catherinejs

Another meme for Miss Book Geek

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:52:44 GMT

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see. 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline the books you LOVE. 4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them ;-) Hey, 65 out of 100! Not too bad! But I was an English major so I might be messing with the curve here. 1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien 3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling 5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6. The Bible (parts of it, probably about half) 7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9. His Dark Materials (The only word I have for this one is WOW. The first book is great. The third is beyond amazing.) 10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (All but a couple. If anyone HAS read Henry VIII, they're a bigger book geek than I am.) 15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien 17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19. The Time Traveller's 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 (wrote my bachelor's honors thesis on this) 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. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (I underlined half because I only love some of them. Caspian, yes. Horse and his boy? Not so much.) 34. Emma - Jane Austen 35. Persuasion - Jane Austen 36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis 37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. 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 (I love all those kinda-gothic victorian novels) 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 (if I could negative underline I would. I felt like the ending was deceptive and manipulative.) 51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel 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' 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 Burnett 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 - A.S. Byatt 81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83. The Color 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 - E.B. 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 and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Because Miss Literature geek couldn't leave this one alone

Thu, 01 May 2008 02:45:52 GMT

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid (in Latin!)
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

I'm surprised -- I thought I would have read more of them. But note that just because I read it for school doesn't mean I haven't read it multiple times for fun.

Will the real Jane Austen please come forward?

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:40:16 GMT

Let's get this straight: I love Jane Austen as much as the next girl. Probably more than most girls, given my English-major background and historical dressing habits. But does the world really need (a minimum of) TWENTY-NINE separate authors writing "Austen-inspired" fiction? Twenty nine??? In my endless quest for non-heinous historical fiction, mysteries, or (hallelujah) historical mysteries, I asked the great god Amazon to send me "Jane and the Wandering Eye". Jane Austen, amateur sleuth, is a bit twee even for me, but I have to say the book was Not Too Bad. And now Amazon has recommended to me an untold number of similar tomes, mostly to do with the Darcy family, by the aforesaid (minimum of) twenty-nine authors. (Twenty-nine is where I stopped counting, and many of them had written multiple books.)

People, is is too much to ask that if you're going to make your living writing fiction, that you actually Invent The Plots And Characters By Yourself? Have you not noticed that pretty much all books "continuing" or "retelling" a classic work, not to put too fine a point on it, suck? When I want Austen, I'll take the real thing, thanks.

Another sewphisticate meme

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 05:43:03 GMT

1. Five-eighths, one-half or three-eighths?
Five-eights for big-3 patterns, one-half for everything else. 5/8 always seemed oddly random to me, and anything less than 1/2 makes me anxious.
2. Linen, cotton, wool or silk?
Silk! Or poly if it's decent, cotton or wool is nice... I never use linen. I hate ironing.
3. Stripes, solids or prints?
Not in a print-y place; stripes, solids or woven patterns.
4. Drape or draft?
Alter existing patterns! Draping is on my "learn to do" list; drafting sounds like way too much math.
5. Pins or weights?
I have NEVER been able to make the weights work. Everything is just way too wiggly.
6. Nipper or seam ripper?
Ripper! I like being able to get the point under one thread.
7. Pleats or ruffles?
PLEATS. All those nasty little drawstrings make me insane.
8. Wheel or scissors?
Scissors. See number 5 -- same problem.
9. Princess seams or darts?
Either, depending on usage. I like the look of princess seams, but they're more fiddly to get right over a full bust.
10. Flat-line or bag-line?
I always flat-line, occasionally bag-line as well. Usually not, since I like to leave alteration access. (Not that I have ever actually altered a bodice.)
11. Serge or French seam?
Don't have a serger. I flat-fell or french seam underpinnings, since they get laundered a bunch. Otherwise I zig-zag the raw edges to prevent fraying.
12. Invisible or original sliding?
I almost never use zippers. And I have never acquired the invisible zipper knack. So I have to go crying to mommy, which is annoying.
13. Hooks & eyes or lacings?
Generally hooks and eyes, since enormous visible metal grommets are a huge pet peeve of mine, and I'm way too lazy to do hand-bound. I also really like buttons.
14. Corset for comfort, or corset for look? (And no, you can’t claim both.)
Look. Duh.
15. Bind, pipe or face?
Facing = evil. I usually turn the edges with bias tape, but I love piping when I'm not feeling lazy.

