Susanne

PUB or Pile of Unread Books

December 8, 2009 by Susanne 4 Comments

A friend of mine has recently started writing a blog about books and cats (in German). I’m always mightily impressed by her list of unread books. Now, don’t get it wrong, it’s not that she’s only reading for pleasure, she also gets send books to review, so in the end she has enough books on her list to justify sorting it. Me, on the other hand, I only read for pleasure so my pile is much lower than hers. Meet exhibit A (Note that German titles are printed the other way around than English ones. I’m finding this annoying. And no, I won’t place the German books face down, no way.):

But then it occurred to me that if my pile of unread books is really that low, why is it that every flat surface of the house is littered with books? And why do I never finish reading anything? And why does it take months for me to finish a book, even one that I borrowed? And why am I running out of bookmarks? Well, meet my PPUB, my Pile of Partially Unread Books:

(After taking this picture I found another one innocently hiding on a shelf. And then, after writing most of this post I found yet another one in a pile of knitting books sitting on the floor plus at least two unread knitting books.) I used to have a shelf dedicated to unread books, and I used to have only one or two books in progress. Now there is this pile on my desk, and the pile in the kitchen, plus the extra shelf in the kitchen. (What, you don’t have a shelf in the kitchen for books that you are currently reading? How odd.)

So, first to the unread books. There is from top to bottom (The links go to librarything, this post took ages to write because my nifty little Amazon helper plugin isn’t working. Otherwise there would have been pictures as well.):

Odd and the Frost Giants – well, it’s by Neil Gaiman that’s reason enough for me to want to read it. It’ll probably get read very soon. It’s also a very short book.
The Lake of Dead Languages – I think that Meno recommended this. Several years ago. It has been sitting around since then and I just didn’t feel like reading it.
Until I Find You – I bought this because I used to eagerly await every new John Irving novel. Then I read the first paragraph and since then haven’t felt compelled to really start it. Especially since a friend told me she didn’t like it.
Buddhism for Mothers of Schoolchildren – Received this two days ago. I have shown restrain and not started reading it, despite wanting to.
Mein Urgroßvater und ich – This is a book I used to love as a teenager. There was some talk about it in the German blogosphere a couple of weeks (or months) ago, and I decided to buy it. It will be great to read with my son but not now. I’d like to reread it on my own, though.
Green Lantern 47 – what to say, I have a subscription to Green Lantern comics. It will take all of 15 minutes to read it but my problem is that I can’t have my comics lying around where my son can see them because he gets scared very easily. (That’s a topic for another post, by the way.) So “Blackest Night” with pictures of people fighting and zombie-like aliens, well, I better keep that in my room which means I never read it because in my room I only read stuff on the computer. I’ll find the fifteen minutes eventually, though.
Respect the Spindle – When I heard that Abby Franquemont wrote a book I absolutely had to have it. This one is likely to be read first. (And it’s a great conversation piece. I have showed three students how one makes yarn on a spindle because the book has been lying around on my desk. That means I showed them how I make it, they didn’t want to learn themselves, but still.)
The Craftsman – it did sound interesting when Jo wrote about it on her blog. It was a birthday present from my parents.

My problem is the pile of books that I started but never finished. The problem is similar to having a lot of UFOs (that’s UnFinished Objects in this case) in knitting. You get all excited and start something new, and you do this so often that you never get around to actually finish anything. As for my knitting UFOs I sat down in October and finished almost all of those things whether I felt like it or not, and now I’m down to very few works in progress and feel much better for it. I have this gnawing feeling that it might be time to try something like this for books. I buy a new book, I get all excited, I start reading it, and then it gets stuck in a pile or two and another, newer book sits on top of it. Part of the problem is that books are so stackable. My pile of partially unread books contains (again from top to bottom, well almost I forgot some the first time):

