The top hundred books

According to the BBC, this is a list of the top 100 books that everyone should read.

The ones I have read already are bolded.

The ones I have started reading, but have not completed, are italicized.

The ones in regular print, I have not read yet.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Travellers Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma- Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - William Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martell
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson
74 Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie & the Chocolate factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo


Total completed: 22
Total partially read:11
Total unread: 67

Eek.  That's rather embarrassing.

I'd like to say I'll make it through this list.  But I'm fairly certain it's not true.  I didn't like Lolita or Captain Corelli's Mandolin enough to make it through the first time; I don't think that a few years has changed that fact.  And I've gotten to the point where I've accepted that life is too short to spend reading books you really don't like.

Still, there are quite a few on that list (Rebecca and The Kite Runner, and everything on there by Jane Austen, come to mind) that I really do want to read.  Plus I have about twenty books on my Kindle that I've yet to crack.  So I'm going to be very busy, even without reading the BBC's top list!

I won something!

Well, look at that.  Three weeks into the year (and into my reading challenge) and I won my first book giveaway from Pixel of Ink.  For those of you who aren't familiar with POI (I wasn't until a friend tipped me off a week ago), it's a great website for people who use the Kindle e-reader.  If you friend POI on Facebook, you'll get live updates on your feed about what e-books Amazon.com has on their limited time offer or temporary free release list.  Also, they sponsor authors who run free giveaways of their books to subscribers.

I decided the other day, what the hell, might as well take a chance.  And I was one of the five winners!

The book in question is Sin and Vengeance, by C.J. West.  I don't know much about this book, because, like I said, I saw a contest and decided what the hell.  If I read it and end up hating it, well...it was free!  But there's always the chance that I read it and end up loving it!

The description of this book on Goodreads is as follows:

When his knee shatters on the playing field, Charlie Marston is plunged into turmoil. His perspective suddenly shifts from sports superstar to regular (albeit wealthy) winemaker. He enters the world of work by way of the family winemaking business. The closeness of day to day operations with his parents illuminates qualities in them that he had consciously denied until now...moreWhen his knee shatters on the playing field, Charlie Marston is plunged into turmoil. His perspective suddenly shifts from sports superstar to regular (albeit wealthy) winemaker. He enters the world of work by way of the family winemaking business. The closeness of day to day operations with his parents illuminates qualities in them that he had consciously denied until now. Soon his youthful passion seeks a new outlet to replace the football career he's lost and he finds a new friend named Randy Black. Randy is part stunt-pilot, part Casanova, and part drunken Pied Piper. Randy leads him into terrifying predicaments that become more exciting and more dangerous with each passing day. Charlie doesn't resist until an ill-conceived stunt, compounded by drunken judgment, explodes in consequences that chase Charlie and Randy back home to Massachusetts. Charlie must eventually decide where his moral boundaries should be drawn as he contends with the after-effects of a half dozen mistakes that threaten to engulf him and his family.

 

I have quite the number of books on my must-read list right now, so it will be a while before I am able to get around to this.  But it's nice to know that it's on my list, waiting for me to get to it.  Right now I'm in the middle of two books: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (love it thus far!) and Labor of Love: A Midwife's Memoir by Cara Mulhan (good, but like other reviewers on Goodreads, I was hoping for more about the philosophy and action of homebirthing and midwifery than of the childhood of the author).  So a lot on my plate right now, but I can hardly complain; it's all very enjoyable!

Review: Yarn Harlot (the Secret Life of a Knitter) by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Yay for Friday!  I'm so glad that it's the weekend, and not just any weekend, but a three-day weekend!  It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday in the States, and my office has all government holidays off.  So I'm very much looking forward to three glorious days off.  Especially tomorrow.  David isn't working, we're not traveling out of state...this is a good thing.  I'm very excited to curl up in front of the TV tomorrow with my knitting.

And speaking of knitting...

