Robynettely

“The Scar” by China Mieville. I started this before everything I finished in February because it was small enough to carry around and I own it so it’s okay if I drop it in a snowbank. CM is so baroque! I never really quite connected with Bellis (the main character), but it didn’t really matter. About 50 pages from the end I started to get nervous that the ending wasn’t going to be satisfying, but turns out, it was. The mosquito people felt like they were that way for a reason other than to squick me out, compared to the grotesqueness in that Ian M. Banks book I read back in… November? LHC #31: “Sideways Stories from Wayside School” by Louis Sachar. Must have been recommended by someone… It was cute.  LHC #32: “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” by Tom Bissell. I did have someone who played games constantly! It was maybe a phase. Now I think he wants to have a life. Games can be part of that. I probably added this to my list when games were still a problem in our h...

I used to write little food adventures here, but for some reason that fell by the wayside. Last night I left the YMCA thinking I should pick up some cottage cheese to mix with the Chimichurri that was leftover in my fridge, but I didn't want to go to the giant Loblaw's across the street. It seems really stupid to me to drive across the street to the Loblaw's parking lot, but the store is extremely pedestrian-hostile. Also, the store is just too large. All I wanted was cottage cheese, and maybe some parsley to go in the Cowboy Pie I was going to make for dinner. So I decided to go a little out of my way to the Foodland store -- much smaller and almost on my drive. But while I was on my way there (passed my normal turn, waiting at the light to turn onto Foodland's street) I realized I could replace the parsley with the chimichurri, and then it wouldn't be leftover in my fridge anymore, and I wouldn't need the parsley anymore. I drove past Foodland and just...

P ersephone One day I wrote about 1500 words! Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 14: This is the gating item that kept me from posting this status update at the actual end of the month.  I still haven't finished it and posted it. Ch 15: did a draft. Also, I meant to finished taking up chapter 3 but never got around to it. Connecting Critted 8 Got back 5 Subs --- Knitting Celtic Gang Girls of the 70’s (Rowan and me). This finishing on this was insane, but it’s over now. So many danglers! So many seams! This took just over a year and a half. FI Corset belt. Started month with 1.5 inches done. Moved this to the “hard” project bag after finishing Celtic Girl Gangs, and… well. It’s black on dark blue, and the pattern I was knitting in was basically invisible. The bottom was curling because I didn’t do purl-when-you-can. The dark blue yarn I’m using is a mess. So, I plan to rip it out and started over. Haven't done that yet however. Drachen (knitty Fall 2...

LHC #27: A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James. It was the next thing on the library list. The library website did a neat thing when I walked in and pulled this off the shelf: it recognized that this was on my holds list and deleted it. The title is kind of a lie because this book is 688 pages long, and a lot of it is in some kind of Jamaican vernacular, making it kind of slow reading. Not sure why I requested this. Probably someone described it as a master-class in voice or some such thing. And that it was! I didn’t really connect with any character, alas. Maybe not all books are written just for me? WHAT?!? I read another book by MJ before and it was quite good. This was good too, but… long.  I actually started it last month but then finished two other things first, and without all the pressure to finish, this was much more enjoyable. While I was reading this his next   book came out, so there was an interview with MJ that mentioned a Reddit thread that ...