Crochet Me!

Crochet Me

Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution

by Kim Werker

Interweave Press, Publisher, October 2007

 

 

$21.95.  Get out your hooks, Crochet fans!  Kim Werker, editor of Interweave Crochet magazine and the founder of crochetme.com, has gathered together a group of hip designers and created a book of innovative and stylish designs.  The eighteen patterns range from bags to sweaters and leave granny squares and crocheted flowers far behind.

 

I particularly liked the looks of both the Babydoll Dress by Amy O'Neill Houck and the Leaves Sweater by Annette Petavy.  Both designs use fine yarn to accomplish a beautiful drape.  In fact, there were only two designs that I saw in the entire book that used worsted weight yarns; all the others use DK weight and finer.  One great feature, especially for a hand spinner, is the substitution section for each pattern that gives a guide to the actual size of the yarn used.  There is a section on techniques and a list of suppliers. 

 

One of my favorite things about this book is that each designer is profiled extensively, and most of them have blogs and web sites!   

The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

It has been quite awhile since I've been inspired to write a book review, but this lovely gothic piece, first by this author, certainly deserves some attention.  I was immediately lost in the wonder of this story.

This is the story of two women, both reclusive in their own ways,  who are brought together by story.  The story of the older woman, a powerful writer who as hidden the details of her life from the world.  Now she wants to tell the truth, to a young woman who has no idea that she, too, has a story.

As a Southerner, I know the importance of story, and I deeply identified with the power of this idea.  The novel is well-written, captivating and elusive as the heroine weaves the threads of the story together.  Along the way she discovers  the power of her own story and the ability of the story to change the world.  Throughout the novel plays a haunting atmosphere of musty bookstores, ancient libraries and the wonder of the word.

I was a tiny bit disappointed in the ending, although I really didn't expect how everything would play out.  Things were maybe a little too tidily wrapped up, but all and all this is a lovely book, well worth curling up with in the big old chair on a rainy, cold or snow day.  

Booksigning

Tom Perry will be here at the shop to sign his books and talk about his many projects and interests in Patrick County on Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 10 AM. His new book is a beautiful pictoral overview of Patrick County's history. Y'all come out and visit, and if you can't get to Meadows of Dan, Perry's books are available at his web site.
Labels: Books, The Shop

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert, Penguin Books, 2006.

A friend loaned me this book to read, and after two pages I had to go out and buy a copy for myself. I have a feeling that this paperback will become frayed and tattered before I grow tired of it. I only wish I had been able to read this book when I was in my early thirties instead of in my late forties.

After a catastrophic divorce, Liz starts a spiritual journey that is special because the reader can relate to the adventure, told with humor and honesty. It was mostly about eating in Italy, with wonderful, sensual descriptions of the food and the experience of learning Italian. Gilbert makes the language sounds as delicious as the food. Then it was on to India, where prayer and meditation, and the struggles really began. Finally, in Bali, everything came together and it becomes clear that Gilbert has learned what it takes to live a life of understanding and love.

Throughout the journey Gilbert meets wonderful people who care for her and teach her as she grows. It reminds me of my own life journey, full of beautiful minds and hearts that keep me on my path.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a wonderful web site that tells more about the book and her life. I plan to buy a few more copies of Eat, Pray, Love to give to friends, especially younger women!

Edited to add:

I was mentioned in a USA Today review of this book! Somewhat thrilling!

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Hissy Fit and Savannah Blues

Hissy Fit and Savannah Blues, by Mary Kay Andrews, Perennial, 2005 and 2003

The first time I knew anything about a Mary Kay Andrews book was when I was traveling all the time and getting Books-on-Tape out of the library. I loved the ones by Southern writers, especially women. On a long drive that usually started at four in the morning, these witty books read by a Southern voice kept me awake and alert and laughing.

Savannah Blues was one of the audio books I borrowed from the Patrick County Library, and I laughed aloud most of the way up the state of Virginia on my drive. Andrews is witty, with some hilarious and believable characters that deal with mystery, mayhem and murder with class and Southern flair. When Mom passed the books along to me, it was like meeting an old friend. The main character of Savannah Blues, Eloise Foley, is a picker, an antique dealer that cruises flea markets, yard sales and estate sales for treasures to turn into cash. She also wears vintage clothes and lives in a carriage house in Savannah. She struggles to make a living and has troubles with her ex who lives in the house she lovingly remodeled. Somehow I could seriously identify with this character!

