Sugar Sugar by Carole Wilkinson

My English teacher absolutely insisted that we "relax" after exams last week by picking out a book from the wonderful selection at my school. Now normally, I am opposed to the idea of the school library due to the fact that the librarians are mean and they don't have a wide enough range of Lewis Carroll. This time though, a book on the latest fiction shelf caught my eye. So I sat down and read it until I was well into the book. And I turned out loving it.

Sugar Sugar is a fiction book set in the 70's about a young Australian girl, Jackie, living in London, who travels to Paris to fulfill her dream of becoming you guessed it, a fashion designer. Now, I know that sounds like the most predictable girly fiction book there is, but I am convinced it is much more than that.

Jackie loses her way, her dream, and her money but manages to get by in the most peculiar ways. From hitchhiking to sleeping in an Italian wheat field, this book shows traveling the other side of business class and Duty Free. And yes, there is a romance. With a mysterious boy Jackie met hitchhiking who left her politely on the side of the road. It is a very strange relationship.

I haven't finished the book yet, so unfortunately I can't ruin the ending for you, but I am dying to find out how she gets home and gets the boy.

That's about it. Read it, and live a little.

X.
For all those lovers of me out there, check out my blog.

Oh Jane, Jane....

C.E. Brock circa 1898
The rest of the watercolors from Emma

Not to hog the blog, so to speak, but I’m almost beside myself about Jane Austen’s Emma and am more surprised about that than anyone. In fact, this has been so pleasurable that I read the first four chapters, felt like I was being rushed, so I started over from the beginning.

The long forgotten pleasure of slowly savoring each delicious sentence of a book is gift from Miss Austen. She's already given me others, and I’ve only really Read (capital R) two chapters.

Until this slow read, I couldn’t have told you why women in particular seem to love Austen. Now I know. I read this enlightening passage of Emma out loud to my husband last night as he watched football, and though we aren’t one of "those" couples, he did have the good sense to nod and grunt affirmatively in all the right places.

Austen was forty when she wrote Emma, if Wiki is to be believed and the wisdom of years comes through in her evaluation of what constitutes happiness within a mature relationship or in the case of the above passage, the lack of said same. It should be laminated and stuck into every bridal magazine ever published. In fact, (spoiler alert *waves at DeLynne) I might take this up as my personal mission, which tells you I have yet to learn the pitfalls of meddling in other people’s lives and should keep reading.

The other thing that has surprised me is that Austen is a mistress of devastatingly subtle humor. I don’t know if humor was her intention, but funny is funny. I cannot tell you how very much I truly want to “throw” some offensive someone “off with due decorum” and to disapprove of their “sort of spirit” with Austen's level of understatement. No one in particular, yet, but that is a social art worth cultivation, to my mind. The beauty of it is that they wouldn’t know they’d been insulted until they were far enough away to discourage retaliation. What’s not to like??

Here I invite, encourage, prod and meddle. Read Emma with me if you haven’t already. Read it again if you have. If nothing else, you’ll find you can call someone a whining hypochondriac without them taking offense. Just use the word valetudinarian and leave off the whining part.

Greetings from the Knit Café, Weekend Knitting and Luxury Knits

Today I had a minor medical emergency and spent almost two hours in the doctors' office. Knowing before I left how long the wait might be, I took my knitting. I am an almost compulsive knitter at times (some obsessive tendencies, here) and have been seen knitting everywhere. There's been a bit of a hiatus, and I felt the need to take back up my needles.

So I sat and sat and knit and knit and in walks this woman. Her beret was nearly horizontal on the side of her head, and I thought; 'Now THAT's a jaunty angle!' She's one of the types of people most of us avoid eye contact with. She stands in the middle of the waiting room and asks, 'Would anyone like a glass of water?' I politely decline, but undeterred, this offer was made to each new-comer to the room.

Then, from her capacious bag she pulls out crocheting and sets to work, just like me. How strange it struck me. You just don't often see needle work of any kind in public anymore, and here we were two kindred spirits, with very little else in common.

From across the room she nodded at my lap and enquired, 'Scarf?' I replied, 'No, slippers.' She worked quietly for the rest of my wait, only pausing to offer liquid refreshment.

And in my rambling way, this brings me to my current bedtime reading. I must now confess that despite the amount of time I've spent over the years working on my knitting, I am only consistently successful with flat, rectangular projects. Washers, dishcloths, scarves, wraps, coasters and hot pads. I churn them out. And they are wonderful, but I am longing to make more things that are shaped properly, you know, with armholes.

