The Blathering

Photo of the Week--1/30/12

2012-01-30T11:15:00.000-05:00

You might have guessed from previous photos that I like trees, especially ones that take twisty turny shapes. I found this one while hiking along the Glacier Gorge Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. (In Colorado, of course.) The scenery here was so gorgeous I almost forgot I was at nearly 10,000 feet of elevation during the six-nile trek. (My lungs were happy to remind me any time I found a steep section of trail, however.) Any physical discomfort was worth it to sit and have my lunch here, in the shade of a twisty tree with a cool lake at my feet.

Quilting How-To: Simple Piecing

2012-01-26T11:10:00.000-05:00

So I've written about choosing fabrics and strip cutting; now I'm at the step where you take all that fabric you cut apart and lovingly put it together again. Maybe sometime in the future (when I'm working on the appropriate project) I'll talk about piecing more complex shapes, like triangles, but for now I'll just consider simple piecing of rectangular shapes. Rectangles are simple because they always line up on one side—at least, that's the goal.

Now, I pre-cut all my pieces so I could pair the fabrics together in squares, and make sure I had a balance of pairs before sewing. (I didn't want all of fabric 1 to be paired with fabric 2, I wanted it matched equally with the other 11 fabrics.) This precluded doing real strip piecing, where you leave at least one fabric in long strips, sew pieces of a second fabric to the strip, and then cut them to the appropriate size. Still, I could save thread by stitching in series, rather than piece by piece. I had at least two blocks of every two-fabric combination, so I made piles of the two sizes of strips. I sewed the first seam of the first block, let the machine go a few stitches over, then fed in the first seam of the second block, like you see in the first picture. After I was halfway through the second block's seam, I could cut the first block off the stitching and match it with a piece to do the second seam. By alternating back and forth between two blocks in this way, and not stopping and cutting after each seam, I minimized the amount of thread used between seams. When you're stitching 240 blocks, that could be a lot of wasted thread.

So once I had my blocks made and laid out (I'll cover that in a separate post), it was time to sew them together. Here is the trickiest part of piecing: getting seams to match. As you can see from this photo, I had to match these two edges where three pieces were joined together. I wanted those two middle seams to match exactly. Now, you can carefully measure while you're cutting your pieces, and carefully set your machine to sew an exact ¼-inch seam, and still not get your edges to match. Seams can be bulky and messy when you sew them together.

But do not fear! There is a trick to getting your seams to match, and it's all in the pressing. When I initially pieced the blocks, I did them in pairs like this one. I knew these seams would be abutting each other, so I carefully identified one fabric as the "dark" and one as the "light." For the center seam, I always pressed the seam towards the "dark" side (in this photo, the green fabric). So on one square, the center seams were pressed to the outside. On its opposite mate, they went to inside. In this way, when I aligned the edges, I could match the seams and have an equal amount of fabric on either side. Pin the seams together and you have a very good chance of aligning your seams.

Of course, you still have to be careful when stitching, especially if the bottom seam is pointing up (towards the machine). If you're not careful, the motion of pulling the seam up towards the machine will flip the bottom down, and then you have a bumpy seam. But if you're careful, you get a nicely aligned seam, like the one in the finished picture here.

When you get to the stage where you're piecing blocks in rows, and then stitching whole rows together, you again need to be conscious of which way you're pressing the seams. I generally wait until I've sewn a whole row together, then I press all the seams in the first row "up." All the seams in the second row go "down," so I can do the same aligning of seams. I double-check, row by row, until I'm finished. The smoother the seams, the smoother the quilting. But that's getting ahead of myself. You'll have to wait for a future installment to learn about that.

Photo of the Week--1/23/12

2012-01-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

It's finally cold here in Michigan, so we're all thinking thoughts of warm places—especially Florida, where so many snowbird like to escape to in the winter months. We took a visit down to a snowbird last winter and took a drive through the Big Cypress National Preserve. We thought these alligators had the right idea: sit out and soak up the sun. And maybe eat a few unsuspecting tourists.

2011 Final Book Report

2012-01-12T15:53:00.000-05:00

Here's where I go into a little more detail about the books I read in 2011, as well as pick my favorite book of all the books I read this year.

102 total books read (1.96 per week)
76 books read for the first time
47 books of nonfiction/biography/memoir
40 books read for work
24 read on the e-reader
18 books for children or young adults
17 sci-fi books
7 fantasies
5 Austen-related
1 classic for first time

Pretty interesting when I compare to 2010; the percentage of books I read for the first time was 75%, almost as good as last year (77%) and better than 2009 (71%). Unlike last year, when the majority of books I read were for young adults or children, this year the biggest portion of my reading material (46%) came from nonfiction, mostly books I read for research. Sci-fi was up by a couple of books and fantasy down by almost two-thirds. Classics and Austen-related books also took big hits, as I didn't have time to write about them in my blog.

The most interesting number, I believe, is the new line item: 24 books read on the e-reader, which I received for Christmas 2010. I've purchased a few e-books online, checked out several from the library, and got a big hunk of the ones I read from CDs included with the latest volumes of my favorite series from Baen publishers. It will be interesting to see, especially with no big research project looming, how much that e-book number grows in 2012. You'll just have to check back in a year to find out! In the meantime, here were my favorite books of 2011:

Favorite book of the first quarter: E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, a funny YA school story with lots to say about friends and gender roles.

Favorite book of the second quarter: Ian McEwan's Atonement, both a historical novel and a meditation on writing.

Favorite book of the third quarter: Louis Sachar's Holes, the 1998 Newbery Medal winner (I'm a little behind) and still a wonderfully plotted book with great characters.

Favorite book of the fourth quarter: Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why (fiction), a moving mystery about a girl's suicide; and Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City (nonfiction), an intertwined account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the murderous doctor who haunted it.

And my favorite book of 2011? Of course, I have to choose Atonement. Beautiful language, epic scope, and a doozy of a final twist—all to explore the role of the author and the act of writing. How could I resist?

Photo of the Week--1/9/12

2012-01-09T16:14:00.000-05:00

For this week's installment of picture of things framed by other things: Picture Rocks National Lakeshore! The only way to really see this beautiful part of Michigan is by boat, which we did a couple of years ago. (In the future we'd love to do it by canoe, but that requires planning ahead for the special class.) I love the patterns the water makes on and through the rocks; testament again to the patience and power of water. Wait long enough, and water will triumph. It's an example to keep in mind as I prepare yet another cycle of revise-and-submit for my novel.

2011 Book Report: Fourth Quarter

2012-01-05T09:26:00.028-05:00

Last quarter, despite the crush of work for my book project, I managed to get 74% of the way to my 100-book-year goal. With my project completed, did I read enough to meet my goal, or did I laze about reading nothing but magazines? Check out my list below.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; R: Romance; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

10/03/11: Clare Vanderpool, Moon over Manifest # (MG, 1)
10/15/11: Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber (F, 10-15?*)
10/17/11: Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon (F, 15-20?*)
10/19/11: Zelazny, The Sign of the Unicorn (F, 20-25?*)
10/22/11: Zelazny, The Hand of Oberon (F, really, I've no idea how many times I've read these*)
10/22/11: Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos (F, 15ish*)
10/24/11: John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist (NF, 1)
10/26/11: Mary Burchell, A Song Begins (R, 5-10)
10/27/11: Burchell, The Broken Wing (R, 5-10)
10/28/11: Burchell, When Love Is Blind (R, 5-10)
10/31/11: Liz Murray, Breaking Night (memoir, 1)
10/31/11: Burchell, Music of the Heart (R, 5-10)
11/01/11: Burchell, Unbidden Melody (R, 5-10)
11/04/11: Burchell, Song Cycle (R, 5-10)
11/06/11: Burchell, Remembered Serenade (R, 5-10)
11/10/11: Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks # (NF, 1)
11/13/11: Charlie Price, Desert Angel (YA, 1)
11/17/11: Price, Dead Connection (YA, M, 1)
11/21/11: Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why # (YA, 1)
11/26/11: Walter Mosley, Futureland # (SF, SS, 1)
11/30/11: Gregory Maguire, Wicked (F, 1)
12/04/11: Asher and Carolyn Macklin, The Future of Us (YA, 1)
12/05/11: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs^ (bio, 1)
12/06/11: Price, The Interrogation of Gabriel James (YA, M, 1)
12/12/11: Price, Lizard People (YA, 1)
12/22/11: James L.Swanson, Bloody Crimes # (NF, 1)
12/26/11: Erik Larsen, In the Garden of Beasts # (NF, 1)
12/30/11: Larsen, Devil in the White City # (NF, 1)

That's right. I cheated. It was the middle of October and I saw I had read only one book, despite being freed from the constraints of research reading. My brain was tired. I didn't want to think. I turned to two favorite series I re-read from time to time; it's like comfort food. Now, just because each book in these series was only about 200 pages doesn't mean ... oh, yes, it does. I cheated. A book a day! Sometimes two! I read each of them all the way through, so these books definitely count, but they were short. I didn't have to think. And so I reached my 100-book goal. Actually, the final count for 2011 is 102 books.

So what was my favorite book of the quarter? That's actually a tough one, and I think I have to go with a tie. My favorite fiction of the quarter was Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, a young adult novel that deals with an extremely serious subject—suicide—without being preachy, treacly, or otherwise "issue-y." It's frank, occasionally funny, and always emotionally true, and the characters really stuck with me.

My favorite nonfiction book of the quarter was actually the last book I read this year: Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City. It dealt with an era that's become very familiar to me this year—the 1890s—and intertwines the story of the building of the Chicago World's Fair with an account of one of America's first serial killers. It builds suspense and evokes horror as well as any novel I've read, and makes even potentially dry subjects (the history of landscape architecture, anyone?) extremely interesting by focusing on the people behind the history. This is the best kind of nonfiction writing, and the other Larsen book I read this month, about the American ambassador in Berlin in the 1930s, was equally captivating. Nonfiction rules!

At least, I'm pretty sure it did for me this year. Check back soon for my final assessment of my year's reading.

Photo of the Week--1/2/12

2012-01-03T10:42:00.000-05:00

Ha! Mother Nature says. Get your picturesque photos of sunlight in a cathedral. That's easy, what with the walls and windows and all. Try this: a lone shaft of sunlight finding you in a forest. Now that's hard! (Or maybe not, if you take a trip to lovely northwest Michigan, as we did a couple of summers ago.)

Cookie of the Month: Gingerbread Cookies!

2011-12-23T22:17:00.000-05:00

Because of time constraints (and waistline constraints) I haven't made many cookies over the past few months. But it's holiday season, so it's time to make cookies—and what kind is more appropriate for the season than gingerbread? I consulted my trusty Better Homes & Gardens recipe book:

5 cups all-purpose flour
1½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 t. ground ginger
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. ground cloves
1 cup shortening
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 T. vinegar

Beat shortening for 30 seconds. Add sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, molasses, and vinegar; beat well. Add dry ingredients (flour, spices, soda, salt) and beat well. (I was so glad I had my trusty KitchenAid for this step; adding 5 cups of flour to any recipe is too much for my poor wrists and elbows.) Cover and chill 3 hours or overnight. You'll end up with a stiff mass, like in the picture here.

Divide dough into thirds. On a lightly floured surface, roll each third of dough to a ⅛-inch thickness. (Keep remainder chilled.) Cut into desired shapes.

Baker's note: This is always the challenging part for me: trying to keep the dough even. At least with cookies, you don't have to spread the dough evenly, and when you have extra you can re-roll it. In that fashion, I would roll and cut, roll and cut, roll and cut, until I ran out of dough. The recipe said "Makes 60"; since I used bigger cutters, I probably had more around four dozen.

Place cut-out dough one inch apart on greased cookie sheet (or ungreased well-used stone, as I have). Bake in a 375° F oven for 5 to 6 minutes. Cool one minute; remove to a wire rack.

You end up with some really tasty cookies. While they were baking, and since I didn't know how they would taste, I thought they might need some glaze. I made a simple confectioners' sugar-and-water glaze and brushed it over some of the cookies. The picture to the left shows an unglazed on top, the glazed on the bottom. The cookies were actually pretty tasty without the glaze; nice and chewy, not too sweet and nicely spicy, and very addicting. This would be a great recipe to use for gingerbread houses, trains, or other construction—if you can bear holding off on eating them.

Final verdict: nom nom nom nom nom (five of five noms).

Photo of the Week--12/19/11

2011-12-20T08:34:00.000-05:00

Again, Mother Nature takes your architectural flourishes, your cornices and finials and whatnot, and says, "Yeah, babe, I did it first." I took this picture on the Glacier El Martial near Ushuaia, the southernmost town in Argentina. It was December, the beginning of summer, and so much of the snow had melted as we walked around the lovely scenery on the mountain. I found this stand of trees, so marvelously knotted and twisted, and couldn't resist snapping a shot.

This post is no joke

2011-12-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

If you're one of my ~~multitudes~~ ~~dozens~~ handful of regular readers, you've probably noticed that I haven't posted much in this blog in the past month. Part of it is because, yes, I got out of the habit and yes, it's hard to get back into the habit once you stop exercising. (That rule applies to both physical and mental exercise, wouldn't you know it.) I got out of the habit because of a family situation: my mother-in-law passed away last month after a long illness. And it just seemed so hard to get back into the habit, to write something light and amusing, when we were all still missing her.

As a bridge back to blogging, and just because I loved her so and want to share it, I'm posting here the words I spoke at her memorial, simple and unadorned:

They say that you can’t pick your family. You’re born, and you’re stuck with them. Well, that’s not exactly true. When you decide to get married, you choose your spouse, and you choose the family that comes along with them. But there you can be stuck, too—at least, that’s what all the “in-law” jokes would tell you. Mothers-in-law, especially, can be a problem. Overbearing, interfering, critical ... those are all the stereotypes.

Well, anyone who ever met my mother-in-law knows she never conformed to any stereotype. When I married TSU and became her daughter-in-law, I discovered a woman who was generous and kind, with a sometimes-wicked wit. Although there are several stories I could tell to illustrate her thoughtful nature, there’s one in particular that stands out.

After Boy was born, we had a little mixup in scheduling. TSU had accepted a new job, but when he picked a start date he hadn’t put any wiggle room into his schedule. I guess he figured that a baby’s delivery date was like a FedEx delivery date, but Boy decided to be born a week late. So TSU began his job two days after we came home from the hospital. I was faced with dealing with a new baby, only a few days after having a C-section.

Of course my own mother took time off from work to stay with us, but she was teaching and only had a limited number of days off. It happened that my mother-in-law's winter break fell right after Boy's birth, and she used it to come help me out. Now understand, she was teaching high school. I have teachers on both sides of my family and I know what kind of hard work goes into it. But where many math or English teachers have two sections of the same class, and only have to prepare lesson plans for three or maybe four different classes, my mother-in-law taught languages. She had different levels of German class, and Latin class, and she might have even been teaching French or classes at the middle school that year. Some of her classes were split—German 3 and 4—so she could have five or even six different class preps every day. I’m sure she had many other things she could have done with her precious free time.

But she came and helped me. And boy did I ever need it. I was an only child, and when I was growing up I was never that interested in handling babies. I had no idea what I was doing. My mother-in-law, I knew, was the oldest of four children, so she’d been around babies her whole life. She had four kids of her own, and they all managed to grow up into productive members of society. Even better, they were all BOYS. I knew nothing about little boys—I didn’t know much about little girls, either, but at least I had been one once. So who knows what my mother-in-law was thinking as she watched this total novice try to deal with this little alien creature, I mean, her precious grandchild.

I don’t know what she was thinking, but this is what she did: she took care of us. She did little chores. She brought me food. She changed a diaper or two. And she never said, “You should do it this way.” Instead, she told me stories of how she had coped with being a mom. She shared her experiences and gave me valuable advice without making me feel like an idiot. She was thoughtful and generous, and during those early days she made me feel like she always did: like I was a welcome member of her team ... and, by the way, that it was nice to have another girl on the team for a change.

My mother-in-law (on left) and my mother, on a family trip we all took to Denmark.

So you do get to choose your family, and sometimes you get incredibly lucky when you make your choice. I feel extraordinarily privileged to have been part of her family, and I will miss her dearly.

Photo of the Week--12/12/11

2011-12-12T14:42:00.000-05:00

All those funky little "details" I like to find in architecture? Sometimes nature likes to remind me that She came up with them first. I got this shot in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a lovely park that was only a block from our hotel. The tree was too huge to get in one shot—at least, not without crossing the street and putting the city back in the frame. But I really took the shot to get the interesting vein-like appearance of this tree's roots; the pretty little dilute tortie was a bonus.

Come and major in overkill!

2011-11-09T09:10:00.007-05:00

It's November, Boy has already sent in his college applications (and gotten one acceptance), yet still the deluge continues. I can't stop reviewing the brochures now, though; how else will I discover who won the "most persistent" award? The "furthest away" award? The "????" award? So without further ado, the latest and not-greatest in recruiting literature.

The Michigan also-rans: Grand Valley State (MI, 3), U of M Dearborn (6-8), U-M Flint (3), Oakland U (3), Wayne State U (4-6), Davenport U (3), Central MU (6-8), Western MU (1-4, welcome to the club!), Eastern MU (4-6), U of Detroit Mercy (3), Aquinas (3), Lawrence Tech, Albion (3-4)

The techies: Rose-Hulman Tech (IN, 2-3): Nation's #1 engineering school you haven't heard of; MIT (4-5): Local meeting and how-to-apply brochure. Sigh. Never mind; MO Science & Tech (5); Michigan Tech (3); NYU Polytechnic: Never mind New York City, we rank high in graduates' salaries!

Small schools, small chance: U of Evansville (IN, 2), Manchester College (IN, 3-6): Indiana now trying to vie for most colleges ignored. Northeastern (MA, 2), U of Dayton (OH, 2), Miami (OH, 3), U of Toledo (3), wait, Ohio still pulling ahead.

Last-minute pushes: U of Pittsburgh (3-7)

B1G Ten? Really only about the one: U of Michigan (3-4). Sorry, THE Ohio State U (5-6): we still don't like you or your love of articles; U of Illinois (2): Dept of Science & Engineering, I love the dot-matrix, non-graphic return address!!; Northwestern (2-3): purple!

Ignoring the Ivies: Yale (4), Penn (2), Columbia (2)

Etc.: DePaul U (3), Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt (TN, 3-4), Case Western Reserve (OH, 3), Washington & Lee (VA, 2), the Army and Marines (eep!)

The diehards: U of Chicago (17-18), U of Kentucky (16-21): Since you ignored our first 19 letters, we're sending a paper application in letter #20.

We're hoping we'll have a final answer and maybe an actual decision by the end of the year, so we're also hoping the mail will stop. That seems unlikely, however, so I'll be back with a last assessment sometime in the (hopefully not-too-far) future.

Photo of the Week--11/7/11

2011-11-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

More things framed by other things! And all of the things are shiny! And all of the things inside one of my favorite, favorite things in the world! Yes, these lovely stained-glass windows and painted ceilings are framed by lovely marble columns inside the bestest of best places: the U.S. Library of Congress. A library! With shiny shiny pretties in addition to all the books you could ever want! No wonder I'm getting carried away with the exclamation points!