Considering that the title of this blog is Read~Knit~Blog, it was only a matter of time before I read a knitting-oriented book (not a pattern book, I don't think those count) and reviewed it.  It was the first book I purchased for the Kindle (still happy in its little green case), and I finished it during the snow day we had on Wednesday, along with the other two books I was trying to finish all at the same time.

I discovered the Yarn Harlot (real name: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) in early 2008.  My apartment  had been broken into (on Christmas Eve, no less) and I was feeling very violated and uncomfortable.  I met up with a dear friend of mine at Atlanta Bread Company in Manchester to do a little knitting.  It was then that she wrote down the words "Yarn Harlot" on a scrap piece of paper and told me to check out her blog.  And it was really all downhill from there.

I never knew that knitting could be a lifestyle.  I never knew that there really were people out there for whom knitting was that important.  Stephanie's blog was funny, endearing, and inspirational.  To a knitter (like me) who was still struggling with the fear of branching out past the garter stitch scarf...Stephanie was like a knitting goddess.  Not only did she knit pretty much everything, she wasn't scared to try new things.  She said "If you screw up, you pull it out and start over.  It's just knitting."  And the realization hit me, over time.  If I screwed something up, if I dropped a stitch, if I knit where I should have purled...oh well.  Nobody was going to die because of my mistakes.  Yeah, I'd be irritated, but if that's the worst than could happen?  Clearly it wasn't the end of the world.

This isn't the first of Stephanie's books that I've read.  I picked up Knitting Rules! last year and read it from cover to cover in about a day.  All of her books are quick reads, but Knitting Rules was more of a book about the philosophy of knitting itself.  Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter, Stephanie's first book, is written in the exact style of her blog entries: snippets of a life lived after falling headlong into knitting, and having no shame of it.  It's not a book so much as a collection of short stories, where Stephanie endearingly pokes fun at herself as she encounters one knitting escapade after another.

I doubt anyone who isn't a knitter would pick up Yarn Harlot, as it is primarily found in the knitting or craft section of bookstores and libraries.  But feel confident in saying that anyone who has a passion (re: obsession) for a craft or skill would understand where Stephanie is coming from when she writes.  I haven't met her on one of her many book tours (yet), but I would be honored to make her acquaintance.  She is not only a wonderful writer and a sometime comedienne, she is a huge philanthropist.  In December of 2004, in response to the tsunami disaster, Stephanie founded Tricoteuses Sans Frontieres (English: Knitters Without Borders), to raise money for the international foundation Doctors Without Borders -- medical staff that travel to places in extreme need of disaster relief.  In the six years and one month since their inception, the Knitters Without Borders have raised $1,062,217 in funding for MSF.

Good on you, Steph.  This wasn't my first Yarn Harlot book, and it won't be my last.

Rating: ****

Review of the Kindle case, and what I'm knitting now

The world is still buried in snow, but not to the point where I couldn't venture out to the mailbox at my parents' house and pick up Amazon's Kindle cover with light, which arrived yesterday during the snowstorm.

It's better than I even expected.  The case is made of sturdy leather (which has that fantastic "new car" scent to it), and the inside cover is very soft, almost felt-like, which keeps the Kindle screen from scratches and damage.  The elastic cord wraps around the case to hold the cover in place, whether you choose to close it, or hold it open behind the Kindle for easy reading. 

The light is somewhat difficult to pull out of the case the first couple of times.  But it is so worth it, and I am now so happy that I can read at night in bed without the overhead light on.  I haven't used it long enough to see if it really does drain the battery as quickly as a few of the one-star reviews on Amazon.com, but I have high hopes for it.  I can't wait to use it on trips -- I've had difficulty reading at night in the car because using the car light distracts David while he's driving. 

All in all, I think it was a great investment.  It was a little more expensive than I would have liked, but I think it was really worth it.


On Sunday, on a whim, after seeing it on SpillyJane Knits, I decided to cast on for Saroyan, a truly beautiful little scarf-shawlette made with worsted-weight yarn.  I chose to go down a size in yarn and needles, because I have two hanks of Socks That Rock Heavyweight in "Rose Quartz" that I really wanted to use. 

