Weekly Geeks 2009 #4 A

Weekly Geeks – Other Passions Part A.    See official site here.

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? For example, are you crafty (knitting, woodworking, scrapbooking, model building)? Do you cook? Into gaming (computer or board)? Sports (player or spectator)? Photography? Maybe you like geocaching, rock climbing? Or love attending events like renaissance fairs, concerts? Music? Dancing? You get the idea.

Tell us why you’re passionate about it. Post photos of what you’ve made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you’d like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire or tell us about a book or magazine related to your interest.

#1.   I love scrapbooking and traveling and photography and gardening and watching movies and baking pies and writing letters and I have dreams of learning how to make paper and books (like iliana!) and I wish I was more capable at framing.   I have an insane collection of frames that I hope to either fill, or hang or mosaic.   That’s my main ‘craft’:  mosaics.   and I used to do cross-stitch but my eyesight (that is now failing me because I’m over 40) annoys me.   Reading glasses annoy me enough but doing intricate work REALLY gets frustrating.   I’d love to learn to sew.   And although I love taking pictures and scrapbooking – I haven’t done anything at all in over 6 months.  How time flies…   And I collect lobster things.   But, of course, you knew that already if you read this.

Photos of my mosaic frames:

This is the first one I made…

This has yet to be grouted…   A gift, I wonder if she is reading this?   My bff from HS…   Most of my mosaic’d frames have been gifts so they are scattered around the country.   (most of my friends and fam live elsewhere.)

And this is a box I store wheat pennies in:

and finally, a pie.  It’s a fruit pie and not a lobster pie despite the lobster on the top.

#2.  To check out a most-amazing mosaic professional, click here, courtesy of a blog devoted to mosaics.

Will have another post later in the week for #3….   Stay tuned!

only for fun!

I have lurked at this site for a long time and I just must help her in her quest to be FOUND…

Visit BookBabie if you like Robert Downey, Jr.

(I am never at a loss for posting ideas – I usually just end up self-editing with a big red pen and NOT posting any of them.   Here goes nothing.)

If you love the Academy Awards, if you HATE the Academy Awards, if you are ambivalent towards what they say are OSCAR-worthy films, just comment and let me know.

If you saw Tropic Thunder, let me know.

If you love reading books that inspire the films…    tell me your FAVORITE movie based on a book.

and a have a HAPPY DAY!

(Oscars on Feb 22nd.   I wish you could come to my house to view the big night but ONLY JIMMI is invited.   Sorry.)

The Great Perhaps

Review   Looking for Alaska by John Green

If you haven’t read Looking For Alaska, just go away.    This entire post will be spoilers and you don’t want to read this book knowing much.    You may come back later.

OK?   Are  you gone?

[crickets chirping.]

If I knew how to do one of these jump-to-read-more breaks, I would.   Sometimes, I wonder if this blog is so I have a place to talk with others about stuff I’ve already read (past tense) and I just don’t want to read any more reviews of stuff I haven’t yet (future) – anyone agree with me?

But if you are still here and yet haven’t yet read the title of this post’s discussion, perhaps you might click over to these other reviews which will tell you plot and all the etcs…   Because I’m not going to.

Other Reviews that link to even MORE Reviews:

MUST CLICK HERE ==>   This is Dewey’s Review and it helped me quite a bit.  [sadly, Dewey's blog is no longer available...]

Heather (Book Addiction) – this is the review I read first after reading the book.   It was the one I had to avoid before I read the book – even though she doesn’t really give anything away…

Dewey’s was the second review I read – and it’s a MUST.   Do watch the Green video.

I think I read all the links that these reviews link to…   I think Nymeth has the most – she wins the linkylove prize!

♦

RANDOM THOUGHTS

♦  I don’t like to review books that everyone I know has read and reviewed already.     But I do want to talk about it.   Maybe I should skip this post and only comment everywhere?  nah.