Photo of the Week--10/31/11

2011-10-31T16:28:00.000-04:00

Annnnd next in my series of photos of things being framed by other things.... I love going sightseeing in great cities, but they can be very frustrating when you want to get a photo of a beautiful building, and you can't get an angle anywhere that let's you get the whole building—at least not unless you have a helicopter or can otherwise get onto a high floor in a neighboring building. So here I present Trinity Church on Wall Street, framed by buildings on Wall Street. It's a beautiful little building among all the giant skyscrapers in Manhattan, with a lovely little garden. I may get a chance to visit again this fall when I head to New York, who knows?

Quilting How-To: Strip Cutting

2011-10-26T17:37:00.002-04:00

So last time I wrote about how I choose colors for my quilts. Of course the next step is to cut the fabric into pieces that fit your pattern. It's one of the funny contradictions of quilting, as a friend's husband once noted: we buy a whole bunch of fabric and cut it up, just so we can sew it together again.

Actually, I should back up half a step; unless you're deliberately seeking that shrunked, puckered fabric look after you've completed your project, you'll want to pre-wash your fabric. I always make sure to safety-pin the ends of the pieces, to reduce the amount of fraying, before I wash and dry the fabric on normal settings. Of course, I make sure to wash light and dark colors separately, to avoid staining, and use Shout Color Catchers if I'm really afraid colors might bleed.

After the fabric is pre-shrunk, and I've ironed the fabric to get rid of wrinkles, I'm ready to start strip cutting. You need three essential tools for this step, which you can see in the photo to the right: a large cutting mat (the green dohickey), a long quilting ruler (the clear plastic thingamabob), and a rotary cutter (the gadget with the blue handle). The cutting mat and quilting ruler should be at least 24 inches long, to accommodate a folded piece of quilting fabric. (They usually come in widths of 42 to 45 inches.)

So my quilt pattern required two sizes of pieces: 2½ x 4½ and 2½ x 6½ inches. When calculating how much fabric I'd need for this quilt, I figured that I'd have less wasted fabric if I started with 2½-inch strips, rather than 4½- or 6½-inch ones. So after cutting a clean edge off once side, making sure that my fold was straight at the top, I was ready to cut a whole bunch of 2½-inch pieces.

You can see it's very simple: make sure the top fold is straight (or anything cut with the fold in the middle will be off center), then line up the 2½-inch marker on the ruler with the edge of the fabric, as I've done in the picture. Then you carefully roll the rotary cutter along the edge of the rule. There are two main things to watch: first, don't catch your finger in the cutter, because those things are sharp and you will bleed! (And yes, I speak from experience. Fingers can really bleed a lot.) Second, you have to make sure you don't move the ruler as you press the rotary cutter against it—the tendency is for the bottom or top of the ruler to get pushed away from the ruler as you roll it. When cutting long strips like these, I usually rest my entire arm on the ruler and run the cutter in two stages: from the middle up and then from the bottom to the middle, centering my arm and checking the placement in between cuts.

Once I have my 2½-inch strips, I'm ready to cut those down into 4½- or 6½-inch pieces. Again I use the quilting ruler—I have a smaller, less unwieldy* size for cutting and trimming small pieces—to cut my strips to the required size.

This strip-cutting method can work even if you're not cutting out square or rectangular pieces. If you have triangles or even trapezoids, you can still start with strips. Measure at the widest point, then add an extra ⅛-inch to the strip; this will give you the wiggle room you need when trimming pieced angles. If you have a template for your triangle or trapezoid, put the quilting ruler on top of it as a guide, then cut out your first angles. You should be able to flip the template over (or upside down) to cut the next piece, then flip and cut again. NOTE: if you're not using equilateral triangles, or your shapes are only angled on the one side (the left, for instance), this method may not work if you're not using batik fabrics, which have no "right" or "wrong" side. If your fabric has a wrong side, you may want to check after the first couple of pieces to make sure this method doesn't give you unwanted mirror-image pieces.

When deciding whether to cut everything ahead of time or as I go depends on the pattern. If all the squares in the pattern use the same fabric, I may cut as I go, just to break up the monotony. If, as in this case, I have squares of varying fabrics, and I have to work on arranging the squares in a pattern, I'll cut everything out ahead of time, so when I'm piecing things together I don't suddenly run out of one color and end up with an imbalance of patterns. The secrets of piecing will have to wait until another installment, however.

*Word nerd aside: unwieldy: another of those fun words that we don't use without the prefix, like (dis)gruntled or (non)plussed or (in)ane.

Photo of the Week--10/24/11

2011-10-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Ah, the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. So orange! So shapely! And here I got to take one of my favorite kind of photos: a landscape framed by more landscape! Usually it's trees that I like to use as a frame, but who can resist a big giant hole in a rock? Certainly not me, especially when there's lot of bright, white snow to add contrast.

Quilting How-To: Fabric Selection

2011-10-19T17:15:00.000-04:00

One of the bonuses of being done with my book—besides having time to return to this blog—is being able to spend time quilting again. I promised that when I began another project, I would document it as I went along and add to my postings of quilting how-tos. Since I had a good friend getting married, it was time to start another quilt. And so I start here with one of my favorite parts of making a quilt: choosing the fabric.

Actually, the first part of designing the quilt is choosing the pattern, which I'm just going to skim over here. I wanted something quick and easy, so I chose a two-color block with only four pieces. The blocks used several colors, combined into different pairings, so I needed several fabric colors and patterns.

I consulted my friend's registry and saw they had chosen sage and a kind of pale, silvery blue for their sheets. Hey! I thought. I've got some sages and blues in my stash, having made a purple-and-sage pattern for my own bed (still being hand quilted) and a blue-and-red lap quilt for a graduation gift. So I went through and found seven kinds of scrap that fit with the color scheme. I had enough to make one-twelfth of the squares, so I figured I needed eleven more fabrics for the project.

Next stop was my local Jo-Ann, which has developed a decent selection of batik fabrics over the past few years. (Of course, my scraps are mostly batiks; I prefer the rich, saturated color and not-quite-patterned look most of them have.) They had a lot of olive greens, turquoise greens, and the like, but not much in sage. Fine. I found a really nice navy blue pattern and an excellent silvery blue fabric and added that to my collection. Now I just needed nine more fabrics to have a good selection to mix together.

Luckily, I had a birthday coming up, which meant a trip to Ann Arbor Sewing Center, my favorite place for quilting fabric. Not only do they have a fantabulous, to-die-for selection of batiks, they give a discount on one-yard cuts on your birthday. So driver's license in hand and my mom along to share the fun, I headed over to browse their batik room.

The batik room is a bit overwhelming at first; if you're not sure what colors you want to use, you can get stuck in front of one of the cases (there are at least half a dozen), looking at all the different shades. Luckily, I knew how I wanted to split my nine remaining fabrics: a couple darks, a couple lights, four medium tones in both grey and green, and one contrasting color to kind of "pop" out of the quilt. So I browsed and found a dark navy and one with both dark green and blue. I found two light grey, nearly white patterns (one escaped this photo), and then four mid-tone greens. You'll notice the one near the top left has almost no pattern to it; I find when you're using several fabrics in a quilt, you need a couple of patterns that aren't very busy so that the eye can rest once in a while.

I tried a lot of things for my contrasting "pop" of color: purple, a couple of burgundies, and a couple of rusts. I was leaning towards a golden-rust color when I found the fabric at the top of the picture: a batik ombre that shaded from pure golden yellow at one end to deep orange rust at the other. (In the picture one half of the fabric is sitting atop other half.) I liked the yellow, I like the orange, and it certainly was going to contrast! I got my one-yard cuts, took them home and washed them, and I was ready to start cutting! But that's a step for another how-to....

Photo of the Week--10/17/11

2011-10-17T11:53:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the waterfalls themselves aren't all that spectacular, but where they are situated is. This one I snapped in Zion National Park, Utah. I liked the angle from under the overhang, and how that little tree is doing its damnedest to grow despite its precarious position. The multi-colored rocks are pretty cool; I'm always fascinated how water interacts with rock to create so many variations in shape and color.

What does it take to write a book? (Part 2)

2011-10-14T09:26:00.000-04:00

So what does it take to write a book, besides letting the housework go to hell? Here's what I did for my book over the last nine months:

Read 40 books cover to cover
Read portions of another 23 books
Read over 100 articles or encyclopedia entries (from databases or web sites)
Compiled almost 1100 pages of single-spaced notes
About 575 of those pages were written by me on books I read
The other 525 were copied/pasted from online articles
That breaks down to about 646,000 words of notes (338K original/308K copied)
Chose 45 images to be included in the book
Chose and excerpted 16 primary sources to be included in the book

And what did I end up with?

A prologue and seven chapters totaling just over 38,000 words
12 primary sources totaling 18,720 words
10 biographies totaling 11,180 words
An overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment!

There still might be a few tweaks here and there (maybe a primary source or image cut here and there), and I won't know the final page count until the book is typeset, but I think I can feel confident that I was pretty thorough in doing my research and writing. We'll see when the book comes out and the reviews come in next spring.

A weighty decision....

2011-10-12T09:33:00.169-04:00

Okay, it's only been three months since the last time I went through Boy's pile of college brochures, but the shelf where I keep them is close to bursting and depositing all that unwanted paper on my kitchen floor. I put them all in a box and they're sitting on my ankles right now, and the box is really heavy. So in the interest of keeping my shins unbruised, I'm going to go through these a little more quickly, and only comment if I feel inspired.

Grand Valley State U (MI, 2): Not just a brochure, but free parking and a meal!

U of Kentucky (13-15): Just in case you forgot about us.

Davenport U (MI), U Detroit Mercy (2), UM-Dearborn (4-5), UM-Flint (1-2)

U of Southern Cal (2-4): Come to LA this summer!

Reed College (OR, 2): No chance, but their annual Nitrogen Day sounds like a blast!

Roosevelt U (IL): Downtown Chicago! Plus my cousin teaches there!

U of Toledo (1-2), U of Dayton, Wooster (3): Come to exciting Ohio?

New York U (2): We did mention New York City, right?

Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech (IN): The best engineering school you've never heard of.

Aquinas College (MI, 1-2): "The most open-hearted, open-minded college in America ... rooted in the Catholic Dominican tradition." Um, yeah.

Eastern MI U (1-3): Oh, Eastern. You have about as much likelihood of getting Boy to attend as your football team has of going undefeated.

Oakland U (MI, 2): Card is nice, but the dancing bear in your TV ads creeps me out.

Central MI U (1-5): Let's see how many in-state colleges we can ignore!

Kettering U (MI, 2-3): That makes the count 12? 13?

Yale U (1-3): Boy believes in equal opportunity when it comes to ignoring brochures, Ivy League! So 2nd postcard addressed to parents. Then a 124-page soft-bound book. No wonder tuition is high.

MIT (3): News supplement for its 150th year; interesting but maybe unobtainable.

University of Michigan (2): Yeah, baby, we've got the president at the Big House!

Alma College (MI, 1-2): They're called the Scots and a picture showed bagpipes. Run, Boy, run!

Carthage College (WI, 2): There's a picture of a huge lake ... that means huge mosquitoes! Run!

Bowling Green State (2): Ohio trying to outbid Michigan in the number of colleges ignored....

Ohio State (4): ... or mocked.

U of Chicago (10): Whoa. They knew we were ignoring the quirky postcards so they sent a massive brochure. Plus postcards (11-12), letter (13-15), and huge brochure (16).

Rice U (TX, 2): They put the tuition right on there to scare you away.

Missouri S & T (3-4); U North Carolina (2); Pitt (1-2); Carnegie-Mellon (3); Olin College (MA): ????

Northwood U (MI): "Where can you get a great BUSINESS EDUCATION?" Isn't a major part of business knowing your target market? Brochure FAIL.

Manchester U (IN, 1-2): Apply early, get a FREE T SHIRT!

Rensselaer (NY): If you can spell or pronounce it correctly, you're admitted!

Army ROTC: Please, sir, may I not have another!

Michigan Tech (2): Hmm, tell me more about this full scholarship with tuition and stipend.

And that's enough for this installment. I can feel my feet again, and there's room in the drawer, so the rest can wait for a while. I'm hoping that now Boy is actually filling out college applications, the mail will slow down. Boy's senior year could slow down, too, he'll be out of the house before we know it!

Photo of the Week--10/10/11

2011-10-10T10:12:00.000-04:00

Sometimes nature comes up with an architecture more spectacular than anything humans can dream up.... This was in Florida in 2005, on a boat a trip through Everglades National Park. Pelicans landed on the boat begging for food before we even left, and of course we saw gators, egrets, and even wild pigs. I was fascinated by the shapes we found in the mangrove swamps, where roots and branches twist and combine and create a maze on the water. On a later trip to the state we would take a canoe into the waterways around Naples, where the mangroves grew even closer together and you had to play limbo under many of the branches.

What does it take to write a book? (Part 1)

2011-10-06T10:37:00.000-04:00

I know this blog has been pretty bare lately. That's because I spent the last nine months (and change) researching and writing a history reference book. I was given a rather broad subject—a period of 35 years—and so I spent a lot of nights and weekends reading history books, biographies, economic histories, and other materials. (My next post will go into that in more detail.) As a result, I did not spend any time cleaning my office. So one thing it takes to write a book is to let entropy take over your office, like this:

Note: I'm not the only one in our house who was reading books for fun, and not the only one who couldn't manage to put them away properly.

All the boxes contain small knitting or crochet projects I was working on as a fundraiser for the humane society. When they decided they didn't have room to house our crafts, our store shut down and my projects remained "in progress" in my office rather than put away in my craft room.

Don't ask for a picture showing the entropy in my craft room. Some things are just too embarrassing to blog about.

...aaand here's the real disaster area: my desk. More craft materials, spare books I meant to read, printer cartridges and other supplies, individual papers with notes I need to remember, stacks of feedback from my critique group I'd been ignoring for the past six months....

It took me a good three days (lazy days, at least) to get a handle on this mess. After boxing and storing and organizing and cleaning and hauling things away, this is what I ended up with:

Books stacked neatly! In single layers! (Except for series, a clever space-saving strategy!) Organized! Old ones donated!

Look! My desk is made of wood! Who knew!

But now that the desk is clean, I have to get back to work. I have to try to reduce the stack of feedback I can no longer ignore and tackle the mammoth job of rewriting my novel.

....Unless ... yes ... my craft room needs cleaning! Be back in another week!

Photo of the Week--10/3/11

2011-10-03T11:03:00.000-04:00

I love visiting archaelogical sites, especially areas where a whole community of buildings have survived, making it easier to imagine what life might have been like when the city was occupied. This is one of the many buildings that survive from the Mayan city of Tulum, on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. It's a newer city, at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries. Tulum briefly survived Spanish occupation; it was likely abandoned after diseases brought by the Spanish decimated the population.

It's a beautiful site, with temples and a pyramid along with many other buildings, some situated right on the rocky coast of the Caribbean. I liked this photo because of the relatively few tourists in the picture (Tulum is a very popular attraction) and the look of the columns that remain while the ceiling is open to the sky.

2011 Book Report: Third Quarter

2011-10-01T08:53:00.080-04:00

Last quarter I managed to get halfway to my 100-book-year goal, thanks (or no thanks) to research for my history project. How did I do this quarter, and I did read anything for fun? Check out my list below.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

07/04/11: David Weber, More Than Honor# (SF, 3 or 4)
07/08/11: Weber, Worlds of Honor# (SF, 3 or 4)
07/18/11: Weber, At All Costs (SF, 2)
07/20/11: Weber, Changer of Worlds# (SF, 2)
07/22/11: Michael Kazin, A Godly Man^ (William Jennings Bryan bio, 1)
07/22/11: Weber, The Service of the Sword# (SF, 2)
07/23/11: Carrie Bebris, The Intrigue at Highbury (M, 1)
07/26/11: Richard Cherny, A Righteous Cause: The Life of WJ Bryan^ (NF, 1)
07/31/11: Weber, The Shadow of Saganami# (SF, 2)
08/07/11: H. Paul Jeffers, An Honest President^ (Cleveland bio, 1)
08/09/11: Henry F. Graff, Grover Cleveland^ (NF, 1)
08/15/11: Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs^ (NF, 1)
08/22/11: Samuel Gompers, 70 Years of Life and Labor^ (memoir, 1)
08/23/11: Weber, Storm from the Shadows# (SF, 1)
08/25/11: Edward Renehan, Dark Genius of Wall Street^ (Jay Gould bio, 1)
08/29/11: Richard Stiller, Queen of Populists^ (Mary Lease bio, 1)
09/03/11: Weber, Mission of Honor# (SF, 1)
09/05/11: Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier^ (bio, 1)
09/11/11: Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.^ (bio, 1)
09/13/11: Louis Sachar, Holes (MG, 1)
09/16/11: Craig Phelan, Grand Master Workman^ (Terence Powderly bio, 1)
09/18/11: Powderly, Terence, The Path I Trod^ (memoir, 1)

Only 22 books this quarter; as you can see, I was doing a lot of research for the biography portion of my book. My deadline was September 27 and I was working weekends and nights to meet it, so I didn't get a lot of extra reading in. (So much for the "lazy summer.") Only 10 of the 22 books were for "fun," and of those, only four were for the first time.

Although some of the biographies were well written and interesting, I have to pick Louis Sachar's Holes as my favorite. It's not a new book—it won the Newbery Medal in 1998 and was made into a movie that I saw when it came out in 2003—and I'd had it sitting around the house so long I thought I'd already read it. So I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading and realized it was new to me. It's a wonderfully plotted book, with compelling characters and a language that is simple but interesting.

So at 74 books for the year I'm just shy of my goal of 100 for the year. With my book project—and the need to research—all done, will I make my target for the year? Check back in three months to find out.

Photo of the Week--9/26/11

2011-09-26T08:41:00.000-04:00

Oh, right, I was also looking for architectural things that caught my eye on this go-round of vacation photos, and it doesn't get much more interesting than Frank Lloyd Wright. This, of course, is his famous building for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, which we visited in the fall of 2003. I love that except for one guy probably getting his own picture taken and thus imposing himself on my picture, the place looks deserted. In reality, it was pretty busy, with lots of people enjoying the selection of Impressionists and 20th-century artists. Or not enjoying, depending on your taste for weird art. In any case, it was fun to look up and down the spiral "staircase."

Photo of the Week--9/19/11

2011-09-19T14:00:00.000-04:00

Although flowers are nice, they aren't necessary to create a beautiful garden of growing things. This lovely scene is part of the Botanical Gardens of Montreal, which I encourage any tourist to the city to visit. Just make sure you save most of the day: you won't want to choose between the bonsai gardens, orchid greenhouses, outdoor water gardens, lovely walkways, and indoor displays.

Photo of the Week--9/12/11

2011-09-12T08:35:00.000-04:00

September is here and in full swing and I am dragging my heels and hanging on for dear life to summer.... Usually I love everything about fall—football, cooler temps, back-to-school—but this summer has flown by and I feel like I haven't been able to stop and smell the flowers. So here I'm virtually stopping to look at the flowers; these were at the Anne of Green Gables House on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Of course Green Gables wasn't a real place, but there is a house that inspired L.M. Montgomery when creating her classic series ... at least the Canadian government says there is, as long as there are hundreds of tourists coming to PEI each year to check it out. The garden is certainly worth a visit.

