Three (+1) on Thursday

Three on Thursday is more nicely alliterative, but since I finished a fourth book I added the +1. Here in order from worst to best are the books I read this week. 

Radically Content is proof that you can't judge a book by its cover. I came upon this book while searching for something entirely different from the library, but it sounded interesting, so I placed a hold. The basic premise of Radically Content is one I agree with (your worth needs to come from within) but given the author's shallow writing style and what felt like endless repetition, I think that her ideas are better suited to Instagram. I was unaware of her content there, mainly because I already follow her advice to not let social media make me feel bad. I'm unclear if this book is meant to be a memoir, self-help, or some combination, but for me, it didn't accomplish either one very well. She writes about affirmations, healing, self-acceptance, body image, journaling, and how moving to Paris can help - a lot of buzz words but no depth or substance. The biggest help I can offer if you are looking for contentment and satisfaction is not to waste your time reading this book. 1.5 stars rounded down.

The publisher's blurb for The Book of George makes George sound fairly unlikeable. Maybe that would be the case in real life, but I enjoyed the person that Kate Greathead writes about in this story that covers his life from about age 12 to almost 40. George isn't a completely pathetic character, he just has very little motivation, or maybe it's not placed in the right areas. We meet his father, mother, sister, and long-term girlfriend Jenny, and begin to understand better why he might be the way that he is. Jenny provides much of the motivation that George lacks, and later on, George's mother and sister are his rescuers. The book does have some humor, but often it's presented in a humor-tinged poignant way. I'd like to hold out hope that George was eventually learning to take the reins and not just give up, as shown by his making multiple attempts to get a dead squirrel out of a car engine. Three stars for this one. 

Thank you to Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on October 8, 2024.

Here One Moment was a real page-turner! I wondered if I was really the reader for this book as I've never read anything by Liane Moriarty, but I couldn't resist the pre-publication copy from the publisher. On board a delayed flight, a woman gets up from her seat, points at passengers, and announces, "I expect," and proclaims their cause of death and the age at which they will die. Some passengers are told they will die at advanced ages, while others receive pronouncements of their death not far in the future. This is unsettling and unnerving for almost everyone, especially for those who are told they will die in the next several months, or the mother who is told her son will drown at the age of seven. As the book progresses, the short (and sometimes choppy) chapters alternate between Cherry's story (the Death Lady) and more details about some of the passenger's lives and reactions. There is a slow reveal of the Death Lady's details, and there were times that I wished for longer and more detailed chapters, but they did serve to propel the story forward. The explanation for the Death Lady's actions on the plane was a little weak, and some suspension of beliefs is necessary at the end, but the book was a nice examination of "Can fate be fought?" Three and a half stars rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley, Edelweiss, and Crown Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on September 10, 2024.

Seven Deadly Sins is both original and quite interesting. Guy Leschziner looks at the seven deadly sins (wrath, gluttony, lust, envy, sloth, greed, and pride) from a biological point. He considers genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and pathology to explain how and why humans may do things that are cruel, or behave in a greedy or lazy way. Each sin is dealt with in its own chapter, and the author presents case studies with rare genetic diseases and illnesses that illustrate and cause the patient to act in a "sinful" manner. Some chapters offer fewer biological reasons for sins, like lust and envy, but even those provide curious and intriguing facts. I will be looking at people's index and ring fingers to judge how much fetal exposure to testosterone they had in utero, beginning with my two sons. Lest you think the author is trying to excuse the sins of the Holocaust or genocide and wars that have arisen throughout history due to wrath and greed, he has also written a chapter on free will and its importance. The glossary at the end of this book is especially helpful for those of us who have forgotten the structures and areas of the brain that we may have learned 45 years ago. This book can help us begin to understand how and why we humans act as we do and the ways biology may play a part in our actions. Four and a half stars rounded up.

I hope Mr. Leschziner's next book is about the Seven Cardinal Virtues, but until then I will be reading another one of his books, The Man Who Tasted Words, an exploration of our senses and how the brain understands and/or misunderstands the world around us.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on December 3, 2024.

Here's hoping you're reading something good!

Unraveled Wednesday: 7/24/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a potholder that took me a long time to weave but it was worthwhile. There is no linkup today as Sherman has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, so please keep Kat in your thoughts.

The pattern is called "Right Hook" from Piglet's Potholder Patterns, and the description is as follows: "Combining a parallel row of double floats with a single diagonal twill stripe gives this pattern a dramatic twist." The patterns on Piglet's site are in black and white, and it's up to the maker to determine what colors they want to weave with. I'm still a bit unsure about choosing colors, but I'll be weaving this pattern again someday and will try different (or maybe fewer) colors. I had to print out the pattern and use a post-it note to keep track of my weft and the over and under symbols. I could be heard muttering "Over, under, over two, no wait, that's under three", but it worked. 

And for the really cool part, take a look at the back of this potholder:

It's a different pattern! I can't give you a weaving explanation of how or why this works, but to me, it's almost like magic!

I read quite a few books this week, so I'll put all of my books in a separate post tomorrow or Friday. 

