Getting Caught Up on the Nightstand

Over my long and leisurely vacation, I read a great deal. Mostly my mother's magazines, which I would never buy, but are great fluff reading. However, in between issues of Reader's Digest and Ladies' Home Journal, I also plowed through several books.

I read Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun, which I was lucky enough to find at Half Price Books. I love Get Fuzzy, especially the little "inside jokes" Darby Conley slips into the picture, like the fact that Bucky's closet has a Slytherin poster, while Satchel's room has a Hufflepuff poster.

Then, I read The Encyclopedia of Knitting front to back. I am going to teach myself a new way of casting on and casting off for the new sweater I am about to start. I'm finished with the knitting part of my Ravenclaw scarf, but I still have to block it and put the fringe on the end. I have a kicking acrylic/mohair blend chunky yarn that is just BEGGING to be made into a soft, fuzzy sweater that I can slip on and feel like I went to law school in my PJs. I'm still mucking around with the guage, since the yarn is not the exact texture of the yarn recommended by the pattern book, but since I have no intention of paying $11.95 a skein for the yarn recommended by the pattern book (the kicking yarn was on clearance for $2.00 per skein AND I had a 40% off coupon), I'm going to adjust the pattern and needles to fit the yarn.

Then, I read the first few chapters of Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. It was a fascinating premise, but the book is so poorly written that I quit after the first two chapters and a skim of parts of the rest of the book.

In the car on the way back to Our Fair City, I read Are You Really Going to Eat That?, a collection of columns and essays written by the man Liane Hanson calls "The Indiana Jones of Culinary Writing". It was like porn for this budding foodie. I totally want this guy's job. He even makes oysters sound almost appetizing to me. Almost.

In the park on Sunday, I started reading The Grand Tour. One of Tim Moore's other books graced my nightstand back in April or so, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I heartily recommend it, especially if you are a fan of Mil Milington (whose first novel I read right before starting law school and loved-- though it has nothing in common with the website save the name and excellent dryly funny writing). The Grand Tour is not disappointing at all.

This morning, I started reading Memoiren eines mittelmässigen Schülers. This book must be commonly assigned on German reading lists, as I constantly find copies of it at Half Price Books. I picked this one up partially because the title catches my eye, partially because I see it so often, yet was never asked to read it in any of my German classes ever, and partially because the little hedgehog on the dtl edition of it is so cute. It's been on my bookshelf for several years. Now that I've started it, I can't imagine why I've never read it before. It's hysterical! The humor is dry yet ludicrous, very Monty Python-esque. However, I doubt very much that it would translate well, as it's very culturally dependent. The book is slim and small, so it's my subway reading.