So, like a kid unable to ride a two wheeler who spends hours watching motorbike races, I read knitting books. I lust after the patterns and the photos, and imagine myself wearing something that makes people say, 'That's really lovely!' instead of, 'Did you make that yourself?'

And below are some of my current bedtime books. I nod off and dream of wearing some of the creations in these beautiful books.

Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick has projects that look simple enough for me. They are trendy, colourful, cheerful and small.

Amanda Griffiths' Luxury Knits has beautiful, classic designs, but they look way out of my league. I read some reviews on Amazon that said one of her books had lots of errata, too. So for me this is a definite 'dream' book.

But my favourite in the stack is Greetings from the Knit Café by Suzan Mischer. It's so cheerful and bright, with a large variety of patterns. Baby, adult, simple, elaborate, large and small, they are all here, even flat ones! You can knit for a person or your home with this book. It also has recipes, music suggestions and the history of the Knit Café, an actual place in West Hollywood, apparently. The models are real customers and the book has a scrapbook style that is very appealing. This is a great book for lusting over.

Am I the only one who reads about projects she'll never accomplish, or does anyone do something similar? What's your favourite fantasy DIY publication?

And, by the way, I never worked out where that glass of water was going to come from…

The shame.

Hi. Uhm, my name is Tracy and, uhm, I, uh…oh geez.

Well, okay, it’s like this: I haven’t read most of the classics. It’s worse than that. I haven’t read any of the classics unless I was compelled to do so by someone with a Ph.D. who had the power to keep me from getting my B.S. I hang my head in shame, ask for lenience and wonder if I would still have had to spell check lenience if I had paid more attention to literature and less to “books.”

Still, I really gotta say, I’ve always found the classics to be a lot of work. My right brain doesn’t mind. My left brain objects and it does so vehemently, but I’ve been inspired by everyone here at Mrs. B.G.’s to rectify the situation.

Kindle has 49,990 books under the heading “Fiction Classics” so I decided to begin with the 140 ^th to correspond with what will be the 140^th post of Mrs. B.G.’s, this one. It turned out to be an Agatha Christie novel. Somehow that wasn’t quite what I had in mind, so I decided to start here:

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition…”

I think my left brain likes her already.

Biblio-Liberation Army Unite! A Report From The Front Line!

If you missed my post about Restoration Hardware mutilating books and reselling them as objets d'art, catch up here: Artful Biblioclasm?!

Saturday, my family spent the day in Tulsa with the main event being my fabulous birthday lunch at PF Chang's. Chang's is always one of my favorite restaurants but I had an ulterior motive in choosing it over any other. The restaurant is located in the ritzy Utica Square shopping center which just happens to house a Restoration Hardware store. No way could I pass up a chance for a little reconnaissance.

Just inside the door, this sight welcomes shoppers:

The store is very spartan; mainly furniture vignettes, a few shoppers and too many bored salespeople lurking about. Definitely a situation requiring stealth. I sat on the itchy Belgian linen sofa behind the basket and said to my five year old: You look so cute. Stand right there and let me take your picture.

Since my main quest was to scope out which books were being abused, I glanced though a few of the bundles in the basket. The twine isn't tight so the books can be pulled apart slightly to see titles/authors. Then, while hubby and son exclaimed over other objets d'art and engaged the salespeople, I glanced though bundles all over the store, jotting down titles and taking more photos-- some with no flash. Sneaky, huh... I knew reading thrillers would come in handy someday. ;o)

I was expecting to see very old hardbacks since the photos on the RH website showed discolored vintage looking books.

But you can see that the ones in the store are newish and most used to be paperbacks.

A few of the titles: Spartacus, Pilot's Wife, Fright Night, Night Star, Les Miserables. Also some non-fiction, self-help and spiritual.

A few of the authors: V.C. Andrews, Jackie Merritt, Robert James Waller, Rosamunde Pilcher.

That one with the large title is a Reader's Digest book.

Obviously no book is safe.

As unpleasant as it was to see these poor naked books, it could have been worse. I most dreaded seeing my beloved books or lots of classics. They are probably in bundles in other RH stores but at least I didn't see them... I didn't cause a scene or start a riot... and I didn't get thrown in the pokey.