What are you making this week?

A Gathering of Poetry: July 2024

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. Those of you who receive The Washington Post Book Club newsletter may have read this poem. In the June 21st email, editor Ron Charles wrote about the long-awaited re-opening of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. A specially commissioned poem by Rita Dove is inscribed in a marble border that wraps around the west garden walkway. I'm not sure I'll be visiting the Library any time soon, but I keep returning to this poem again and again, so I'm sharing it here.

Clear your calendars. Pocket your notes.
Look up into the blue amplitudes,
sun lolling on his throne, watching clouds
scrawl past, content with going nowhere.
No chart can calibrate the hush that settles
just before the first cricket song rises;
no list will recall a garden’s embroidery,
its fringed pinks and reds, its humble hedges.
Every day is Too Much or Never Enough,
so stop fretting your worth and berating
the cosmos – step into a house where
the jumbled perfumes of our human potpourri
waft up from a single page.
You can feel the world stop, lean in, and listen
as your heart starts up again.

====

You can read more about the incredible story of the poem here, and listen to Rita Dove read the poem here. 

You can also read more about Rita Dove (Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate) here. 

Thanks for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unraveled Wednesday: 7/17/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a potholder set. I got the bright idea that Ryan might also have a use for some smaller six-inch potholders in addition to the larger eight-inch PRO size, so I had to buy a regular loom. Here is the first matching set. They're real ROYGBIV potholders in the proper order since I knew that would matter to Ryan.

I read a couple of books this week, one slightly better than the other. The first was You Are Here by David Nicholls. For me, this was an enjoyable three-star summer read. It doesn't quite rise to the level of One Day but Nicholls has written two pleasant protagonists, Marnie and Michael. They are both divorced and living singular lives. Michael does not want to be at home by himself so he goes for long walks; Marnie is almost agoraphobic and doesn't want to leave home. Through pushy friends, she ends up on a walk from coast to coast in England, and of course, Michael is there. There is humor (not as many laugh-out-loud moments as others have noted), a light and predictable plotline, and charming characters. This might fit the bill if you're looking for a non-challenging, feel-good read. 

Sarah recommended the second book, A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus. I just love a good story set in England, and A Place to Hang the Moon fits the bill. It's a middle-grade book set in 1940 but sometimes that's what you have the bandwidth to listen to. Siblings Anna, Edmund, and William live with their grandmother after the death of their parents, but unfortunately, their grandmother has just died without making any plans for guardianship of the children. Her solicitor arranges for them to be evacuated to the country, and although they are lucky enough to be billeted together, they are often not housed with very kind people. Of course, there is a war going on and London is being bombed every night, so everyone is on edge, and William often has to take responsibilities that I would not wish on a twelve-year-old. I kept imagining my own children in a situation like this and that gave extra poignancy to the tale. The story is predictable, but it is also charming, sweet, with a little sadness, and just one fairly repulsive rat-catching scene. This book makes a welcome respite from reading the news and more bad news every day, so I rounded up my 3.5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week? 

Read With Us: The Ministry of Time

Last week, Carole gave you an introduction to our current Read With Us selection, The Ministry of Time. This week I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this time travel, romance, spy thriller, science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction novel. It's a combination of many genres, hard to classify, and there is a lot going on in this book. 

I'm always interested in how authors deal with time travel and I especially love Kaliane Bradley's take on the subject. At the beginning of the book, she presents time travel as a relatively inexplicable phenomenon, saying that “the moment you start to think about the physics of it, you are in a crock of shit.” When she was asked about this in an interview, the author gives what I think is a great answer:

"Time travel is such a weighted trope. When you write about time travel, you’re not just writing about time travel; you’re writing your own outline for the shape of the universe. Do you subscribe to Thomas Carlyle’s “great man” theory of history, or does history come from below, from the people? Is time a series of linear events, expanding into unfixed futures; or is “time” complete and whole, regardless of the human perception? Does time travel always have to draw on our (rich and varied) hard sci-fi tradition, especially if the author has barely a gnat’s grasp on quantum physics?

Well, what I wanted to do was write about this one sexy polar explorer. So I shut all those questions down ASAP.

I’m joking. The book is told from the point of view of a woman for whom these questions are so many ontological fart noises; it would have rung false for her to try and explain the fictional physics. She perceives history as a human subject, so she flags early on that what she’s telling is not a conceptual story, but a human one."

About that sexy polar explorer...

Bradley says “I wrote this book kind of by accident." During the pandemic, she took refuge in the TV series The Terror (based on a 2007 novel by Dan Simmons), a supernatural horror about Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 Arctic expedition. She was especially drawn to one of the crew, Lt. Graham Gore, who dies two episodes in at the age of 38. While looking for more information about Graham Gore, Bradley was struck by a Wikipedia description of him as “a man of great stability of character, a very good officer, and the sweetest of tempers”.

“I was in such a state at this point in my life that I thought, ‘You’d be handling the pandemic better than me,’” she laughs. She was smitten. A dashing portrait of Gore now sits in her study.

