Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

* Trigger warning for sexual assault content. It's coincidental to the story, but it's in there.

I'm in Love. As in all romantic comedy story lines, I met my love while life was not going me well. In fact, it was kind of kicking me in the nuts. I have issues with depression, and my psychiatrist told me to work out five days a week. Know what sucks worse than being depressed? Working out at the gym five days a week by yourself. My boyfriend broke up with me on a sidewalk, and obliterated me from his life in an impressive 15 minute purge-a-thon of social media. Work was kicking my ass, and grad school applications were filling me with anxiety that no amount of fish oil or emotional eating could mitigate.* I was down, feeling unsure of my ability to make change, ready to embark on a quest of some sort. Maybe I'd drop everything and go on an around the world tour getting to know myself. But alas, not enough money! Maybe I could have a summer fling who would teach me how to trust my inner voice, but the seasons speed by for no woman. And then, surprisingly, unexpectedly

★ ★ ★ ★ I read this whole book in a single day. It was an easy read, but good.  Audrey Niffenegger is also the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, which I've also read. I enjoyed this book a lot more although there are clearly some themes that the two books have in common. The theme of individuals traveling and communicating in ways that aren't typically possible is at the forefront, as well as some rather twisted personal relationships. I was incredibly uncomfortable about the romantic relationship in The Time Traveler's Wife, which, although made to seem beautiful, was in actuality somewhat disturbing. He knew her as both an adult and as a child, which is, at the least strange, and at the most somewhat perverse. In Her Fearful Symmetry, there are ghosts, two sets of twins, and some very strange familial/sexual relationships. The tone of the book is sufficiently dark that you can anticipate the plot twists with relative ease, I thought. Basically, if there is a

★ ★ ★ I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I felt like there was too much going on for me to become involved in any one character. The book is the story of a family holding onto the past and trying to make sense of what's happening to them and to their nation. With so many characters who all have a different response to what's happening, it's somewhat confusing as to what viewpoint we're supposed to identify with.  There are also a lot of themes at play here - racism, colonialism, family struggles, the relationships between generations, traditionalism vs. modernism, and a large group of people attempting to make sense of the world in the midst of incredible changes of a magnitude that far exceeds their ability to cope.  In some cases, this plays out almost ironically. When Daniel Dorai decides to return home to Chevathar and reboot the family farming colony, he finances the endeavor with earnings from his skin whitening cream. He knows how to be

★ ★ ★ ★ When I saw this book on the shelf of the Edisto Island Bookstore this summer, I was instantly interested in reading this.   I should admit up front that part of the appeal of this book was that it was fictionalized Jewish history. I love books about Jewish people.  When I said that to Patrick, he looked at me like I was crazy. It does sound exoticizing*, but I feel this way because books about Jews make Jews less exotic, not more.  Growing up in South Carolina, I knew one Jewish person, and I had no idea what it meant to be Jewish.  I certainly never got any history lessons or world culture lessons about Jews.  I did not understand, for instance, that they are a vast and diverse culture spread across the whole planet that is made of many different groups with their own individual cultures.  Even more interesting is that I was raised in a Baptist church and grew up with the stories of the Old Testament, but no one ever told me all those people were Jewish

★ ★ ★ ★ I read the first book in the series years ago, and only just now returned for 2 and 3.  In the intervening years, Stieg has lost none of his appeal.  I think we all know what an incredible character Lisbeth Salander is, and honestly Blomkvist is still about as appealing as an over the hill playboy ever is - so sometimes a lot, sometimes less so.  The confusion I felt about her being hung up on him at the end of the first novel was reiterated once again at the beginning of the second.  He proves incredibly loyal through books 2 and 3, and clever besides, and yet it never becomes at all clear why Lisbeth would fall in love with him.   I think the primary appeal of the novels lies neither in the plot nor the characters, but rather in Stieg Larsson's writing style. He is practically a documentarian, providing details continually throughout the entire novel that most authors wouldn't have provided to begin with.  For example, he provides incredible detail about what

