Recently in Patterns/Books Category

Have you read Friday Night Knitting Club?  It's not exactly high literature, but it's a really sweet story about some unlikely friendships formed between a group of women who start knitting together in the main character Georgia's yarn shop.  I am very lucky to have a few close friends that live near me who are also knitters, but I know not everyone has that luxury, and it has taken me several years to find those people.  For me, part of the reason I started and continue this blog is the connection with other knitters that I make, even if it is from a long geographical distance.  I have had the opportunity to meet a few "blog friends" in person, and its generally been a really great experience.

My longtime blog-friend Stephanie and I were emailing earlier today about reading Knit Two (the sequel to Friday Night Knitting Club) together and trying to do an online book club-type discussion thing (maybe over Google video chat?  We're still working out the details.)  We will probably do our first discussion sometime the week between Christmas and New Year's. 

Anyway, we decided to put it out there to see if anyone else was interested.  Let me know, and I'll email you to work out the details. 

A package of books I ordered from Amazon, as well as a wonderful gift from a friend who loves to read, both show up on my doorstep within a week's time. Should I declare defeat now, call in sick, and just bury myself in books? 

I am on a serious reading tear this summer.  I already finished reading 2 out of the 3 books that I took with me on vacation, and I'm reading with the third renewed interest thanks to some cajoling from my same book-loving friend.  Middlesex is an amazing story of a Greek family throughout the 20th century, and its a little Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque (sweeping storyline, a little bit a magic, suspension of disbelief) which I love.  The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society is a lot more of a beach read, but with some interesting WW2 history thrown in, and a charming little love story.  As long as I'm making literary comparisons, this one definitely had a feel of Austen about it.

The third book, The Corrections, took me a lot longer to get into... I am about halfway through right now, and as far as I can tell it's a satirical story about an older midwestern couple and their three adult children.  I normally like to read books where I like the characters (and I most certainly do NOT in this book) but I am trying to appreciate the writing.  Viewing the characters more as caricatures than real people seems to help, although I am a midwesterner and occasionally I feel like the author is making fun of me.  One thing that is pretty interesting about reading it right now is that it's set in the economic boom times of the late 90s/early 2000s, and comparing it to our current situation.

Not that I need any more books to read, but....Have you read anything good lately?

The KnitPicks 40% off sale strikes again. I was busy dealing with house stuff last night, but I'm looking forward to digging into these books in the next day or two, and dreaming of cool weather to knit socks and sweaters for...