Me me me me me!

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:10:47 GMT

sewphisticate's excellent costuming survey!

1

. Are you the type of stitcher who works on one project start to finish, or do you work several different projects at once?

I mean to be the former, but in reality I am the latter. I work on one till it annoys me (usually at bodice time) and then start another. It takes a deadline to get me to finish a bodice.

2. How do you decide which projects to begin? Need? Whim? Herd mentality?

Up to this point, need and whim. Either a fashion plate or some fabric that makes me say DAMN! But you CC-bound ladies are making me want a venetian REALLY badly. I haven't put on renaissance in about a decade, and have NO need for it, but I want I want I want!

3. What are the sorts of things that will cause you to hurl said project(s) into the corner and consign them to the pit of Hades?

When something VERY BAD happens. Usually a major error on my part. Recently I have: fitted a bodice muslin (in muslin) like a second skin, and then was startled when, once made up in taffeta, twill, and boning, it was inches too small. On the same project, I built a VERY elaborate bustle skirt onto black twill, and then found that the twill was bleeding. Somehow this happens to me a lot lately, and they all result in tantrums and time-outs in the sewing drawer.

4. Once consigned to Hades, will you ever return to the d*mned project and complete?

Nearly always, yes. It may take me a year, but I've never not completed something. I frequently have to decide that I don't hate the gown when I'm done.

5. What about those projects you complete, and then decide you hate for whatever reason (doesn’t fit, don’t really like how it looks on you, etc.) How do you dispose of them?

I need to ebay a set of Georgian stays that came up completely hideous on me. I have a whole closet full of gorgeous gowns that fit before I had babies. Currently they're loaners, but I might sell them to the local costume rental place or donate them to my sister's school's drama department.

6. When disposing of old costumes, do you pick off the good bits (the nice lace, the vintage buttons, etc.) to use on future projects, or does the dress move on to the great wardrobe in the sky more or less intact?

Oh heck yes! Anything that I bought at Joanne's can just leave, but vintage lace, czech glass buttons, etc. are MINE.

7. Of course imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but have you ever gone anywhere (including to various Web pages) and found a gown that looks suspiciously like one that you created?

No, but when I was fairly visible at the renaissance faire (a LONG time ago) people used to say "oh, that's so gorgeous, I need one, will you help me make mine?" Um, NO. But I never saw anything actually get made.

8. Have you ever lifted design elements from the gowns of other costumers? (Let me be specific: Not vintage garments, not film costuming, but gowns created by costumers you have come across, either at events, cons, or on the Web.)

Only in the most abstract way. Like, oh, the puffed sleeve is so much prettier on a lining, or look how she covered that elastic, I think I'll do that next time. But nothing more concrete. Costuming is my art and I don't see any point copying.

9. If you could pay someone to do one hated task involved in sewing, it would be…

CORSETRY. Fitting is just not a talent of mine, and I can't afford Dark Garden. I just muddle through with the help of talented friends. I may have to train my sons to cut stuff out for me before my knees and back completely give out. I do already bribe my husband to do my fittings, since he's good and it and I don't have a dummy.

10. What are you working on now?

I just finished two ballgowns, one 90s and one bustle, for the Gaskell ball last weekend. I have a half-finished elliptical cage crinoline and petticoat for an upcoming late-60's ballgown. And I have fabric for matching jammies for sister and her baby girl, for sister's birthday.