Photo of the Week--9/5/11

2011-09-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, enough with the waterfalls! It's September, and it's starting to get cool outside, we don't need to imagine cool sheets of water falling on our head. I hear, and I obey: instead of a cool Icelandic waterfall, I give you a hot Icelandic geyser! Geyser, by the way, is one of the few English words of purely Icelandic origin, although the two languages have many words with Old Norse roots in common.

Photo of the Week--8/29/11

2011-08-29T18:15:00.001-04:00

Yes, I'm still posting picture of Icelandic waterfalls. (At least this one is taken from behind the waterfall.) And yes, my brain is still flooded with research for my book. I have four more weeks to finish everything, and while I could list everything I have left to do, the prospect makes me want to run around the yard screaming, so I'll spare us all. Just think of the cool, refreshing water....

Photo of the Week--8/22/11

2011-08-22T08:45:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's another waterfall. It's like someone was experimenting in Iceland: "Hmm, let's try a blue water waterfall. Let's try a black stone waterfall. I know! Blue water AND black stone!" (Given his proclivity for the Norwegian fjords, I suspect Slartibartfast from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) In any case, this waterfall, Barnafos, was another beautiful variation on what you can do with rushing water and a little gravity.

Janespotting: Aunt Celia by Jane Gillespie

2011-08-17T08:48:00.087-04:00

Jane Gillespie is one of those authors who has dipped into almost all of Austen's works as inspiration for her own, including a fun if forgettable take on Mansfield Park, a look at the naughtiest characters from Northanger Abbey, and a sweet, witty take on one of the neglected characters from Sense and Sensibility. So how would she approach our lovely Emma and her shenanigans?

Again, Gillespie eschews he main character and follows one of the more overlooked characters from the original, Mr. Weston, father of Frank Churchill and husband of "poor Miss Taylor," Emma's former governess. This novel opens almost two decades after Emma, with the widowed Mr. Weston and his nearly-adult daughter, Celia, anticipating a visit from Frank and Jane Churchill and their large family. Celia wonders if she still will be friends with the Churchills' eldest daughter Stella, who is two years younger and livelier than her "Aunt" Celia.

Besides these visitors, who are staying at the larger Donwell Abbey, the Westons are hosting the widow Mrs. Petteril. Mr. Weston, a kind soul, thinks Celia needs female company after her mother's death. Celia would be just as happy to spend her time cheering her father, because Mrs. Petteril is not a very sympathetic lady. In fact, the impoverished widow is scheming to have her wastrel son Henry marry Celia, and then marry Mr. Weston herself.

While Celia manages to escape these machinations—mostly—she does not find comfort with her relations, either. Her Uncle Frank is rather severe (family life has made him responsible and boring), and her Aunt Jane is occupied with her younger children. The Churchill boys are a bit rambunctious, and barely under the control of their tutor, James Aske, who hopes to devote some of his time to poetry. Stella is a bit of a flirt and a flibbertigibbet, and enjoys teasing James about his ambitions; she is egged on by Henry, who has his own plans to find a rich wife. Celia is sympathetic to James, and is further intrigued when his brother, Captain Aske, shows up to drag his younger brother back home to their parents Lord and Lady Langleigh. Nobility? Oh my!

Captain Aske is a rather humorous, straightforward type. There is no urgent reason for him to bring James home, except that he has promised to do it and is impatient to finish the job. A chance meeting with Stella in the village leads him to enlist her help by passing a message to James. The message goes astray and causes a misunderstanding; in her panic Stella lies and says Celia was the intended target of improper intentions. She runs away and is taken in by Henry, who runs away with her. She is not discovered as missing until Celia has managed to be falsely accused of involvement with three different men and cleared her name. The serious Captain Aske takes the blame and goes in pursuit; Celia discovers James is intrigued by her as well; and Stella is returned home, abashed, unblemished, and ready to settle down.

Scheming villains, innocent maidens wrongly accused, and happy endings with wealthy and handsome young men ... we can check off many of the elements that make a good Austenish read. This one had the added benefit of a very appealing heroine; Celia is considerate and patient (without being a doormat), so seeing her triumph over the plans of selfish people to make herself and her family happy was a pleasure to read. So another thumbs up for a Gillespie "sequel": fun if not earthshaking.

Photo of the Week--8/15/10

2011-08-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

You may be wondering, What's up with all the waterfalls? Well, there were so many different kinds I saw in Iceland, I thought it would be interesting to compare them. Or perhaps the waterfall is a metaphor for my longing for escape from my current, labor-intensive project. Or for the state of my brain, which feels like a droplet of water lost and unable to swim as it flows over the tall cliff of work-to-be-done to be beaten upon the rocks of quickly-arriving-deadlines. Or maybe it's just pretty. Pretty water! Water so sparkly pretty!

Yeah, it's a metaphor for my sad brain. :p

Recipes from Fish Camp: Sweet Potato Rice Salad

2011-08-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

Another year, another fish camp with the family. Which means another chance to try a new recipe! This one went over fairly well, and I took the leftovers home and they were still good a week later. Keep in mind I made a triple batch of this recipe, so check out the asterisk to see about my substitution.

3 cups chicken broth
1 cup wild rice (uncooked)*
2 cups sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1 T. + ½ t. olive oil, divided
⅓ cup red delicious apple
¼ cup orange juice concentrate (thawed, undiluted)
¼ cup green onions
¼ cup raisins
optional: mint sprigs

*Do you know how expensive wild rice is? I only found one size of box, with barely 1 cup, so when I tripled the recipe I used 1 cup of wild rice and 2 cups of brown rice. Tasty and a nice texture.

Bring the chick broth to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add rice; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.
Preheat oven to 400F.
Combine sweet potato and ½ teaspoon oil in a bowl, tossing well to coat. Arrange sweet potato in a single layer on a jelly-roll pan. (Cover in aluminum foil & coat with cooking spray to make cleanup easy.) Bake at 400F for 30 minutes, turning once.
Combine diced apples with orange juice concentrate in a small bowl. Drain, reserving concentrate. Combine 1 tablespoon oil with reserved concentrate; stir well with whisk.
Combine rice, concentrate mixture, apples, green onions, and raisins; gently stir in potato. Cover and chill 1 hour. Garnish with mint sprigs, if desired.
Eat!

Photo of the Week--8/1/11

2011-08-01T08:29:00.000-04:00

Still hot, so still continuing with Icelandic waterfalls. This one, Svartifoss, looks like it would be nice to take a shower under in 90-degree heat ... not that it ever gets up to 90 in Iceland, but I'd like to transplant this beautiful waterfall into my backyard for the summer!

Please ... think of the trees!

2011-07-28T08:15:00.157-04:00

It's been five months since I left off going through the pile of Boy's college brochures, and since then he's added very good ACT score and a second top AP to his credit. The stack is ready to spill out of its hidey-hole, so it's time for me to peruse the pile and add my snarky comments....

Rice U. (TX): glossy one-fold brochure with six reasons on "Why Rice?" Carbs not one of the reasons.
Boston U.: we're hedging our bets ... enter with a major in Engineering, like you said on your ACT survey, or discover "an unexpected new passion or career path."
Wayne State (3): Take a peek at your future ... wait, you can move your hands from your eyes, Detroit is safe now!
Northwestern U.: nice glossy brochure: we're fancy but not stuck up! And purple!
North Carolina: "May I tell you why I love UNC?" Actually, I think the question is "Can you," and the answer is "No."
Grand Valley State: Sign up for the Laker Experience! Does it involve Laker girls? Because Paula Abdul is so passe.
Brown U.: Combines the best of both worlds ... an Ivy League education and a name that lends itself to immature jokes!
U of Kentucky (11): New slogan "See Blue." Every month, it seems like.
U of Southern Cal: "As a top-rated private institution in the heart of Los Angeles, $$$$$$$$$$$$$." Sorry, I couldn't bring myself to read further.
Oakland U (MI): wouldn't it be so easy to stop by an check us out? Not as easy as trashing this postcard.
THE Ohio State U (2): Looks like no change from the last brochure, and no change in our response: AHAHAHAHAHA!
Ohio Northern (2): Big brochure with key facts, among them these seemingly contrary ones: School mascots are the Polar Bears, but the school colors are orange and black? Are they Halloween polar bears?
Harvey Mudd College (CA): Awesome holographic brochure! Focus on math, science, and engineering! And 35 minutes from Disneyland!
DePaul U (2): Come to our local reception in metro Detroit to hear about Chicago!
College of Wooster: Choose your adventure now ... in Ohio?
OSU (3): come visit and learn more ... or visit our tattoo shops for extra cash!
Sarah Lawrence: no need to mention we're co-ed, unless you count name-dropping Joseph Lawrence and Star Wars in the first sentence.
U of Michigan ... Dearborn (2): Damn.
Penn U: Ben Franklin founded us ... we're Ivy League but we don't need to mention it until the last paragraph.
Embry-Riddle: Aeronautical University! in Florida! Where you could train to work on the shuttle progr—erm, never mind.
Lake Superior State (MI): The one picture with snow shows kids wearing sweatshirts ... and neither does the flyer that came a few days later. Yeah, not buying it.
Penn State: Take five seconds to return this postcard ... or five minutes to try and unfold this brochure.
Michigan Tech: Visit our virtual booth at our online College Fair!
U of M Dearborn (3): Sigh. Great value, though!
Mercer U (GA): these Bears don't believe in hibernation! (And they're trying to attract teens?)
Miami U (OH): ACT score = potential $10K per year scholarship!
Princeton U: We're so Ivy League, we don't need to mention it.
Penn State (2): Check out our local meeting!
Bowling Green State (OH): Young eyes could read tiny white letters on a bright orange background, but old parent eyes can't.
George Mason U (VA): attend our National Youth Leadership Forum on National Security. Gulp.
Macalester College (MN, 2): This may be your last piece of mail from us, unless ... Promise?
SUNY at Albany: College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering ... Nano, nano, nano!
Kentucky (12): Ooo, a glossy newsletter instead of the usual letter .... zzzzzz.
USC (2): Big brochure with pretty pictures.
U of Chicago (8): Emphasizing research instead of the usual quirky stuff ... setting up for the big brochure coming soon.
U of Illinois: "We practically invented engineering. Ok, maybe not."
DePaul U (3): The postcard literally says "Hi." We say, "Bye."
Miami of OH (2): "successful students like you earn special perks," which sadly do not include free cars and tattoos.
Wooster (2): "Follow a path that's all your own," along with all the other students.
New York U: New York City, kids, with guaranteed housing!
U of Chicago (9): Includes big poster designed to give students "warm fuzzies imagining my future as a college student."
University of Michigan...: ... Ann Arbor! Hooray! It took you long enough. But hey, we had the president at our last commencement.

Since Boy actually wanted to read that last one, I'm going to stop here. I've still got a stack two inches thick, but that can wait for another installment.

Photo of the Week--7/25/11

2011-07-25T08:59:00.000-04:00

It's hot here in the Midwest. I even went up to the UP of Michigan on vacation, and it was still hot (ie, above 85). So I can't resist photos of cool, cool water. This is another Icelandic waterfall, the magnificent Dettifoss. The last picture I showed was of a slow, seeping, blue beauty; this one is gray and huge and nasty, but still beautiful. And look! Do you see any guide ropes, any railings, any "DANGER" signs? Nope. Either Icelanders assume tourists are smart enough to figure it out, or else they don't have many liability lawyers. Either way, it was easy to get a great photo!

The Quilt Files, Episode 23

2011-07-13T08:22:00.013-04:00

It's been a while since I've detailed any quilting projects on the blog, because it's been a while since I've worked on any projects. I still have a king-sized piece I'm hand-quilting, but it will be a long time until that's done. In the meantime, I got invited to a summer wedding, and thought I'd find a little project to supplement a gift on the gift registry. I saw a kit in a catalog for an insulated casserole tote, and thought it looked like a fun little project. Then I opened the pattern, and saw the directions required 60 feet of cotton clothesline ... what the heck? I looked at the directions. What had looked like thin sewn strips in the tiny catalog picture was actually fabric-wrapped pieces of clothesline. So after a four-store search to find cord of cotton-blend, not polyester (which wouldn't be good with heat), I was finally able to get started. I wrapped twelve strips of fabric around the line, then zig-zagged the pieces together. I cut them into smaller slices and sewed the slices together to make the body of the carrier. (Click on a photo to enlarge.)

For the covers, I pieced more strips together and made a sandwich: strip-pieced top, insulative batting in the middle, and solid bottom. Then I put a mitered binding around three sides of each cover. I didn't bother tacking down the binding by hand, I could stitch in the ditch and catch the underside without a problem.

Next was to take the covers and attach them to the top of the zig-zagged clothesline sides. That could be done by machine, and once the tops were attached to the sides I could do more binding on the top of the clothesline sides. Pulling the binding to the inside and tacking it down (again by machine) hid the seam very well, as you can see in this picture. I butted the edges of one cover right next to another; in the picture you can see one cover is flipped back (the black part on the left), while another is lying on top of where the casserole goes (the black and white stripes).

Next came the fun part—NOT! I had to attach the binding at the bottom of the clothesline sides to the reinforced, cloth-covered bottom by hand. Since this seam had to hold the weight of a glass casserole, filled with food, the pattern recommended using tapestry thread. As you can see from the picture, it's pretty heavy, at least three strands, and I had to use a tapestry needle to fit the thread. Pushing a tapestry needle through regular cotton fabric is tough, and I had to start over twice to get the circular side to line up with the square bottom. It was painstaking hand-work (emphasis on the pain, that's big needle to wield), but I finally finished.

And here's the finished product! You can't see, but there is a casserole dish on the inside, nestled under four layers of insulated covers on the top and kept secure by four ties that were sewn directly onto the bottom of the base. Something pretty, functional, and hand-crafted to accompany the casserole dish that was on the registry. It was a fairly work-intensive project, but I liked how it turned out so much I might make it again for myself.

Photo of the Week--7/11/11

2011-07-11T08:42:00.000-04:00

I've seen bigger waterfalls, and taller ones, and ones terrifyingly fast, but never one as cool as this one, Hraunfoss in Iceland. If you look closely you can see yes, that the water is actually coming out through the rocks and not over them. Coming through the rocks is what turns the water that unusual and very lovely opaque aqua, as minerals leach into the water. It was just one of the wonderful sights we saw in Iceland.

Photo of the Week--7/4/11

2011-07-05T08:42:00.000-04:00

Now this is one of the prettiest city hikes I've ever taken. Back in 2002 we took a cruise of the Norwegian fjords, and spent a day in Tromso, Norway. A cable car took us to the top of a ridge, and as we walked over a tundral meadow (Tromso is north of the Arctic Circle) we got this lovely view of the city. Blue skies, blue waters, white snow, white clouds ... sun giving just enough warmth to make it comfortable. On days like today when we have a forecast approaching 90F, this kind of summer sounds great!

2011 Book Report: Second Quarter

2011-07-01T08:51:00.123-04:00

Research for my history project helped me reach 28 books read in the first quarter, a good start on my 100 per year goal. How did I do this quarter, and I did read anything for fun? Check out my list below.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

04/03/11: Jane Austen-Leigh, A Visit to Highbury (H, 1)
04/10/11: John Steele Gordon, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street^ (NF, 1)
04/12/11: Kenneth D. Ackerman, The Gold Ring^ (NF, 1)
04/18/11: Clark, Judith Freeman, The Gilded Age^ (NF,1)
04/23/11: Joan Aiken, Jane Fairfax (H, 1)
04/24/11: Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons^ (NF, 1)
05/01/11: Jane Gillespie, Aunt Celia (H, 1)
05/05/11: Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism^ (NF, 1)
05/14/11: David Weber, Field of Dishonor# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/18/11: The Rise of Big Business and the Beginnings of Antitrust and Railroad Regulation, 1870-1900^ (NF, 1)
05/20/11: Weber, Honor in Exile# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/25/11: The Great Strikes of 1877^ (NF, 1)
05/27/11: Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence^ (NF, 1)
05/27/11: Weber, Honor Among Enemies# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/29/11: Weber, In Enemy Hands# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/30/11: Milton Meltzer, Bread—and Roses^ (NF, 1)
06/01/11: Weber, Echoes of Honor# (SF, 5 or 6)
06/07/11: Weber, Ashes of Victory# (SF, 4 or 5)
06/16/11: Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892^ (NF, 1)
06/21/11: Ian McEwan, Atonement (1)
06/26/11: McEwan, Solar (1)
06/26/11: Pete Hautman, Godless (YA, 1)
06/27/11: R. Hal Williams, Realigning America^ (NF, 1)
06/29/11: McEwan, On Chesil Beach# (1)

I'm amazed I managed 24 books this quarter. It felt like all I was doing was reading history books to research my project, but when I look at the stats, only ten of the books I read (just over 40%) were for work. (To be fair, though, I probably read part or half of another dozen books that I didn't list.) I did manage three variations on Emma—although I've only managed to blog about one of them—and just to give my brain a break I read half a dozen books in one of my favorite sci-fi series.

Which brings me to an aside: I attended a workshop by author Pete Hautman (see the 6/26/11 entry) in May, and we talked about how people read. He asked if anyone skipped a lot while reading, and said he often skipped whole chapters in books, or put a book aside altogether if it didn't hold his interest. I thought I'm not like that at all—I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've started a book for fun and not finished it—but then while I was re-reading these books I realized I was skimming quite a bit. Every time there was a long description of a space battle, with the captains giving commands about acceleration and heading and gravities, I started skimming. I wanted to get to the more personal bits, the character development and political intrigue, which are what I really like about the series. Granted, this was the fourth or fifth time reading some of the books, so I knew I wasn't missing anything, but still ... I skim on occasion.

So anyway, of the few (7) non-research books that I read for the first time this quarter, which was my favorite? It was clearly Ian McEwan's Atonement, which was made into a very good film a few years back with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. I actually saw the movie first, and was reminded I liked the other books of McEwan's I had read while I was living in England. I wrote a piece on him last summer, so I decided to read a few of his more recent works. Atonement has a historic sweep (it's mainly set before and during World War II), characters driven by strong passions, and a doozy of a final twist. Even more intriguing to me was how it was a meditation on writing, and it inspired this weekly haiku from me:

Words: a blend of sound
and revelation; with them
we remake the world.

So with 52 books for the first half of the year, I'm on pace for my goal of 100 books. Will I keep up during the "lazy summer" months, or will my not-so-lazy summer be too filled with writing for reading? Check back in three months for a progress report.

Photo of the Week--6/27/11

2011-06-27T13:22:00.000-04:00

Now this is what we're talking about! You probably can't see that Boy has a smile on his face—a rarity on our later trips—but it's definitely there because we found a trebuchet! Treb-oo-what, you may wonder? It's an old-fashioned siege engine, sort of like a catapult but using counterweights to fling projectiles through the air. It was just one of the things that made our visit to Urquhart Castle in Scotland such a fun time, although we did not detect a monster in the Loch behind the castle.