Off the Page – recommended by Jo again. I love books about writing, and I thought this one would be great. It is so far, I took it with me on a trip in May, read one or two chapters and never got around to it again.
A New Earth – recommended to me by Christine Kane years ago. First my husband read it and since then it has been sitting here because it requires me to actually think while reading. That requires specific reading arrangements.
The Power of Now – I thought I’d start at the beginning, and read this before “A New Earth”. There is a bookmark somewhere in it, I guess.
Anger – I got this for my husband and after reading it he thought it might be a good idea for me to read it too. And it is. But – the thinking again.
Schulz and Peanuts – I read an official Charles Schulz-biography some years ago, and enjoyed it very much. I have been loving the Peanuts ever since my father brought home six volumes of collected Peanuts strips from Canada. I learned English reading these. (My English teachers were quite baffled by my unusual vocabulary.) Oh, and this one was given to me by my sister. I think for Christmas – last year, I hope.
Zum Buddha werden in 5 Wochen – this was a bit of a joke. I expected to read it through in about two days. That has been month ago. Oh, and the title translates as “Become a Buddha in five weeks”
Use of Weapons – a friend brought this because she thought I would like it, and she is right. I’m dragging my feet though because I resent the “look I’m making this suspenseful in a clever way by mixing the timeline all up, and now you can guess what’s when”-strategy of this book. Of course, if I had read this in my usual state before becoming a mother I wouldn’t even have noticed the cleverness because I would have read it fast enough to not be bothered by this. I’d have raced through the book, and at the end all the pieces would have fallen into place. Like I didn’t realize that “Pulp Fiction” isn’t told in chronological order until my husband asked where the two people from the beginning went. (He meant the couple who robbed the diner.) In my head everything had unfolded in perfect and timely order.
Fatal Revenant – I’m having a bit of a problem not only with fiction these days but especially with epic fantasy. I love, love, love Stephen R. Donaldson and especially the Thomas Covenant books but I’ve been reading this for ages because it’s not exactly an easy read, and – well – I have to look up names all the time which is the thing that happens when you go for weeks without reading it and then want to come back, and then I’m not always in the mood for something that moves rather slowly. I’m sure it is me, again, because I read the first six books of this in no time flat.
The Wisdom of Menopause – I bought this for obvious reasons after my last visit to my ob/gyn. I’m actually reading it at the moment, and it’s getting a bit better since I gave myself permission not to read every single word of it. I am allowed to skip parts that don’t interest or concern me.
Lick the Sugar Habit – this was recommended by Mel, and it is an excellent book. Probably. Only it has been hanging around the house for too long already. And somehow I’m not that thrilled to read about all the ways sugar wrecks havoc with my metabolism. And to be frank, the message is: “Sugar is bad, avoid it.” Maybe I won’t finish this one.
The Mindful Way through Depression – I have written about this before. It is an excellent book, and the only reason I’m that keen to finish is that I no longer think that I am depressed. On the other hand mindfulness helps with several things, not the least life as a whole so maybe it’s time to read this already.
Inside Songwriting – I’m always reading books about writing and writers and then sometimes I hope for more books about songwriting. This was recommended by Vikki on her blog. I saw her post about it and immediately bought it. I took it with me to a writer’s group meeting two months ago, felt incredibly inspired and then sat it down on top of a pile on my desk. I keep moving it to the top of that pile because a) it’s a pretty color, and b) it looks better to my students than having Green Lantern comics sitting there.
Batman – Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? – What can I say, it’s by Neil Gaiman. And I did read the beginning but then my usual “comic problem” kicked in, I can’t have this sitting around where my son or my students can see it. So I basically had to stuff it in a drawer. Or at the bottom of the pile of unread books. It’s nice and big …
Head First HTML– I bought that back in the day when I got serious about blogging, I think it was just before going from blogger to wordpress. It’s not exactly light reading material, more of a course. I did quite well doing the homework for a couple of weeks, and now I’m at the part where I should start learning CSS. With a wordpress blog, and being unhappy about the layout hereabouts it would be a very good idea to learn CSS but then – there would be the thinking again.
Handbuch Buddhismus – a book that my husband gave me for my birthday years ago when I started being interested in buddhism, I am not sure if I like it or not, it is very German, a bit dry and academic, and I never can remember anything (that’s not the book’s fault, it’s me I have read numerous books about buddhism by now and all the names and dates and crucial facts keep slipping out of my mind.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? In fact there are more partially unread books in my possession but those are the ones that I have made peace with never really finishing. The books you see here are the one that I still think I will get around to read anytime soon. So what to do? I won’t burn the books and I won’t throw them away. They really do interest me. I think I will organize the books, I already cleared the “unread books” shelf (well, part of a shelf) and now it actually holds unread books only. I will keep one fiction and one non-fiction book in the kitchen, and find a nice clear spot on the floor for the rest, I think. Oh, and please remind me not to buy any more books on Buddhism for me.

