ReaderWriterVille

Blog in progress

Category: knitting

December 31, 2022

Seeing out 2022

Hello again. It’s the semi-obligatory end of year post. Thanks to the semester break in my academic year, I’m even more prone than the average person to take stock of the calendar year that’s ending and think about tweaks large and small to the way I do things. I used to write a year-in-reading post on the blog, with the productivity post coming in January. But given my sparse blogging over the last couple of years and my almost-as-sparse reading, I figured I’d do what I did last year and combine them.

READING

I read more than last year, thank goodness. I managed 30 books this year, which is still a low number by my historical standards but better than the 18 (!) I read last year. My early reading was shaped by a presentation I gave on the works of Arundhati Roy, which led me to read more of her nonfiction and revisit her two novels. I was lucky enough to meet her in person when she came to St. Louis, and what a lovely opportunity that was. She is gracious, soft-spoken, and fierce, and I felt fortunate to have the chance to talk with her after reading her work for so many years. Her Booker-winning novel is better known and more widely praised, but my personal favorite is The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; it throws you into the middle of Old Delhi and takes you all over the map emotionally, geographically, and sociologically. It’s not as “polished” as The God of Small Things, but it immerses you just as thoroughly in a world. I also strongly recommend sampling her nonfiction, which is quite different but excellent for the myriad insights she provides into contemporary India.

There wasn’t much of a pattern to my reading, although in looking at my chronological list I went back and forth between reading literary fiction and taking a break with mysteries (Simenon, Mick Herron, and le Carré, Higashino and Kirino in translation) and romance/romantic novels (a few Burchells and the latest Sarah Morgan). The only non-work nonfiction I read was Adrian Tempany’s And the Sun Shines Now, which is about the Hillsborough disaster (Tempany is a Hillsborough survivor) and the search for justice as well as the corporatization of football that characterizes the modern game. It’s a bit disjointed at times but very worth reading.

In literary fiction I had a few standouts:

  • Telephone by Percival Everett (Version B, I think?)
  • A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
  • The Paper Lantern by Will Burns
  • Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham.
Read the rest of this entry »
12 Comments
December 31, 2021

TGIF and the end of 2021

Well hello there. It’s been a while. Except for a quick post back in April, I haven’t blogged since January. I don’t entirely remember why, except that I didn’t want to add to the online cacophony and I’ve been trying to live my life offline as much as possible. Looking back, I realized that I’ve blogged less than a dozen times since May 2020.

But I miss blogging in a number of ways:

  • I miss my regular visitors and knowing how they are.
  • I miss writing; no, that’s not accurate because I write quite a bit in other venues. But I miss the kind of writing blogging is, the musing out loud and then having it go out into the world. Despite not wanting to participate in the online world much, I missed this kind of participating. Social media is so different from the old blog world.
  • I miss documenting my existence in a way that isn’t entirely self-referential. I still journal semi-regularly, but that’s just for me. The in-between of expressing oneself in public in an informal way isn’t really captured elsewhere, at least not that I have access to.
  • I like end of the year posts!

Having been away so long, it’s hard to know what to write. Year-end format to the rescue!

READING

I read less fiction this year than I have in decades. A grand total of 18 books. There were a couple of months where I didn’t finish a single novel. And I only got to 18 because I read a handful of really short books, barely novella-length. I can’t tell you why I read so little this year because I don’t know. There was the Euro not-2020 tournament in the summer, but that’s not stopped me before. And I’ve been reading for work without any trouble. Ah well, I just hope 2021 was a one-off, because I missed reading even when I couldn’t manage it.

Read the rest of this entry »
30 Comments
February 3, 2020

Finished object: Paris Loop

Ta-da! I managed to weave in the ends on my Paris Loop and take it for a spin. The pattern is an old one from Stefanie Japel and the result is a cross between a capelet and a poncho. The pattern was very straightforward and simple, although I don’t think it’s really one size fits all. There is no increasing or decreasing; instead, the shape is obtained by changing needle sizes. I used just over three balls of Colinette’s Tagliatelli, which I picked up a couple of years ago on sale after it was discontinued. It’s a merino wool ribbon yarn, and I love the feel and the color saturation. It’s also quite warm.

I decided not to block it just yet. Tagliatelli has a tendency to stretch, which I’m hoping it won’t do too much here. I kind of like the stockinette curl at the neckline so I think I’ll leave it that way.

