Books - News

Through my challenge, 9 for '09, I have met many new-to-me bloggers.

A couple of them have book giveaways. Check them out:

• Diary of an Eccentric - she also does great author interviews.
• Caribou's Mom - besides book reviews, she is on top of other challenges.
• Fresh Inks - a very devoted reader.

If you knit or do some needlework, enter the Knit-A-Long Monthly Giveaways and you might win some cool stuff.

This site honors the late Dewey, who loved to read and knit.

I am reading Gone with the Wind. I've seen the movie about 20 times, but I never read the book. Matt will be hosting a virtual bookgroup very soon.

Lisa See will be joining the International Fiction Book Group of New Orleans, via speaker phone, on March 18th! I am so excited by this. I look forward to hearing her views about Peony in Love and her soon-to-be-released novel, Shanghai Girls. Click here to win an ARC.

And last, but not least, I am no longer a lady of leisure. I am working at a local medical school library doing ILL (interlibrary loans). It's very busy, and I am learning a lot!

Illustration Friday - Instinct

Happy Mardi Gras!

When I see a plastic bead flying in the air, my hand goes up to catch it, before anyone or anything else gets it.

Stuff - An Award

Matt from A Guy's Moleskine Notebook gave me the Friends Award!


These are the criterion for the prize:

“These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

So, (Drum Roll, Please), I bestow this award to:

• Timothy Hunt - I enjoy seeing his work and he inspires me to continue with my collage.
• Amy - her blog gives insights on being a newcomer to New Orleans.
• Elizabeth - a person who roots for me and gives good insights on different books.
• Winter - the person who gave me the chance to hold the International Fiction Book Group at her store.
• Dani - who reads more than I do (envy, envy) and finds time to needlepoint.
• Patricia - an artist whom I hope to meet in person one day.
• Shani - I admire her work!
• Kevin from Canada - he leads me to works that I have never heard of.

Enjoy!

Books - Book Review - The Ten-Year Nap - Meg Wolitzer

I treated myself to a couple of books at Blue Cypress Books. One was this copy of The Ten-Year Nap.

This novel examines women in New York City who gave up work in order to take care of their kids. The children are now about ten years old.

But, except for Karen Yip, I found the moms rather whiny.

They were conflicted women. They liked staying home (which I believe is a very important job, even though I don't have any kids myself) but they also felt guilty about not contributing to the household income or to expanding their minds.

And, one lady's mother always made the lady feel badly because of her decision to stay home.

Still, I kept reading to see if their guilt would ever go away or how they eventually solved their problems.

I still don't know whether their feelings are just a NYC mindset or not. I know many moms who are glad to be there for their kids and find other ways to keep their minds nimble, without having to work to prove their worth. (But, then, these moms don't live in NYC.)

This novel also examines how the first feminists and important trailblazers are upset with the present generation of women, that they give up their work and education so quickly. I understand what the feminists contributed and also can sympatize with them about the succeeding generation of women not appreciating their struggles.

However, I do feel that part of feminism is to respect all decisions by women and not to taunt those who chose to take care of their children and not work outside the home.

This novel is interesting in the sense that you can see how the upper-middle-class lives. With all the financial downturns, I wonder how many can still live like the characters in the novel?

Stuff - Prospect 1

I was a volunteer for Prospect 1, a city-wide modern art exhibit. I didn't see all the works, but I had a few favorites. It was open from November 2008 to mid-January 2009.

1. Fiona Tan's Island - a video and contemplation, filmed Gotland, Sweden


2. Pedro Reyes' Leverage - a modern seesaw. It takes 9 riders on one side and one child on the other to have the balence. I keep thinking what's built in to do this. (Click here and go to slide 29.)


3. Kalup Linzy's Keys to Our Hearts video - a send-up on soap operas with voices that don't match the actors.

I also went into the 9th Ward and had a chance to see the modern homes that Brad Pitt and his foundation are building. Very cool looking.

My goal is to see all the works in Prospect.2.

Stuff - Joseph Cornell

There are special events at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Wednesdays this spring: lectures, art lessons, poetry walks, etc.

I got in for free the other night with my Louisiana state ID.

The event for that night was by inspired by an art work and then write poems about it.
I went into the Modern American Art section and almost fell on the floor. There were 10, yes, 10 works of Joseph Cornell, who did assemblage. (The last time that I saw his works was in 2005 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.)

The 10 pieces were bought with funds of two foundations: Joseph and Robert Foundation and the Muriel Bultman Francis (a local funeral home heiress. Her funeral home is now a Borders Bookstore.)

The work that I decided to concentrate on is Untitled (box construction, about 1948). (It's not the work seen above, but it looks similar.)

Untitled has a lot of blue sand and from the distance, the frame looked like a weathered window frame.

On closer look, the frame was strips of paper that were once part of a French Dictionary and novel. The pane of glass that covers the work is broken in two places (on purposes?). It's white inside with coffee stains. There were many concentric circles with tinges of blue.