And then it was December – woosh

December 3, 2009 by Susanne 2 Comments

I just taped my NaNoWriMo winner certificate underneath my other NaNoWriMo winner certificates. I don’t know what it is about these competitions, I can’t stand to not win. The rest of the year I’m sitting on my lazy butt and don’t do anything much. But yeah, I did it – again – I wrote 50,000 words in November. The story is about one third done, and while I like the plot and the characters the language is blah, and since this story wanted to be fantasy I need fancy words, and names, and a fake history for their country and there are a few things that have to be made logical.

nano_09_winner_120x90

Of course my plan was to continue on, and make this mad November-dash into a nice little daily habit but so far it’s been the same thing as the years before, I haven’t written one word after crossing over the finish line.

This year I managed to do this as low stress as possible, I was very good and wrote mostly in the mornings, even if that meant turning on the computer at 6.15 and writing 500 words at breakneck speed until it was time to wake up my son. I never wrote late in the evening, these days I’m just too tired for that.

Life conspired against me, and so I ended up falling behind starting the second week. And I fell behind and behind until at the beginning of the last week I was on the brink of giving up. Then I remembered that that’s always what happens, I start out all smug, ahead of the game and then I feel like I can never do it. And then I decided to finish early even, and I had two days where I wrote like crazy. The second of these days was Saturday and that was the only day in this year’s NaNo that I asked my husband to do everything else so I could write. I wrote 6,000 words that day, and I even went grocery shopping, and took a shower. (Not necessarily in that order.)

I also finished knitting my NaKniSweMo-sweater the day after. Now it is sitting there looking at me because I still need to weave in the ends, wash it, get buttons and sew them on. The sweater is very pretty, I’m only afraid it might not fit because the yarn is rumored to grow bigger with washing. Sadly I can’t show you a picture because I keep forgetting to take one while there is still light outside. My motivation for really finishing it is also quite low because I won’t be wearing it for the next months. While it is wool it doesn’t have a turtleneck, and I know from experience that only turtlenecks make me warm enough in winter not to catch a cold. So, this lovely low neckline will be something for early spring.

I found that knitting a sweater in a month isn’t all that hard for me. Even when I start five days late, and I’m knitting something in a fine gauge, that is to say with sock yarn. The knitting was very pleasant and quite mindless. I find that that’s the way to go at the moment, my head is quite full, mostly with mundane and trivial things, and so I enjoy knitting stockinette around, and around, and around. Quite unusual for me.

As every year I find December quite overwhelming. There’s the present buying, and the present choosing for Christmas as well as my son’s, my mother-in-laws, and my husband’s birthday. There’s the school things to do like helping with the Christmas crafting, making and wrapping a nice little present for my son (that’s not supposed to cost anything, nice touch), and about half a million things I just can’t remember right now. We have already reached the point where we don’t go anywhere anymore, and if you’d happen to invite us anytime until February the answer would be an automatic “no”.

I’m still blessed to be teaching quite a lot, and I mean really a lot. For the first time in years I had to turn down a potential student last week. My timetable is full. On the upside that might mean I might get my new piano a little bit earlier. Last week I suddenly had a revelation about the piano. I thought that if I wait until I have all the money to buy it I will never get it. But I could pay it in installments. That’s totally do-able. And reasonable. Yes, it is. So I’m looking at a bright new shiny piano in my future. Sometime next year, I hope.