On to the next stash project.

3 Comments
January 23, 2020

Weeknote 2

School, snow, freezing rain, ice; all the fun stuff.

WORK

Between the intro sessions and the MLK holiday, I’ve only taught 50 percent of my class periods over the last two weeks. One is going very well, the other is only OK, perhaps because I haven’t taught it in three years and I’m still feeling my way to a rhythm. They’re both set up the same way, with theoretical and abstract readings to provide a foundation, but I walk out of them feeling quite differently. Oh well, it’s the beginning and it’s me, not the students. The OK one will improve.

I forgot to mention that I’m the Director of Undergraduate Studies this semester. A colleague and I have split the work for the last two years and this is the last of it. I describe being DUS as comparable to being nibbled to death by ducks: there are rarely big crises, but there’s always something. So. Much. Email.

Nothing else I can really write about, just the usual meetings. My two regular seminars start up again this week and next, so that will provide a rhythm along with class times. I have some letters of recommendation to write and a bunch of research papers to write up comments on.

READING/WATCHING/LISTENING

The Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl! I’m so happy for the team and the fans. They are a blast to watch, and it should be a great game. As a long-time 49ers fan as well I suppose I should be rooting for them, but it’s Chiefs all the way. Time to dig out our magnetic car logos and wear my logo wool varsity jacket.

One of my 2019 holds from the library came in, Javier Cercas’s latest “nonfiction novel” Lord of All the Dead. It’s a companion work to Soldiers of Salamis and so far it’s really good. I love his writing style, which is deceptively informal and feels unselfconscious, but the words and phrases are beautifully chosen. You notice how well it’s written almost after the fact.

I’m also continuing to work my way through The Steep Approach to Garbadale, which is starting to be work. Much as I love Banks, this is not his best novel by any stretch, and the audio format makes the digressions and quirks more apparent to me. I just hit a chapter where the breasts of not one but two women are described in detail and I was grateful to have a reason to stop listening for a while. I’ll keep going because it’s Banks, but I’m bummed he is yet another male author whose characters are obsessed with breasts over other body parts. I hadn’t noticed this is his other books, but then I’ve mostly been reading the M. novels up to now.

Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments
January 14, 2020

Weeknote 1

I’m starting over numbering the 2020 Weeknotes. Let’s see how many I can manage; I had 21 in 2019, but I didn’t start until partway through the year.

WORK

The spring semester began yesterday. I’m teaching two undergraduate classes, both of which I’ve taught before and which I enjoy a great deal. They also require regular updating because things are constantly happening, but that also means that the students are interested. And I have enough assistants that I don’t have to do all the work myself. It feels like a light semester even though technically it’s not.

I got to throw a drinks party for a visiting professor and his family, whom we’re trying to recruit. The weather was awful but the party was fun. Fingers crossed.

I’m on one (and a half) committees this semester. The one is a college scholarship committee that is always enjoyable. There’s nothing like interviewing whip-smart high school students to make you feel as if maybe the world isn’t so bad after all. The half is the end of the Committee That Ate The Second Half of 2019 and Part of My Sabbatical. It shouldn’t be too much work, maybe a couple of meetings and a memo.

Which means I may actually have time for some writing! Which is good, since the pile of to-be-written is rivalling my pile of to-be-read.

READING/WATCHING/LISTENING

Liverpool, all through the holiday fixtures. I’m almost starting to believe that at 16 points clear of the 2nd place team in the EPL, they can win the title for the first time in 30 years. Almost. I’m not counting ANY chickens.

I’m also watching the NFL playoffs and rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs. We went to all their games for five years in the early 2000s when we had friends on the staff. They been shut out almost as long as Liverpool has, and I’d love to see them make it.

I read a fun, unjustly obscure book when we were away for the weekend right after New Year’s. It’s called The Ascent of Rum Doodle and it’s a satire of the mountain-climbing memoir genre of the 1930s and 1940s. We found it in a store in London and I bought it because the Mt. TBR Challenge has Rum Doodle as its first level. I’d never heard of it before but as I was reading, I was reminded of passages of various serious mountaineering books I’ve read, including the excellent Into the Silence. The satirical tone gets a bit heavy-handed at times (as satires do), but the book is short and sustains itself well.

Read the rest of this entry »
13 Comments