The part of my work life that takes place at an elementary school has recently been affording me the privilege of sitting in on a seminar of 6th-8th graders. I love middle schoolers, and I love to watch them explore their liminal kid/adult roles and come to grips with their new awarenesses. Their task during the first 50 minutes of the school day is to read and discuss and argue about big ideas, and under the extraordinary leadership of their veteran teacher, they do so with confidence and insight. They’re about to start in on To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favorite books, and I can’t wait to see what they make of it. And so I’ve been thinking about books that really stick with you, that stamp themselves on your person, change the way you think and what you expect of yourself and of others. Then I saw the Unread Books list over at Katie’s:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of some days ago). Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

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 — reading it again soon, because my brother gave me the new Edith Grossman translation for Christmas
Moby Dick
Ulysses – I’ve read excerpts. I was intrigued.
Madame Bovary – reading it right now! Yay nerdy bookclub!
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice****
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma**
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner– does it count if I read the manuscript and haven’t yet read the finished book? I know they softened the ending, at least, and changed the wife character…
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 – good enough for a beach read, which it was for me, but irrevocably spoiled by a few lines of truly horrific innuendo involving eels and caves. I shudder to think of it.
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 – but I was only in 9th grade. I’ll probably try it again.
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 and demons
The 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 corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
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: a novel
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 motocycle maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
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
The three musketeers

This is an odd list: I’ve no idea how it was complied, and can only assume titles like Time Traveller’s Wife, Curious Incident, and Kite Runner show up here because they’ve loomed so large on the pop lit scene of late, and therefore they’re on people’s minds as books they think they ought to read (or vow never to read, if they’re contrarians). But there are many books on the list that I consider really important, whose characters have taken up residence in my mind and whose themes have affected me deeply, and I feel pity for all those folks who haven’t discovered them yet.

As for my own current reading, Madame Bovary is engaging, which surprised me a little. I was half expecting I’d need to pull up my socks and apply myself to get into it, but it caught me right away when I started reading on the flight home on Monday. Despite my exhaustion, I blazed through the first six chapters. I also need to get going on Longitude for a school faculty retreat in a month, and I’m thinking I may try to get it on audio so I can listen and knit. The Subtle Knife is on my bedside table: I’m rereading Philip Pullman’s trilogy in the hope of cementing it in my mind before the coming movies recolor my images of the characters and story. And at the risk of offending delicate sensibilities, I also have a dedicated bathroom book. It’s Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry, and it’s been installed on the bathroom shelf since the middle of last winter (all praises upon the former residents who thought to build a bookshelf above the WC). It’s such a languid river of a book, and its inhabitants are so richly drawn, that it’s perfect for just dipping in for a beautiful chapter once a week or so.

So what about you? What books burn brightest in your memory? Because winter is coming, and my favorite local socialist institution is richly stocked, and I’m beginning to think there’s really something to this idea of books on tape + knitting.

Mr. Garter and I zipped off to Boston over the weekend for the wedding of two good friends. Naturally, this entailed a lot of last-minute scurrying around, taking our wedding finery to the drycleaners and scheduling haircuts and lining up neighbors to feed the cat and printing driving directions and — most importantly — figuring out what to knit on the plane. Hence, the blog post I started to draft never quite got off the ground, and then I didn’t touch a computer for four whole days. This may be a record for the year, which alarms me just a little, but I’m happy to report I didn’t feel any symptoms of withdrawal. I did, however, feel guilty about not having fed the blog before I went away. Do forgive the hiatus.

So what was I knitting on the plane? I had started a little lace project earlier in the week. The wedding was to be “daytime formal”, and here at Blue Garter we don’t stock a lot of haute couture. My best dress is inherited from Mr. G’s Fashion-Plate Beverly Hills Grandmother, may she rest in peace. It’s lovely, but I feel certain that at one time it had some sort of belt or sash or something in the middle. It needs it. So naturally, I thought I’d knit one to match my shoes. I was in possession of a skein of Habu cashmere laceweight (nabbed on sale) in a complimentary shade. Why is it that it seems like such a brilliant idea to just whip up a little something in yarn the weight of spider silk on size 2 needles when you know the thing needs to be blocked and buttoned in five days’ time? I know I’ve had these impulses before, and I know I cursed myself for giving in to them, and yet it seems I haven’t learned a thing from the experience. At any rate, I pulled it off this time.

I’ll admit to getting certain kicks out of setting foot on a hallowed Ivy League campus. The brick, the lawns, the art museum… you can practically smell the bookish geekdom. Of course there was an entirely different scene kittycorner across the Yard. It was Octoberfest in Harvard Square.

This piratey stilt-clown guy snuck up on me. I totally didn’t know he was there in this picture, except that my camera man was grinning suspiciously.

That other plum-colored bit of knitting I’m wearing isn’t my own work. It’s the Shibui Lace Shrug, and it’s really lovely, and it matched my shoes perfectly.

The wedding (at Memorial Church; we didn’t get all dolled up and go to Harvard just to be quirky) was joyous, and it was a delight to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in five years. This is a crowd I know from the time I spent teaching school in the Bahamas, and they’re top-notch people. You know you’re among top-notch people when, during the wedding supper, everyone around you is suddenly wearing a ridiculous wig. At first it’s your goofy friends, and it’s just good nostalgic fun because the wigs (along with hula hoops) were a favorite party accessory for nights on the dock drinking Kalik beer. But pretty soon the wee flower girls are decked out as Elvis and Little Orphan Annie, and the bride’s father is cutting up the dance floor in a fluorescent pink bob. The wedding pictures are going to be tough to explain, I’m afraid. We had to leave the festivities all too early in order to snatch a few hours’ sleep before the morning flight home.