Janespotting: A Visit to Highbury by Jane Austen-Leigh

2011-06-23T09:44:00.000-04:00

To begin my review of the various sequels to Emma, it's only appropriate I start with this one penned by Austen's own great-great-great-grandniece. A Visit to Highbury is subtitled "another view of Emma," and that's exactly what this provides, retelling the story from the point of view of Mrs. Goddard, who runs the school that Harriet Smith attends. The novel is epistolary, meaning it is told entirely in letters, which can provide charm but also have limitations.

Because Mary Goddard is well outside Emma's inner circle—she is the one left keeping Mr. Woodhouse company when Emma goes off to parties without him—her view of the novel's events is fairly tangential. But she speculates and passes along gossip in letters to her sister Charlotte Pinkney, who is living in London with her new husband and wondering if she has made the right decision in marrying him. In her letters back to Mary, she clamors for more gossip, looking for ways to entertain herself because her husband treats her as merely a housekeeper. Mary complies, speculating about the mysteries of why Mr. Elton has suddenly run off to Bath, who gave Jane Fairfax a piano, and why Frank Churchill has stayed away from Highbury so long. She also admonishes the tart-tongued Charlotte to be more dutiful and open towards her husband.

In Charlotte's letters, we get a few outside views of events, as the Pinkneys share an apothecary with John and Isabella Knightley, and on a trip to Bath they encounter the future Mrs. Elton and her family. Mostly, however, Charlotte Pinkney writes of her growing accommodation with her husband and their new friendship with a young girl who is being mistreated at the girls' school next door. She claims their sympathy by being the daughter of a missing naval officer and by sharing the name of Charlotte, and gains their friendship because of her sweet nature. As the elder Charlotte makes small overtures to Mr. Pinkney on the younger one's behalf, she discovers there is more depth to him than she had bothered to notice, and they grow closer. Mrs. Pinkney even shares the mysteries of Highbury with her husband, who has some very perspicacious theories.

The novel concludes with several happy endings: besides the three matches in Austen's Emma, we get one for the young Charlotte, whose father reappears and can bless her match with a young naval officer. We also get true love between Mrs. Pinkney and her husband, an expected baby, and—most desired throughout the book—an upcoming visit between the two sisters, which brings an end to their letters.

I found this a charming little novel, approaching Austen in tone and wit and giving a little embroidery to the events of Emma. Mrs. Pinkney is open enough in her letters to make her an interesting character, while the gently chiding Mrs. Goddard keeps a bit of the formal flavor of an Austen novel. If you're the kind of Austen fan who hates to see people take liberties with the original characters, this is the kind of "sequel" for you.

Photo of the Week--6/20/11

2011-06-20T08:39:00.000-04:00

I love it when historical places, like the city of Carcasonne in France, can spare a little corner to let visitors play pretend and live a little history. Carcasonne is an old-fashioned walled city and you can really be transported back in time as you walk the cobbled streets and see the fog move against the walls. And when you can look out of an old-fashioned fortress door and pretend to shut Mom out, well, that's the best!

Janespotting: Clueless

2011-06-15T12:43:00.116-04:00

So about the same time the Austen film renaissance began in the mid-1990s appeared this teenage comedy from writer-director Amy Heckerling, starring Alicia Silverstone as a privileged California teen. Not all reviews acknowledged it (and it wasn't in the credits), but Heckerling freely admitted she stole liberally from the plot of Emma for her film. Standing in place of Emma is Cher: a pampered rich girl who is queen of her high school but is not interested in high school boys, whom she considers "dogs." She skates along on charm, wrapping her daddy around her finger, and when she can't get her cranky debate teacher to change her grade, she tries to fix him up with history teacher. With a little makeover from Cher, the ruse works, cheering her teacher and boosting her grade. Looking on with disapproval—and standing in for Mr. Knightley—is Cher's stepbrother Josh, a college student she calls "granola breath" who is always chastising her for her shallow selfishness.

Feeling cheered by her good deed in matching her teachers, Cher adopts the new girl/Harriet Smith-analog Tai, who is kinda grungy and attracted to a slacker student. Cher and her best friend make Tai over, then try to set her up with classmate Elton, who admires a picture of Tai Cher has taken. As in the original, Elton is admiring the artist, not the subject, and when the three go to a party he engineers giving Cher a ride home, makes a move on her, then shows he is too snobby to be interested in Tai. After Cher ditches him, she gets robbed and has Josh come rescue her. Cher shows she has a bit of a brain by correcting Josh's obnoxious girlfriend, who is misquoting Hamlet.

The Frank Churchill role is filled by a new boy at school named Christian. He has a rat pack vibe and Cher is interested in a date although it's clear to the audience he is gay. (This neatly avoids too many characters by cancelling the need for a Jane Fairfax analog.) They take Tai to a party with Josh's friends, where Josh dances with Tai because she looks lonely. Tai is rescued again while shopping with Cher, when Christian rescues her from some pranking boys. Tai's story makes her popular, to Cher's detriment, and things go downhill as Josh criticizes her again and she flunks her driving test.

Making things worse is Tai's request that Cher help her charm Josh, when Cher thought she wanted Christian. Being no demure Harriet, Tai calls Cher "a virgin who can't drive" when Cher hesitates and the two quarrel. Just as Emma suddenly discovered her feelings for Mr. Knightley, Cher has a sudden realization she wants to be with Josh. She doesn't know how to act around him, so she undertakes a "makeover for the soul" by organizing disaster relief. She also makes up with Tai and encourages her to pursue the slacker boy. The denouement travels far from Austen, as there's no question of Josh's Knightley-analog being in love with someone else. With all the bickering between the two, however, it's not clear he knows his own feelings, so instead Heckerling shows the two working on research for her dad's court case. When another lawyer chides Cher for screwing up, Josh comforts her and they confess their feelings—and we have a cute rom-com ending.

Although "Clueless" is built on the skeleton of Austen's plot for Emma, it's totally a typical teen comedy of the time. There is partying and drinking, an emphasis on brand names and fashion (even satirically so), and practically invisible adults. And yet, the dialogue is a cut above what you might expect from a teen comedy, with lots of big words; one character even comments, "Wow, you guys talk like grownups." The reply: "Well, this is a really good school."

As a teen comedy Clueless is fun—especially with Silverstone's charming portrayal of Cher—and maybe a little deeper than the usual raunchy teen flick. As an Austen adaptation, it's an interesting curiosity, showing how many of Austen's themes and even character types are timeless.

Photo of the Week--6/13/11

2011-06-13T13:50:00.000-04:00

Now that's what I call a castle--hewn into the very living rock of the Welsh countryside. Caerphilly is the largest castle in Wales and the second largest in Britain (after Windsor Castle, the queen is number one in everything). It was built in the 13th century and has everything you look for in a castle: a huge moat, tall towers, and a little bit of ruins to give it character. I'd certainly rather be defending it than assaulting it, that's for sure.

I'm glad ...

2011-06-08T22:32:00.000-04:00

... there haven't been any complaints about my lack of blog posts lately. I have been busy, and complaining might make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm so angry I'm blind with rage:

Photo of the Week--6/6/11

2011-06-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

Madrid is a city that knows how to light its landmarks. Ironically enough, this is the Fuente del Sol ("Fountain of the Sun," but it sure looks great at night!

Photo of the Week--5/30/11

2011-05-31T07:51:00.000-04:00

Now that's what I call an airport with a view. It's a very small airport on Gibraltar, but I bet it's easy enough for pilots to find, being at the very southernmost tip of Europe with a giant rock at the end of the runway. Spending four years overseas and taking advantage of to travel, we certainly saw a lot of different airports, and this was one of our favorites.

Photo of the Week--5/23/11

2011-05-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

Shiny! Those Europeans, they sure know how to gilt it up. During a lovely New Year's trip to Vienna, we stopped at the Natural History Museum, which opened in 1889. It has a great collection of dinosaur skeletons, among other cool things, and is housed in this lovely building erected specifically to hold the vast collection of the Hapsburgs. Of course, being Europe and being the late 19th century, you had to have the awesome gilt ceilings! We stopped for a snack and I looked up and snapped this photo. I'm not sure how high up the ceilings are—high enough that I wouldn't have wanted to do the artwork!

I'm a lying liar who lies...

2011-05-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

That's right. Last month I promised I wouldn't neglect this blog so much. After all, I was close to finishing a deadline, the next deadline wasn't until July, and I'd managed to finish my portfolio for my taekwondo black belt testing (that involved scrapbooking three years of photos and events, no minor feat). Then I looked at the calendar. That deadline in July means I have three weeks each to complete four chapters, each of which involves around 5000 words of writing and reading a few more books for research. My TKD testing is in the beginning of June, and I haven't finished making the costumes for my skit. It's spring, and I had to plant 200 annuals in my garden. (Well, I didn't have to, but it would have been a waste of the four flats of flowers I bought from the annual marching band sale if I hadn't.) So although I have watched another Austen-inspired movie, read three "sequels," and have a growing stack of college brochures to mock, I have not managed to find the time to blog about any of them. And I probably won't, until I make it through my testing in two weeks. So June, I promise, I'll be more faithful.

Assuming I'm not lying again. :p

Photo of the Week--5/16/11

2011-05-16T08:58:00.000-04:00

Nighttime, lights, water, reflections: all things I love when I'm taking a photo. This one was during our trip to Budapest, Hungary, back in fall of 2001. The Chain Bridge is a major landmark of the city, bridging the two parts split by the Danube, and at night I couldn't resist the lovely sight of it glowing over the river.

Janespotting: Emma (2010 miniseries)

2011-05-11T12:44:00.203-04:00

So a few years ago, PBS presented a whole season of Austen adaptations, five of them new ones. (Pride & Prejudice being the lone exception, of course. You don't mess with your audience.) And despite having two relatively new versions of Emma barely more than ten years old, the powers that be (in this case the BBC) decreed it was time for a new one—and why not, if you're going to make it a miniseries?

With almost four hours to tell the story, we're treated to a relatively faithful telling of the story, plus lots of scenes that further develop both major and minor characters. Most important is the opening that contrasts the early childhoods of Emma, Frank Weston, and Jane Fairfax. We see all three lose their mothers, but Emma is kept at home while Frank (now Frank Churchill) and Jane are sent away from loving homes for their own good. This is a very effective contrast, and further scenes of Emma as an older child hearing Miss Bates natter on about Jane, with another nattering 7 years later, make her distaste for Jane a little more understandable.

Another added scene is of a young Emma claiming to see a future match between John Knightley and Isabella—something Mr. Knightley finds ridiculous—but she is proven right at their wedding, also shown. Although this doesn't happen in the book, it gives her self-confidence in matchmaking an added boost, especially after she foresees the wedding of Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston. We might find Emma a bit insufferable by now, but we also get a scene portraying Emma's loneliness after Miss Taylor marries and leaves, making her a bit more sympathetic.

With this leisurely pace, we don't even meet Harriet Smith until over 20 minutes in. We do get to see the discussion between Mr. Knightley and Mrs. Weston over Emma's friendship with Harriet (although not the line about Knightley wanting to see Emma in love with some doubt of return, boo). He seems to agree with her advice not to press Emma about it, but when Emma helps Harriet reject Robert Martin (whom we see apply to Mr. Knightley for advice in an earlier scene), he can't help but start a big argument. At first he seems more frustrated than angry, but the discussion becomes very heated, as only true friends can argue. "Men don't want wives who argue," Knightley tells Emma, adding that "Harriet and Robert are not your dolls" and warning she will regret her meddling. As the first hour ends, we see the argument has made Emma thoughtful.

The second hour begins with the Christmas party at the Westons; the scenes are quite amusing, showing Emma's growing realization that Mr. Elton is making a play for her. As we had seen her before being very giggly with Harriet over the match, we also see her truly upset at Harriet's disappointment. There are also some very amusing moments, for instance when Emma has not received an invitation to the Coles' party and discusses it with Mr. Knightley. They have some very witty exchanges, with Knightley sometimes sarcastic in response to Emma's silliness—but always amused, never nasty.

The rest follows fairly closely to the plot of the book, but that isn't what I like best about this version. The miniseries format gives it a steady pace and depth that allows the film to portray both Emma and Mr. Knightley's growing feelings for each other. At the Coles' party, we see Emma very thoughtful as she considers Mrs. Weston's idea that Mr. Knightley gave Jane Fairfax a piano. When Emma is upset at the upstart Mrs. Elton and complains to Mr. Knightley, we see how he wishes she could get out and experience more of the world. We also see Mr. Knightley's growing jealousy of Frank Churchill—although after he dances with Emma at the ball, he shouldn't need to worry, as the scene wonderfully hints at the pair's growing feelings for each other, as do the scenes of both remembering the dance.

The casting and acting is also uniformly good, with care in all the minor roles. Jane Fairfax is quiet and reserved, as she should be, but we do see occasional hints of more as she reads Frank's letters or gets excited about the ball. We get additional scenes with the Bateses, and Miss Bates is appropriately dignified and flighty. Mr. Elton is suitably obsequious and ingratiating, while Mrs. Elton is infuriatingly interfering. And finally! We have a Harriet that looks the part, a sweet round face framed by lovely blond curls. Although she is obviously inexperienced and inferior in wit to Emma, we can also see her improvement in sense and sophistication over the film, enough that you might actually believe a sensible gentleman could overlook her background or her more polished friend.

Best of all the minor characters is Michael Gambon, better known as Professor Dumbledore in the later Harry Potter films; he is terrific as missish Mr. Woodhouse, obsessing over cake and health risks. In other versions the character can seem somewhat peevish, but Gambon shows his worry as grounded in losing the ones he loves, and we see him genuinely doting upon Emma and his family. To emphasize this, John Knightley's grumpy worrying provides an amusing counter to Mr. Woodhouse's loving concern.

BBC/PBS Masterpiece

Of course, the film really belongs to the two actors who play Emma and Mr. Knightley, Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. I had never seen Garai in anything before, but I particularly liked her approach to the character. She made Emma able to hold her own with Mr. Knightley without seeming bratty, and really captured the combination of overconfidence and inexperience that makes the character. As for Jonny Lee Miller, he is not very tall, or darkly handsome, but I do believe he is my favorite Mr. Knightley. After all, Mr. Knightley is not supposed to be a lofty dreamboat like Mr. Darcy; he's the steady guy who's the treasure that's been under your nose for a long time but you were too stupid to see it. And as Miller plays him, we see his steadiness, his frustration (rather than anger), and his journey as he realizes the friend he has guided for so long means more to him than just a friend. I guess the Emma and Knightley in this version feel more like real, complicated people who evolve, rather than characters who follow a prescribed plot. This is the version that makes me understand why some people might find Emma their favorite Austen novel, so I recommend it if you're a fan.

Photo of the Week--5/9/11

2011-05-09T08:51:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm a week late to celebrate the royal wedding, but here is a photo from Merrie Olde England, a veddy British garden at beautiful Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. It had been a medieval castle once visited by Queen Elizabeth I, then fell into disrepair, was built and re-built, housed prisoners of war in the 18th century, and was finally rediscovered by married writers Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson in the 1930s. They're the ones who designed the marvelous garden, which was full of beautiful blooms when we visited in summer of 2001. I'm hoping I'm going to have some beautiful blooms of my own in my garden soon.

Janespotting: Emma (1996 TV film)

2011-05-04T08:38:00.002-04:00

Not long after the feature film version of Emma came out in 1996, this BBC adaptation appeared on American television. Although it was written by Andrew Davies, the same screenwriter who penned the previous year's Pride and Prejudice miniseries, this version was only two hours long. Nonetheless, the film opens with a scene that isn't in the book but is crucial to the conclusion: someone robbing a hen house and stealing chickens.

We are then very quickly taken through Emma and Harriet's interactions with Mr. Elton—we get no "courtship" puzzle to encourage them—and after just 20 minutes we are at the start of the Weston party, where Emma finally realizes that Elton has been courting her, not Harriet. Despite skimming over a lot of the Elton story, the film does take time to show Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley discussing Emma's relationship with Harriet (he thinks it is a bad idea), and throw in the line from the book that Mr. Knightley should like to see Emma "in love, and in some doubt of a return." I don't know why more adaptations don't use this line—probably because it suggests that Mr. Knightley is not thinking of Emma as a match for himself at this point— but I like it because it's nice ironic foreshadowing.

In any case, we swiftly get Emma's soon-broken vow to stop matchmaking, our first visits from Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, the introduction of Mrs. Elton, and the events on Box Hill. The strawberry party is left out entirely (or else mashed together with Box Hill so thoroughly I didn't recognize it), which is no great loss, as the two events are rather similar. We do get a scene of Jane Fairfax weeping in a field, cluing us in to the revelation to come. However, in this version we don't see Emma really encourage Harriet in her new infatuation, which Emma thinks is for Frank Churchill but is really for Mr. Knightley, no comment that "raising your thoughts to him is a mark of good taste." This may seem like a minor quibble, but without it, Emma's discovery that she and Harriet love the same man loses a bit of effectiveness.

All is resolved happily, of course, and we get an added coda not in the book: a harvest dinner in which Emma gives an invitation to Robert Martin and sisters and gets to dance again with Mr. Knightley. The final scene is of more chicken raiding—so crucial to getting Mr. Woodhouse to agree to the marriage, as my college professor stressed when we read the book. I won't quibble with these additions, as they help illustrate the change in Emma's character while bringing the story full circle.

So the plot condensation had some pluses and minuses. What about the casting and acting? As Emma, Kate Beckinsale—the lone brunette to play the role—conveys a real sense of youth and inexperience, and is very good at conveying Emma's interior confusion and doubt when things don't turn out the way she expects. She's probably the most likeable Emma on film, although that may not be truest to the character.

Mark Strong is brooding and attractive, but his Mr. Knightley is very angry in arguing with Emma, almost uncomfortably so. He seems better suited to Mr. Darcy than Mr. Knightley, whom Austen describes as having "a cheerful manner, which always did him good." Raymond Coulthard's Frank Churchill has much the look of Ewan McGregor's, with charm and amiability but a little less smarm (and much better hair). The jewel here is Olivia Williams as Jane Fairfax, who is very good at showing subtle hints of her fondness for Frank Churchill. The screenplay also wisely includes her comment comparing the "governess trade" to the slave trade, giving her more wit than most adaptations, which make Jane as insipid as Emma thinks she is.

The one real drawback, again, is the miscasting of Harriet. Again, I remind you of Austen's description of the "very pretty" Harriet: "She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness." While Samantha Morton is a very good actress with two Oscar nominations to her credit, and as such gives Harriet the right temperament, her face is thin and sharp-featured, foxy rather than plump. Compared to Kate Beckinsale's radiantly elegant Emma, Harriet looks plain, again making it hard for me to believe that men would overlook her dubious background, or that Emma might believe she is a serious competitor for Knightley's attention.

So all in all, I think I prefer the other 1996 adaptation to this one, which doesn't have quite the wit and easiness of the Gwyneth Paltrow version. It's definitely worth a viewing, though, especially for comparison purposes. If you're at all interested in the mechanics of story, it's always a fun exercise to see what someone thinks are the essential elements when they create their adaptation.