♦ I came to the one part (the part that has Green so incensed in the vid. yea, that one.) and thought “Uh Oh.   I told my niece to read this!   I can’t be endorsing such things to 16 year olds!!!”     Well, I’m over that, thanks to the author.  OK, I get it.    But I was fascinated by the impulse I had to censor this for the youths in my life!    The cig smoking and the drinking?  Sure, yea, whatever.   s.e.x.?!   goodness me.  sigh…

♦  I did not read any reviews before I read this – other than everyone loves it.       I was seriously thinking Alaska only ran away.     I did know enough that Alaska was a person, so I did pick up on some stuff…   but, WHAT?!   dead?    car crash?    suicide?     Am I only going to fill this post with questions?   I was thinking – Hey! nobody warned me she was going to die!!!

♦   Some extremely funny laugh out loud sections.  OMG.    terrific.    The last prank – did they really have Lara yell that out?   I would have been mortified.   I really liked Lara.     And the cheers at the first basketball game?    I sent Jill an email that we would have to remember those for the next Read-A-Thon.   (which, alas, makes me sad – I’ll help if anyone is thinking about maybe having one. ??? )

♦   I absolutely love that Alaska gave tutoring in pre-calc.   She was awesome.

♦  I did figure out that what Alaska FORGOT was the date of her mom’s death.    I also was bummed that Miles and the Colonel ignored Takumi and Lara and was miffed as they were that they were being ignored.     I think this is another example of the skill of Green’s writing.   It’s not that I figured stuff out I wasn’t supposed to but that I felt RIGHT THERE TOO.    And, who, really, kept track of the days before and after?  Not me.   I did think about it though and decided it wasn’t important for me to be anal about it…

♦  I loved all the book references that I knew!   I read Vonnegut’s Cats Cradle in high school.    so cool.   And I want to read the ones I don’t know and I was thinking that if I was 16 years old, I would want to read all those books, too.  WAY TO GO GREEN!

♦  I love thinking about stereotypical ‘smart’ kids who aren’t stereotypified.    Does that make sense?    I know this is what I loved about majoring in engineering.    The variety of personalities; really cool kids I studied with who weren’t the nerdy guys who tore apart washing machines and put them back together.   NO, the guy I had a major crush on quoted the entire Poe’s Raven to me in the dark.     We discussed all the existential questions.     This book made me reminisce so much…

♦  Any idea how to explain the word ‘perhaps’ to someone who doesn’t speak English?   I think I failed miserably.   I was put on the spot.    It’s a great word, isn’t it.    Maybe doesn’t quite cut it, does it?     So the bit about what the title of this book is in Dutch (I think.) and how it translates back, fascinates me.

♦ I read this for the Dewey Challenge.   I’ve already read 3 of the 5 books I planned on.    How COOL is that?!

♦  I am writing this without having the book with me.   HATE IT when I rush off to loan it to somebody and forget that I haven’t yet written the review…    I just walked it over to my neighbor…   She’d never heard of it.

♦  I actually had the terrific idea that I would read the Reading Guide at the end of this book and answer them for this review.   THEN I read the questions.   Nah,  maybe some other day.

Perhaps…

Comfort Food Casserole

Recipe Tuesday (inspired by Jessi at Casual Dread)!   I’m cooking this right now…  It’s from a recipe tree back in 1996;  my mom sent me this.
Sausage Rice
I love it!   I make it a lot.   Unfortunately,  I never make it quite the same each time so the consistency is not consistent.    Let me explain:

You will notice that the veggie quantity is not given.   So this varies depending on how much I want to chop.    I had always used minute rice and it would often turn out too soupy.    So we end up playing with the water (using less) or add more rice – usually in the middle of the baking time.     After all these years, I only recently noticed the word regular to describe the rice.   Not minute rice?     OK.

So now that I don’t even buy minute rice and am now a good girl to use regular – longer cooking time – rice, I still screw it up because my old habits of adjusting water to rice ratios get in the way.   I never write down when it works out.

