Knit the Season, by Kate Jacobs

I have two craft-type hobbies - scrapbooking and needlepoint. Also, I cook rather well. And although I try to take pictures of nearly every event in my life and put them into a scrapbook at some point, I do not actually attempt to make every gift I give or life occasion I celebrate into a papercraft. Nor a baked good. I did needlepoint some Christmas ornaments once, about 25 years ago.


I bring this up because Kate Jacobs' Knit the Season is all about knitting and how the shared love of knitting ties together the lives of a group of women - sort of. Unfortunately, the manner in which Jacobs chooses to demonstrate this is by dropping in references to knitting at every opportunity - these women literally do not let any event in their lives go by without knitting something for the occasion, to the point where I envision them all as a well-heeled group of Madame Defarges.


A brief list of some of items knitted during the course of this book:

• a sweater
• bookmarks
• a necklace
• purses
• christmas ornaments, including a holiday garland and the halo for the angel on top of a tree
• socks and slippers
• a wrap worn to a wedding

also, a wedding gown.


This would probably be a good time to mention that some spoilers follow, for both this book and its predecessor The Friday Night Knitting Club.

The general outline of the book is that the characters are getting ready for the wedding of one of the women. That wedding becomes a double wedding, and at the same time, Dakota, daughter of Georgia, the heroine of the first book, has to decide between her career (accepting an internship over the holidays) and family (visiting her elderly grandmother in Scotland for Christmas). Previously, she'd had to decide between her love (cooking) and continuing her mother's work (the knitting store), and happily hit on the idea of a knitting cafe, neatly resolving the issue without any hard decisions on her part. Similarly, Dakota struggles between family and career, but as it turns out, the internship hiring manager is dating her father, and allows her to put off the internship until after the family gathering.

It's kind of like Happy Days, where everything is neatly resolved at the end of 23 minutes (plus commercials), only it takes a lot longer, I laughed less, and someone knits Fonzie a motorcycle cover.

The book contains a lot of flashbacks to Georgia's life, and I found myself enjoying those sections the most - she was the most likeable and interesting character of the first book, too. I couldn't help thinking how Kate Jacobs must be kicking herself now for killing Georgia off in FNKC. Even the flashback sections had an odd quality about them - sometimes I wasn't sure why they were included, as they didn't seem to relate to the story at hand. That didn't bother me as much as my confusion about who exactly was narrating those sections - they weren't really flashbacks since some of them were clearly Georgia's perspective, including her private thoughts and feelings about events. But since they were presented as reminiscences, rather than, say, diary entries, I couldn't figure out how that could be.

I suppose if you can get past the too-perfect characters, the improbable plot points, the cloying saccharine sweetness, and the incessant clicking of the knit-dropping, you might enjoy this book.


As for me, I'm ticking off book 22 with a sense of relief and moving on to, well, name-dropping. I had a whole bunch of holiday books I was going to read, but Dominick Dunne's final book came out and as I was placing my last minute Amazon order, there it was, just begging to be added to my cart. I couldn't say no ... after all, tomorrow is Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

How do they do it?

Marie over at Boston Bibliophile posted recently about people who book through books. You know the ones I mean: the people who tell you they love to read so much that they read (insert unimaginably large number here) books in a week. Although in general, I try not to think about these people, it is an interesting question. How do they do it? I propose three possible answers.

1) They don't really. I went to a book club meeting once, and there was a woman there who went on and on about how much she loved to read. Loved to read! 

Now, this woman could loosely be called a friend of mine; at least, we were Facebook friends and I had noted that she used the Visual Bookcase app, but was "currently reading" the same book (Eat, Pray, Love) for six months. But I smiled politely and bit my tongue.

She went on about how she read all the time. All the time. She even read while she was cooking! Finally, the other book club members were impressed, and she stopped with a self-satisfied smile. 


The next day, on Facebook, she updated her status: "I'm reading while cooking dinner!"
 