Hissy Fit is also about an independent business woman, this time an interior decorator. Keeley Murdock throws a real Southern hissy fit when she discovers her groom-to-be in a compromising position with her best friend and maid of honor the night before the wedding. Her fit makes history in the town and angers the snobby family of her groom. They try to run her out of business but Keeley saves the day and the town, with the help of the new owner of the local bra factory and her classy aunt that knows where all the bodies are buried.

These books may not be great literature but they are entertaining and fun. I've ordered Little Bitty Lies and I'm checking out other titles by Mary Kay Andrews. Mary Kay has a new blog, The Kudzu Telegraph (what else) with an entertaining first post about her next book and cruising estate sales!

Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, Random House, 2007

Most of the books I read about English life are either written or set in the peaceful English countryside of the past centuries. Black Swan Green is also set in the English countryside, but in a modern world that is far from peaceful.

Jason Taylor is a poet that is afraid of being bullied if his peers find out that he writes, and a regular thirteen-year-old boy facing the usual perils of adolescence. He lives in an ordinary housing development near a sleepy village, but in the thirteen months of his life explored in this book, he discovers that things are not nearly as ordinary in Black Swan Green as they seem.

Jason's journey through that year of his life is a struggle with school, a stuttering handicap and bullies, and with changes in his family and in himself. These are the usual rites of passage that might happen to any boy, but in Mitchell's novel the common moves along with the uncommon, as a ghostly playmate helps set the theme for the coming chapters. Jason wanders from the ordinary world of his affluent housing development into a stranger, older England, with strange mysteries and even stranger people. But even as Jason discovers a wider, mystical country alongside his own modern world, the common transforms the fantasy, and is transformed as well.

Ghosts often haunt David Mitchell's books, but the ghosts in Black Swan Green are more elusive than usual. The modern mind seems to shun mystery, creating an ordinary world out of the routine of daily life. Mitchell captures the glimpses of the extraordinary that exist alongside the common, with a beautifully written story of one young life in rural Worcestershire.

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Gap Creek

Gap Creek by Robert Morgan, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999

I had read this once before, but when it showed up in the astonsihing stack of books my aunt sent me recently I thought it was time for another visit with the Richards family down in the valley. The theme I liked the most in this books is that it doesn't seem to be a good idea for mountain folk to leave the mountains; that's just asking for trouble.

And trouble is just what Julie and Hank get when they move down on Gap Creek so Hank can go to work at a job nearby. Julie, newly married with the secret hope that her days of hard work are done, finds herself working just as hard to keep house for her landlord and new husband. Their trials really begin at hog killing time, and things just get worse and worse as the young couple struggles to deal with fire, flood, famine and a difficult mother-in-law.

Told from the point of view of Julie, I sometimes thought the characterization of Hank and the others in the book was a little sketchy. But then I realized that Julie told her story like a mountain woman would tell it. If my grandmother had ever really sat down and told the story of her life, it would have read very much like the story of Julie and Hank. Not so much tragedy, of course, but it would have been about trouble and working and family. And Grandma would have told it like Julie did, with not so much emphasis of how and why this happened; she would have just said it happened this way.

Reading between the lines is required more with this book than with many others, but there is a sublte Appalachian realism here. Mountain people don't go in for introspection and emotion, really. Perhaps the book would have been stronger with less tragedy and more empathy between the characters, and more revelation about the development of some characters. But I think the author accomplished his purpose, and told "The Story of a Marriage".

The Autobiography of God

The Autobiography of God by Julius Lester, St. Martin's Griffin, 2006

Sometimes a book written as fiction plunges bravely to the heart and depth of the hardest and most complicated philosophical and theological issues. This slender volume explores the themes of faith and evil through the story of a young woman rabbi who is struggling with loneliness and a crisis of faith. When she comes into possession of a special Torah, her life is changed radically, and she must face the truth, about herself and about God.

The quietly mystical search that Rebecca experiences in the first part of the book appealed to me, and I identified with her struggle with the difficult questions of life. I spent a lot of time looking up terms and exploring meanings as I read. I also made notes of some beautiful and thoughtful quotations to ponder further.