Another issue with moving to a different part of the country is that I can never find the frozen tube of 1# turkey sausage.    I end up buying the Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage in the links so I have to take off the outer wrap casing before I brown it – so that makes it ‘different’.

No matter, it tastes incredible!

So, I encourage you to try it and just don’t worry about quantities and stuff like that.     Really, it is very very yummy.    I sprinkle parmesan cheese on it during the serving phase…

Recapping the ingredients:
Turkey sausage – brown & crumbled
Rice – 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup ?
Water – 4 cups or more or less
1 envelope Lipton pkg chicken noodle soup
1 Green Pepper – chopped
4-5 stalks of celery – chopped
1 onion – I use a small red onion because it’s pretty
parmesan cheese

Boil the soup packet with the rice in the water for a couple of minutes, mix with the sausage and all the veggies in a deep casserole dish.

Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

My Books for the Science Challenge

OOPS!   I just found a post draft that was almost complete except for all the linking, so here it is, finally!

Books to Read: 3
Website:     Science-Book Challenge 2009

Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2009
Other Great Lists to Consider: Eva, Debi  (I thought Debi was the one who prepared an awesome list of suggestions but I can’t find it…  Too much time has past?  I’m not creative in my searching?   Her blog is here, if you know the link, pls comment!  Thx, C)

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield 2002, 242 pages.   
Awhile back, I was flipping through TV channels and stopped on a documentary talking about the origins of color dyes. I was fascinated and, unfortunately, I failed to write down any details other than this: “argaman – ancient hebrew name for purple.” Purple is my favorite color. When this challenge was presented, I knew that I wanted to find a book on the science of color and this one on mauve is the one I’m choosing. But wait! there’s more!! I found out about an event – a field trip! – to add to my color challenge: The Arts Foundation of Cape Cod will be presenting an art show this month called ROYGBIV: Exploring the Color Spectrum.  Sounds like fun, yes?

This book might also qualify for the World Citizen Challenge.

♦

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean My review here.

I loved the movie Adaptation which is loosely (did I mention ‘loosely’?) based on this book.   Don’t worry – I think I’m aware of the differences and I have been wanting to read this for a long time.    I’m excited that this book which has been on the tbr wishlist for so long will be perfect for this challenge.   This book will also qualify for my Lit Flicks Challenge.

♦

Einstein:  The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark   1972, 878 pages

I started this in 2008 and it stalled.   I’ll just pick it back up and read from where I left off.

♦

A Spring Without Bees:  How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply by Michael Schacker  2008, 304 pages.

I’m interested in the mystery of the declining population of honeybees.

Review The Orchid Thief

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…”  ” –Isaac Asimov

Review   The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
1998, 282 pages, ***
For the Science Challenge and the Lit Flicks Challenge

WARNING – I suspect this will be a LOOoooonnng post and I’m just getting started.  I’m wondering if I should do this in pieces/parts…   Why am I telling you this?!?

I have been curious about this book ever since seeing Adaptation, a crazy nutty awesome movie (one of my very favorites) starring Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper and Nicholas Cage.   I can only recommend this movie if you like the really strange ones.    I have a crush on Charlie Kaufman.   If you don’t know who he is, you probably won’t like him.

And, so I liked the book.   I like the book especially because it really reinforces the theme of the film!  [To me, the theme of the movie is that some books are impossible to adapt into a film...]      The book is good but really should be considered a stand alone book that is mostly about flowers – and fascinating flowers they are!  but not as a true ‘story source’ for the movie.     It makes the movie hilarious!  but it is not the movie in book form.     And if you don’t get that, forget it.  (I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?  trying to explain this?    the fun is you can’t explain it!   you either get it or you don’t.)

Enough about the movie.    But it’s great fun to read about John Laroche, the orchid thief that Susan Orlean uses as her subject for this nonfiction expose into the culture of orchid collectors.     It was terrific to imagine Chris Cooper when I read this and thankfully, the book’s cover jacket has a photo of Susan Orlean so I could imagine her instead of Streep.   Thankfully.

