished and continued reading. Normally I give myself at least a month before rereading a book!