The later chapters were very different, almost shocking and certainly thought-provoking. Unexpected twists in the plot and stunning new characters are only part of the sudden change, which serves to underscore the meanings in the first part of the book and take the reader into strange new territory. The final chapter isn't a complete resolution, but it is satisfying and I won't soon forget this story.

Julius Lester has a blog called A Commonplace Book.

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A Fine Balance

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Vintage International Books, 1997.

I have read a few books recently, all fiction, about India. The last was an entertaining and comic novel about a modern Indian girl's search for "a nice boy" to marry. Even though it was funny, there were some disturbing themes, in the lack of control the young woman felt regarding her life and future.

Mistry's book, also often funny but overshadowed by repeated tragedy, also brings out the theme of lack of control. The four main characters are born in different castes and in different parts of India and are all searching for better lives. They come together through strange circumstances and work together to make a future for themselves, but repeatedly their lives are shattered by events beyond their control. Government corruption is a major offender in this dark world and poverty batters the lives of all of the characters in the novel. The story is set in the mid-1970s, during the "State of Emergency".

What was appealing to me about this book was how four ordinary people somehow managed to rise above the tragedies of their individual lives and reach out to each other and to others around them, some even less fortunate than themselves. The main characters learned to respect each other despite appearances and differences, and the struggle to survive sometimes brought out the best as well as the worst in even the minor characters.

The plot is a beautifully woven tapestry of intertwined lives and loves. Occasionally the story is horrifying, then comically shattering before it soars. The truths in this novel run deep, revealing the changing attitudes toward individuality and personal worth in a culture in turmoil. The depth of the human spirit in a world made up of beggers, murderers, extortionists alongside ordinary people just trying to get by is a fascinating and rich portrait of a culture and time painted by a master.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones, By Alice Sebold, Little, Brown and Company, 2002.

A haunting, beautiful and often painful tale, The Lovely Bones is the story of the death, life and the mystery of both as Susie Salmon tells about what happened to her one terrible night in a corn field near her home. Her rape and murder begin a shattering journey for her family and friends that she watches from heaven. Unable to tear herself way from the bonds of love and need, Susie is helpless to influence events as grief isolates her family.

This is the second time I've read this book, and like the first time I couldn't put it down. The writer does a wonderful job of speaking for Susie, the victim of a crime that doesn't for a minute see herself as a victim. Told from a unique point of view, as Susie watches the unfolding lives of her family and friends from a gazebo in heaven, this is a unique coming-of-age tale. Filled with sadness and tragedy as the story is, hope and humor lift the story with a unique perception of what heaven might be like and with the comforting idea that those that the living have lost are just beyond our perception, behind the veil.

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Savage Beauty

Savage Beauty, The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford, Random House, 2001.

I've been reading the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay lately, so I was pleased to find this book in one of the boxes that my aunt sent at the beginning of the winter. I knew very little about the poet and her life, so this biography, thirty years in the writing, makes me want to take a new look at the poems. Although I feel that there are some faults in Milford's biography, seeing the poetry against the background of a life, often troubled but always adventurous, added a new dimension to my understanding.

Millay spoke for a new generation of women, those of the Jazz Age that were stepping across boundaries and breaking into new territory. Millay smoked in public and made no secret of her many lovers, both male and female. Marriage vows, her own or another's, had little effect on her behavior. Her troubled life began in Maine, where her father abandoned the family early and her mother felt obliged to leave her three small daughters alone for long periods of time while working as a nurse. The relationship between the four women affected much of "Vincent's" life, with turmoil between herself and a difficult younger sister who felt overshadowed by Vincent's talent. Cora Buzzell Millay, Vincent's mother, seems to struggle with pride and jealousy in Milford's portrayal of her, and it sometimes seems that Vincent and her sisters go to great lengths to pacify Cora's demands, perhaps from fear of abandonment. There is a hint at one point that Vincent may have been molested by a man Cora was involved with.

What struck me most about Vincent Millay's life is that genius so often comes out of such a life. Talented people often seem to be driven toward a need for experience, and the depth of their work reveals an understanding of experience that so many of us lack. We need these people to speak for us, out of their pain, to say what we cannot find words to reveal.