The writing style is engaging; she makes the subject very interesting.   Lots of history on orchid hunting and the strange characters that found new species and the guys who hired them in order to add unique flowers to their collections.    This could also be a book for the World Citizen challenge since they travel all over the world.   I was also intrigued with the debate of whether or not delicate protected plants should be ‘rescued’ while jungles are being destroyed or if harvesting these precious specimens are part of the problem.

I wish this book had more pictures of the flowers…

The ghost orchid, polyrrhiza lindenii:   This is what the author most hoped to see in her quest to write this book.     She is very much a character in the story, as she pursues everything about orchids, learns more about Florida and attempts to discover what the passion is for this exotic plant.    She wishes to know what makes some people have such passion, any passion.

A bromeliad:   (there are many varieties but it so helps to have any image pop in my head when I read about them…)

The winner of the 1984 World Orchid Conference Best Orchid was the Vanda Deva Robert.   This image pops up when you google for it: 

♦

This image of a child  on a water lily ‘…became a photographic cliché.’     The few mentions of Joseph Paxton fascinated me and I will be reading more about him and his Crystal Palace* some day.   Don’t you love when a book suggests something and off you skip to go learn more?     Maybe that’s one of my thrills with reading nonfiction.     People are so darn fascinating;  I love history and architecture and …   oh!  lots of things!!   

♦

Vocabulary

avuncular: Regarded as characteristic of an uncle, especially in benevolence or tolerance.    (I always look up this word!   When will I remember its definition already!?)

impecunious:  hard up;  not having enough money to pay for necessities

stupefaction: a feeling of stupefied astonishment  (I know ‘stupified’ but something about this form of the word and how it was used, made me write it down…)

changeling: 1: a person of subnormal intelligence [syn: idiot, imbecile, cretin, moron, half-wit, retard] 2: a child secretly exchanged for another.

♦

Passage from page 252:

… and I thought to myself:   I am standing amid millions of dollars’ worth of flowers.  I breathed in deep and held my breath while I swung my head so that the $4 million of flower colors smeared like lipstick.  It was in the nature of Florida, this kind of abundance, the overrichness of living things – so many of everything that all of it blurs together and you have to decide whether to be a part of the blur or to be a distinct and separate being.

♦

Finally, no, I will NOT be starting an orchid collection.   I will avoid attending an orchid show no matter how much I think I want to go!     However, I will admit, I do have a buried faded dream** of being a botanist…

OH!    One of the quotes on the back of the book jacket is by Katherine Dunn!   This excited me because her novel Geek Love was one of my favorites from 2008.   I love it when I know one of the authors so featured and (maybe?) not many others do…

HH

HH

* Further reading:   Kate Colquhoun – A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton

** and a photographer, an architect, a novelist, a college professor, an artist, a wealthy eccentric philanthropist, a retired US Senator, a greeting card designer, a quaint stationery shop proprietor, a travel guide…)

Not a Review: Twilight

OK, I’ve read it.   I set out to make 2009 a non-vampire year and then this book fell into my lap.   Not even one month in and I blew the anti-challenge!   oh well.    And the ‘giver’ requested I get it back to her because another neighbor wants it next.   She’s trying to talk her husband into reading it, too.   (really?!  ok, whatever.   Actually, that’s cool.   I won’t be suggesting this to mine…)

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

* *

I’m giving it TWO STARS for “It’s OK.”

To go over what I want my stars of rating to mean:
* = I didn’t like it.
** = It’s OK.
*** = I liked it.
**** = I really liked it!
***** = WOW! I LOVED LOVED loved it very much!!!!!

And even a one star book, might not be horrible trash, just that I didn’t care for it much.    A NO-Star book would be something I just can’t endorse or recommend.     I will also state all books I Did Not Finish as DNF and I may or not rate til the DNF page/time.  I can’t decide…   Do you rate your DNFs?