★ ★ I'd heard a lot of comparisons between Battle Royale and The Hunger Games , so I wanted to see if they were well founded.  Other than the central concept of kids battling it out, it is not particularly similar.  I realize that to say that them having the same central concept yet being totally different sounds ridiculous, but I think they are. The main act of Battle Royale is the fighting, and while the fighting is important in The Hunger Games, it's used as a way to pull out other issues.  The relationship with the state and the purpose of the games is much clearer in Hunger Games.  I think this makes the violence in Battle Royale more menacing, in that it seems without purpose, but it also makes it seem less important, almost trivial.  This is stupid, kids are killing each other. There is, perhaps a lesson there, that we need the context of Rue and Katniss's family and relationships made clear to us before we care that kids are killing each other. Somehow it isn

★ ★ ★.5 When I first picked up this book, I thought the title was referring to an entire continent.  I was intrigued by the idea that the title was reducing a whole continent down that way, as simple the light between two oceans.  As it turns out, the title is both more literal and more metaphorical. The main characters are Tom and Isabel, and the story is told largely through Tom's eyes, although the omnipotent narrator provides insight into the other characters increasingly more often as the book continues. The story begins as Tom returns from the Great War to Western Australia, where he begins tending lighthouses for the government. The work is governed by strict rules and an order that Tom finds appealing after his experiences at war.  At one point he says that rules are what prevent man from becoming savages.  He clings to the safety of this order as well as his dedication to something he perceives to be larger than himself - the Janus lighthouse guiding ships safely

I started a new job about a month and a half ago, and it's been quite a ride so far.  My titles are the most impressive I've ever had, Program Coordinator and Managing Director (It's a joint appointment).  It's a great opportunity for me to grow and expand my skill set, and I'm enjoying it, but there have been moments when I've wondered if I can accomplish everything that needs to be done, both in terms of quantity of work, but also the level of quality that I want to achieve. One of the things I've struggled with in the past is delegating, which would seem to be at the center of both managing and directing, and would also go a long way toward helping me to accomplish everything I need to. So far, I'm doing better in this job and I've discovered a few things about why that might be.  First, there's just too much for me to do alone - asking for help is the only way to make it work.  I'm nothing if not pragmatic. Second, delegation is about

★★★★ As I observe my neighbors across the street yelling at their kids as they are often wont to do, I think about Nell and her primer.  I'm also thinking about the Mouse Army and whether they ended up better or worse off than the boys born into their families. They didn't have families, but they had each other.   Patrick and I are having an ongoing discussion about what men and women (generalizations, heyo!) look for in media.  Someone posited that women look for a story, words they can sing along to, characters they like.  We're narrative.  Men look for a mood, an experience, a feeling, a setting.   I didn't immediately agree or disagree with him, but I've been gathering information and observations and I keep revisiting the conversation, both mentally and with him.  It's made me wonder how we would perceive this story differently. The technology is a huge part of it - it's at the center of the story - the fate of nations and the entire econom

★★★★ It's not that I resisted reading this, it's more that it just wasn't really on my radar.  It was gifted to me by a friend as an epub, and I knew it was fairly long so it appealed to me as something that I could read while traveling.  I made the mistake of starting it last Thursday, and devoured it in a weekend, and anticipate starting the second book in the series as soon as I can get it loaded on my iPad. I resisted looking at anything about the HBO series until I was finished with the book.  I really like being able to imagine the characters and wonder about how they look when they do things.  Characters are seldom well visualized from the beginning for me.  It takes a while before I know what they look like in my head.  I didn't want to spoil my own imaginings with how some producer thinks they look.  I took a peek after I finished the book because at that point, I felt like my ideas were well enough ingrained to resist alteration by some pictures.  I'm gla