And my husband will be giving me this for Christmas. It’s a flyer for my spinning wheel. It’s called a “freedom flyer”; that does sound lovely, doesn’t it? A friend already told me about it, and when the new “spin-off” magazine arrived there was an ad in there, and I made my husband drop everything so I could show it to him. I would have bought it right away myself with part of the money I got for teaching those two knitting workshops but then my glasses broke on Saturday, and so that money will go elsewhere. And he (my husband) said, “Does that mean you want this for Christmas?” And I said, “I don’t know, it is too expensive, and I don’t really need it.” “Do you want it?” “Um, yes.” “Then I’ll give it to you for Christmas. Go on and order it.” And I did.

Oh, and about the glasses? Turns out that I’m getting old. Well, I knew that but not only do I need glasses to help me with my nearsightedness, I need reading glasses as well! For now I’m trying to do without but this will get interesting (and quite expensive) in the future.

On the plus side I’m getting new glasses! And they look pretty! And it will be safe to wear them for driving! And I will be able to watch TV again! Because right now I’m wearing glasses that are way old, and the whole world is fuzzy and looks a bit depressing. I spend most of my time spinning while listening to podcasts…

Feeling like a zombie but having done my quota for the day

November 19, 2009 by Susanne 2 Comments

And here’s another quick post to let you know that I still “aten’t dead”. (Well, unless I missed something terribly important.) I’m still firmly in the fangs of NaNoWriMo, something I might have to explain because people have been asking. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Of course it’s totally International by now, and so I’m able to participate even though I’m not American. Every year in November aspiring procrastinating writers gather round their computers and write 50,000 words on a novel. Each one gets to write his or her own novel, and the rules are that you have to start something new, that all of the 50,000 words have to be written in November, and I don’t remember any other rules right now. Nobody is going to read your novel, or publish it, it’s just that you write and write and write. For the 50,000 words to happen you need to write 1,667 words a day though I always tell people it’s better to aim for 2,000 because there will be days when you can’t write for some reason.

This year feels particularly hard to me but maybe it just feels that way now that I’m slogging through the words, was behind. I should be well over 30,000 by now and I only managed to crank my word count up to 28,429 today because I chained myself to the computer and didn’t let myself loose before having written for something like 2 1/2 hours (with additional breaks). The story is gathering momentum though so it doesn’t feel like I’m writing uphill all the time now. I remember that from years past, week 2 is always the hardest.

People always ask me why I do it. (To be fair, people ask me a lot of things, for example why I’m not skiing, so I’m used to this.) Well, it is a bit insane but there’s nothing but the feeling you get when you reach the finishing line with your 50,000 word first draft of an original novel written by you and can show off your winner’s certificate. To see how that looks go to this old blog post of mine.

The next thing people ask me is what I then do with the resulting novel. Ahem. So far I have had two of these sitting in a nice little drawer. Then last year I pulled them out again and read through them. Well, at least one of them. The first was so bad that I just couldn’t stand reading it again. The second one has potential. I’m thinking about editing it maybe when it’s National Editing Month. (There is such a thing but I don’t know how it’s called and where to find it.)

Anyways, everything is going fine, I was only wondering why I feel so tired all the time and then I remembered: a) I haven’t slept enough again, and b) I have been doing a lot of writing on top of my regular life, duh, that’s like, you know, work. And this year November has been a bit crazy with things I have to do and places I have to go, and then I haven’t even dusted for weeks. (I have great plans of cleaning today, and even going grocery shopping. Wow.)

As you know I’m also attempting to knit a sweater in the month of November, a sweater that I started five days late and then had to frog after the beginning but – it’s coming along nicely. While I have fallen a bit behind because there were three days in a row that I didn’t feel lucid enough to start the sleeves, and while I’ve been knitting on the sleeve cap for three days now (something I would have imagined to take about two hours or so) the sweater is two-thirds finished by now.

I think there will be another crisis on the weekend since I plan to go on a yarn excursion complete with meeting an online friend from Stuttgart on Saturday and there’s spinner’s meeting on Sunday, and I know from experience that while I always think I can write my quota in the morning I rarely do, and then get all cranky. But then, who knows, this is also the first year of NaNoWriMo that I haven’t written everything late at night. Mostly because I’m so tired in the evenings that all I can manage to do is stare blankly into space and maybe knit stockinette stitch in the round.

Okay, off to clean, my son will be coming home from school in twenty minutes or so. See ya.