Gore led her to seek out other polar exploration enthusiasts online, “quite a community, it turns out”. She began writing what would become The Ministry of Time in installments for them: kind of “a nerdy literary parlour game” imagining what it might be like to have her favourite explorer – Gore – move in with you. “It just kept spinning out and I kept on going,” she says, writing 400 words or so in the evenings. “It was just so much fun.” About halfway through, one of her new online friends said, “I think this is a novel.”

And so it is, one I hope you'll Read With Us. 

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout July. Discussion day for The Ministry of Time is scheduled for Tuesday, September 17, 2024, at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always fun, educational, and entertaining Zoom discussion.

The hardcover, Kindle, and audio versions of the book are all available from my library with a bit of a wait. Hopefully, we'll all have plenty of time to place a hold, get the book, and read it.  The Kindle and hardcover versions are priced reasonably on Amazon and I'm sure your local bookseller could order a copy for you if you're lucky enough to have a local bookseller. I found that the dual approach of listening to the audio version and reading it on my Kindle worked well for me. 

I do hope you'll read The Ministry of Time with us. It's a genre-defying book with an intriguing cover and an original premise. I have read it once and I'm hoping that a re-read in late August or early September will answer some of my questions and make things clearer for me. (I will admit to being a bit confused about the ending.)

Come Read The Ministry of Time With Us!

In Person!

I feel like I "know" quite a few of you virtually. Between comments and email exchanges I "talk" to many of you several times a week. But it's an even greater pleasure when I get to meet some of you in person, and that happened on Saturday. 

After they drove across the state of PA from Pittsburgh, we (Dee, Vera, and I) met up with Sarah and her daughter Mo in person. Of course, they are even lovelier than you might have imagined. We all had beverages, chatted, knit, and Mo crocheted. She's wearing a sweater that she crocheted and Sarah has on her first Rift tee. 

I truly appreciate Sarah and Mo taking time out of the TwinSet Retreat that they were attending to meet up with our little group of knitters in the eastern PA/NJ area. Now John can't tease me about my "make-believe friends" because of all the knitters I've been lucky enough to meet in person. 

If anyone else is ever in the area, please let me know! We can meet at the Three Birds coffee house and be watched over by a friendly caribou.

Thanks again to Sarah and Mo; it was a lovely way to spend Saturday morning with all five of us in person!

Unraveled Wednesday: 7/10/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a mixed bag of making. There were several more potholders, one more bright one for me, and two in neutrals for a housewarming gift.

There was also a return to knitting on my Hitch On the Move. It's progressing, but I've still got quite a ways to go. I guess you have to actually work on a project in order to finish it, but my interest in knitting has waned as the temperatures have risen. 

Reading was a bit of a bust this week also. I looked forward to The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan and was happy to get it from the library. It was a much-hyped book, but I realized I was going to have trouble when I had to make myself read it. The Cliffs begins well enough telling the story of Jane Flanagan. Growing up in Maine, she came upon a deserted house, perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Jane eventually becomes a historian and gets a job as an archivist at Harvard. But then due to her alcoholism and inappropriate behavior, she loses her job and husband in one fell swoop. Jane returns to Maine to clear out her deceased mother's home, and she connects with Genevieve Richards, a wealthy woman who’s bought the old house and bulldozed much of its history so she can put in a pool. This is where I think the book starts to go off the rails. The author tries to do far too much, including lecturing the reader about the history of the Native Americans of New Hampshire and Maine, the theft of their artifacts, culture, traditions, and the injustices they were forced to suffer, the history of the white explorers and settlers of the region, the Shaker community, and spirits of the dead who haunt their former homes. And let's not forget the effects of alcoholism on the alcoholic herself and all of those around her.

All of these topics were related but the author did not make the connections in any interesting ways and the book just became tedious with too many characters, timelines, and points of view. It felt like Sullivan had done extensive research but then threw it all together into one book. Sadly, it was a meandering, chaotic, two-star book that left me feeling glad to finish and move on to hopefully much better reading.

I've read How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking three times, but this time I was focused specifically on what Jordan Ellenberg had to say about math, probability, polls, and voting. We're in the midst of some pretty awful political upheaval, and I need to find a way to think about it calmly and preserve my sanity. Some quotes I want to remember:

"There is a good reason to bet on "X" (candidate), but we don’t know for sure. There are so many people, especially pundits on TV, saying: “Now look, this is what’s going to happen.” And then somebody else says, “No, this is going to happen.” That’s a very different perspective to have on the future: to believe that a clear answer exists, if only we’re clever enough to see it."

"Feelings are for the same thing that math is for. They’re both for guiding your decisions and helping you select actions and helping you understand things. Relevant to your decision making is how strongly you feel about the outcome. So, yes, probabilities are about feelings."

"A good mental-health question to ask yourself is: What am I actually gaining from trying to figure this out now? Our epistemic situation when we know the outcome of the election will be the exact same no matter how hard we think about it right now. Our stress affects nothing."

This is perhaps easier said than done, but this at least provides a framework for me to deal with this cataclysm in a way that's slightly better for my mental health.

What are you making and reading this week?