As it turned out, we missed our connection at Newark and were left with eight hours to wait until the next plane. I was in no mood to spend that much time in my second-least-favorite airport, even after the customer service counter attendant pointed out that there was a “meditation room” available. So we caught the train into the city and enjoyed a quick visit with my brother and his fiancée and a few other good friends. We could hardly keep our eyes open, but it was worth it.

And fortunately, I didn’t have to knit little scraps of lace on the way home. I’d brought my two sweaters to work on, and some lazy hours with my pal Mia and the fabulous entertainment of the Planet Earth DVDs gave me ample knitting time: there’s a veritable sea of blue ribbing in my tote bag just now. More on that next time. Just now I need to get some sleep. Mr. G caught a cold on the way home and I’ve no wish to contract it!

Yesterday evening I donned my favorite stripey tights, a cute skirt, my Hourglass Sweater, and my best chocolatey Sherwood Forest boots, and I took myself off to the book launch party for Kristin Spurkland’s The Knitting Man(ual). Anyone who keeps a man of any size at home knows that good knitting patterns for blokes are scarce as good ideas in the White House. (Oops, did I just write that? Ahem.) Kristin’s new book, I’m delighted to report, goes a long way toward amending that. Her patterns are simple and clean, thoroughly modern but respectful of tradition. Click the link above for a peek at a few of the clever designs. And there are many of them in this generous collection. Mr. Garter took a gander when I brought the book home, and after he finished rhapsodizing over the handsomely shaped Saturday Morning Slippers (who knew the guy wanted slippers so badly? I feel so guilty that I never asked before!), he had praise for nearly every design. This is the kind of book that keeps on giving: the clean and inviting design of the book itself draws you on, and the good patterns just keep coming. Twenty-two are listed in the table of contents, but some are groups of patterns (a trio of individual hats, for instance) and many include additional directions for variations. Mr. G deemed the Everyday Sweater particularly alluring:

It’s just a brown wool pullover in stockinet — the perfect staple for gents who want a sweater to coordinate with all three pairs of their trousers and all twenty-seven of their geeky tech conference T-shirts — but the unexpected green square on the back elevates it to memorability and most likely to Favorite Sweater status.

Me, I’ve lost my heart this one:

It’s the kind of thing you’d knit for your sweetie just so you could steal it back. I’ve always been dubious about the faintly tacky hand of Rowan Felted Tweed on the skein, but the sample was soft as a bunny’s underpants — the stickiness was gone and served only to lock those colorwork stitches into place and to adhere the floats to the fabric. You could be nekked under there making your French-press espresso in total comfort.

It’s possible my first blush of allegiance to this book could have been influenced by the delicious handmade pretzels and free-flowing Bridgeport Ale at the signing, but the strong designs will keep me coming back for inspiration and counterchecks in my own work, and I feel certain that several of these patterns will be on my needles once the next wave is complete. Thanks and kudos to Kristin for her strongest book yet, and I’ll be looking forward to the next one!

After four halcyon weeks of September sun, the Oregon rain arrived last night. Yesterday I did my research outside on the lawn, basking in the warmth we know will never last, and managed one more evening lounging in a friend’s backyard as our bookclub met to discuss Cry, the Beloved Country. (Next up: Madame Bovary. We are the geek squad of bookclubs, and we like it that way.) Granted, we did our lounging fortified with hot toddies of whiskey and spiced cider and had a merry fire in the outdoor fireplace Eliza and her husband built themselves, but the night air was pleasant and dry. During the small hours of the morning, the first big drops spattered the skylight and spooked the cat, and he scuttled up to curl himself under my chin and purr us both back to sleep.

It was almost comical, the feeling I had when I awoke to the steady drizzle and the zliss of car tires on the wet pavement: “Oh, this is real life again.” As if the whole sun-dazzled summer had been nothing but a fever dream, and here we were waking to the wet reality of Oregon again. It wasn’t a depressing thought; we children of the northwest have a broad streak of puddleduck in our natures. Rainy days are cozy days, and the ancestral climate of knitters besides. Wool between the fingers never feels better than on the wet days when we can stay in our nests, perhaps beside the fire with a good radio program or an audio book or an old movie and a warm lap cat for company.

Of course, this is a workday, but a girl can fantasize. There are a few projects to wrap up, and a wealth of new ones to begin. I have a sweater’s worth of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed and a fresh design crooning to me, and I just received the wool for my next ShibuiKnits project, which must be finished by November. (It’s a sweater, using Merino Kid and Sock in the beautiful blue called Rapids. Can’t tell you too much more, although you’ll see a few teaser pictures next month.) Then there’s my brother. I love him, in the unforgettable words of Anne Lamott’s small son in her excellent writing book Bird by Bird, “like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops.” But you’d never know it from the state of the kid’s handknit collection. He has only this measley Fishtrap swatchcap (modelled by me – we look alike, but not that much alike):

The dude needs a sweater in the worst way. It’ll be like my contribution to his hope chest before he gets married next May. I have yarn (pumpkin orange Morehouse Merino 2-Ply), I have pattern (Teva Durham’s Irregular Rib Raglan with Toggle) — all I need is time and volition. Is it too much to think I could finish three sweaters before Christmas? Let’s hope for lots of rainy days. Meantime, I’ll leave you with my favorite anonymous rain poem:

The rain it raineth all around
Upon the just and unjust fella
But mostly on the just because
The unjust stole the just’s umbrella.

Any other favorite rain poems out there?