Don't you just hate it when you have the perfect Facebook comment but you can't post it? Here was mine: No, you're not, you're updating your status on Facebook while burning dinner.

2) They read for a living. One of my high school friends is a school librarian, and she sends out numerous book reviews weekly on goodreads and has probably a hundred followers on that site as well - many of whom are parents at her school, or other school librarians. Many of the book reviews are of children's books and rated for age and type of child. 

I complimented her once on how much she read, and she said, "Thanks - I think being unemployed for part of the year helped me get a lot of reading done."

I suspect that had some disadvantages as well.

3) They don't really get anything out of it. When I decided to try to read 50 books in a year, I looked around at many possible reading challenges (and there are a lot of them). I considered the 100-book-a-year challenge on goodreads, and read some of the group discussion - which included a post by one man who bragged that he had read Proust's Swann's Way and two other books in the past week.
 
That's right, her read Proust's 496 page novel in two days.
 
I thought, but did not post: Really? And what did you get out of the experience, other than bragging rights?
 
With the exception of group 2, I've learned to avoid these sorts of people - I find they stress me and make me enjoy my own reading less. I hate admitting that I've never read Proust, for example, but which is worse - not having read Proust, or skimming Proust in order to check it off your list? Are you a better cook or a better reader if you read while you cook dinner? I don't know, and never will - I play music like ABBA while cooking. My friends and family seem to enjoy my meals, if not always my musical accompaniments. 
 
I didn't read three books this week - I am still slogging my way through Knit The Season. What I really, really want for Christmas is to finish it.

Why read?

Some days I wonder why I bother to read book at all: It's not like my life doesn't have enough drama already. In fact, my life is imitating art, and I really wish it would stop. Among the literature currently being re-enacted on my home stage for the holidays are:


The Invisible Man: The sci-fi classic in which a man (played by Madeline, our cat) discovers the secret to invisibility. In the original H.G. Wells version of the tale, the invisible man is driven insane by his invisibility. In our modern twist, the cat is fine, but everyone else goes insane searching for her for four days. The story ends abruptly when the invisible cat shows up on the doorstep and demands her dinner, but refuses to provide any explanation as to her whereabouts during the freezing weather that prevailed during her disappearance.

Marley and Me: A modern classic about a lovably naughty dog. We've replaced the story's original labrador retriever with an Australian shepherd, Rufus, who isn't generally very naughty. However, Rufus decided to play against type. We hosted a holiday cookie exchange last Sunday, and  afterward, there were several trays of cookies remaining on the table, waiting to be delivered to teachers and mailed to relatives. We went out for an hour on Monday night and when we came back, one entire platter was on the floor, among a few remaining crumbs and some bits of tin foil. The tray in question originally contained creme de menthe brownies, and since I've been told chocolate can be fatal to dogs, I sat up all night Monday, trying to comfort Rufus as it all came back up, listening to him whimper and hoping that would be the worst of it. For him, it was. I am still cleaning carpets.


The Gift of the Magi: The O. Henry Christmas classic that has been re-told a thousand times, in which a couple with no money each sacrifices to buy each other Christmas gifts, but in an ironic twist, each gift is rendered useless by the other's sacrifice. My husband decided to re-write this story, but somewhat against his will - his car was struck by another car on the way home from work on Tuesday. I thought he was just trying to get out of carpet cleaning, but the other driver was entirely at fault. The ironic twist is that the other driver could afford a car but not insurance, too!

On the bright side, the cat is fine, the dog is fine, and my husband and his car are fine. The carpets and I are slowly recovering ... we'll be better by Christmas.

Thank you to the many kind readers who have offered support while the cat was MIA!

Freakonomics: Come Fly With Me

Didja ever wonder ... how planes stay up in the air? I do, every time I board one, for as long as I'm aloft. I've already been given the explanation, repeatedly: It doesn't really help. Thanks anyway.

What does help?

Two things: Martinis and airport books.