Quick random friday

November 6, 2009 by Susanne 2 Comments

Just so you know what I’m doing:

Yes, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. First I was all sensible and only wanted to use it to get back into a regular writing habit, and write about 500 words a day. And finish a story I had started in June. Then I thought that not starting something new was like cheating. And then I thought, “Well, I can try how many words I can write comfortably without stress during fall break, and then I can decide later.” And – I think I’m hooked again. For now it’s really enjoyable if a bit crazy, I have managed to write mostly in the mornings so I could do other things later in the day without having to live with the dread of unwritten words all day long. In the past I have often procrastinated until bedtime and then written in a very bad mood and very tired.

I’m also doing NaKniSweMo. But a little less seriously. Either it works or it doesn’t, and since I’m knitting a sweater with fingering weight yarn on 2.5 mm needles and couldn’t start before yesterday there’s a fair chance I won’t finish it in November. But I’ll try.

Since my last post I followed the advice of the beautiful Jo and got myself some new, low heel, pricey, and gorgeous boots from this place. So far I love them, I can even stuff my pant legs into them and still close them. They also work with hand-knit socks since I bought them one size bigger than I usually need. And I have walked in them for about twenty minutes already without chafing or anything. Great.
Now I have to run and meet with my family, and get ready for lunch. See ya.

It’s International Wear A Dress Day!

October 29, 2009 by Susanne 6 Comments

And I’m wearing a skirt. A crinkled one that needs ironing.

I need to have a haircut, the jacket needs a zipper, and in real life the jacket and skirt do match.

And the skirt needs darts, and needs to be a little less full. I know.

I really wanted to wear a dress but the only one I own is a summer dress. I didn’t feel like explaining to everyone I meet why I wear a summer dress right now.

I did start the day in jeans though. And I found myself thinking about why I don’t wear skirts or dresses more often. You might say it’s because I only own one dress and two skirts (that fit) but then I only own two pairs of jeans (that fit), and no other pants except for one pair that I wear for hiking, one of those that have zippers on the legs so that you can make them into shorts. I don’t count those because I avoid wearing them as much as I can. They look horrible. So I thought, and then I thought, and it boiled down to:

Pants are more comfortable than skirts (or dresses).

Well. There are people who think differently, first among them the gorgeous Erin who declared today to be International Wear A Dress Day. Also Isabo whose post you should read (and probably already have) when you understand German. And I went on about my day, and all of a sudden I started realizing that I’m constantly pulling on the waist of my pants. You know, when I say that I have two pairs of jeans that fit this means that I can close them all the way, I can wear them in public without feeling embarrassed, and they are about the right length, that’s all.

The length issue is the reason why I only own jeans but no dress pants or anything. Because jeans come in different lengths, and some of them will be 34″ and so these will fit me. Most pants are simply too short for me. Both of my jeans though have to be pulled up every time I sit down, or get up, or bend over, or move in any way. When I complained about this to my husband he said, “Why don’t you wear a belt?” Well, for several reasons: 1) It’s hard to find a belt that fits me. 2) My jeans – while being to wide in the waist – still manage to pinch me in the belly area. Belts only make this worse. 3) The belt then will be pulled down in the back as well which makes the whole thing really uncomfortable when sitting down. 4) Because of the belly situation (and because I don’t want to look really ridiculous) I can’t pull the belt tight enough to have the pants actually stay up where they belong.

See, I need the back of my pants to be several centimeters higher than the front. Not everybody does, and so pants manufacturers usually don’t accommodate my need. I also need the waist to be two sizes smaller than the hips. Again, not everybody needs this. I already spoke about my long legs, and in addition to this I need my pants (or anything for the bottom of my body) in a plus size. Oops.

Very well. So now how does this make pants more comfortable than dresses or skirts? It doesn’t. I have this very comfortable, sturdy, practical, and not dressy skirt. And I can easily make more, all it took was two ours, a zipper, and a bit of fabric. The two things that make skirts uncomfortable then are: tights and shoes.