Photo of the Week--5/2/11

2011-05-02T08:02:00.000-04:00

Okay, I want my next house to have a room like this one: crystal chandelier, mosaic floor, marble walls, gilt-covered wainscoting. This is the Pavilion Room in the Hermitage, the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg. Besides this gorgeous room (and others), the Hermitage has an amazing art collection with some 20 works by Rembrandt alone, as well as Renaissance masters, Impressionists, and all sorts of fun stuff. Of course, it was so crowded when we visited there during our Baltic Cruise that we didn't get very long looks at them, but it was still a great trip.

Janespotting: Emma (1996 film)

2011-04-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

Among the cinematic Austen revival of the mid-1990s were two versions of Emma, both released in 1996. The first was released in theaters and was written and directed by American Douglas McGrath, who had previously written Bullets over Broadway with Woody Allen. It was also the first starring role for Gwyneth Paltrow, whose performance made many people wonder where this British actress had come from (America, it turns out).

At under two hours, there was quite a bit of condensing necessary. I found this version very well-paced, with the first half hour showing Emma's romantic machinations, all in a very playful manner. In one sequence, the director made several clever cuts, taking the subjects from one scene to another mid-sentence, quickly continuing the thought and the story. Of course, other events are combined or simplified. The gypsy attack happens to Harriet and Emma, rather than Harriet and a classmate we never see again, and the film combines the events of the strawberry party and the Box Hill outing. Finally, as Emma struggles with the news that Harriet believes Mr. Knightley cares for her, she discusses her feelings with Mrs. Weston, writes in her diary, and says a prayer for him "to at least stay single." These events aren't in the novel, but they dramatize Emma's change of heart very well and contribute to continued good pacing.

Neither was the screenplay slavish in reproducing Austen's dialogue. Although this meant no "If I loved you less I could talk about it more" line (sigh), there were quite a few witty gems in there. On our first encounter with Miss Bates, she tells Mr. Elton, "Your sermon on Daniel left us quite speechless, we could not stop talking about it!", encapsulating her character perfectly. And there are several amusing exchanges between Emma and Mr. Knightley; the scene where they argue about Harriet and Robert Martin takes place during an archery practice at Donwell Abbey. As Emma's aim gets worse during the argument, Mr. Knightley murmurs "try not to kill my dogs," with a fond smile.

I thought this version did a very good job of portraying the genuine affection between Emma and Mr. Knightley, as he is instructive and never angry, not even after Box Hill, when he sounds frustrated. Of course, that might be due to Jeremy Northam, who is yummy yummy dreamy and brings the right sense of brotherliness, exasperation, and playfulness to role. (Although I'm not sure Mr. Knightley should be so yummy yummy dreamy.)

Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty good as Emma, with the right mix of sincerity and brattiness and her emotions easy to read on her face—maybe a little too easy, though, as it wasn't a very subtle performance. Most of the minor characters are very good, with some stellar Brit actors: Alan Cumming has right mix of smarm and solicitousness as Mr. Elton, and Juliet Stevenson is perfect as tacky, imposing upstart Mrs. Elton. Sophie Thompson (sister of actress Emma) brings out the silly and the dignified in Miss Bates, and Ewan MacGregor gives Frank Churchill the right mix of vivacity and secrecy, although he has to act while wearing one of the nastiest wigs I have ever seen.

The one serious flaw in casting is in Toni Collette as Harriet Smith. While I think she's a wonderful actress, with her own quirky attractiveness, she doesn't match Austen's description at all: "She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness." Collette is not plump (her face is more angular), nor does she have regular features or light hair. Plus, she plays Harriet with a slight dippiness that makes Harriet completely overshadowed by Paltrow's elegant Emma. Harriet is supposed to be pretty and charming enough for Emma to think that men will overlook her dubious background, and in this case I didn't buy it.

Still, this version was fast-paced and witty enough for me to enjoy it very much. It got to the essential bits of the story, and for the most part kept my favorite parts from the book. If you only have a couple of hours to introduce yourself to Emma, this is a good place to start.

Photo of the Week--4/25/11

2011-04-25T08:32:00.000-04:00

So I discovered that not only did Jean Sibelius write one of my favorite pieces of music (his 2nd Symphony), but he also had this gorgeous house outside Helsinki. He named Ainola, it after his wife Aino, and had it designed with a study facing a lake. We were there in the summer, as you can probably tell from all the lovely sunshine and green. Some days I'd like one of these little writing retreats in the middle of nowhere (but not too far from somewhere).

Mr. Popularity....

2011-04-20T09:05:00.014-04:00

So six months ago I reviewed the pile of college advertisements Boy had begun getting. Six months later, he's almost done with his junior year and has a good ACT score to his credit—and the pile is becoming a deluge, so it's time to wade through the mail again ... because he doesn't care to. The numbers in parens indicate what number mailing from that particular school.

Kentucky (5): Newsletter style this time, what's new on campus and new academic program.
U of Chicago (4): Another foldout postcard, touting overseas programs.
Kentucky (6): New school year starting, think of us!
Kentucky (7): Letter pegged to fall activities.
U of Chicago (5): Foldout postcard on fun school scavenger hunt.
Iowa: Glossy brochure. Smallest Big Ten school, small faculty: student ratio. No mention of cows.
Kentucky (8): I know it's homecoming week, but your stalking is starting to freak me out.
U of Chicago (6): It's a race to waste the most paper!
Kentucky (9): I didn't mean it, really. Stop it.
U of Chicago (7): Summer high school program, but still. Stop it.
U of Evansville (IN): PSAT scores earn you this letter and shiny brochure!
Wayne State (2): "See it to believe it" ... um, we've already been to Detroit.
Missouri S&T: Go to a specialized university! But there are clubs, too!
Rochester IT: I didn't even know there was an Insitute of Tech in Rochester. And I don't want to know why Admissions is in the "Bausch & Lomb Center."
U of Rochester (2): Do they use the same mail service? They give a login and password for an "academic guide!"
Washington U in St. Louis (2): We'll match your online service and raise you an SASE.
Washington & Lee (VA): We're like Harvard, Northwestern, Notre Dame, & Duke, except you've heard of them!
Drexel U (PA): If our online quiz doesn't tempt you, maybe our dragon logo will!
U of Miami (FL, 2): Another online quiz, helping you figure out who you are and where to go...
Kentucky (10): Spring semester is starting, and these winter months bring challenges ... like figuring out which season it is.
Carnegie Mellon: In big letters: "Are You Technology?" In fine print: "Yet we're about so much more than technology."
Kettering U (MI): Check us out! We have a smart phone code!
U Detroit Mercy: Postcard personalized with name and interest! Someone's been reading their PSAT list!
Illinois Wesleyan (2): "What's the big deal about small colleges?" Hmm, who will tell me?
Swarthmore (PA): "within easy reach of the excitement of Philadelphia!" We do like our ratings, don't we?
Carthage (WI): Another fan of touting college ratings.
Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY): "Galileo ... Fahrenheit ... Edison ... Gates ... Boy?" Are you the next great mind?
Case Western Reserve (2): a letter this time, and invitation to "how to choose the ideal college" ... and that might be ... CWR?
Tulane (2): Wow, you've been selected to take part in the online quiz!
Bellarmine U (KY): Another free guide "Where to Hang Your Hat" ... people still wear hats?
Wittenberg U (OH): Not just a guide ... a free checklist!
CO School of Mines (2): Focus on engineering and science ... in the Rockies ... and a career center to find you work.
Columbia Engineering (NY): "You may be competitive for admission" ... we're Ivy League, we don't beg.
Bowdoin College (ME): former home of Longfellow and Hawthorne. We hope you know who that is.
Penn/Wharton: summer program, management and technology?
Missouri S&T (2): Come fly in and visit!
Carnegie Mellon (2): summer "pre-college" programs ... is it "pre-college" tuition?
DePaul (IL): Hmmm ... are they in Chicago? I can't tell from the dozens of pictures.
Oberlin (OH): What liberal arts education should be ... did they read his areas of interest?
Northeastern (MA): online quiz, "Find out why you are a high achiever!" Good genes?
Macalester (MN): A big glossy brochure and no pictures of snow.
Norwich (VT): Offers to look at "working life of an engineer."

I'm not even two-thirds through the stack, so I'll save the rest for later, and get some totals together then. I don't remember getting this much mail when I was in high school ... are there more colleges than there used to be, or do they just want our money that badly?

Photo of the Week--4/18/11

2011-04-18T08:22:00.000-04:00

It's April in Michigan, and I'm looking outside at SNOW. To counteract this, I give you a picture of SUMMER. Granted, it's summer in Denmark, so it wasn't that warm, but at least there's SUN and not SNOW.

I'm not ignoring you...

2011-04-15T07:52:00.000-04:00

... I've just been very very busy. Deadlines for my history project are pressing and I'm being squeezed trying to keep up. Lately, my typical day is: get up, work on my book most of the day, take care of dinner, and then, if I'm not going to an evening rehearsal or meeting, read research books at night. I try to squeeze in some exercise here and there, as well as my regular teaching, volunteer, and household obligations. The time I would usually spend writing a blog entry—sitting in front of the TV at night—I'm catching up on the books I need to review to write the next day's section. So although I've read/watched a couple of Emmas, and there's a huge stack of Boy's college letters I'd like to plow through, and there may even be pictures from some cookies I made last month (or was it February?), I just haven't found the time to sit and write for fun. Next week, I promise.

Photo of the Week--4/11/11

2011-04-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

Here's something architecturally interesting ... a tower with no stairs! The Rundetarn in Copenhagen, Denmark, was built in the 17th century as an astronomical tower. I don't know why they built a spiral ramp instead of stairs—perhaps to make it easier to deliver the telescope—but it made for a fun trip upstairs, especially with little hidey-holes along the way, perfectly sized for a Boy to jump out and scare people.

Photo of the Week--4/4/11

2011-04-04T08:33:00.000-04:00

Now, I'm not a huge fan of climbing things—my knees are too troublesome to enjoy it for long—but I do love a good aerial shot. This is of the Stadhuis (Town Hall) in Delft, the Netherlands. I'm guessing it's taken from the vantage of the top of the Nieuwe Kirk ("New Church"), "new" being a relative term as the building was finished in the late 15th century. The building is a hodgepodge of styles, as it was built and rebuilt over the years. I like the contrasting colors in the shot—the orange and grey roofs, the red shutters on the stone building. It makes for a nice pop of color on an otherwise colorless day, something you learn to appreciate after enough winters in Michigan.

2011 Book Report: First Quarter

2011-04-01T08:41:00.088-04:00

New year, new book count. Will I be able to hit that magic 100-book count this year (last year I read 104 books), or will I be swallowed up by research for the book I'm writing? Will I read more books on my new e-reader, or will paper still rule? Let's check my first-quarter progress.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

01/02/11: E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (YA,1)
01/07/11: Margo Lanahan, Tender Morsels (YA, F, 1)
01/08/11: Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons^ (NF, 1)
01/12/11: Robert W. Cherny, American Politics in the Gilded Age^ (NF, 1)
01/13/11: Terry Pratchett, Nation (YA, H/SF, 1)
01/16/11: Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road (YA, 1)
01/19/11: Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Gilded Age^ (NF, 1)
01/22/11: David Weber, The Short Victorious War# (SF, 5?)
01/24/11: Alan Trachtenburg, The Incorporation of America^ (NF, 1)
01/29/11: Adam Rapp, Punkzilla (YA, 1)
01/29/11: Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Gilded Age, or, The Hazard of New Functions^ (NF, 1)
02/01/11: Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith (NF, YA, 1)
02/06/11: James T. Wall, Wall Street and the Fruited Plain^ (NF, 1)
02/09/11: Charles. W. Calhoun, From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail^ (NF, 1)
02/11/11: Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist (YA, Hr, 1)
02/13/11: Calhoun, editor, The Gilded Age^ (NF, 1)
02/15/11: Libba Bray, Going Bovine# (YA, 1)
02/20/11: Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal^ (NF, 1)
02/22/11: John Barnes, Tales of the Madmen Underground (YA, 1)
02/23/11: Elmus Wicker, Banking Panics of the Gilded Age^ (NF, 1)
02/28/11: T. J. Stiles, editor, Robber Barons and Radicals^ (NF, 1)
03/02/11: Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age^# (classic, 1)
03/11/11: William C. Davis, The American Frontier^ (NF, 1)
03/15/11: Jane Austen, Emma# (classic, 6-7?)
03/28/11: Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World^ (NF, 1)
03/29/11: Andrew Carnegie, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie^# (NF, 1)
03/30/11: M. John Lubetkin, Jay Cooke's Gamble^ (NF, 1)
03/31/11: Roy Morris, Jr., Fraud of the Century^ (NF, 1)

That's a whopping total of 28 books read this quarter ... and if I was adding up half a book here and there, it would be more. I thought that might be cheating, though, so I only counted the 17 books I read cover to cover for my current project.

So what was my favorite book of the quarter? I bet you were thinking I'd choose something exciting like Banking Panics of the Gilded Age, but the one I really enjoyed was the first of the year: E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. It some ways it was a typical funny school story of relationships and hijinks, but it also had interesting things to say about friends and gender roles. It was both a lot of fun and thought-provoking, something I always enjoy in my reading.

I'm going to be provoking lots more thoughts next quarter; I still have a stack of 9 books for work to browse through, with more to keep coming. Will I have much time for anything else? Check back in three months and see.

Janespotting: Emma (1972 miniseries)

2011-03-30T08:22:00.000-04:00

As one of Austen's most popular novels, Emma has been adapted for film and television multiple times, including twice in 1996 alone. I doubt I'll be able to view all of these adaptations, considering the earliest was in 1948, but I'm going to do my best. I'm particularly wanting to get the 1960 BBC miniseries with David McCallum, currently playing "Ducky" on NCIS, as Frank Churchill, but since I can't find it on DVD/tape anywhere, I'm starting with a later BBC version.

The 1972 BBC miniseries of Emma—amazingly, available at my library—is six 42-minute episodes. At nearly 4½ hours, that's long enough to be extremely faithful ... or extremely boring. You never know what to expect with some of these older adaptations, which can be overly formal, strangely decorated, or otherwise not suitable for modern tastes. This one was a pleasant surprise. The sets and costumes were appropriate, the direction was paced well and didn't call attention to itself, and the acting was, for the most part, restrained.

I did have some quibbles with the acting/casting choices, however. While the actress playing the title role was the right age for the part, she played Emma with a certain smugness I found off-putting. Her verbal sparring matches with Mr. Knightley were playful, but there was an unpleasant edge to them, like Emma cared more about winning the argument than listening to her friend.

There were also some particularly weird changes concerning Jane Fairfax. First, on the occasion in the book that Emma and Harriet visit Miss Bates and end up hearing a letter from Jane Fairfax, instead she actually is in residence. Instead of the Dixons being the daughter and son-in-law of the Campbells, the family who took Jane in, they are a couple Jane meets on holiday who have offered her a position as governess. And when Miss Bates reveals that the Dixons have made such an offer, Jane Fairfax becomes upset that Miss Bates has revealed anything—to the point where she objects furiously, something out of character for someone who is supposed to be so reserved.

Why vary from the story, if not for time considerations? After watching for a while, it seemed as if the writer wanted the viewers to understand what was going on before Emma does. So we see Jane Fairfax clearly upset and hiding something, where in the book it's unclear why she is waiting to get a governess position. We get a new scene showing Harriet the day after the dance with Mr. Knightley, swooning over the chance to go to Donwell; in the book we are surprised along with Emma to learn that Harriet considers this dance a big service, not Frank Churchill saving her from gypsies.

Strangest of all, the writer removed both Mr. Elton and Jane Fairfax from the outing on Box Hill. Presumably getting rid of Elton was to emphasize that Mrs. Elton was taking liberties with leadership of Mr. Knightley's party, but that was already shown in the strawberry picking party. But by removing Jane as a witness to Frank and Emma's flirtation, there's no reason for her to suddenly accept a governess position and reject Emma's advances of friendship. After making Jane's discomfort so obvious before, that seems a strange choice.

Lastly, the ending had the characters seeming oddly direct for circumspect Austen characters. Emma never directly apologized to Miss Bates for insulting her in the book, but that awkward scene is in the film. In the book Mr. Wodehouse never says no to Emma's match with Mr. Knightley, although "he tried earnestly to dissuade her from it," but in the film he forbids it, briefly, before the report of hen thieves changes his mind.

While overall this was a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, the changes they did make seemed to underestimate the viewers' intelligence, and also undermine Emma's character. When you read the book, Emma seems charming in her conviction, and we are just as surprised as she is when her matchmaking comes back to haunt her. In the film version, Emma seems a little snotty, even more so as we see how wrong she is while she continues in her mistakes. So while this was a very watchable version of Emma, it wasn't entirely satisfactory. Next time we'll see what differences condensing the story into a feature-length film can make.

Photo of the Week--3/28/11

2011-03-28T13:24:00.000-04:00

I love to get up high to take a picture of a city. Luckily, there are many such Alcazars (high towers) you can climb in Spanish cities. This one was in Jerez, a lovely city even before you go on the sherry tour. We had another beautiful Mediterranean sky, and I'd really love to be somewhere with palm trees right about now!

Janespotting: Emma (Austen's original)

2011-03-25T20:17:00.000-04:00

Emma was my first exposure to Austen, back in college, and at the time it didn't strike me as particularly wondrous. Sure, it had wit, but it didn't make me want to go out and read everything else Austen ever wrote. Maybe that was because I read it for a class—it's hard to really enjoy a book when you're taking notes and on a deadline—or maybe it's because I didn't fall in love with the heroine, as so many other people have. Austen sums her up in the first sentence: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

Unlike Austen's other heroines, Emma does not need to worry about money or marriage, and so she occupies much of her time with matchmaking and other amusements. As the novel opens she is celebrating the marriage of her former governess to a neighboring gentlemen, although the family's close friend (and Emma's brother-in-law), Mr. Knightley, says Emma made a lucky guess, not the actual match. Undeterred, Emma tries to pair her new friend, the lovely but dubiously born Harriet Smith, with the local minister, Mr. Elton. This turns out disastrously when she discovers Mr. Elton has been wooing her, not her friend, and poor Harriet is left disappointed and distressed.

Emma spirits are only temporarily dampened; when Frank Churchill visits the neighborhood, she is ready to flirt with him and promote a match between him and Harriet. In particular, Emma enjoys speculating with Frank about the lovely Jane Fairfax, the niece of their impoverished neighbor Miss Bates; Jane is destined to support herself as a governess. Jane is lovely and musically talented (annoying Emma, who doesn't apply herself and suffers in comparison), and her reserved manner perversely inspires Emma to imagine something inappropriate behind a gift piano. Emma's behavior becomes another point of contention with Mr. Knightley, who has long been accustomed to instructing her. They both enjoy their verbal sparring matches, although Emma is put out when Mr. Knightley tells her she is spoiling Harriet.