There can be many DNF reasons as to why I had to give up on something that have nothing to do with quality of story or writing or whatever.   Most always it’s just a mood-fit issue.

Let’s move on, shall we?

Weekly Geeks 09 – Issue 3 CLASSICS

Ah, the classics…   I’m hit and miss in that grand list of old books we all are supposed to have read in order to be considered ‘well-read’.    and the debate continues WHAT these titles are and WHY someone (who!?) dictates that ‘should’.

Please refer back to the source for the full idea of what this week’s theme is.   I’m going to stray just a bit.

I have read a few books beyond what the teachers made us read in school.   I actually picked up a Henry James a few years ago and actually enjoyed it.     A Portrait of a Lady, 1881.    I’m sure that I was inspired to read this after moving to the Boston area and becoming entranced by the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner (her museum is a MUST SEE) and James supposedly-maybe-loosely based his book on her,  or at least borrowed the name Isabella.  [Researching this idea at Wikipedia, I find no mention of a link between this book and the famed Bostonian art collector; it is just some craziness drug up from the depths of my brain perhaps?]

For me, reading the classics immerses me in the time they were written and I love the exploration of the author’s lives at the time – who they knew, where they traveled, what motivated them to write?

QUESTION for you all who are movie lovers:    Have you seen the Nicole Kidman version of A Portrait of a Lady?    Netflix doesn’t have it.

What the other Geeks are saying:

I love the suggestions that Mysteries in Paradise gives us for classic crime novels!

Marg says she’s never read Austen!    My mother just mentioned the very same to me and I told her she didn’t have to start with P&P if she didn’t want to, but that she would probably like any books by THE JANE.    Emma is my favorite and I want to read Mansfield Park this year.

I mentioned in a comment at Gautami’s that I have Thomas Hardy on my list of authors to read this year as part of my personal reading expansion challenge.   (the list is still evolving in my head)

And finally, to conclude, I often answer Les Miserables whenever anyone asks me my favorite book.

Happy Weekly Geeking!!

Snowy SE Mass

A few photos from the last couple of snowy days here south of Boston.  For my Mom.  

Currently seen in the header...

View from our front door (hi Neighbors!)

PS – there’s another very nice winter scene at the end of my Anne of Green Gables post.  FYI.

Mini Review Anne of Green Gables

Review   Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

This Reader’s Digest edition (1992) contained the complete text, originally published in 1908.  Canadian, 256 pages.

Anne is ‘good for what ails ya’.     I can’t help but think that this little story is like medicine for the mind and heart.    Anne is lively, the language is lively.   Anne is imaginative to the nth degree, the scenery is idyllic.   The story of how Anne moves to Green Gables, Avonlea, Prince Edward Island is not without struggles and hardships, but always has the overcoming.   For all the little moral lessons and a bit of wondering how the trials of Anne’s early years produced such a wonderful girl, the thing to remember is that love is it. Love is everything, love makes the world go round.    It is easy to see why this book is treasured by so many.

Montgomery is amazingly descriptive and colorful.   She is also very clever in her character assessments.   I dread reviews of classics knowing that most have read this and the ones who haven’t probably know quite a lot about it already.    I won’t say much more, other than I recommend you get this book, meet Anne, go to school with her, get caught up in her adventures and explore her world and times.   You won’t be disappointed.

First book towards completion of the Dewey Challenge.  (Dewey’s review here.)

Other reviews:

So Many Precious Books
The BlueStocking Society
Becky’s Book Reviews
Bookfoolery & Babble
1 More Chapter
Nymeth’s Things Mean A Lot <—-  Nymeth has found even more reviews!   so I think I’ll stop linking now…

one more:    The group read blog to celebrate the 100 year of Anne:   Blogging Anne of Green Gables

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.  Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce.  The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne’s heart and on her lips. page 121