Review: The Sea, the Sea

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I should not have enjoyed this book.
The narrator rambles, he jumps all over. He talks about food all the time and weird food.
He's a dick, to his friends to his cousin, to women oh my god to women. He's a class A misogynistic douche.
He's paranoid and crazy and self obsessed. He has no redeeming features. None. He's an awful human.
The other characters are also self obsessed or insane or weird.
There were so many weird coincidences, someone happens to appear at just the right time. Turns out so and so knew so and so the whole time for no reason. So many problems could be solved if everyone just sat down & talked like a normal human. But no, not even the non theatre people act like normal people.
And yet I really enjoyed it. No idea why. The writing just carried me, it didn't feel like 500 pages I read it on kindle so I had no concept of how fast I was moving but each time I checked I'd read another 10%.
Read the first 50 pages, if you can handle that he gets slightly less rambley and talks about food less. And it becomes quite tense in the middle.



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Sneezles

It's spring. You can tell by the fact that my eyes and nose are itchy and I sneeze every 4 seconds. I've always had hayfever, I even started allergy treatment for it but quit halfway through because it was too hard. It involved going to a specialist once a week for a series of injections, I didn't give a hoot about the injections I just hated going.
Now I couldn't afford it even if I wanted it, stupid American healthcare system.

It's really not that bad, a slight inconvenience and tiredness but this year seems worse than the last few years.
Anyone else suffering more this year? Has the Bay Area had a massive pollen explosion? Or is it just me?

Here's a video to get you in the sneezing mood. http://youtu.be/WLY-8_PfxAw

Free Pattern: Chunky Baby Mitts

 

We're waiting on a new addition to the family. My cousin & his wife are having a baby and I put off knitting until the point where the baby was threatening to arrive before the gift so this weekend I whipped up a hat and mitts. The hat I used the Fixation Newborn Hat pattern but the mitt pattern I wrote myself and I thought I'd share it.  This pattern is for personal or charity use only.

Chunky Baby Mitts

Gauge: 4.5sts per inch
Materials: 
A small amount of bulky yarn I used KnitPicks Brava Bulk.
Size 6 DPNs (or size needed to obtain gauge).
Tapestry needle. 
Stitch marker if wanted.

CO 18sts, join in the round being careful not to twist. Place marker if desired.
Work in K1, P1 for 2 inches.

K1, m1, K4, m1, K1 three times until all stitches are worked (24sts).
Knit 15 rounds.
K1, ssk, K6, k2tog, K1 x2.
K1, ssk, K4, k2tog, K1 x2.
K1, ssk, K2, k2tog, K1 x2.
K1, ssk, k2tog, K1 x2.
Graft remaining stitches.
Weave in ends.

Repeat for second mitt.

 

A note on yarn choices for new babies. Use yarns that are machine washable and dryable.  Babies are messy and parents are tired, if the people you are knitting for aren't knitters they may not realise some yarns need to be treated with care. If they are knitters they'll still be exhausted and doing a lot of washing, give them a break and don't make them something they need to delicately hand wash and dry flat.

2013 New Years Resolution

This years New Years resolution is last years recycled (I'm very green).
Last year I wanted to not buy any book until I'd read the ones I owned. And I bought less books but didn't really make a dent in my pile of unread books, nor the virtual pile of unread ebooks.
The trouble last year was that I told myself that library books weren't bought books & this didn't count. So I borrowed a bunch of library books. I also told myself that books I bought after turning my loose change into amazon gift cards at a coinstar machine also didn't count. On the basis that that was somehow free money.

This year I'm being much more strict. No buying books unless it's a Pratchett book or something miraculous happens (I've got a couple books I want to read that are priced at around $100. If one of those is magically on sale for a reasonable price I'm buying it).
No library books, unless they were put on hold last year.
No free ebooks they have to already be on a device to be read.
No rereading, this was another trap I fell into last year.
Focus on the physical books. This isn't a strict requirement but some of these books I brought with me when I moved here with 2 suitcases. I thought they were important enough to lug half way round the world when I had limited space, they need to be read.
Discarding them is fine, I don't have to force myself to read a book I hate. But I need to at least open them.

So far it has been going really well. I've read several from my physical shelf although I haven't tackled any of the heavy ones that will be the most difficult to get through.
I finished 2 ebooks I'd been putting off reading of years, one I started over because it had been at least 2 years since I touched it.
I haven't bought any books. I only read one library books because it has been on hold for me for months and months.
So far this has been a much more effective challenge than last year but it's early days and there's a high probability I'll fall off the wagon.

2013 Reading Challenge

tuttle88 has
read 28 books toward her goal of 50 books.

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28 of 50 (56%)

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Blog Update

I haven't posted in a while, I've been wanting to post more regularly but I have been in a bit of a blogging rut and I'm not sure why. Actually I know exactly why, I've been needing to write about my friend Rhian who sadly passed away last month but I haven't been able to.  I've spoken about her before and I wanted to write something about her but I put it off and put it off, I read other people's beautiful tributes and wanted to add mine but I just wasn't able to write it.  And I didn't want to post anything else because I had mentally assigned the next one to be about her.

I will write something tonight, I don't know if it will be about Rhian or about something utterly stupid but I need to get on a schedule and get stricter about it.