Emma's unrestrained pursuit of amusement comes to a head one afternoon when, encouraged by Frank Churchill's flattery, she cruelly insults Miss Bates. She is crushed to see Mr. Knightley's disappointment in her, and determines to apologize and also make up her lack of attention to Jane Fairfax, whom she has come to pity. Not long after she discovers that Harriet is not aspiring to Frank Churchill, but Mr. Knightley—and that she believes he returns her affection. Emma is shocked, for she hadn't realized before that she is the only one for Mr. Knightley. One final surprise remains: after Frank Churchill's aunt dies, leaving him her fortune, it is revealed that he and Jane Fairfax have been secretly engaged. Mr. Knightley and Emma reveal their feelings to each other, and even silly Harriet ends up engaged, to the young farmer whom Emma originally thought beneath her friend's notice.

I can see why Emma is many readers' favorite Austen book. It is light-hearted and playful, like its heroine, who never has the threat of poverty or loneliness hanging over her head. Early on Emma reveals her intention never to marry, noting that "a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else." When you think about it, Jane Fairfax, not Emma, is more like the typical Austen heroine in situation: potentially consigned to poverty and facing many obstacles on her road to romance and happiness. I guess that's why Emma isn't one of my favorite heroines: yes, she's charming and kind, but she's also rather shallow, at least until the end of the novel. On the other hand, the secondary characters are some of Austen's best, between the over-talkative Miss Bates, the enigmatic Jane Fairfax, the obsequious grasper Mr. Elton, and his vulgar, pretentious new bride.

So for me Emma ranks somewhere in the middle of Austen's novels: I don't love it like I do Pride and Prejudice, but I'd much rather read it than Mansfield Park. Actually, how I feel about Emma depends on whether I'm feeling indulgent and playful or not. I'll be considering that playful edge more as I begin exploring all the film version of Austen's classic. Stay tuned.

Photo of the Week--3/21/11

2011-03-21T08:47:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite photos from our European travels. It was taken at Ephesus in Turkey, and shows part of the Library of Celsus, a magnificent two-story building (or what remains of it) that was completed in 135AD by a Roman consul of Greek origin. Of course, in my photo you can't see the two stories, but there's something about the play of light and shadow and the angle that really gives an idea of the building's sheer, grand height. At the time this was built, Ephesus was the second-largest city in the world (behind Rome), and this was a really impressive collection of ancient buildings.

Cookie of the Month: White-Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

2011-03-17T23:42:00.000-04:00

So I wasn't quite pleased with last month's Raspberry White-Chocolate Oatmeal Bars, thinking them a bit too sweet for my taste. (Astonishing, I know, that I'd find anything "too sweet.") I'd originally wanted to try using white chocolate chips in an oatmeal cookie, so when I had a little more time I went to my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and headed to the drop cookie section. Their several variations on the Basic Drop Cookie included an oatmeal version, so I adapted it to get the following recipe:

¼ cup butter or margarine
¼ cup shortening
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup quick-cook oats
½ cup dried cherries
½ cup white chocolate chips

Beat butter and shortening with electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add sugars and beat till fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and milk; beat well. Add flour, soda, and oats to beaten mixture; mix well. Stir in dried cherries and white chocolate chips. You can see the resulting mixture is a little goopy, but full of good stuff.

Next drop spoonfuls of batter two inches apart onto a greased cookie sheet. You can see I was pretty generous with my spoonfuls, because I have a little scooping device that is perfect for drop cookies. A heaping scoopful gives me the right amount (1-2 tablespoons) of batter, and a little squeeze of the handle slides all the batter from the scoop onto the sheet. It's much easier than the old two spoons technique, since I only need one hand to use it.

Anyway, once you've got your batter scooped, bake in a preheated 375F oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack. Eat!

And here's what they looked like after they came out of the oven and cooled a little bit. They were nice and chewy, which is how I prefer my cookies, and the mixture of flavors—oats, white chocolate, and cherry—was nice. But the balance was off; the cookies weren't very dense, and the oats seemed overpowered by everything else. So again (sigh): just a little too sweet.

Final rating: nom nom nom (three of five noms).

For now I'm giving up on white-chocolate combinations. Who knows what I'll come up with next month?

Photo of the Week--3/14/11

2011-03-14T12:08:00.000-04:00

Venice is a lovely city, especially so when you get to visit and leave your kid behind, as we did in September of 2000. There's the lovely Mediterranean weather, the canals, the haphazard appearance of the buildings, and the different bridges. This one, the Ponte Tre Archi ("bridge of three arches," duh), was so intriguing I wanted to go back and forth and back through each passageway. I guess that's why they don't let the tourists drive the gondolas, though.

The Printz Award Winners: 2010

2011-03-10T10:24:00.149-05:00

This is the last one of these reports for a while; although the ALA recently announced the 2011 Printz winners, they're in demand in the library and it will be a while before I can get to them. I did manage to finish the 2010 books that "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature," and here are my thoughts.

Winner:
Libba Bray, Going Bovine
Honor Books:
John Barnes, Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Adam Rapp, Punkzilla

Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

Barnes's Madmen Underground: I wasn't wild to crack open this book, maybe because it pained me to see 1973—a year I can remember—described as "historical." (Actually, I was probably just burned out from historical research.) But once I started, I had trouble putting it down. It wasn't anything narratively unusual, just a first-person account of a boy's first week of school. But when the boy is a member of the "Madmen Underground"—a group of students put into psychological counseling throughout the years—and he has a drunk for a mother, a late father who was the town mayor, and five jobs, his struggles to find his place are compelling and fascinating. This novel is pure YA just for the voice, which was strongly opinionated, funny, and believable. This was a long book, but the pages flew by.

Heiligman's Charles and Emma: If there's anything I love more than a good story, it's a good true story. While many books have examined the life and work of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species and the theory of evolution, this is the first to look at the relationship Darwin had with his wife, Emma, and how it framed and supported his work. While the writing style tends to be simple and abrupt (I do love my compound sentences), it's meticulously researched and endlessly fascinating. I would recommend this book to readers of any age who are interested in natural history and Darwin's work. (Charles and Emma also received a National Book Award honor citation.)

Rapp's Punkzilla: This is one of several YA novels by Rapp, who's also known for his stage plays, and I have to admit I didn't get it. It's an epistolary novel written by a 14-year-old military school dropout who is traveling cross-country to see his older brother, who is dying of cancer. I didn't mind the graphic language or sex, or the portrayal of the difficult times that young Jamie—street name Punkzilla—has experienced on the streets and on the road. But there's an inherent weakness in the story-through-letters format; first, everything feels very episodic (and when it doesn't, it feels very un-letter-like), and second, we can't see the denouement firsthand, when Jamie finally arrives at his brother's home. The format felt very self-conscious to me, and the climax-after-the-fact it necessitated was unsatisfying.

Yancey's The Monstrumologist: This book was a surprising inclusion on the list for me, not because it wasn't well-written—it was—but because of what type of book it was: horror, filled with suspense, lots (and I mean LOTS) of gore, and breathless plot turns. It's the kind of book I'd expect to see on the bestseller list, not an awards list. But Yancey's writing is so lush and precise, easily evoking the Victorian era of his setting, that it was a pleasure to read about his vicious, headless monsters devouring their human prey. The human characters are interesting, as well, as is the fast and twisty plot. I enjoyed it very much; it just wasn't the kind of thing I expected to see on an awards list, which doesn't usually reward popular fiction.

Bray's Going Bovine: I went into this book blind, as it was the first e-book I ever borrowed from my library and there was no cover or jacket flap to clue me in. The opening was like many a YA novel, with high-school outsider Cameron giving a funny account of his irksome days in school. But then it took a strange turn, which the title kind of gave away: the narrator discovers he has variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, better known in cattle as "mad cow disease." There's no treatment for this brain disease, which leads to growing dementia and then death, so Cameron escapes from the hospital and goes on an increasingly picaresque journey in search of a mystical cure. His adventures get wilder and wilder—involving a teenaged little person hypochondriac, a talking garden gnome which is actually the Norse god Balder, a punk angel guide, a strange cult obsessed with happiness, and possibly universe-traveling physicists. As each adventure gets weirder, we're more inclined to think they occur only in Cameron's head, and that the possibility of a "happy ending" is less likely. When I got to the end, though, it still felt satisfying, and the ride to get there was endlessly imaginative and even funny.

So, overall a pretty good year for Printz books, with a wide variety to please lots of different tastes. For now, though, my taste is going to return to Janespotting. As I said, I'm having trouble acquiring the 2011 Printz winners, and my busy schedule means I'd rather not have to read five books for one blog entry. So look next week for my review of Emma, and all the books and movies it has inspired. That should keep me busy for a while!

Photo of the Week--3/7/11

2011-03-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

We traveled around England quite a bit during the summer of 2000, and Canterbury was a great place to visit. The historical cathedral, with the memorial to the matryrdom of Thomas a Becket; a Canterbury Tales attraction with re-creations of the 14th century; and this lovely building, one of my favorite kinds of places in the world: a library! We didn't see this style of building as often as you might think, because these lovely wooden facings are susceptible to fire damage. London suffered a huge fire in 1666, so there aren't many lovely wooden buildings like this any more. Just one more reason to enjoy our trip to Canterbury.

Wordless definitions: puzzling

2011-03-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

What is it about jigsaw puzzles that cats find irresistible? Every single cat I've owned has been unable to stay away from them. Okay, I get that the little pieces are fun to play with, but one cat (the late, great Antonio the Mighty Mouseslayer) would climb into the puzzle box while I was working on it, even if there were pieces in the box. Here we've covered the puzzle in progress and still Clio sits on top of it, right next to the box, as if she has to make sure no more of those tricksy pieces escape. I could just have easily chosen a picture of Gigi sitting on the puzzle, or under the puzzle table with a couple of lost pieces, looking straight at the camera with an innocent "who me?" expression. I guess it's one mystery I can't put together.

Photo of the Week--2/28/11

2011-02-28T22:01:00.000-05:00

What is it about Germany that brings out all these picture-perfect castles? Neuschwanstein was built by a mad king, and this castle, Burg Eltz, has been in the same family for 33 generations. Actually, it's owned by three branches of the same family, one of whom still uses part of the castle. The rest is open to tourists, but at one time there were around 100 family members living in over 100 rooms of the castle. With it still inhabited, no wonder it's still in good shape, with fresh paint and lovely decor inside. I'm not sure why Boy is making a monster face, or holding up six fingers, but at least he's facing the camera.

How do I love thee, Library? Let me count the ways...

2011-02-17T10:30:00.031-05:00

You've probably noticed I haven't been very active on the blog recently. I think I already said it's because I'm writing a historical reference book, and it's requiring a LOT of research. But I thought I'd take a little break from my recent immersion in stacks and stack of history books to write an ode to the place that is making this job possible: my local library.

My local library is one of the biggest single-branch libraries in the state, with a wonderful collection of books, videos, and I borrow items regularly just for my own entertainment. But my library is also part of a state-wide consortium, the Michigan e-Library (aka MeL), that lets me borrow books from any member library ... for FREE. So when I'm working on a major project like this one, I search the MeL database, put in a request, and they mail the book I want to my local library, where I pick it up as I would a book from my home library. For this project, I've received books from libraries at Oakland University, U of M Dearborn, Grand Valley State, MSU, Wayne State, West Bloomfield, and St. Clair Shores, among others. I can't imagine how I'd get access to those books otherwise.

The library also subscribes to various databases, so that I can search them for biographies, reference books, and newspaper articles that might be useful--and they will be, when I get around to writing the biographies for this book.

But wait! There's more! I recently got an e-reader, which I love and call Shiny (because it is shiny and I love it). My library belongs to another consortium which lends e-books and audio files, so all I have to do is log in and download something to read. Last week I "checked out" my first e-book, read it comfortably in one hand while using the exercise bike, and "returned" it.

Now I must end this love letter to my library, as it's time for a visit ... I need more books! Research materials! Audio books for a long drive! And maybe a treat from the in-house coffee shop! Swoon! I'll see you soon, my love!

Photo of the Week--2/14/10

2011-02-14T08:36:00.000-05:00

I'd almost forgotten about this quirky little architectural detail in the town of Freiburg, Germany, which we visited in the summer of 2000. There were these little canals running throughout the town, and Boy was utterly fascinated. I barely got him to stop playing around them to take this picture, and for months—and I do mean MONTHS—afterward all he could talk about were his plans to put a canal in our garden, in the front yard, at school, at Grandma's house. It's strange, the things your kids get obsessed about that occupy your conversations for months on end, and that you later forget about. But Boy definitely went through a "canal engineer" phase, a major part of his sojourn through the "Age of Lego."

Wordless definitions: bliss

2011-02-09T14:43:00.000-05:00

Really no explanation needed here, right? Face it, if you weren't afraid of hurting your back, you'd be rolling around in front of the fire this winter, too.

Photo of the Week--2/7/10

2011-02-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

When we passed by St. John's Hospital, now a museum, in the beautiful city of Bruges, Belgium, I couldn't resist this picture. The hospital dates at least to 1188, when it was more a hostel for pilgrims that took in the occasional non-contagious sick person. I'm guessing that back then the water levels in the canal were a lot lower than they are today, judging by the half-doors and incomplete arches just above the water line. Or else there are aquatic people living in Bruges who walk along the floor of the river to their underwater houses, where they live in harmony with their air-breathing friends.

Photo of the Week--1/31/11

2011-01-31T08:51:00.002-05:00

Now, that's what I call a castle! Yes, if you look at the very top of the photo, you see a little square section of the rock that isn't as rough as the rest. That's Dumbarton Castle in Scotland, and yes, we walked up to the top of this very tall hill to visit it. It was only accessible by a very narrow staircase, and we could imagine how easy it would have been to defend the castle from attackers. Why someone would want to attack ... that was a little harder to imagine.

Cookie of the Month: Raspberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

2011-01-27T08:43:00.079-05:00

A bake-sale fundraiser was coming up, which meant a chance to bake cookies without eating them all. (Not that I don't like eating cookies, but I really shouldn't eat all of them.) I was still thinking fruit and white chocolate, and maybe adapting an oatmeal cookie recipe to include some of my stash of white chocolate chips and some dried cranberries or cherries. Except I didn't have many dried cherries, and when I looked in the recipe book, I came across a recipe for oatmeal bar cookies instead.

If you're like me, you may think that making "bar cookies" is cheating. Like brownies, you make bar cookies in a single pan, then cut them up into individual bars. That doesn't really seem like cookies, which I think of as individually baked, but I was pressed for time, and who am I to argue the definition of "cookie" with the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook? That's an "old faithful" of recipe books, so if they say bars are cookies, I was ready to go. I adapted their recipe for Apricot-Oatmeal bars to include my own favorite flavors. Here are the ingredients I used:

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups quick-cooking rolled oats
1 cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup butter or margarine
1 cup raspberry jam/all-fruit
1 cup white chocolate chips

First, mix the flour, oats, brown sugar, and baking soda together in a bowl. Then you cut in the butter/margarine with a pastry blender until you have very fine crumbs. This takes a lot of elbow grease, cutting until there are no big chunks of butter left. You can't warm the butter, or you won't get crumbs, it will be more like batter. (So it's a no-batter butter battle to get your crumbs.)

Next, take about two-thirds of the crumb mixture and press it into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13" pan. Spread the jam on top (it doesn't have to be even at this point) and bake in a preheated oven at 375F. Take it out and let it cool for a few minutes. You can see the result of this step, plus the texture of the leftover crumbs, in the picture to the right.

After the base has cooled slightly, smooth out the jam so it is evenly spread, then sprinkle the cup of white chocolate chips atop the base. Cover with the remaining crumbs and bake for another 15 minutes, until the top crumbs are a lovely golden brown. Take out of the oven and let it cool for quite a bit before you cut them into bars and serve. You can see the result is very gooey, so cooling makes them a little easier to handle.

So how did they taste? I actually found them a little sweet for my taste, which is very improbable if you know me and my sweet tooth. If I were to make these again, I might cut down on the brown sugar in the crust, reduce the amount of the raspberry jam, and/or add chopped walnuts to the top crumbles. (I thought about it here, but I try never use nuts in bake sale items.) I've made a similar item to this with caramel filling and semi-sweet chips and nuts which is super tasty, but I don't think I'll make this variation again, at least not with both white chocolate and jam.

Final verdict: Nom nom nom (three of five noms).

Photo of the Week--1/24/11

2011-01-24T08:37:00.000-05:00

I thought this photo was particularly apropos this week because Tunisia has been in the news because of its recent revolution and I figure not a lot of Americans know much about the country except that they filmed bits of Star Wars there. Maybe you know Tunisia is on the north coast of Africa, that part that sticks out in the Mediterranean towards Sicily and Malta; it's less likely you know that Tunisia was once part of the Roman Empire. This photo is of the amphitheatre at El Djem, which dates from about 3rd century AD and held about 35,000 spectators. The Colosseum at Rome only held 10,000 more, and El Djem's floor is in better shape (meaning it has a floor).

We visited in February 2000, and we got the feeling that they didn't get a lot of American tourists there (plenty of European tourists, especially from Germany, but not Americans). During our "safari" to El Djem and the natural beauties in the south (including the Sahara), TSU remembers having lots of conversations with our guide, who was curious about American-style democracy. We had a great visit there and the people were friendly and accommodating to our group, and I wish them success in creating a more open government.

The Printz Award Winners: 2009

2011-01-20T08:20:00.128-05:00

How nice to have a little break for the holidays. I got quite a bit of reading done, so I'm ready to give you my latest report on the books the American Library Association deemed "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature" in 2009.

Winner:
Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road
Honor books:
M. T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 2: The Kingdom on the Waves
Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Terry Pratchett, Nation

Anderson's Octavian Nothing, Vol. 2: The first volume in this historical pair was an honor book in 2007, and was one of my favorites that year for its unique perspective on the American Revolution. The first book recounted Octavian's journey from coddled experimental subject to escaped slave, and in this book he decides the road to freedom is best achieved by joining Loyalist naval forces. His experiences are sometimes harrowing and always interesting, as he develops into a young man and tries to decide what freedom means to him. The "discovered journal" format continues to serve the story well, giving us a somewhat ambiguous ending that seems true to history. Together these two books were one of my favorites I read last year.

Lanagan's Tender Morsels: I'd really enjoyed Lanagan's Printz-honor collection from 2006, so I was looking forward to see what she'd do with the novel form. She started with the Snow White-Rose Red fairy tale, sprinkled in a strange mountain ritual involving bearskins, and came up with this astonishing fantasy in which an abused girl is transported into her "heaven" with her two baby daughters. As the two girls grow up, they get glimpses of the real world they left behind; when one accidentally returns to the real world, her mother and sister are forced to follow. They must leave "heaven" behind, and the three women's differing reactions to a world that—unlike their heaven—contains danger and violence along with opportunity and real love is fascinating to read. This is fantasy with real depth, but it's for more mature readers; the abuse the two girls' mother suffers is heart-wrenching to read.

Lockhart's Disreputable History: This book was a lot of fun, falling into the boarding-school genre established in that first YA, Catcher in the Rye, complete with a pranks and a secret society. What I loved about this book, though, was that Frankie's involvement with school pranks was more about her exploring her role as friend/girlfriend/clique member and what it means to try to fit in. So yes, this was a fun story about boarding school life among the rich people, but it had a real depth to it that would appeal to any teen (or older reader struggling with identity issues. (Disreputable History was also a National Book Award nominee in 2008.)