Last weekend, we headed down to San Francisco to take care of some minor business, and to check out the King Tut exhibit at the DeYoung Museum. Last year, when my daughter dressed as Cleopatra for Halloween, I taught her the words to Steve Martin's King Tut song, and believe me, it's as funny now as it was in 1979, especially if you're nine. I was going to pick up a copy of The Murder of King Tut to read on the plane, but was so busy I forgot, and they didn't have it at the airport. 

What they did have was Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and since it's one of those books I keep hearing about, I idly picked up a copy, even though I normally avoid books on topics end in "-omics."

I flipped to the chapter called "A Roshonda by Any Other Name," because I love reading about baby names, and I laughed out loud at some of the statistical name lists:

• "The 20 White Girl Names That Best Signify Low Education Parents." Yes, I read that one first and then breathed a sigh of relief. For the record, I found my daughter's name on the list of "Most Common White Girl Names Among High-Education Parents," and I wasn't terribly happy about that either, because although I consider myself to be relatively well-educated, I don't like being called "common."
• "The 20 White Boy Names That Best Signify High-Education Parents." I couldn't even hazard a guess at how to pronounce many of these names. I was also baffled to discover that  from a statistical standpoint, naming your son after a cheap Korean car likely indicates you are highly educated, BUT naming your daughter after a luxury German car likely signifies the very opposite.

You see what I mean? I love this stuff. I bought the book. I read it on the plane. I absolutely understand why this book has been so popular: it's chock full of entertaining analyses of oddball things that ordinary people can relate to. If drug dealing is so lucrative, why do so many drug dealers live with their mothers? Do teachers cheat on tests?

The chapter that intrigued me most concerned an analysis by a bagel seller on how honest people really are. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a store and bought something and realized,  "I don't really have to get on line and pay for this. There is literally nothing stopping me from walking out the door with item. No one is watching, there's no security system, nothing." I never do it and never would, of course, but I always wonder how many other people would.

The answer: 87% of people are basically honest, and he arrives at this conclusion by citing the research done by a bagel seller who set up his business completely on the honor system: delivered bagels to offices with a collection jar with a requested price. After a number of years, that was the result: 87% paid for their bagels. There is some interesting discussion of the variability around that number (executives were less likely to pay, for example) - but the result is heartening, over all.

I could go on and on but I'd spoil the book for you. After all the whining I've done about my book choices recently, it was nice to find a quick, fun read that made me feel slightly smarter (if also more common).

21 books read so far, 29 more to go!

It's Christmas (Kitty Please Come Home)

Our cat ran off ... again. She snuck out of the house when I let the dog out. She's been gone for two days and it is COLD outside. I can only hope she found shelter somewhere or some kind soul took her in.

If she still isn't home by Monday, we're going to put up flyers around the neighborhood.

Kitty, your stocking is still hung by the chimney with care. Please, please come home. I know the kid pesters you a lot, but she's heartbroken that you are gone.



Hello to all my VGNO visitors! Hope you are warm and if you see any strays, please help them out ... thank you.

Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is one of those authors that everyone tells me I'll love, but somehow I've never read any of his books. I managed to pinch a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day on bookmooch, and it made it off my Shelf of Shame (books I've bought but haven't read) and onto my bedstand, but that's as far as I've gotten with David Sedaris.

I decided to spend the month of December doing mostly holiday reading, just as I listen to holiday music all month, and I was pleased to discover that Sedaris had his own book of holiday stories, Holidays on Ice. I was more pleased to discover that this is a short book, filled with short stories - ideally suited to my very short attention span of late.

It was buy one, get one for half price at Borders, and even though I was annoyed that I couldn't find a second book I wanted to buy, I bought it anyway. When the clerk rang my purchase up, she asked if I'd ever read Sedaris before. When I told her I hadn't, she remarked: "Oh. Well, I hope you enjoy it. If you don't, I really recommend Me Talk Pretty One Day - it's hysterical." 

Hm.