So far?

Well, I think it's coming along as well as can be expected!  (Sorry about the cat in the picture -- our kitty Tempest has a hard time steering clear of any knitting project, and also from the fleecy blanket that I have placed the knitting on.)

The leaf lace pattern on the edge of Saroyan pops beautifully in the STR yarn.  I'm really happy to use it for this project.  I love the color, it's soft and light and very pretty.  I'm not quite halfway done (this is a long scarf, and the middle stockinette portion can be downright dull, although it lends itself well to television knitting).  I'm looking forward to wearing this as a late winter/early spring scarf.  It's got just enough ruffles to be flirty and pretty, but not too many -- it doesn't look froufy.  I've had trouble knitting lace or lace edges in the past...let's knock on wood that those are over, at least for this project.

Review: Don't Die, Dragonfly by Linda Joy Singleton

To any and all people in New England -- that was one hell of a snowstorm, no?  Schools in CT are STILL closed today, even though the sun is out and shining and the roads are clear, but I am back to work.  There is about three feet of snow on the ground.  I wish I had brought my camera to work today, the snow on the brownstone church is beautiful, like something out of an old-fashioned picture.  But it's also bitterly cold out today -- not sure of the temp., but definitely cold enough that I don't want to go out in it!

My "snow day" yesterday was great.  I got to relax my poor spine, and finish three of the four books on my "currently reading" list on GoodReads.  I also started two new ones (I like to have a little variety on my plate when I read).  So I'm going to review one of the books today, and the other one probably tonight (when the husband is at his EMT class) or tomorrow.  Here goes.

Another free book from Amazon.com.  I downloaded Don't Die, Dragonfly by Linda Joy Singleton a few days ago, not expecting much from it.  I'm not a huge fan of the current YA literature.  I loved the Harry Potter series, I loathe Twilight, and I don't understand why 90% of the YA literature currently out is about vampires.  This book was blissfully devoid of vampires or the living dead, so I decided to give it a shot.  It's the first book in the "Seer Series" by Singleton, so I figured if I liked it, I'd give the others a shot.

I didn't like it.

The synopsis from GoodReads is this: After getting kicked out of school and sent to live with her grandmother, Sabine Rose is determined to become a "normal" teenage girl. She hides her psychic powers from everyone, even from her grandmother Nona, who also has "the gift." Having a job at the school newspaper and friends like Penny-Love, a popular cheerleader, have helped Sabine fit in at her new school. She has even managed to catch the eye of the adorable Josh DeMarco.  Yet, Sabine can't seem to get the bossy voice of Opal, her spirit guide, out of her head . . . or the disturbing images of a girl with a dragonfly tattoo. Suspected of a crime she didn't commit, Sabine must find the strength to defend herself and, later, save a friend from certain danger. 

The difficult part for me was in relating to the characters.  I don't think that, at 27, I am too far-removed from my teenage years to understand where an emo 16-year-old is coming from.  I couldn't relate to Sabine and I found it hard to give a crap about what she was thinking or doing, or her plight.  It's also really obvious that Singleton had Edward Cullen of "Twilight" in mind when she invented the character of Dominic.  Sullen, mysterious, and with a strange knack for always being there when Sabine needs him.  Although Sabine and Dominic don't hook up in Dragonfly, it's pretty obvious that Singleton is setting them up for true love in the next few books of the Seer series.

...which it doesn't look like I'll be reading.  The one thing I can say about this book is that it's quick; I read it from cover to cover in under two hours.  But it doesn't do anything for me.  I feel like I should keep this blog balanced, and read some more YA or contemporary fiction, so don't worry -- it's not all going to be history or historical fiction.  But I'll be steering clear of the rest of this series.

Rating: **

Review: Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall

FINALLY.  I am so glad to see the end of this book.  At least, I was, when I completed it last night, but being too doped up on drugs for my back, I didn't have enough faith in myself to write a review right then.

When I received Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall from my parents for Christmas, I went into it with the expectation that Kendall would write a sturdy, generic account of the life of Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King of England.  The king, whose reputation is a byproduct of Shakespearean legend, who is known always as a villain, the usurper of the English crown who would not even hesitate to commit murder to get what he wants, even the murder of his two nephews, King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, the tragic children known as the Princes in the Tower.  It's a story I felt I knew inside and out.

But.  I was wrong.

Kendall is no unbiased observer.  His goal is simple: to tell the story of what he feels is the real Richard III, and to debunk the rumors as nothing more than what he calls "Tudor tale(s)."  Instead of the vicious usurper, Kendall writes about the sickly boy who idolized his older brother Edward, the talented soldier and charismatic ruler who seized the throne and became King Edward IV.  In Kendall's version of events, the true villain is Edward's wife, the infamous and beautiful Elizabeth Woodville, the first commoner who ever took the title Queen of England.  Elizabeth, and the rest of the Woodville family, metaphorically castrate King Edward and ruin his reign, leaving him soft, emasculated, and disrespected.  Upon the king's death, his twelve-year-old son, Edward, is left to manage as king, with his uncle Richard as Lord Protector of England until Edward reaches adulthood.  Kendall argues that Richard's decision to take the crown from his nephew was really an unselfish attempt to recuperate the image that his brother destroyed.  Kendall's theories are best explained in the following passage:

...The passionately loyal brother who was Constable of England and commander in his teens, who indefatigably bolstered Edward (IV)'s throne and won the devotion of the North, may readily be traced in the King earnestly seeking to dispense justice to his subjects and exerting a prodigious vitality to deal with the problems of his government.  But between these lives stands the Protector who usurped the throne, the brother who thus doomed, if he did not murder, the boy king who was Edward's son.  The dislocation of this middle moment can be divined, if true, in the progressive corrosion worked upon Richard's relation with his brother by the direction of Edward's later life; and its consequences plainly show themselves in the King's labor to atone for his rupture of the succession, in his compulsive reliance upon loyalty rather than force, and in the haunted and feverish pursuit of well-doing that wore out his heart.  Yet it is a fractured life, and the man who lived it must also have been, obscurely, fractured. (Kendall, pg. 389)

Flaws: This book is long, and it is dry.  Also, in his attempt to change history's perceptions of Richard, Kendall puts off talking about that most juicy and intricate story of the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower.  There is a blurb at the end of the book about it, where Kendall tries to exonerate Richard of their murder -- which is good, providing you have the patience to read Appendix I:

It will perhaps come as a surprise to the reader accustomed to the absolute assurance of history texts and guidebooks that there is no proof that King Richard murdered the two sons of King Edward IV.

Kendall's theories are interesting.  Unfortunately, the prose of his book is rather less so, and he is fighting a losing battle in trying to prove the innocence of one of the most notorious reputations in the annals of history.  To those who are interested in biographies and history, particularly British history, this is a must-read.  For everyone else, skip it.  You probably won't even make it to the Battle of Tewksbury, much less Bosworth Field.

Rating: ** and 1/2

Updates of the not-very-literate kind

All of New England is going be getting a snowstorm tomorrow.  I can't express how happy I am to work at a job where I'm not required to be here if it snows, and to have a boss whose motto seems to be "If it snows, go (or stay) home."  With the expected snowfall of anywhere between 8 and 20 inches, I'm very much looking forward to a day of sleeping in, watching TV, knitting, and reading.

This snow day is coming at a most auspicious time, considering that I went to the doctor yesterday about my back and was diagnosed with scoliosis and early-onset arthritis of the spine.  The picture here shows what scoliosis looks like.  My back x-rays, which I got to see, look a lot like this picture.  Scoliosis is when the spine is angled to the side.  Looks fun, doesn't it?  Blech.  As for the arthritis...when I told my mom that I was diagnosed with it, she told me that my pediatrician had predicted spinal arthritis when I got older, for whatever reason.  I guess they never thought I needed to know about it!  (Well, truth be told, I didn't, since it's not exactly something that can be easily avoided...).