Pratchett's Nation: I've enjoyed several of Pratchett's works for adults, including his "Discworld" fantasies and the apocalypse satire Good Omens; he has that British flair for wordplay and dry humor I enjoy so much. This book seemed very different to me; not only was it "alternate history" rather than fantasy, it had a sincerity and earnestness I don't really see in his satires. There's still the same sense of wordplay, though, as the young island boy Mau struggles to unite the survivors that arrive on his island Nation in the South Pacific. The first survivor he meets is Daphne, who doesn't know that a plague has made her father the King of Great Britain instead of a very distant relative. (This is where the "alternate" part of the history comes in; Queen Victoria and most of her brood were still alive and kicking around 1860, when the novel takes place.) Although Mau's struggles for survival are engaging, as is his resourcefulness, the novel is really considering bigger issues, like are there gods? What is our duty to them, to ourselves, and to each other? What makes a nation? Although these are huge themes, they never overwhelm the book, owing to Pratchett's lively humor and intricate plot. Another book with an inner depth underlying an entertaining surface.

Marchetta's Jellicoe Road: And another Australian storms the Printz Awards! Although this is another book set inside a boarding school (this one in the Australian countryside) with its own rituals and battles, it is more of a family mystery—and what a mystery Taylor Markham has facing her. Abandoned by her mother at age 11, Taylor has grown up at the school, semi-adopted by Hannah, a young woman who lives on the school grounds. When Hannah disappears with no word, Taylor uses the manuscript Hannah left behind to try and decipher what has happened to her. She is aided by school chums and by the leaders of the townies and cadets who battle for territory around the school every year. As the story shifts between present, Taylor's shared past with the cadet leader Griggs, and Hannah's story of her own tragic youth, Taylor learns to open up emotionally even as the puzzle facing her becomes more complex. (Sorry, not going to be more specific and ruin the mystery for you.) This book was a little confusing to get into, what with all the shifting accounts, but it was worth it to get involved in an intricate mystery with a very satisfying resolution. It's nice when an author can take multiple threads and tie them up neatly at the end—good plotting is tough and it's fun to see it done well.

So all in all, another extremely good year for Printz books, maybe one of the best. And when I look at some of the books that didn't make it onto this list but onto the National Book Award list—like Laurie Halse Anderson's Chains, another wonderful historical novel set during the Revolution—you'd be safe to say it was a great year overall for YA books.

Photo of the Week--1/17/11

2011-01-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

This was just too cool not to feature on the blog: the Prague Orloj, or Astronomical Clock. First of all, it's scientific, with one dial showing the position of the sun and the moon in the sky, along with other astronomical details. Second, it's historic: the first part built around 1410, with a calendar dial added around 1490 and moving statues of the Apostles sometime in the 17th century. Third, it's shiny! Beautiful design, gold details, just pretty to look at. And it managed to survive Nazi shelling during the Prague Uprising of 1945, although several portions had to be repaired. And last, of course, we saw it and took pictures! It's part of Prague's Old Town City Hall and by visiting in January low season, we got a shot without tons of tourists in it. Hope you enjoy it too.

This brain is offline...

2011-01-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

... because I am busy stuffing it full of 19th-century American history. I might have said that this year I'm devoting my professional writing to an entire book, not just a series of essays. You may wonder, how different is it to write a whole book from writing a 3000-word essay? When you're writing nonfiction, it's really not that different, and I can break it down into four simple* steps:

Research your subject. This means read, read, read, read.
Take good notes. While you read, highlight significant facts and especially quotes that you might like to reproduce in your piece. A juicy quote from a subject can liven up a piece, or give your argument more weight.
Make an outline. This starts by reviewing your notes (or in the case of smaller pieces, re-reading your research). Certain important points will usually jump out at you, either because they're repeated frequently or they're interesting. When outlining, start broadly and then get more specific.
Write it together. Once you've got an outline, you can fill it in with those interesting facts and quotes, connecting them all with good transitions and observations. Before you know it, you have a finished essay, or even a finished book!

Of course, writing a book means each step is more intensive and takes longer, and the outlining step is crucial to keep you organized. Right now, however, I'm on step one: READ READ READ READ. I have a stack of history books over a foot high, and I've only gotten through about 3.5 inches of them. So I have little more for anything else in my head; the hamsters are racing on their wheels as fast as they can, chasing facts about robber barons and greenbacks and the Grange and strikes and all sorts of fun stuff. They would have to slow down to create something for this blog, so you may not see much from me for a while ... although I am still slogging away at the Printz books, and they just announced this year's winners, so I'll get a few more of those in this winter. In the meantime, you can look at the pretty pictures every week.

*simple to describe, not necessarily to do...

Photo of the Week--1/10/11

2011-01-10T13:21:00.000-05:00

I know my theme this go-round was "interesting architecture," so why am I including this picture of a snow field? Well, if you look closely along the horizon of the snow, you'll see some glowing runway lights: this is not just a snow field, it's an airport runway! When we took our little jaunt up to the Arctic Circle at Christmas 1999, this was where we landed in Ivalo, Finland. The terminal was a small, stone building with two gates, and the runways were really snowways. Now, that's how to make your architecture fit in with the landscape!

2010 Final Book Report

2011-01-06T08:43:00.095-05:00

Here's where I break down the 104 books I read last year (104!), and look at totals and trends.

In 2010 I read:

104 books total (exactly 2 per week)
80 books for the first time
59 books for children or young adults
19 fantasies
14 science fiction
12 Austen related
10 were nonfiction/memoir (5 for work)
4 classics for first time

These are good numbers compared to 2009; not only did I read 12 more books over the year, more of them were books I was reading for the first time. While last year 71% of my reading was new books, this year I reached 77%. A majority this year were for young audiences, and it was great to see the quality of writing in the genre. Not that there was ever any doubt in my mind about that, but now if anyone ever pooh-poohs YA books to me, I can say, "Yeah? Have you read X? or Y? Z? or the whole alphabet, for that matter?"

I'm not sure I'll be able to get to 100 books in 2011, although I'd like to. I'm going to be working on writing a reference book, and that means I'll be doing a lot of reading for research. So you're going to see a lot of nonfiction on my lists ... hopefully the fun stuff won't get squeezed out. In any case, here's my summary of 2010:

Favorite book of the 1st quarter: Empire of Ivory, by Naomi Novik, a dragon fantasy set during the Napoleonic Wars that does a great job of world-building and thinking of alternate cultures.

Favorite book of the 2nd quarter: Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson, a compelling portrait of a teenage girl battling anorexia.

Favorite book of the 3rd quarter: Freewill, by Chris Lynch, an amazing experiment in second-person narration that makes the plot's central mystery even more compelling.

Favorite book of the 4th quarter:
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, by M. T. Anderson, a fresh historical approach to the American Revolution.

Favorite book of 2010: Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly, a seamless weaving of contemporary teen trauma and fascinating historical fiction, set in modern-day New York/Paris and Revolution-era France.

Again, the majority of my best books were written for young adults. You're only young once, but you can read YAs forever—and with more people using e-readers (making it easy to hide what you're reading on the bus), I predict a continuing rise in popularity for the genre.

2010 Book Report: Fourth Quarter

2011-01-04T10:27:00.030-05:00

So did I manage 100 books in 2010, or did my extremely busy fall defeat my best intentions? Check out my reading list from the last quarter.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

10/05/10: Gary Schmidt, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (YA, H, 1)
10/14/10: Kenneth Oppel, Airborn (YA, F, 1)
10/18/10: Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now (YA, 2)
10/24/10: Lois McMaster Bujold, Cryoburn (SF, 1)
10/26/10: Margo Lanagan, Black Juice (YA, F, SS, 1)
10/31/10: Marilyn Nelson, A Wreath for Emmett Till (P, 1)
11/05/10: Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger (YA, 1)
11/10/10: Elizabeth Partridge, John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth (YA, NF, 1)
11/18/10: Sonya Hartnett, Surrender (YA, 1)
11/26/10: Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese (YA, graphic novel, 1)
12/05/10: M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1 (YA, H, 1)
12/11/10: Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. 2 (YA, H, 1)
12/13/10: Justine Larbalestier, Liar (YA, 1)
12/16/10: A.M. Jenkins, Repossessed (YA, F, 1)
12/18/10: Judith Clarke, One Whole and Perfect Day (YA, 1)
12/22/10: Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (SF, 3)
12/24/10: Stephanie Hemphill, You Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath (YA, V, 1)
12/26/10: Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness (YA, 1)
12/28/10: Emma Donoghue, Room (1)
12/29/10: David Weber, On Basilisk Station (SF, 4 or 5#)
12/31/10: Weber, The Honor of the Queen (SF, 4 or 5#)

Total for the quarter: 21 books, giving me a grand total for 2010 of 104 books! I feel very pleased to have made my 100-book goal, despite a very busy fall. Again, most of these books were young adult books I read for my Printz Award project, which means not only did I read a lot of quality books, I got a lot of market research done.

So what was my favorite book of the quarter? I think it would have to be M. T. Anderson's two-part historical novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. Not only is the historical aspect really interesting—it's set in Boston during the American Revolution and told from the point of view of a slave—but so is the form, which is full of re-created "journals," letters, and articles. I love a good historical, especially one that can bring a fresh perspective to a familiar era.

Check back in a couple of days for my final accounting of my year in books, as I break down what kinds of books I read and look forward to 2011.

Photo of the Week--1/3/11

2011-01-03T08:26:00.000-05:00

We found this interesting site on a weekend excursion to Jersey, in the Channel Islands. La Hougue Bie has cool buildings from different eras in one place. Atop the "hougue" (mound, in Norman) is a medieval chapel. At the bottom of the picture, where Boy is standing, we have a Neolithic ritual site that is about 5500 years old. Although this type of site is called a "passage grave," its primary function was ceremonial, not for burials. When they excavated and restored the entrance to this site, they discovered that on the equinox, the sun's rays would shine all the way into the back of the chamber at sunrise. Proving once again that an interest in astronomy isn't geeky, it's historical.

The Printz Award Winners: 2008

2010-12-31T17:04:00.000-05:00

I've been plugging away at the list, using the cold weather as an excuse to stay inside and read while using the exercise bike rather than going outside to run. That means a little more reading time, and I've made it through the list of books from 2008 that the ALA deemed were those that "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature."

Winner:
Geraldine McCaughrean, The White Darkness
Honor books:
Judith Clarke, One Whole and Perfect Day
Stephanie Hemphill, Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
A.M. Jenkins, Repossessed
Elizabeth Knox, Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet

Clarke's One Whole and Perfect Day: Another Aussie makes the Printz list, with a book that didn't feel YA to me at all. Sure, the main character is a teen, a girl who feels like her family is totally crazy and hopes that maybe her grandfather's upcoming birthday party might be a chance to have something go right for a change. But her point of view isn't the only one: we get scenes from the point of view of her mother, her grandparents, her brother, her brother's girlfriend, her brother's girlfriend's mother (and father)—characters with a wide variety of ages and backgrounds. YA books are usually in the first person, and even when they aren't they're usually focused on one character's point of view. To include the thoughts of—gasp! adults, especially adult family members—seems really really unusual. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book, it was fun and the characters were interesting, I'm just not sure how open most teens are to reading about the enemy's, er, their parents' or grandparents' side of things.

Hemphill's Your Own, Sylvia: The author labels this a "verse novel" that is based on the life of the poet Sylvia Plath, who famously committed suicide via gas oven at age 30, with her children in the next room. I've mostly known about the controversy surrounding her death and her legacy (her estate was controlled by her husband, poet Ted Hughes, from whom she was separated at the time of her suicide), and the whole kerfuffle turned me off of wanting to know more. Hemphill's verse novel/biography combines poems, sometimes in the style of Plath's own work, with brief explanations of the biographical facts behind the event described in the poem. The triumph of Hemphill's work is not just the wonderful poems which trace Plath's life and work, envisioning her and the people around her, but that it made me think I've been missing something. The poems moved me, both as verse and as story, and made me want to go to the library.

Jenkins's Repossessed: It seems like YA has been flooded with supernatural fiction over the past few years, what with all the vampires, angels, werewolves, fairies, and other creatures starring in their own novels. This book features a demon—sorry, a fallen angel—who tires of tormenting souls in hell and decides to take a vacation on earth. He assumes the life of a slacker teen scheduled to be creamed by a bus, and discovers the fun of having a physical body, and the complexities of having feelings. After a few philosophical discoveries—has anyone noticed he's left Hell? does God pay attention anyway?—Kiriel leaves Earth behind, having tried to make a difference in a couple of people's lives. This book was a pleasant-enough read, but I didn't find it revelatory, having left that kind of philosophical angst behind during my own teen years.

Knox's Dreamquake: Although I had access to this book, I didn't think I could fairly judge it without reading the first volume, which was checked out of the library. Rather than wait, and postpone this blog entry weeks and weeks, I took my first pass for a while. Too bad; this fantasy looked interesting.

McCaughrean's The White Darkness: Wowee. I had no idea what this book was about when I cracked it open—I had some vague idea it might be a fantasy, given the dreamy-looking cover and the acclaimed British author's previous work in retelling myths—but it turned out to be a contemporary adventure set in Antarctica. The story is told by Sym, a 14-year-old Brit who is fascinated with both Antarctica and the polar explorer Lawrence "Titus" Oates, who perished on Scott's fatal expedition in 1912. Sym feels estranged from her schoolmates, most of whom are obsessed with boys and clothes—we don't discover she is partially deaf until a few chapters into the book—and often talks to Titus in her head. When her "uncle" turns a weekend in Paris into a trip to Antarctica, Sym is thrilled at first. As she discovers more about her uncle's true intentions and his past relationship with her family, the novel turns into a terrifying, hallucinatory journey into the cold and the blinding white of Antarctica. It was an intense story of survival, and even if it did push the boundaries of disbelief in places, it was a fascinating portrayal of one of our planet's last frontiers.

So overall, I didn't think it was a great year for the Printz books. A couple of them I thought were interesting enough to read once, but kind of forgettable. The National Book Award winner from this year was Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which I have read and do think will endure, while the runners-up included Sara Zarr's Story of a Girl, which I thought would speak more to teens, especially girls. Of the Printz books I read, I'd probably pick Hemphill's as my favorite ... but as a writer I may be inclined to favor books about writers.

I would say at this point I've only two more years of award-winners to read, but the 2011 awards will be announced in February, so I may not finish by then ... keep posted to see.

Photo of the Week--12/27/10

2010-12-27T11:31:00.000-05:00

This building in Lucerne, Switzerland, was just cool: the Wasserturm ("water tower") in the middle of the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge). The Kapellbrücke was built in the 14th century to help defend Lucerne from attacks, and is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe. The water tower is 140 feet tall and made of brick, so it has served not only as a water tower but as watch tower, treasury, and torture chamber (oooo!). A lot of European buildings have such interesting backgrounds just by virtue of existing for centuries, but we thought this one was extra intriguing. A tower! In the middle of a bridge! In the middle of a river! No wonder it's one of Switzerland's most popular tourist attractions.

Don't Fear the Springform

2010-12-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

Another holiday, another party, another round of "Diane, this cheesecake is awesome!" Although I've always had a love for baked goods (for more evidence, see Cookie of the Month), it took me a while to attempt a cheesecake. Part of it might be that I was never that wild about cheesecake, having only been exposed to it in restaurants, where it was usually plain, dry, and accompanied by fruits I didn't really like. I have to admit, though, that a big reason I didn't attempt a cheesecake was the pan. That's right, I was intimidated by the springform.

I mean, look at it. It's got some kind of mechanism on the side. If it looks complicated, I reasoned, it must be tricky to use. I bet the recipes must be tricky, too. Why should I bother to play around with tricky pans and tricky recipes when there are so many cookies and cakes I could make instead?

Well, I finally broke down and got one at the first Pampered Chef party I ever attended. You go to those things and eat the food or sample the wares and feel like you should buy something. I was living in England at the time and had a tiny oven, and the springform was cheaper than stoneware anyway, so I bought one. And lo! It wasn't that hard to use. And guess what? Fresh cheesecake, made with interesting flavors, is pretty damn tasty. I became a cheesecake baking fiend. So I am going to share some of my cheesecake baking tips with you, along with a recipe that never fails to get compliments.

Digestive biscuits make a better crust/base than graham crackers. I learned this out of necessity, as digestive biscuits are native to England while graham crackers are not. They are made from wheat flour and wholemeal, and have a denser, grittier texture than graham crackers. This makes them great for a cheesecake base, as they don't collapse under moisture like graham crackers do. I usually find them in the international section at the grocery store, or at specialty stores like Cost Plus World Market.
You can reduce the fat/calorie content by judicious substitution: neufchatel or light cream cheese instead of the full-fat stuff, vanilla yogurt instead of sour cream. I've used all these with success, although you might need to adjust baking times (see number 4 below).
I can't stress enough how much a real mixer can make the cheesecake. It's just too hard to get cream cheese blended by hand; a powerful stand mixer will take care of all those lumps. Making sure you let your cream cheese soften before mixing is helpful, too.
Don't trust your recipe when it comes to baking times. I often have to leave my cheesecakes in for longer than recipes say to make sure that the center gets set. This time can be 10 or even 20 minutes longer than a recipe's baking time, but cheesecakes are so dense that it's hard to overbake them. Fail to bake them enough, though, and the center will be too gooey. (Not that anyone will complain, it still tastes great, but it's hard to serve a gooey cheesecake.)
Experiment with flavors! I've had success with chocolate, Bailey's (or both!), peppermint/candy cane, pumpkin, cranberry, triple berry, M&Ms ... lots of things lend themselves to cheesecake, because the cream cheese base is so bland it mixes with any kind of flavor. I simply Google "cheesecake recipe" to find something new and interesting to try.

And now, one such Googled recipe that gets great results with a relatively simple instructions.

Cranberry Cheesecake with Walnut Crust

1½ cups graham cracker/digestive biscuit crumbs

½ cup finely chopped walnuts
¼ cup butter, melted
1 can (16 oz.) whole cranberry sauce
3 packages (8 oz. ea) cream cheese, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup flour
3 eggs
8 oz. dairy sour cream
2 t. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325F. Combine crumbs, walnuts, and butter. Firmly press crumb mixture into the bottom of a 9-in springform pan. Bake until golden, 5 or 6 minutes; remove from oven. Cool slightly. Spread with cranberry sauce and set aside.

Reduce oven temperature to 300F. Use mixer to beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour until smooth. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and vanilla until well-blended. Pour evenly over cranberry sauce. Bake until a knife insert1 to 1½ inches from edge comes out clean, about 1 hour [or longer, if necessary--D]. Turn off oven; leave the cheesecake in over with door ajar until top is firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack about 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours. Just before serving, remove cheesecake from pan onto a serving plate.

Serve and receive compliment!