Milford disappoints me occasionally throughout her work. She isn't a particularly organized writer; the book is unsettling in the manner that the material is presented, sometimes in an almost haphazard fashion. It is difficult to capture a life, of course, but the best biographers understand the "why" behind the "what happened" and these reasons elude Milford. Reading between the lines of the numerous excerpts of Millay's works, journals and letters is up to the reader, and Milford offers no interpretation or analysis. I felt sometimes that Milford was overwhelmed with the material, and perhaps intimidated by Millay's sister, Norma.

Savage Beauty has some flaws, but so did Edna St. Vincent Millay. The biography is well worth reading for the facts presented and the excerpts from Millay's journals and less accessible writing beyond her poetry. The biography has encouraged me to go back to the poems, with a better understanding of their author, and maybe this is accomplishment enough.

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I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, St. Martin's Griffin, 1998.

This book, a discovery by my aunt in Connecticut, is such a charming work that I can't understand why I never read it before. The story is quite simple with shades of Jane Austen; two poor girls with no prospects live with their eccentric parents in a rundown ruin of an English castle; then the rich neighbors move in and life is changed forever. But this little story, written from the point of view of the younger sister by way of her journal, captures more than just the castle as young Cassandra discovers life and love and the wide world beyond genteel poverty.


Although Smith's story is not meant to be challenging, I like a small section where Cassandra talks to the local vicar about religion. The vicar is more of a friend than pastor to the family; he is well-educated and one of the few people that the girls or their father know in the small village. Cassandra has realized that she is in love with her sister's fiance, and, although she doesn't know it, the vicar understands she is troubled. He tells her to "sit in an empty church. Sit, not kneel. And listen, not pray. Prayer's a very tricky business." Earlier he explained that God is "merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about."


Cassandra wrestles with a few hours of determining to "get religion" and do good works, but then she realizes that some people might use religion as a means of avoiding "life" and she knows she doesn't want to bypass the good and bad of living. The story goes on, often funny, with a gentle tragedy for young Cassandra that somehow seems it will work out right in the end. It's hard for a seventeen year old to give up on life, even with a broken heart, when she has so much interest in people and writing.

Surpassing Wonder

Surpassing Wonder by Donald Harman Akenson, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998

I'm not a Biblical scholar or professional historian, so I'm not sure that I'm a good judge of the worth of a book like this, which is somewhat geared toward the "educated amateur" but deals with historical methods and a tremendous quantity of literature. The subject of the book is the processes that led up to the creation of the main texts of Christianity and Judaism, from the Hebrew Bible up to the Talmuds.

One interesting point that he makes is that the thought and writings of Judaism have had a much stronger impact on the development of Western Civilization than is normally credited. Since I've always been taught that classical Greece was the major influence on the development of modern thought, this is a viewpoint that I hadn't considered, but shall in further reading. Much of Akenson's work urges further research on the part of the reader as well as critical analysis of current scholarship, even his own work!

The writer is deeply respectful of his subject, occasionally witty without being sarcastic and mindful of the fact that there are more questions than answers about some historical periods that he is writing about. Much of his theme revolves around the destruction of the Temple and how that event was a major factor in the development of the Scriptures and commentary.

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Cold Sassy Tree

Cold Sassy Tree
by Olive Ann Burns
Delta Fiction, 1994

This is one of those amazing books that captures many aspects of Southern life, especially during the changing times and attitudes of the early 20th century. Young Will Tweedy, just 14 years old, begins to discover just what the people around him are really like, as he explores his budding talents as a writer and records the strange events that take place after the death of his grandmother. Small town life and the upper middle class concern for appearances are explored with sympathy and amusement by Burns, who worked as a journalist before turning to fiction later in her life. Cold Sassy Tree, Georgia, grew from a family history the author was working on, and nearby Commerce was the home of her grandfather's store and the model for the town in the novel.

I'm not sure why I had never read this book. I think I had a vague notion it was part of some sort of heavy generational series. There is nothing heavy about this novel, although like many Southern women writers Burns tackles the difficult issues of life, love and death as seen through the eyes of Will Tweedy. The narrow-minded prejudices of small town are revealed with humor and grace, and the women in Will's family tackle their adversities with their heads held high, despite the opinions of the neighbors!

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