Holidays on Ice consists of six short stories. It starts off brilliantly funny, with "Santaland Diaries," chronicling his experience as a department store elf. A delightfully wicked elf, really, who has seen it all, and I laughed from beginning to end. Who tells their kid to ask Santa to "make Proctor and Gamble stop testing on animals?" Who lets their kid pee into the artificial snow in a department store display? Reading this story made me realize what a truly sane person I am.

The book moves on to "Seasons Greetings to Our Friends And Family!!!" and unfortunately, it's a bit of a downhill slide. This is a send-up of those awful holiday letters people send, the ones where they are telling you all about how awesome and wonderful they all are!!! In this case, the narrator is also exposing what a truly repellent person she is, and although I found it funny to a point, I was also offended by some of the humor. (Killing babies isn't, and never will be, funny to me.)

The rest of the book was more of the same - good enough to finish, definitely some laughs, but also a sort of meanness that was a bit unpleasant. I think the humor could have been achieved more effectively by simply leaving some of that meanness out. He hits his marks, but there's a bit of overkill.

I haven't sworn off Sedaris, but I do think in future I will heed the diplomatic warnings of the clerks at Borders. That said, "Santaland Diaries" was, to me, worth the price of the whole book - I just wish I'd stopped there.

20 books read so far, 30 more books to go - 24 more weeks in which to read them. Uh-oh.

Something there is about a trip

To my dear Readers:

First, thank you. I am endlessly amazed and humbled that anyone reads my blog - especially anyone who isn't counting on me to leave stuff under their Christmas tree in ... oooooh let's see ... 17 days. Ack! Ack!

Second, apologies. You would think that in my gratitude I would not be such a neglectful blogger, but I am and I regret it and I fully expect there won't be anything under my tree either in ... OMG ... 17 days!

I am woefully behind on my reading, as you already know, and I have no one to blame but myself, although it is tempting indeed to blame my numerous ancestors for hanging so many colorful characters on my family tree. I always found geneology intriguing, but when there are witches, murders, and even squatters in one's bloodlines - well, it's fun stuff, and it's hard to tear away from it and read a regular old book, especially when the book in question is Knit the Season.

But last weekend we spent four days down in San Francisco, and as I usually do when on vacation, I got a lot of reading done, even though it was a relatively short vacation. Last summer on Cannon Beach, I read three full books, despite having three kids and a dog, all in need of constant activity. Last weekend in San Francisco, I finished two books and got halfway through a third, despite the presence of my husband, child, and inlaws, and the discovery that I could bid on crap (er, fine holiday collectibles) on Ebay using my blackberry.

I think part of it is simply that I choose books differently when there's a plane ride involved. No matter how many books I have packed (three), I always buy one at the airport. I make the selection quickly, because no matter how early I am, I am always convinced I need to sit near the gate so that I don't miss any announcements, no matter how irrelevent they might be to me personally.

My favorite announcement of this trip: "Mr. XXX, please return to the Massage Bar to retrieve an item you left behind."

Yes, everyone looked up to see who Mr. XXX was. No, he never did stand up. Yes, I also want to know what the mysterious "item" was.

For the plane ride itself, I don't want any books that involve intense concentration, or require much of me at all, to be honest. I've got my hands full clutching the armrests and making sure, by sheer force of will, that the plane stays aloft. I am what you might call a "nervous flyer." I don't need any heavy thoughts while in midair - anything that might make the plane heavier is counterproductive.

The funny thing is, I always finish my airport books. I spend hours choosing other books: reading reviews, Amazon recommendations, suggestions from friends. Maybe I finish them, maybe I don't. But those light distractions I buy in airports? Those books I often leave behind in hotel rooms? I take about five minutes to choose them, and those books, I finish.

I should probably spend some time thinking about why this might be, but that would probably be counterproductive - when it comes to me and books, impulse shopping may well be the way to go.

Hopefully, those same impulses will be equally successful with my holiday shopping, because I've only got 17 more days to go!