Here are some of the haiku and poems that I wrote:

Joseph's world
and mine -
collide

playing in the sand -
Joseph's box
survives

sand survives time
ever still
not moving

staring into the circle
I lose myself
I lose time

System
Around
New
Dawn

Where
Has
It
Touched
Eden?

Books - Book Review - The Friday Night Knitting Club - Kate Jacobs

I was at Bette Bornside, buying some stitch holders, when I saw bookmarks and postcards for Knit Two, the second book of the Friday Night Knitting Club, so I decided that I better read the first book before reading the new one.

So, I went to the trailer at Lakeview to borrow the first book.

This novel is about the fictional yarn store, Walker and Daughter, run by Georgia Walker, a bright single mom in the Upper West Side of New York. The dad of her child, Dakota (a girl), is not around, her parents don't like going in NYC, so Georgia has created her own family from friends and customers of her store.

Anita, who is older than Georgia, likes being the mother figure to Georgia. "Their friendship precious and free of the mother-daughter acrimony that would linger after a decade of teenage rebellion."

And, without meaning to do so, a knitting club starts on Fridays. The women who come are at points in their lives where they have to decide whether to continue on the path or change.

I got confused at first with the characters, since they were of similar ages. Once I got it straight, I kept on and read about the amazing friendships and growth of the characters.

I didn't like the ending; it was too abrupt. However, this could be corrected with the next book. (Which I am hoping to find soon!)

Each section of the book starts with knitting advice and it correlates well with the events going on in the novel.

Books - Book Review - A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami

I am finally reading a book that doesn't meet any challenge requirement. This is one of the first books that I got from the Lakeview Trailer Library branch. I think that I am the second or third person reading this book.

I think that I finally figured out why I like Murakami's books; his books deal with ordinary people living ordinary lives, but something happens to shake them up. Their lives take on some meaning and border on the supernatural, even if they never believed in ghosts, or fate, or coincidences.

In this early novel by Murakami (1989), the main character is a man who is in his 30s, divorced, part-owner of a small publishing company that is feast or famine; half the time, he's bored out of his mind, and then, he works like a dervish.

The life that is going along, without much purpose, is disrupted when a visitor comes and talks to the other partner. The business card was "hermetically laminated, unnaturally white, and printed with tiny, intensely black type. No title or affiliation, no address, no telephone number. Only the name. It was enough to hurt your eyes just looking at it."


"Yikes!", I said to myself as I read this passage. Knowing previous Murakami's works, I knew that this is when the surreal starts.


And it does. The little publishing company printed a picture of a moutain scene with a strangely marked sheep among a flock of ordinary sheep. The visitor wants the location of the picture tracked down, the name of the photographer, and all evidence of the photo to be destroyed.
Or else, the business will suffer and maybe the owners will also suffer.

So, our protagonist goes in search of the photo and the photographer. He journeys from Tokyo to parts of Japan that he has never visited, learns about raising sheep in Japan, and interacts with all sorts of people who love sheep.

He has strange thoughts. On an airplane ride, he muses, "Or, more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountains and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth."

In this novel, the journey and, not the end, is the most important. You will look around your reality and wonder about it.

Books - Book Review - The Lost Planet - Angus Macviar

The purpose of my February challenge is not only to review the book, but to write something about the author.

For my February Mini-Challenge, I am reading a "new to you author." May I introduce you to Angus Macvicar.

He is a Scottish writer (1908 - 2000). He doesn't have a website, and he can't blog from Heaven.

He wrote thrillers, children's books (more YA, in my opinion), and memoirs. He was also a scripwriter and and playwright. He wrote about 39 works. He also hosted a show on BBC called
Songs of Praise.

I bought The Lost Planet from Brye Books in Wigtown, Scotland. I knew nothing about the book nor the author. The name of the author called to me. The cover was plain red hardback, so it wasn't the cover that attracted me.

This is a YA book about Jeremy, an orphan from Australia who goes to Inverard, Scotland to live with his only remaining relative for the first time. His uncle doesn't pay much attention to Jeremy, because he is preparing a trip to Hesikos, a planet between Mars and Jupiter.

There is intrigue (someone is a agent), suspense (will they make it to Hesikos and back to Earth?), romance? (the engineer and the young university assistant), regular, practical Scots (Madge, the wise cook), science (or alchemy? turning iridonium to gold), atomic power (the engine), exploration (of the planet Hesikos).

The book wasn't too long and the vocabulary was just right. There wasn't an overload of information on the science/technical side, and Jeremy eventually becomes part of the team.

The Lost Planet was made into radio and tv shows. Here's a little description of the TV show.

Most of the information that I found was from Wikipedia. I wish that I had more to tell you.

His sci-fi works were one of the first ones to be translated into Hebrew. (OK, I couldn't read anything, except for the cover names.)

I looked in various Scottish author sites, and couldn't find more information. If you know of something, please let me know.

Books - Book Review - Waiting - Ha Jin

I read this book when it first came out, when Book Girl and I were members of the same book group in Dallas.