I usually despise tights because they never fit (same issues as with pants only they pinch at the toes as well), they are really breakable. And they never fit. Usually I’m left with ladders everywhere while the top part of my pantyhose tries to meet my knees while still managing to pinch my belly. But. I found a brand of tights that fit! I found them totally by accident because I wanted to wear my summer skirt, and all of my tights were full of ladders, and so I had to buy new ones locally and they were really more expensive than I feel comfortable with but: THEY FIT!! No pinching, no sagging, no nothing. Bliss.

The next problem is the shoes. I follow a strict “no heels”-policy, and I also refuse to wear shoes that I can’t walk a couple of miles in without feeling pain. This means that mostly I’m wearing walking sneakers. Not pretty, I always have this soccer mom look but still, I can walk for hours without any problems. I bought myself some cute Mary Janes (the ones you might get a glimpse of in the picture above) but while they feel comfortable when I’m sitting still they start chafing the minute I take a step or two. I have declared them to be my indoor skirt shoes for teaching. The comfortable pair of Mary Janes is red and ugly. You know what I need to do? Buy shoes.

I’m thinking of some flat lace-up boots. Has anybody any experience with knee-high Doc Martens? I have really, um, voluptuous calves. There might be some boots that fit over my ankles but almost none that I can close all the way to the top. I know that there are custom boots available but really, I’d rather spend my money elsewhere.

On the other hand, think of all the money I could save if I no longer had to buy really expensive pairs of jeans that get holes after six months (no kidding). I can whip up skirts in almost no time, I could even add lining and pockets (because that’s something I don’t like about skirts too, no pockets, but then – if you make your own…), and fabric and zippers is not that expensive.

Okay. the skirts won. Especially when I don’t think about what I think I should wear a skirt with but just wear hoodies (that’s Vivian without a zipper), and silly tees (it says, “Schrödinger’s cat is dead” on the front and “Schrödinger’s cat is not dead” on the back) and comfortable shoes.

So what do you think? Do you like wearing skirts and dresses? Or pants? Or both?

Excuse me, I have to go look for shoes. And a coat. And fabric. And more tights.

knitting with my handspun

October 23, 2009 by Susanne 1 Comment

Last year when I started spinning again I really didn’t expect how happy it would make me. I’m still struggling with my spinning, I’m still not content with what I get but then I started spinning a bit more than ten minutes twice a week, and I started knitting with my own yarn. And it’s making the most amazing difference.

And now that I’ve actually sat down to write about it I find that I can’t really describe it. The yarn isn’t that much more beautiful, and it still is uneven and looks very – handmade. But somehow I’m enjoying every stitch. This handmade yarn has much more personality.

I felt the same way about the first thing I ever made out of my own yarn, which is why I called it the “happy hat”. But now I have made three small shawls out of yarn that I spun and I enjoyed knitting them in just the same way. Even though the orange merino/silk-blend was supposed to become an Aeolian. And I didn’t manage to spin it fine enough, so it became an Ishbel instead. I seem to be on an Ysolda-spree right now. I have two of her sweaters in the making, and have just finished two of her shawlettes.

So, here’s the evolution to shawls:

merino/silk-blend hand-dyed by the “wool dragon”, the pattern is Ishbel by Ysolda

BFL multi.jpg

Blue-Faced Leicester multi from the “wool sheep“, the pattern is Gail (aka Nightsong)

This has been quite hard to photograph. When it was blocking my husband said, “This looks like the perfect latte.”

And this is some Corriedale, again from “das Wollschaf“, made into a Damson, another Ysolda-design. The Corriedale isn’t as soft as I would have loved it (I have since learned that that’s the nature of Corriedale). I was in such a hurry to make this that I didn’t even take a picture of the yarn or the finished shawl, the picture was taken by my father.

You might ask yourself what do I need so many shawls for? Well, the orange one is mine (and I use it often) but the Gail is for a friend of mine who lost her father this year, and the Damson for one of my aunts who found out she had breast cancer a couple of months ago. Don’t worry, she’s doing fine and on the mend again.

And the next thing I’ll make is for me again. Finally I managed to spin enough yardage for Aeolian. It’s Blue-faced Leister again (so soft, and marvelous to spin), hand-dyed by Spinning Martha, and I really love the yarn, even if it’s a bit too thick and uneven: