Shameless AWing of the wifely kind

(This entry has nothing to do with books.  Or knitting.  Just an FYI.)

This is my husband, David.

Kinda cute, huh?  :)

I'm home tonight with my sister and my friend, Jess, watching movies.  He's not home with me tonight.  Because he's at his first EMT training class.

When we came home from our honeymoon, David enrolled in a six-month course to train to be an EMT.  He's been bouncing off the walls about it ever since (and that was in November).  He'll be at classes two days a week for the next few months. 

I'm so happy for him, and so proud that he's doing this.  So today I'm shamelessly AWing my husband.  Because I'm damn proud of him today.

(Hopefully a book post tomorrow.  I'm about halfway through one book and a third of the way through another.)

(But no closer to finishing Pride and Prejudice.)

Review: Sweetie by Kathryn Magendie

I don't know about you, but for me, it's difficult to break out of my regular reading genre and go for a book that may not immediately pique my interest.  I've been scouring Amazon.com for free books for my Kindle, and just picking up anything that sounded even the slightest bit interesting, knowing that I'd probably get a few bad apples.

I.  Love.  This.  Book.

Proof?  I started reading it yesterday morning, before work.  I finished it in the afternoon.  It was THAT good.

Granted, at 216 pages, it's a rather quick read.  No matter.  I would have torn through this little gem regardless.

Sweetie is the first-person narrative of Melissa, a chubby, stuttering, nondescript girl whose wanderlust-driven father and hypersensitive, nagging mother have moved her all over the country in search of her father's "inspiration".  Recently moved to a small town in Appalachian North Carolina, Melissa finds herself the butt of every joke at school, until she befriends the skinny, blonde, uneducated, free-spirited girl who has no other name than "Sweetie."  It is Sweetie who encourages Melissa to "breathe slowly" and learn to stop stuttering, and leads her on an adventure all over the mountains of their little town.  Over time, Melissa develops her own self-confidence and begins to question everything around her, including the secrets that Sweetie is holding close to herself.

Any girl who has ever been teased or tormented at school (including yours truly, I feel compelled to admit) will relate to Melissa, and if they hadn't already, will wish that they had had a friend like Sweetie.  I loved this book, and I'm hoping Ms. Magendie writes more, so I can read those.  I'm so glad that I took a chance on it.

Rating: *****

Up next?  Well, I have a few on deck.

Oh, Richard III.  You absolutely devious S.O.B.  Why must you be so compelling for me to try and figure out?  I'm still sad that Alison Weir, my favorite author of all things English royalty-related,  has never put out a book about Richard the Third.  I read her book The Princes In The Tower last year, and it was good, but that was more about the luckless Edward V and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, with very little about Richard except that he was totally evil.

My parents bought me Paul Murray Kendall's Richard the Third for Christmas this year, and I cracked it open last night.  It's long (608 pages), but I'm already to Chapter Three and the action is pretty good (how could it not be, at the forefront of the War of the Roses?), so I'm going pretty fast.  Admittedly, Kendall is a bit more dry than Weir, but we can't have everything in life, can we?  I'm hoping for better insight into the life of the man who is known as England's most wicked ruler.

And, on my fiction plate...

The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson.  A play on the classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, set in medieval Germany, Apprentice is the story of a woodcutter's daughter named Rose, the apprentice of the town healer who is determined to prove herself and become a healer herself, to avoid marrying a lecherous old suitor.  I'm about 10% into this one, and I started it last night.  This looks like it's going to be another quick read, but considering that I'm reading it at the same time as Richard, I don't know if I'll finish it as quickly as I did Sweetie.

Finally, because I really want to start tearing through everything and anything by Jane Austen, and at my sister's suggestion, I have begun Pride and Prejudice, that quintessential of pre-Victorian romances.  I'm not far into it at all (maybe 2%), but I'm mostly listening to it on the text-to-speech function on my Kindle (how I love that thing).

Happy reading!

Review: Traitor's Wife by Susan Higgenbottom

My favorite literary genre has to be historical fiction.  Let me amend that.  Has to be well-written historical fiction.  Confession: I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to historical fiction.  I don't like it if it's too unbelievable.  I don't mind literary fiction when the author has taken liberties interpreting the characters thoughts and emotions; I have issues when the author throws in a completely unbelievable affair or battle scene or murder when all historical evidence points to its impossibility.  However, writing historical fiction "by the book" as it may be can result in some very dry novels.  Even I have to admit this, and I'm a huge believer in "real history is better and more fantastic than any fiction writer could dream up".

Traitor's Wife is the story of Eleanor le Despenser, little more than a footnote in history as the wife of Hugh le Despenser, a nobody who was ambitious enough to fight his way through those born more nobly than he and eventually become the confidante of England's King Edward II.  I'm always interested to read novels about real historical figures about whom little is known, and this is the case with Eleanor.  She is not well-known, but largely overshadowed by her notorious husband Hugh.  This is a period of history which, I confess, I am not well-versed in (English royal history is my passion, but I'm definitely better-read when it comes to the Renaissance and the Tudors than I am about medieval English history), and I have to say that, after reading Traitor's Wife, I am itching to learn more about that era.

Traitor's Wife is not without fault.  The first half of it is a little dry, and somewhat monotonous (Higgenbottom insists on leading the reader through all of the births of Eleanor and Hugh's many children, as well as Hugh's somewhat dry plans to amass more and more English estates for himself).  I can't really fault Higgenbottom for wanting to include every bit of research she did; she's extremely thorough in her work, which I can appreciate.  She bases a majority of her novel on royal scandal/speculation/rumor, which (in the case of Edward II and his notorious homosexuality) has become the stuff of legend, and is more or less widely-accepted.  Though I must say, there are some scenes that were so unbelievable I felt that my eyes were going to roll right out of my head.

Overall, I would recommend Traitor's Wife to anyone who is a fan of (extremely thorough) historical fiction and English royal history.  I am not sure if I would read it again, because it is very long for a book that I wasn't crazy about.  Still, I'm glad I read it, and it kicked off my 100 in 2011 very nicely.

Rating: *** and 1/2

I find myself really hankering for some hardcore history books, after reading this.  Because of its subject matter, I'm now dying to pick up Alison Weir's Queen Isabella -- a book I've been really neglecting because I had no idea who Queen Isabella was and what her impact was on history.  Unfortunately, it's not one I have on my bookshelf right now (and as a die-hard fan of Weir, I have most of her books already!).  But it will be on my to-read list for this year!

Up next: Sweetie by Kathryn Magendie.  This is one that I picked up from Amazon.com (for free, although it isn't anymore), and it's not normally a book that I would pick up.  However, I started it this morning and it's such a quick read!  I'm already at Chapter 5, and I have a feeling that this is going to be finished pretty quickly.

One down, ninety-nine left to go!

Real-life Jane Austen

After my last post praising Jane Austen, this entry is extremely well-timed, for I had occasion this weekend to dress like one of Jane's characters in real life!  One of David's friends threw a masquerade ball for New Year's Day (it was supposed to be New Year's Eve, but they couldn't get the hall that night).  The attire was formal.  David work a Victorian tuxedo, and I wore a Regency gown, much like something that one of Jane's characters might have worn.

I don't have many good pictures from the event, but here you go:

 

(The husband and I are to the left.  In the center and to the right are other party-goers)

I (rather stupidly) forgot my contact lenses, so when I wore my mask I couldn't see.  Fortunately, the masks stayed on for only the first hour or so, and then we took the off to eat dinner and socialize.  I have one other picture of me and David.

(I look like a MASSIVE tool in this picture, ugh)

It was a lot of fun, but I'm really exhausted from staying up late two nights in a row, and my weekend out did not bode very well for relaxing or getting anything done.  Fortunately, I discovered that I can read in the car on the Kindle and not get carsick!  This is great news, because I love reading in the car, and did so until about two years ago, when I started getting carsick while reading.  But I read for two hours (as we drove from Connecticut to MA on Friday), until it started to get dark, and didn't feel remotely ill afterward.  Great.

What am I reading as my first "official" book of 2011?

Traitor's Wife by Susan Higgenbottom.  I first read about this somewhere online (and of course I can't remember where), and I downloaded it for free on Amazon.com.  I started reading it on Friday evening, and I've barely put it down since.  Unfortunately, not because I'm really into it, but because I really want to finish it at this point.  It's okay, not the best book I've ever read, but pretty decent so far as historical fiction goes.  Most of what is written is unproven historical rumor, so it's accurate, but not necessarily true.  It's well-written, but there's a LOT of backstory, and the book is just starting to get really interesting...now that I'm 54% into it.  Not my favorite thing ever, but at least I'll be able to finish it.  Full report when I do, of course.

And now it's back to the grindstone.  Post-holiday work is quiet, but blissfully normal.  As much as I wish I could stay home and just relax, it's good to be back to whatever "normal" was, before Christmas.  

Happy reading!

Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Having a Kindle can be, at first, intoxicating.  What books to download first?  What to read?  There are so many good ones, and so many that are FREE!  Yet, for some reason, my mind went immediately to one that I had picked up twelve years prior, and then put down with disinterest.  I wanted to give it another shot.  I really did.

And wow.  Am I glad now, that I took it up again!

Jane Austen.  Like millions of people before me, I think I might very well be in love with her.  I'm completely enamored of her writing style, and this book has skyrocketed right to the top of my list of favorite books ever.

I saw the 1999 film "Mansfield Park" when it was in theatres, and I fell in love with the heroine, Fanny Price, and her snobbish but (generally) well-meaning relatives, the Bertrams, especially her gallant and humble cousin Edmund.  The film Fanny Price is very diffferent from the literary heroine of the same name; however, she is no less endearing.  Movie-Fanny (played by Frances O'Connor) is fiesty, plucky, and adventurous, where Book-Fanny is quiet, demure, and delicate.  Both "incarnations" of Fanny Price are eminently relateable, though entirely different in nature.

The world of Mansfield Park, a manor in Northamptonshire, England, at the turn of the 19th century, is beautiful and constantly proper, yet possess an undercurrent of turmoil and tempestuousness.  The primary characters -- Fanny, her cousins Edmund, Tom, Maria, and Julia, and their charming and tempting neighbors, brother and sister pair Mary and Henry Crawford -- attempt to walk the delicate line between what is proper in society, and what matters most in the depths of their hearts.  Without spoiling the ending for those of you who are yet to read it (and if you haven't read it, you should), some characters fail in this task, and some succeed.  It's a beautiful story, at its heart, a love story, absolutely timeless.

I only wish (as I said before) that I had discovered Lady Jane so much earlier, like when I was a misguided young woman with a torrid love life, instead of now that I am married very comfortably to a very steadfast and dependable man.  But no matter.  I will spend the majority of 2011 making up for lost time.

2011: No more waiting

The word that I believed would reflect the past year most was change.  Not really.  Everything changed, and yet nothing did.  The expectation of change was so much bigger than me, and when everything happened, and everything was done, it was weird to look around and see that really, in the end...nothing was different.  Nothing, except a piece of paper filed with the Sturbridge, MA clerk's office...and my last name.

No.  The word that most adequately describes my year 2010 is waiting.

Waiting.  I spent most of 2010 waiting.  Sitting in my room, looking over websites and pictures of weddings, planning our own, thinking about how I would look, how the food would taste, how the music would sound...never believing for an instant that, even two hours after it was all over, I would be hard-pressed to remember the way "Canon in D" sounded as I walked down the aisle, or the taste of the cake we'd chosen so carefully, or really, anything except the look on David's face when I saw him for the first time at the front of the church, trying so, so hard not to break down in tears.

Last New Year's Eve, I thought that 2010 would be magical, and it was.  But it was over in a heartbeat, in the bat of a butterfly's wing.  At the end of the day, David was right, when I tried to wake him up at midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, to ring in what would be our wedding year.

It's just one year.

One year, in a life (hopefully) full of them.  Since 2008, since David and I came to an understanding that we would marry, months before he actually proposed, I have been lying in wait for 2010.  The year that I would become his wife.  And now that year has come and gone.  And there is a lifetime ahead of us.

And who is to say that 2011, a year I've hardly thought about for a second, should not be even greater than 2010?

In truth, our futures have never been brighter.  David starts school in seven days.  Seven days until the course that will finally open the door for his career begins, and everything will change for him then.  His entire demeanor has changed since he got that acceptance letter.  Maybe it's only in my head, as his oh-so-proud newly-wedded wife, but his shoulders seem straighter, his eyes brighter, his manner lively.  I look at his proud, excited face and realize how lucky I am, that this man of mine has the spark of ambition at last, and he is finally excited and ready to become something amazing.  Yes, I am probably more proud even than he is.

And me?

I saw the film "Tangled" a few weeks ago.  I really liked it.  The opening song, by Mandy Moore, really reflects how I have felt about my life this past year.  It is called "When Will My Life Begin?", and it's incredibly accurate, until the last stanza at least.  I've been waiting.  Waiting for something incredible to happen, placidly sitting and imagining and not doing much of anything.

This year, it's time for that to end.  It's time for my life to really begin.

I'm setting goals.  New things, new experiences, new pursuits.  I've joined a book club online and I'm attempting to read 100 books (most of them new, with any luck) by the end of 2011.  I'm meeting new people online, and stretching myself socially, since I've always been too shy to go out and meet new friends.  I'm going to take a class in spinning my own yarn, and try something new.  Even if I hate it, well, I will have tried!

Most of all, I'm going to go back to school and finish my History B.A.  I am going to finish.  I am so close, so close I can taste it, and I'm going to complete it.  So I can finally be proud of myself for completing something.  I'm going to figure out what I want to do with my life.  History?  Journalism?  Something totally different?  Yes.  It is time.  I'm twenty-seven and it is time to figure out what I want to do with myself.

And finally, hopefully, I pray in the deepest recesses of my heart...I will, this year, become a mother, and make David a father.  It is the hope dearest to me, and the one thing I want above all in this next year.  He has promised that we will start trying around summer, and I can wait that long.  It's not as if I don't have enough going on to distract me until then, and it's only six months off, after all!

I'm through waiting for my life to start.  I'm going out, I'm going to achieve what I set out to do.  It's time to start making things happen.

I can't wait to see what happens in 2011.

In praise of the Kindle

Those of you who have Kindles, or any electronic readers, will know exactly to what I refer with this entry.  I have, for quite a long time, wanted an e-reader, and very much to my surprise, on Christmas Eve, I unwrapped one, a gift from my husband David and my parents all together.  It was the gift I wanted most for Christmas, and, as I'm sure you can imagine, it was very well-received, to the point where I was almost afraid to turn it on and start it up, so excited was I to receive it.

It did not disappoint me.  In the first evening, I downloaded one book (stupidly at full price) before I remembered Project Gutenberg, and realized that I had all the classics I could ever have wanted to read at my fingertips for virtually free.  I downloaded two, and the next day, five more. 

I can't say enough in praise of the Kindle.  My own Kindle (who I named "Annabelle Lee" -- with some spelling creativity -- after the subject of my favorite poem by Edgar Allen Poe) is light and portable and easy to carry, though she is desperately in need of a protective cover and I carry her around in the box she came in, until I pick one out.  I have to say that I am most partial to this one, especially since it's kitted out with the one thing I find the Kindle lacking in: a built-in book light for reading in the dark.  But my favorite feature has to be the "Text-To-Speech" function, which allows me to read, write, or even knit while listening to the book of my choice.  I can't tell you how much this has changed my productivity.  It's nearly impossible to knit while reading, since reading requires at least one hand, and knitting, at least two (though sometimes it seems like more!).  But this morning, I was able to "read" while knitting a mitten for a friend of mine, an activity that can't  be done with a book in your hands.  I have a feeling this is going to change my life.

