Books Update

I finished reading Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare today. I also read The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan for my book group. You can read my reviews for both over at Goodreads.

Knitting

I'm listening to the On Point replay of today's show on the resurgence of knitting. Looking at the blogs that are listed on that page, I realized that I haven't said anything here about my own knitting resurgence.

I was taught to knit when I was an exchange student in Sweden in 1985-1986. My host mother taught me, and I learned the terminology in Swedish. I also knit "backward" from most Americans, so I'm a bit of an anomaly among local knitters.

I hadn't knitted for years, but started up again last fall at the urging of some lovely ladies that I work with. I found out that they get together to knit at lunchtime every day. I had been thinking longingly of knitting for a while, but didn't think I had time to do it. You know, two boys who are involved in EVERY sport, a husband, a full-time job, and all that reading I'll never get caught up on. Anyway, I figured that if they were getting together every day, I didn't really have an excuse not to join them.

I started with some yarn I had laying around, knitting up a scarf with a pattern I found online. It's pretty, but you can tell my tension is very uneven. I then had the great good fortune to win a knitting basket at our workplace United Way raffle. Therein I found some lovely yarn, notions, and books to get the creative juices flowing. Since then, I've knitted scarves, hats, and ear warmers for my family. I've found that the boys' sports are actually great for knitting: I can work on a project and keep an eye on them at the same time. Bonus!

At Christmas I got my sisters, nieces, and nephews involved by buying them each a Klutz knitting book. I wanted them to learn something that I was having so much fun with.

I realized the other day that I haven't knit anything for myself other than the hat from the Klutz book. I've decided to make myself a scarf that will match my winter jacket, and have ordered some lovely cotton yarn, tagging onto an order one of my knitting colleagues is placing. I can't wait to get started. :)

Now my oldest son, Will, has told me he wants to learn how to knit. I'm wondering if I should have him start with the Klutz book, or try to teach him myself.

Talking Birds & Bees

We have two sons. This makes me outnumbered. Even counting the cat, a very pretty calico named Marnie, I'm outnumbered. So when I'm met with the question, "Mom, if you don't have a penis, what do you have?" (we encourage our boys to use the proper names for ALL parts of their anatomy), I'm kind of at a loss. I mean, my descriptive powers only go so far. I'm not good at drawing pictures, and show & tell is, obviously, out of the question.

So, I went to a friend who is both a fantastic nurse and the mother of a 15-year-old boy to ask her for -- what else? -- book recommendations, and she recommended two fantastic books. The first, geared toward ages 7 and up, is called It's So Amazing!: A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families. The other, for ages 10 and up, is called It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health. 

Both books use very clear, straightforward artwork to convey meaning, with the "younger" book using more of the artwork and cartoon-like panels to give the information. There is no mincing of words, no beating around the bush, and nothing said to make anything seem like it's taboo or titillating or shameful.

Now, instead of trying to explain what Mom has instead of a penis, I can open up It's So Amazing! and show them what Mom, and every other "girl" in the world, has. I've recommended these books so many times to other parents at baseball and soccer games that I figured I would just write a blog post about them and just direct people here from now on. Good luck to everyone raising kids with answering the tough questions!

Librarians do Gaga

A Twitter friend sent me the link to this video, and I absolutely loved it. You gotta love librarians. Truly. We're wonderful people.

Book update

I figured that I should use this space to update the books I've read. As I think shows in my sidebar, I make note of them in Goodreads, but I could put a little commentary here.

I read the latest in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Lover Mine, last week, and it was wonderful. It was about John Matthew, with a healthy dose of Qhuinn and Blay (who collectively broke my heart). We also got the backstory on Xhex, who is much older than I'd thought. Terrific, though. The book had the same tough sexiness of the other books in the series. My quibbles were her overuse of some of the slang, such as "getting verticle" and derivations thereof. Once or twice was fine; after that she could have just said that people sat up.

I also read Water for Elephants.  I may have been the last person in the country to read this. It was fantastic. It's being made into a movie, with Rob Pattinson playing young Jacob and Reese Witherspoon as Marlena.  Hal Holbrook will play old Jacob.

The last book club book I read was The Blue Girl, which was an urban fantasy book, and I really enjoyed it. It was about a girl who befriends a ghost boy and has to fend off a bunch of fairies.

I had to flounce on the last book club book, Under the Sabers, because it was so bad. I just couldn't get past the first few chapters. I guess books about army wives just aren't for me. I ended up being sick on the discussion day, anyway, so it must have been a cosmic sort of thing.

This month's selection is The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I'm listening to the audiobook version. I'm about half way through it, and I'm loving it so far.

Update: June 2, 2010:

I finished Deliverance Dane a while ago, I just forgot to update here. It turns out that I continued loving the book, though that sentiment wasn't shared by my book group colleagues, interestingly. I thought it was a nice, fun story that went back and forth from the 1990s to the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Others in the book group thought that it was lacking in scholarship and dumbed down for the reader. But, that's what makes for a good book group discussion. It's a boring book group in which everyone agrees.