Right now I'm on painkillers that are so weird that I can sometimes feel my heartbeat in my face (just go with it), and knock me out for 10 hours at a time.  Good stuff.

Reading, unfortunately, has been slow going.

I have never, ever gotten my butt kicked by a historical biography as I have by Richard the Third.  Not even kidding -- it is SLOW GOING.  I love history, I really do, but this book is dry.  And I've never blanched at a book as much as I did when Paul Murray Kendall admitted that no part of this book (save for Appendix I) would speculate as to whether or not Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower.  Probably the biggest mystery of his reign, and Kendall glosses over it.

And yet, I'm still intrigued.  This is the book that those who believe in Richard III's innocence  have been looking for.  Kendall crushes speculation of the diabolical rumors surrounding Richard, Duke of Gloucester's life as "Tudor tale(s)" and tries to explain the reasons behind Richard's seizure of the English throne after the death of his brother, Edward IV.  The villain in Kendall's biography isn't Richard, it's Queen Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV and mother of the Princes in the Tower, the lovely commoner who dared not only to marry a king, but to push her family into places of power they did not deserve.  Seeing Richard painted in a positive light is unusual and refreshing.  I've got about 200 pages left to go.  I'd love to finish it either tonight or tomorrow and have a complete review.

I have a few other fiction pieces on deck, since I know histories and biographies aren't for everyone.  But I'm not allowing myself to read anything but Richard until I'm finished with it (it's the only way it's going to be done).

Finally, I caved in and ordered a cover for my Kindle!  I've been carrying Annabelle Lee (yes, it's from Poe; yes, I took some artistic license with the spelling) around in her box ever since I got the Kindle for Christmas, but I've been planning on buying a good, sturdy cover since that day.  I was planning on buying the cheaper version of Amazon's cover, but a lot of reviews said that it short-circuited the Kindle when used, so I spent the extra $20 to buy the more expensive version.  And this one has the book light, which (though it says it will drain the battery faster) will be useful for night reading, especially when David and I drive to and from his family's home in Massachusetts.  He hates it when I turn the inside light of the car on to read (says it distracts him), so now I won't need to do that.  Unfortunately for me, the cover won't come until tomorrow, according to Amazon.  And since I don't trust the mail at our apartment, and it's going to my parents' house...and we're getting a snowstorm...I probably won't be able to get it until at least Thursday.  Boo.

Oh well.  I've waited more than three weeks for it, I can wait a day more :)

Review: Heidigger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank

Like Sweetie by Kathryn Magendie, I picked up Heidigger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank for one single reason -- it was free.  I started it on the way home from a friend's birthday party on Saturday night, and finished reading it early this morning.

Heidegger's Glasses is set in Germany, late in World War II.  Anyone who has seen any Indiana Jones films has heard that Hitler and some of his commanding officers in the Third Reich were obsessed with the occult and the supernatural.  Preoccupied with their fears of keeping the Final Solution a secret from the world, Commandants Goebbels and Himmler worry that the ghosts of those who died in the camps after sending letters to loved ones will haunt and reveal their plans, so they (somewhat ludicrously) remove dozens of individuals from the death marches, those who are bilingual or speak obscure languages, and move them into an abandoned mine shaft, converted into an underground village.  The Scribes, as the Reich calls these lucky few, have only one duty -- to write letters back to the dying or the dead, to keep angry souls at bay.

The ludicrous premise of the book leads to an interesting and rather haunting story of dozens of misplaced people struggling to survive, celebrating as the Third Reich crumbles around them.  It is the story of Elie, a young Polish girl who is bent on saving as many people as she can, and her lover, former solider Gerhardt Lodenstein, who wants to understand Elie through his love for her but can't quite manage to figure her out.  In the midst of their struggles, a letter arrives from the philosopher Martin Heidigger, to his Jewish optometrist who is now incarcerated at Auschwitz.  His letter starts off a chain reaction that puts the lives of all the Scribes in danger.