With a whole world of books and reading at my fingertips (and at my ears), I've discovered The Nest Book Club, and have set what I think is a reasonable but challenging goal for myself this year:

I don't know if I can do it, but I'm certainly going to try.  I have quite the list on my Kindle of free books to read, along with three paper books that I received for Christmas from family members (and an entire bookshelf of already-read books to work my way through).  I'm determined.

The first book on my list?  One I should have begun years ago.  Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

I began it two days ago, and so far, I'm enthralled.  I've developed a new love for Jane Austen, and plan to work my way through most of her work.  I only wish I'd "discovered" Jane ten years ago when I was a teenager going through the ins and outs of juvenile relationships, rather than as an "old married woman" (I laugh at this, seeing as I haven't been married for even two months yet) in her late twenties.

Wish me luck, and happy reading!

Hello

My blogging history has been spotty at best.  For the last six months, I've kept a WordPress blog, about my life with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).  But in the past few weeks, that's been relatively dissatisfying, for several reasons.  I hate the idea of "labeling" myself, especially labeling myself with something attached to so much stigma.  To call myself merely "the girl with GAD" is to deny every other facet of myself.  And although I may be wrong in believing so, I do theorize that I am worth much more than the sum of my parts.

The idea of creating a blog for the activities I love most in life is much more agreeable to me.  I am not the sort of person who leads a remarkable life -- in fact, my life up until this point has been rather unremarkable.  I was born in a small town in Connecticut, in the United States; I had a more or less traditional upbringing; I graduated from a girls' high school shortly after the turn of the century and I spent four years at college out of state, achieving my bachelor's degree in English in 2005.  I moved back to Connecticut three days later, to enroll in graduate studies in History, but was involved in a major car accident two days before I was supposed to begin classes, which set back my studies quite a bit, to the point where I have still not finished.

I spent two years trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing with my life, and that's a time period I'd rather not discuss, for it was then that I started needing medication and counseling for my anxiety.  In 2008, at my sister's request, I auditioned for a play, and was cast opposite a man named David.  We began dating two months after we met, and a year and a half later, he asked me to be his wife.  We were married on November 5, 2010 (Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, if you are from England or familiar with English customs), and now we live in a very small apartment in Connecticut with our three black cats and guinea pig.

I have been reading since I can remember, probably around the age of five, like most children.  I can read very fast, although not as fast as my younger sister.  I suppose you could call me a "bookworm" as a child.  I still do love to read, but life and college and work and other pursuits have unfortunately relegated it, at times, to the back burner, and I find myself more often than not re-reading books, instead of going out and finding new ones.  The goal of this blog is to encourage myself to go out and read more, and review the books I do read.  My wonderful husband and parents pitched in and bought me a Kindle this year, my new favorite possession, and I have recently joined a book club on a website, so I am hoping that I manage to meet my goal of 100 books in 2011.

I began knitting when I was twenty years old, in college, and spent the next five years halfheartedly knitting away on garter-stitch scarves, until my boyfriend's mother (now my mother-in-law) gave me a book on basic knitting.  That week, I taught myself to purl, stopped being frightened to try new things, and now churn out hats, scarves, baby blankets, socks (my personal favorite) and mittens on a regular basis.  I don't knit often or well enough to create an entire knit-blog, but I do read them and aspire to the level their writers have achieved, so some of this blog will be reserved for knitting, and posts about it.

Finally: writing.  I wrote my first short story at age 8 (something terrible in my day-to-day journal for my third-grade teacher) and never looked back.  I write as naturally as I breathe, every single day.  But again, college does make writing difficult, if not odious, at times.  Getting back into writing that I enjoy is another goal of mine.

So that's all.  Welcome to Read.  Knit.  Blog.  I hope you enjoy your stay.