Photo of the Week--12/20/10

2010-12-20T14:00:00.001-05:00

I chose this photo not so much because the building is that interesting in itself, although it is a pretty example of a British manor house. No, St. Michael's Mount is more interesting because of how it's situated. Take a look at the picture to the right: St. Michael's Mount is just off the Cornwall coast in a nice little bay. When the tide is in, as in this picture, it's an island. When the tide is out, you can walk from the mainland to the mount. That makes this building, and the little village at the base of the mount, much more interesting. Imagine how much work it must have been to get all the building materials up to the site! Although the St. Aubyn family has owned the mount since the mid-1600s, the National Trust manages visitors, so you can visit most of the island, either by boat or on foot. If you've ever seen the 1996 film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with Helena Bonham Carter and Imogen Stubbs (and if you haven't, you should), you might recognize the island as the setting for Orsino's castle. We visited in 1999, and the mural/map along one building in the film was still visible. Cool.

Cookie of the Month: White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

2010-12-17T10:24:00.000-05:00

I know, it's more like "Cookie of the Season," since I haven't had an entry in this series since August. Number one, I've just been that busy, and number two, I haven't had an occasion to make cookies. Okay, maybe I don't need an occasion to make cookies, but I definitely need somewhere to distribute them besides my house (and by extension, my hips). It's the holiday season, so I needed to bring something to my band's holiday concert. I had two requirements: I wanted something that looked pretty, and I wanted white chocolate. A little Googling and I found this recipe at the Better Homes & Gardens site:

½ cup maraschino cherries, drained and finely chopped*
2½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 cup cold butter
12 oz. white chocolate baking squares with cocoa butter, finely chopped
(or be lazy like me and get chips)
½ teaspoon almond extract
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
2 teaspoons shortening
white nonpareils and/or red edible glitter (optional)

1. Preheat over to 325F. Spread cherries on paper towels to drain well. *I actually avoided this by using candied cherries instead. No draining, and they mixed in pretty well.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour and sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in drained cherries and 4 ounces (⅔ cup) of the white chocolate. Stir in almond extract and, if desired, food coloring. Knead mixture until it forms a smooth ball. It's surprising, how you start with a completely crumbly mix of stuff you think can't possibly hang together, but after a little kneading it turns out into a reasonably sticky dough, like you see in the picture here. I did use food coloring, although I think it formed a little ball and didn't spread very well throughout the dough, so I wouldn't use it again. You get enough red color from the cherries anyway.

3. Shape dough into ¾-inch balls. Place balls two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls to 1-1½-inch rounds. Here's a silly question: what other kind of glass might you use besides a "drinking glass"? Is there any other kind of glass, and if so, would it really be suited for squishing dough? I don't think so. Anyway, this is what the cookies looked like pre-baking.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers are set. Cool for 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool. My baking time was about 12 minutes, although the cookies didn't get that golden tint you expect from shortbread. Perhaps they needed another minute or two, or perhaps they just won't get golden with all the stuff in the dough.

5. In a small saucepan, combine remaining 8 oz. white chocolate and the shortening. Cook and stir over low heat until melted. Normally when I melt chocolate for dipping, I do it in the microwave, 20 seconds at a time at half power. This time it didn't work, and I had to go to the saucepan method and add extra shortening. The shortening makes the chocolate smoother and more suitable for dipping.

6. Dip half of each cookie into chocolate, allowing excess to drip off. If desired, roll dipped edge in nonpareils and/or edible glitter. Place cookies on waxed paper until chocolate is set. Mmmmm, I broke out my various mixes of holiday decorations. You can see I had some with nonpareils and sugar, and some with holiday "evergreens and berries." Both types tasted equally yummy. The cherry flavor was subtle, the white chocolate sublime, and the toppings added an interesting texture. You could taste the shortbread base underneath the cherry and white chocolate, but the texture wasn't very like shortbread at all. These were very smooth, chewy cookies, pure shortbread tends to be crumbly; again, I couldn't tell whether this was due to the extra stuff in the shortbread, or whether they needed a couple more minutes baking time. In any case, these were extremely tasty, and even though we had four dozen left at home after taking some to the concert, they were consumed within a few days.

All in all, I take away a little for the texture and give these cookies a nom nom nom nom (4 of 5 noms).

Photo of the Week--12/13/10

2010-12-13T12:02:00.000-05:00

I selected this photo of the Ingreja do Carmo in Lisbon not because of any particularly interesting architectural detail, but rather because the building exists in the first place. Of course you see the sky through the window, but if you look more closely you'll also see it peeking through the trees, too. That's a lot of sky to be seen, and that's because this church was damaged during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which some scientists estimate to have measured around 9.0 on the Richter scale. Besides killing between 10,000 and 100,000 people, the earthquake destroyed 85 percent of the buildings in Lisbon and caused tsunamis that were noted as far away as Cornwall, England (see next week's photo). This convent church had its roof collapse, destroying a 5000-volume library, and it was never rebuilt. It served briefly as a military billet, and now is an archaeological museum. Unfortunately it was close when we went to visit, so we only got this view from the outside; luckily it was still a fascinating view.

The Printz Award Winners: 2007

2010-12-08T12:39:00.000-05:00

It's been tricky finding time to read, but luckily I'd already read two of the books on the 2007 list that "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature," according to the American Library Association. It was an outstanding year for Printz books.

Winner:
Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese
Honor books:
M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
Sonya Hartnett, Surrender
Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief

Anderson's Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1: This is an extraordinary historical novel set during the American Revolution, with its title character not a rebel or a loyalist, but a slave. The story is told through diary entries and letters, all with a formal language that enhances the historical feel. Octavian's story is told in four parts, and that's how I consumed the novel. The first part was fascinating, as we see Octavian's childhood growing up as an experiment in a research college. He is taught Latin and Greek and music (and has his poop weighed every day), while his mother, an African princess, is treated like a lady. Of course he has a gradual discovery of what their slavery really means, especially after smallpox ravages the college and his mother dies in part two. Part three covers his escape to rebel forces, and part four his recapture. The depth of the character and story kept building with each part I finished, and I eagerly turned to Vol II. You'll have to wait for the 2009 reviews for that one, sorry. (Octavian Vol. 1 also won the National Book Award for Children's Literature.)

Green's An Abundance of Katherines: Green floored me with his dark Printz-winning debut, and I enjoyed his second novel just as much, although it had a completely different tone. Colin, the narrator, is a former child math prodigy who has been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. The later dumping has occured after high-school graduation and Colin, afraid he will never demonstrate any genius again, goes on a road trip with his friend Hassan. They end up in Tennesee and take a job for a woman who owns a tampon-string factory, and Colin discovers mathematical formulae cannot substitute for (or explain) love. I loved the comic tone of the book, which used footnotes and other asides to enhance the humor, and although I'm not thrilled with Green's reliance on the manic pixie dream girl archetype, I really enjoyed the novel. The nerd jokes were right up my alley.

Hartnett's Surrender: This novel by an Australian author really floored me. I'm not sure how to describe it without ruining the story, because it's a psychological thriller that's more of a mystery than a pure thriller. At least I can give you the opening setup: a young man named Gabriel lies dying, wondering if his old childhood friend Finnegan will visit him before the end and bring his dog, Surrender. Years before, back when Gabriel was known as Anwell and was involved in a horrible tragedy, the two boys made a pact: Anwell/Gabriel would embody the good for the two boys, and Finnegan the bad. Now that human bones have been discovered in a forest nearby, however, things start to unravel, leading to a surprising and violent climax. The mystery was engaging and the resolution, and although it's the kind that gives more questions than answers, was very satisfying. It's a haunting book that stays with you.

Zusak's The Book Thief: Another gem of a book from Australia (and again much different than his previous Printz honoree), this story set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death hit bestseller lists around the world. Death is fascinated by young Liesel, whom he first encounters when her young brother dies on a trip when the two siblings are being taken to live with foster parents. During the trip she steals her first book, a guide for gravediggers, and her new foster father teaches her to read using the book. She is soon stealing books from book burnings and the mayor's house, reading and writing being a way for her to cope with the increasingly difficult conditions under the Nazi regime. She has two other encounters with Death, who at the end notes "I am haunted by humans" like Liesel. Even if you think you have fatigue with WWII/Holocaust stories, this one is so powerful and hopeful—attesting to the eternal power of words—that I think you would enjoy it.

Yang's American Born Chinese: The winner this year was actually a graphic novel, a field that's always been popular with YAs, but only lately has branched out to broader topics. This novel is three related stories in one, beginning with the trouble young Jin Wang, son of Chinese immigrants, is having in assimilating into his American school. The second story builds on the Chinese folk character of the Monkey King, who in the book keeps accumulating power to prove he is more than just a monkey. The third story is presented like a television sitcom starring Danny, a blond American teen who keeps changing schools every time his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee, an amalgam of Asian stereotypes, comes to visit. As the novel bounces back and forth between the three stories, we see the connections as each character struggles to define their identities without denying their origins. I thought it was very cleverly presented, although I didn't find it that revelatory, being somewhat far removed from my own teenage struggle for identity (ie, old and irrelevant). I certainly can see why it's considered a groundbreaker in graphic novels for young people, although there has been great work in the genre for years. (American Born Chinese was also a National Book Award finalist, and won an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New.)

So all in all, a superlative year for YA literature, and I would be hard pressed to choose a favorite among these books. I suppose it would depend on my mood, because there was something for my inner history, math, and book-loving geeks, and they're not very good at fighting it out.

Photo of the Week--12/6/10

2010-12-06T14:08:00.000-05:00

In July 1999 we rented a car and drove around the northwest part of Ireland, and in County Galway we found this cute little castle, Aughnanure. It's not a huge complex, like you generally think of when you hear the word "castle," but rather a "tower house," a defensive structure that was designed to defend a key strategic location. There are a couple hundred of these "castles" in County Galway, and Aughnanure lies near Lough Corrib, the second largest lake in Ireland, and near enough to the city of Galway to be an important water supply. As you can see, the castle was in a bit of disrepair, although thankfully it was sturdy enough for us to climb the ruins. Because if you're going to visit a ruined castle, you should at least be able to climb around it like a bunch of monkeys and play hide and seek.

Fashion Math: When does 526 not equal 526?

2010-12-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting in the blog much lately, owing to a pressing deadline last week, another upcoming deadline in two weeks, and preparing for the holiday season. (Which in my family begins with Thanksgiving, an entire four-day weekend devoted to my two favorite sins, Gluttony and Sloth.) Being so busy might account for my pissy mood, but maybe it's because I haven't been venting my spleen on the blog. Lucky you! You're going to get a whole series of rants!

Today's rant concerns my most recent annoyance: stupid wracking-fracking-sacking women's clothing companies. I complained a couple of years ago about the frustrating phenomenon of vanity sizing, which makes it difficult to figure out what size to get when you're trying on clothes. I've lost 10-15 pounds since that original post, which is great, but it has made finding my size more difficult, as it's now the lowest women's size available in many stores. (I do not have junior hips, I gotta shop in misses.) When it comes to jeans, I have to try things on in different sizes, owing to cut, style, brand, etc. I was so happy when I found a jean that fit me perfectly, a Levi's 526 model. I got one pair of the single color they had in my size, and wished they had the other color, but oh well. When I returned to the store a couple months later, they now had corduroys in the 526 style. I tried them on, and they fit perfectly ... but they only had golden-brown, not the black I coveted, and of course the dark blue jeans still weren't available in my size. Grrrrr.

Then I saw a sign! Use our online kiosk for more colors and sizes! Shipping free! I toddled over and yes! Found the black! Found the oceana blue! Got them on sale, with a coupon, shipped right to my house! I was excited, until I tried them on. The black cords were great—fit just as perfectly as the others—but the dark blue jeans were a little tight. I washed them, thinking maybe the fabric was just stiff, but I ended up with a pair of jeans that went on like I was wearing a girdle. Dang, I thought, I got a bad one. Sometimes it happens, things get mis-sized or mislabeled. I would just have to go to the store, find my size, try it on, and then exchange.

I went to store number one. Of course, they didn't have my size in the dark blue jean. They didn't even have it in the light blue jean I already had. I went to the service counter with my sad story, and they offered to check the item with nearby branches. The one a couple miles south had not one but two in my size, so I thought I'd go try them on. At store number two, I grabbed both of my size, one in each color, and headed to the changing rooms. As I slid the dark blue ones over my legs, I got an uncomfortable feeling ... this time I could barely get the damn things around my hips, and forget about buttoning them! The light blue ones, however, fit perfectly. WTF? Being stubborn, I went out and got the next size up in the dark blue, along with two sizes of two other dark blue styles. Of course, the higher size of the 526 was too big in the waist (my usual hip-waist ratio problem), while the other models were cut differently and didn't fit in either size.

The other models not fitting doesn't bother me so much; of course different styles will have different cuts and different hip-waist ratios and other things which mean they won't fit me well, but some other woman will love them. But why oh why, dear Levi's, would you label two pairs of jeans with the same model number and not have them fit exactly the same? I could have understood it if there was a big difference between the cords and the denim, because the two fabrics have different weaves and give in different ways. But to have such a big difference between two pairs, both made of denim? I think you're deliberately trying to drive the American female crazy. At least, after chasing those stupid jeans around town, I feel crazy enough to throttle some fashion designer somewhere.

Photo of the Week--11/29/10

2010-11-29T08:36:00.000-05:00

I chose this picture of the Palais de Chaillot, on the site of the former Trocadero Palace, because I liked how wild the fountains were. We were there on a sunny spring day, but it wasn't that warm, so I don't know why they had the large fountains spewing mist all over everything. It still made for a pretty picture ... although that didn't require much skill, as most pictures taken in Paris are pretty.

Photo of the Week--11/22/10

2010-11-22T20:25:00.000-05:00

Barcelona, what a beautiful city! Many of its sights were designed by the architect Antonio Gaudí, including the extraordinary cathedral known as the Sagrada Familia ("Holy Family"). Even from a distance, it's a striking sight, with its conical towers reaching into the sky. I took this close-up because I was fascinated by the detail work, which covers the entire building. I especially liked the colors of the stained glass.

Photo of the Week--11/15/10

2010-11-15T09:14:00.000-05:00

One of the things I loved about visiting Malta was the variety of buildings and sites on this Mediterranean island. This is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mnajdra, a megalithic temple complex that dates to sometime around 3500 BC. We weren't there for an equinox to witness the sun lighting up one specific doorway, or for a solstice, when the sun lights up flanking megaliths, but we could climb around the complex, see the limestone megaliths and benches, and otherwise envision the place in its original setting. You can see there isn't any visitor center, or guard rails, or anything else to get in the way of the imagination—at least, there wasn't in 1999, when we visited. Now, I believe there is a tent to prevent further erosion, and guard ropes to direct tourist traffic. But when we visited we were the only ones there, and it was easy to imagine yourself in the middle of an ancient culture.

The Printz Award Winners: 2006

2010-11-11T10:31:00.000-05:00

The pace of fall hasn't slowed any, but I have with a twisted ankle ... meaning instead of running, walking, or TKD I've been using the exercise bike. I can read while I bike, and I've made it through the books from 2006 that "exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature," according to the American Library Association.

Winner:
John Green, Looking for Alaska
Honor books:
Margo Lanagan, Black Juice
Marilyn Nelson, A Wreath for Emmett Till
Elizabeth Partridge, John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth, a Photographic Biography
Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

Lanagan's Black Juice: This collection of short stories from an Australian writer was trippy, wild, imaginative, and right up my alley. The author used all different kinds of fantastic settings, but only one was what you might think of as traditional fantasy, with a medieval-type setup. Sometimes it took a little patience to figure out the setting—one was futuristic punk, one seemed an African or aboriginal setting, one I didn't know how to describe—but they were all worth it. Lanagan creates snapshots of wildly different worlds, all with something interesting and powerfully moving at the center. I gobbled this book up very quickly. (Black Juice also won two World Fantasy Awards, for best collection and best short story for "Singing My Sister Down.")

A Wreath for Emmett Till: I'd heard of this book before, and was familiar with the subject—the fourteen-year-old African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955—but I didn't know that Nelson's book was actually a cycle of 15 interlinked sonnets, a form called a heroic crown. The last line of the first sonnet made up the first line of the second sonnet, etc etc, until the 15th sonnet, which is made up of the first lines of the previous fourteen. The format itself is impressive—especially when you see the first lines of the last sonnet spell out "RIP Emmett Till"—but the poetry is just as exhilarating. She uses imagery from popular culture, mythology, and history; links the hate of lynching to the attacks of 9/11, imagining a grown up Till becoming a hero in the towers; and calls for an end to hate. I read the book through once, then again with the notes the author includes at the end, explaining some of her references, and was thoroughly impressed. This book should be read not just by kids who need to understand the civil rights era, but by kids who don't think they like poetry. It's a wonderful, wonderful book, and the first thing I wanted to do after finishing it was share it with someone else. (A Wreath for Emmett Till also won a Coretta Scott King Honor citation from the ALA.)

Partridge's John Lennon: this heavily illustrated biography was one of the books that has led a renaissance of sorts in nonfiction for kids, as it seems lately there is at least one nonfiction book (if not more) that scores a major honors every year. And this is a very appealing book, liberally supplied with photos, that tells the story of Lennon's life from the time he was born until his murder in 1980. As someone who writes a lot of nonfiction, I really admire Partridge's judicious use of historical context, giving us just enough history to understand the events in Lennon's life without interrupting the flow of the story. The structure is simple, the pacing quick, and the subject compelling, making for a good read for any age.

Zusak's I Am the Messenger: this novel by an Australian novelist felt more like what they're now calling "new adult" literature rather than "young adult," as the main character, Ed, is out of high school and struggling to find purpose in his life. Chance seemingly sets him on a new path when he inadvertently thwarts a bank robbery, leading someone to send him playing cards in the mail with strange messages. The cards set Ed a series of tasks in which he is to help people, sometimes by directly intervening in their lives and sometimes just taking small actions that send a powerful message. Ed is an interesting character, and his struggle was compelling reading, but as the novel progressed and he learned more about who was sending him the cards, I found the story taking a metafictional turn that I found irritating. It was an entertaining read, but left me slightly unsatisfied at the end. (I Am the Messenger also won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award.)

Green's Looking for Alaska: This novel, I think, was another game-changer in YA fiction, for its frank depiction of teenage "misbehavior." At the very least it introduced an incredible new voice in the genre. The "Alaska" of the title is not the state, but a girl that Miles "Pudge" Halter meets soon after starting classes at an Alabama boarding school. Alaska is wild and mysterious and Pudge is soon head over heels ... but the relationship doesn't last (because of a twist I won't reveal), and he and his friends are left trying to piece together why. The book has often been challenged by censors for its portrayal of teenage sex, smoking, cursing, and drinking—but none of these behaviors are gratuitous, and we see the consequences of the characters' poor choices, so these elements only strengthen the emotional honesty and power of the novel. I read this novel last year, and quickly sought out Green's other books.

So how might I have voted among this books? I have to say that I thought this year's finalists the strongest across the board since the first year of the Printz Award, and it would have been a hard decision. But I think Alaska is likely to be the longest lasting of the bunch, so I think I would have had to agree with the panel.

Can I manage to get to 2007 by the end of the month? I'm certainly going to try ... only four years of the award left to cover, and I'd like to get there by the end of the year.