I was looking forward to reading it with another group to get their reactions.

All the members that attended had the same reaction: they wanted to shake up the main character, Dr. Lin, and tell him to make a decision and not to let life pass him by.

None of us understood why Lin was chased by so many women. We found him boring and shallow. He blamed not being able to fully love any woman on the fact that he hadn't fallen in love so much and had his heart broken. "..emotionally he hadn't grownup. His instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had an opportunity to blossom." And then,
as he was seeing his children being born, he thought, "Why do people have to live like animals, eating and reproducing, possessed by the instinct for survival?" Most of us thought that a man in love would be worried about his wife and children, not thinking about a family as a pack of wild beasts.

Lin was stationed in Muji and went home every summer to the countryside to visit his wife and child. His wife had bound feet, when it was no longer considered fashionable. Mao was at the height of his power and any ideas of capitalism were still off in the future.

Lin was a good officer. He toed the party line, attended lectures, did everything that he was told to do, didn't protest anything, didn't steal anything.

However, one of the nurses took a liking to him and they dated for almost 20 years. After meeting her, he would go home to try to get a divorce, but it never happened until many years later.

I like reading the descriptions of where Lin was stationed, because Muji had an interesting climate: "Spring descended all of a sudden. Aspen catkins flew in the air, so thick that when walking on the streets you could breathe them in...The scent of lilac blooms was pungent and intoxicating...Within two weeks, the summer started. Spring was so short here that people would say Muji had only three seasons."

The novel gave a good snapshot of the time; when being in total conformity was good. And I really believe that such people existed at the time.

Stuff - Submissions for

I have finished 65 leaves for the Tree Project of the International Fiber Collaborative. Jennifer Marsh posts the pictures, but I know that all won't make it to the web site.

If you want to participate, there is still time. Please help out or let a creative soul know about it.


Embroidery on khaki or plastic.



Knitting - the purple one is a thread with stainless steel; it can fold up.



Crochet - ok, not all look like leaves, so it's a conceptual leaf.




Tatting





Recycling - plastic and paper from soaps and gifts.

Books - Book Review - Como un Paraguayo Ebrio y Celoso de su Hermana - Washington Cucurto

This counts as book with a "relative" in its title for the What's in a Name - Reading Challenge. Hermana means Sister in Spanish.

The complete title can be translated as Like a Drunk Paraguayan Who is Jealous of His Sister.
This is an unusual book. It's a book of poems that records regular events in Paraguay. I looked and looked, but there was no poem about the sister.

The poet likes to hang out most in supermarkets and McDonalds. He also makes observations about people in his life, insects and fruits.

A prayer to God becomes a request for victory for a soccer team. He starts the prayer:
Sen~or,
aqui' estoy gozoso de salud
y lleno de trabajo,
frente a las go'ndolas de las verduras

God,
Here I am, full of health
and with lots of work
in front of the vegetable area, with the container that looks like a gondola.

Despite being a short book, I spent a lot of time reading it. I read Spanish more slowly than English, and I had to look up a lot words.

Some of his poems are anti-North America, such as comments about a now former president of the US and of businesses that reek of US influences.

But, it was a good experience to read something in the original language and to know that others like where they live and don't like too much outside influence.

Books - Book Review - Escher on Escher - Exploring the Infinite

This book counts as a USED Book in the 9 for '09 Reading Challenge.

I bought it at the Louisiana Philharmonic Book Sale. It was falling apart, but a friend glued the binding and the pages and it's ok now.

The paper is of high quality.

The book is a collection of essay and speeches that he wrote and presented (or not) to people that asked him to speak.

The most surprising fact is that he DID NOT consider himself an artist, but a graphic designer.
"A graphic artist has something of the troubadour within in him. He always repeats the same song in every copy he makes of a single woodcut, cooperplate, or lithographic stone. It doesn't matter much if sometimes a page gets lost, stained, or torn. There are enough copies to carry forth his thoughts."

Well, his works are enduring despite of what he thought of himself.

Escher was sometimes influenced by mathematicians; he would read a journal article as far as his understanding would go. In turn, the mathematicians would see his works and come up with new theories.

Escher started his work before he saw the patterned tiles of Alhambra, Spain and Japan. Viewing these works allowed him to continue his path and expand on his ideas of representing multiple dimensions on a sheet of paper.

This site contains many of the works that Escher mentioned to explain his ideas on constracts, patterns, movement, etc.

The paper of my edition is a high quality gloss and has many color pictures.

If you wish to learn more about this artist, this book is informative and not didactic.

Illustration Friday - Flawed

This week's theme is FLAWED.

My paper tree was pretentious and grew a pinkish bark and a multicolored leaf and lives in multicolored soil. The tree doesn't know that this is not the norm!

The leaf and the ground are leaves that I am making for the Tree Project of the International Fiber Collaborative. Since the leaves aren't perfect and technically are flawed, I have decided to designate them "conceptual leaves."