★ ★ ★ ★   I was ridiculously ill with a sinus infection when I found this on the living room sofa like a literary present to the part of me that wanted to be a kid, reading in bed while my mom brought me something hot to drink.  I had to make my beverage myself, but finding the book was a really nice treat.  It was Kristen's and I stole it for the 2 hours it took me to read.  The Bad Beginning is a short little novella and a great read.  Having never seen the movie, I was still able to very vividly conjure up images of the characters.  The descriptions are not particularly thorough,  but the details Mr. Snicket (a pseudonym) does provide are incredibly evocative and allow you to fill in all the gray areas with the physical characteristics you think go along with his opinionated descriptions.   The writing is clever enough to be entertaining for an adult, but simple enough to be appropriate for children. I was really surprised by how many things I've read about people not b

★ ★ ★ I'm sick of Chuck Palahniuk, which is kind of too bad since I've really enjoyed his books in the past.  I like his stories, I like what he has to say, but it's so damned heavy handed.  There's no subtlety - it's all shock and awe and in your face. A few other trends I've noticed.  His characters find themselves in cars a lot.  It's like they don't belong anywhere, so they have to be mobile.  Also, they are almost universally awful.  Would it kill him to write a character I don't hate once in a while?  Finally, only batshit crazy things ever happen to them.  I find it hard to identify with individuals who are clearly nutso. I listened to this in the car on the way to SC - it took a little less than 6 hours, which is pretty short for an audiobook.  It was good for listening in that the fast pace kept me interested, but I didn't find the characters particularly compelling. The girl who read the audiobook did the best Evelyn (pronounce

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Bill Bryson rocked my world with A Short History of Nearly Everything, and this one book is somehow even better, maybe because the histories he's telling deal with our most intimate surrounds. Bryson marches through our houses room by room, answering questions most of us have never even thought to ask. It's a fascinating premise for a book, made even more so by Bryson's conversational writing style*. I stretched out the reading of this book because I didn't want it to end, but found no difficulty picking it up and putting it down and devouring it in little bites. It's like running into a particularly fascinating friend on the bus. Even better, the information turns out to be so immediately applicable all around you. For example, I read about Henry Dreyfuss and his design of the cradle desk telephone and then that day went to buy stamps and he was featured on the pioneers of industrial design stamps, and I knew why. It was oddly satisfying. Since

I debated about whether or not to blog about this bc well, it's my lady parts.  But with all the crazy legislation lately about what I can and cannot do with my bits, it seems that it's on the public table, so I mean, why not?  Also, people talk about having babies all the damned time, I can talk about not-baby-having. I had an IUD put in today.  It's not something I'm particularly thrilled about because it's a long-term birth control solution, and I don't want to believe that I need a long-term birth control solution because I'm about to turn 31 and I'm never going to have babies, and oh my god, I think I'm crying a little.  Okay, not really.  Not right now.  But I'm not thrilled is what I'm saying.  I went with Paragard because it's non-hormonal (more on that in a second) and it can be left in for 10 years.  You can have it taken out much sooner, which I hope will be the case for me.  Other non-hormonal birth control options are thin

It was a very productive craft night...  In addition to finishing off my hat, I tried out a new Epicurious recipe: Maple Tart Tatin , which is a take on the classic French apple tart tatin, but with the addition of some maple syrup.  It was incredibly easy and I highly recommend it.  I'm not a huge fan of just eating raw apples; for some reason they always make me feel more hungry after I'm done eating them.  Plus I'm not a fan of red delicious apples (I don't think they're that delicious), and most apples are too big for a snack for me.  However, I've been getting a ton of apples from the CSA, so this was a great way to use them.  The maple syrup is more of what Nj brought me, and Market Street Market had puff pastry so I could just stop and pick it up on the way home.  You have to cut out a round from the puff pastry, but I took the corners, baked them, punctured them with a fork and drizzled more syrup into them.  Also delicious. Photo courtesy Ashley Aye