New Year's Eve

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:50:45 GMT

So this is my big project for the year -- along with some friends, I have been planning a Ball. A New Year's Eve ball, in Berkeley, CA. And if you're reading this, you're invited -- check us out at www.gildedgalas.com. The site is sensational -- Julia Morgan built it at the same time she was building San Simeon, and it shows. The band is incredible -- as anyone familiar with Bangers and Mash from the Dickens' Christmas fair knows. There will be finger food, dessert, champagne, men in tails and ladies in big swirly dresses -- what more could you ask for? We're selling a limited number of tickets, so get yours today!

I've been making a dress, or rather two dresses. It will be a race to the finish line, and then I'll decide (based on what's done) whether to wear the black-and-red-striped, over-the-top bustle gown or the peach changeable silk taffeta 1890s gown with embroidered pansies and silk satin ribbon. Flamboyant or tasteful? Hard to say at this point.

Must go pick up the kids. How do I have time to plan events and wrangle monkeys (I mean little boys)? G*d knows, but I consider it therapy.

My very first meme

Fri, 05 May 2006 20:41:21 GMT

Don't expect frequent postings here; I'm a busy mommy and if I get sucked into this, my minimal sewing time will evaporate. But the machine is in the shop, so here's a fun survey from my friend Sewphisticate:

1. You are limited to sewing costumes from ONE era (I was going to say one decade, but that's too soul crushing). NOTE: If you prefer fantasy or science fiction work, you must limit yourself to ONE movie or book series. Pick!
2. You must choose ONE color to work in for the rest of your life (NOT BLACK. NOT WHITE.) It is...
3. You must choose ONE type of fabric to sew on forever, it is... (and no, "silk" isn't good enough. Nor is "cotton." "Cotton voile," or "silk satin," however, are both suitable answers.)
4. Why did you choose that ONE fabric you just chose?
5. You can have only ONE costume whore DVD to watch forever. What is it?
6. You can keep only ONE of the costumes you have made. What is it and WHY?
7. You get only ONE website for research, or for diversion. You choose...
8. You can keep only ONE of your reference books (painful, I know). Which is it and WHY?
9. You may keep your machines, your scissors, your chalk, thread and pins, but you may have only ONE other sewing tool. It is...
10. The sewing g*ds are feeling a little guilty about their draconian measures, so you can have ONE costume from a movie, or stolen from someone's (anyone you choose!) closet for inspiration. You take...

1. This is in a way too easy, although I'm tempted to challenge myself. Gilded age: 1870-1915. That covers everything I'm currently obsessing over. But if I were going to challenge myself, I'd choose 18th century, which I adore and know nothing about. That would keep me busy for a long time!
2. Red. I just love it. And I can cheat into pink, rust and burgundy.
3. Silk doupioni. No brainer. And I KNOW, it's slubbed, it's not period, blah blah blah. I don't care; it's pretty.
4. I love the sheen; not satin-shiny, not flat mattte. I love the thousands of colors it comes in, I love the wild irridescent color combos, I love that it's easily available and reasonably priced. And I love how easy it is to sew!
5. The Buccaneers. Lots of scrumptious bustle gowns.
6. Tough one. Probably the bustle ballgown I'm working on right now, although with the bodice in pieces and the stripe matching making me crazy, it's hard to say. Otherwise, my "I'm going skating on the pond" 1870s plaid wool day dress.
7. Demode. Can't beat the real clothing links (is it cheating to follow a link somewhere?).
8. Now that is just MEAN! Jean Hunniset 1800-1900, for the patterns and construction advice.
9. Wait, I have to choose between a hand needle and a measuring tape???? OK, I'll use hook tape forever more, forget about buttons, and choose the measuring tape.
10. http://www.museumofcostume.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseAction=SM.nav&UUID=DB5563A8-C34C-48B7-9511936786E23DD7 If I get one dress to inspire me, it's gonna be Worth.