This book was interesting.  It's another book that I probably wouldn't have given a second thought to, had it not been a freebie on Kindle, but I'm glad I read it.  I would recommend it, especially to anyone who is interested in historical fiction or World War II.

Rating: ****

FO: Baby Pumpkin Hat

It's been a rough weekend here, unfortunately.  I've been laid up all day with a sharp pain in the center of my spine, which is probably going to require a trip to the doctor (on the advice of a good friend who is an EMT).  I've been intermittently reading, watching my favorite TV show (The Tudors), and knitting.  But it's not all been a complete loss...today has brought me my first FO (finished object, in knitting lingo) of 2011, thus bringing the title of this blog full-circle.

There's going to be a whole bunch of babies born into this family this spring and summer -- not ours, not yet!  David's three cousins' wives are all pregnant, and due in April, May, and June.  There will be two boy babies (April and May) and the one born in June will be a surprise, since Mom and Dad are choosing not to find out in advance.  There's something so delicious about baby knitting -- it's quick, it's (relatively) simple, and you're left with a finished object that you just can't help squeeing over.

Exhibit A: the Baby Pumpkin Hat.

I started this yesterday -- Saturday, January 8 -- and finished it today, after knitting sporadically on it.  Using worsted weight, held double, with US 9 needles, and considering that this is a project that is already tiny to begin with, this thing flew off the needles.

And it is so adorable!  I can't wait to give it away.  One baby knit down, two more to go!

Specifics:
Pattern: Pumpkin Hat by Susan Esser
Yarn: Cascade 220 in 7824 (burnt orange), 2429 (irelande), and 2431 (chocolate heather) -- less than one ball of each
Needles: Takumi bamboo needles, US 9
Modifications: None, with the exception of the leaf.  I didn't like the directions given with Susan Esser's pattern, so I used the pattern listed here.

My feelings?  Obviously I think it's precious.  Knit baby hats are freakin' adorable to begin with.  I'd knit it again, but probably not right away...there are three babies to knit for and I'd like to knit them all something different!

Review: The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson

Everyone loves a good fairy tale.  And as you know, I love good historical fiction.  The Healer's Apprentice is described on  a spin-off of the classic Sleeping Beauty story, set in medieval Germany.  And, well, there heroine's name is Rose (much like the Briar Rose of the original story).  That...is pretty much where the similarities to the original Sleeping Beauty end.

If one goes into The Healer's Apprentice with an open mind, the story is quite charming.  Rose, the daughter of a poor woodcutter, is the 18-year-old apprentice to Frau Geruscha, the ducal healer, but she can't help feeling lost in her chosen path.  She grows nauseous at the sight of blood and has very little faith in her healing abilities.  When Lord Wilhelm Hamlin, the duke's son, is injured and comes to her for treatment, Rose finds herself strongly attracted to him.  Unfortunately (for Rose), Wilhelm is already betrothed to the mysterious "Lady Salomea", whom Wilhelm has never seen, but who he has vowed to save from the murderous vengeance of an evil conjurer.  Unfortunately (for Wilhelm), one look at Rose, the poor healer's apprentice, and he's instantly smitten.  But what to do?

Warning: this is not another Ella Enchanted (note: I'm talking about the charming YA fairy-tale spin-off of Cinderella, not the horrific watered-down film of the same name).  The Healer's Apprentice deals with a number of heavy-handed topics that wouldn't appeal to young readers or their parents, including religion, possession, demonology, prostitution, and open marriage.  The religious aspects of the story can get a little heavy-handed at times, and the latter half of the book drags a bit, but I can never knock a good fairy tale, especially one with a little history thrown in!  I would recommend it, but I don't know if I'll read it again.


In other news, Richard the Third continues apace...although it's starting to get to the really interesting (re: gory murdering) parts.  I should have a wrap-up of that within the next two days.  Tomorrow I'm off from work, so here's hoping!

Rating: ***