Lauren went to Canadia, and brought me back some lovely kelly green wool yarn.  I used it to make a snazzy hat.  It took a while, but only because I'm so busy.  The actual knitting was pretty quick and the pattern works up quickly and beautifully.  I put a marker between each chart on my circular needle and then transferred two repeats to each dpn (4 total) once the hat was too small for my circular needle.  I used a medium sized pot lid to shape the hat and then today I wore it for the first time. I used the medium size, and I think it would have fit better if I'd gone with the small, but the measurements put me at a medium.  However, my yarn was larger than what was called for, so I think I got a little extra circumference because of that.  Either way, it's the first hat I've ever knit and I really like it.  Oh yes, this is the Brambles beret from knitty. These pictures really don't do justice to the color of the hat, but when I tried to adjust the color, I cam

Tonight I made my first dinner from my Horse & Buggy produce share.  I made wheatberries* with chicken broth, sauteed onions and mushrooms .  This was accompanied by roasted butternut squash with a maple syrup and orange juice glaze.  I used some of the mixed Asian greens and greenhouse cucumbers to make a salad.  Upon this salad I poured homemade balsamic vinaigrette sweetened with some of the leftover glaze.  The maple syrup was a gift Nj brought me back from Vermont. For dessert, I used some of the frozen blackberries to make a kiwi blackberry salad with homemade whipped cream.  The whipped cream had just a tiny bit of hazelnut syrup which imbued it with a slight and delicious nuttiness. * Items in bold are from the CSA.

★★★ I listened to this on my drive down to SC.  My friend Rob loves the book and wanted to know why I only gave it 3 stars - what did I not like about it.  It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just don't believe in grade inflation.  It worked as a book to listen to in the car because I was exhausted and Alice has scarcely experienced one thing before something else strange has befallen her.  It's not a long book (only 112 pages according to Amazon), but there's a lot of adventure.   I think had I read it the first time when I was a kid, I would have liked it more, but as an adult, the shallow plot didn't offer much more than amusement.  That's not a bad thing, as it is, in fact, written for children.  I imagine that someday I'll read it to my kids and they'll love it.

My grandmother is in the hospital in SC.  Until today, I think we all had a lot of faith in the idea that she'd get better.  I saw her yesterday and she seemed to be improving. Now they think she is going to die. She's drowning in fluid in her lungs. Her kidneys aren't working. She has some kind of strange anemia with no apparent cause.  I think she's really tired.  I would be. I'm scared. I'm scared she's going to die and everyone is going to be really sad, and there will be another big hole in our family. I'm worried about my dad too.  In the past 6 months, his best friend died, his chihuahua (who was about 20 years old) died, and now his mom is probably going to die. I'm scared he's going to be so depressed that he's going to give up and die too, and I need him. They don't know how long she's going to last. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and my dad doesn't want to leave her.  My nephew has school tomorrow and this coul

100 Best Novels Board's List Ulysses by James Joyce The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler 1984 by George Orwell I, Claudius by Robert Graves To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1001 Books to read before I die.  Frack. 2000s Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro Saturday – Ian McEwan On Beauty – Zadie Smith Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson The Sea – John Banville The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble The Plot Against America – Philip Roth The Master – Colm Tóibín Vanishing Point – David Markson The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle The Colour – Rose Tremain

First day of the year means new reading challenges!  I did better last year than my blog indicates.  So my goal for this year is not to read more, but rather to actually follow through with writing about what I read (so writing challenge really?).  What's life without something to work toward, even if it's just to be a little happier.  Writing makes me happy.  I should do more of it.  I'm biting off more than I can chew again, but who cares?  It's fun. I love dystopian novels.  Like a lot.  Reading 5 of these for the Asocial level won't be hard; I probably read 15 (the next level) last year, but didn't write about them.  I'm aiming small.  5!   1. The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson 2. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami Another one I really enjoyed last year, but didn't write about as much as I should have.  I'm signing up for medium again - 2 from each continent.  14 books, here I come! 1. The Light Between Oceans - M.