Adding diversity: Knitting needles

A friend recently asked about the difference between knitting needles: "I feel like in my experience a #4 needle is much like other #4 needles." When questioned, she admitted that yarns move differently on the needle. Some seem to flow just right. Some feel so slippery that they almost fall off the needle.

Those differences create a technical benefit for different knitting needles. This blog is going to grow a little bit and add thoughts on needles as well as books. Yarn may eventually join the fun.

It's time for Audible!!

After three years of mining the library's supply of Terry Pratchett audiobooks, during which time we have listened to some of the audiobooks multiple times, we are about ready to expand our audiobook collection. These are really expensive if bought outright.

It's time go to to Audible. We are thinking of starting with a subscription to Audible Gold because, as above, we have completely exhausted the library's supply of Terry Pratchett books. We thought about starting with an Audible free trial, but that was two years ago. Before we listened to Going Postal eight times. (Of note, there is an excellent movie version of Going Postal.)

Oh-hoh! Let's see if this works:

Heart Healers

James Forrester's book, Heart Healers, is one of the best medical books I've read in a long time. The author is a cardiologist whose career spanned and contributed to dramatic developments in the field of cardiology. He writes an engaging, thorough, informative, and often personal history of this era. This is a superb read, so good that I may have to buy my own copy instead of re-borrowing it from the library!

Out of fiction, and into finance

Over the last year, I've graduated from reading about finance online to real books. At a cousin's recommendation, I'm working through Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor. It's superb. Graham's practical evaluation of investing is tremendous, and his handling of the underlying issues of risk and decision-making are masterful. For those who want to dig a little deeper into historical background and concepts of risk, I highly, highly recommend Peter Bernstein's Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. It's on my re-reading list, and it may deserve its own dedicated post once I get back to it.

Graham's tome is really a long-term reading project. I can usually take about 1-2 chapters at a time, but I find it needs some time to soak in.

For reading on the lighter side, I borrowed a copy of Jeff Yeager's The Cheapskate Next Door. It's great. Yeager's humorous take on the stranger habits of cheapskates (or frugal folk, as I may choose to call them) balances a very pragmatic summary of frugal tips and tricks.

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A new NC find: Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster

This short gem tugs at the heart with a same gritty focus on the messed-up human condition, and it wasn't until I flipped through the author information at the end that I realized why it felt so familiar. Kaye Gibbons is from Chapel Hill, NC, and her writing shares regional similarities with some of my favorite modern Carolinian writers (for example, Clyde Edgerton).

Unlike some of my far less favorite Southern writers (William Faulkner), Gibbons' writing is infused with a sense of hope. It's also comprehensible. But the hope is what really stands out. Young Ellen Foster starts life with a dying mother, a deadbeat, abusive dad, a demented grandmother, and very little support of any type. She persistently solves problems, and each obstacle teaches her a little bit more.

There seems to be a new genre of Female Under the Odds. Way back when, there was a Rags to Riches genre of hardworking, morally straight young men who prospered despite all odds. The current genre is far more depressing, and often rather hopeless. Ellen Foster makes this group a little better, a little more positive, and definitely more defiant.

Worth a read. I will eventually grab more of Gibbons' books.

More on Wendell Berry: growing the wishlist.

My last post mentioned Wendell Berry as a recent discovery.

  From this review of Bonzo's and Stevens' guide to Berry, this quote:

The authors begin with the claim, "If we were asked to name one person to whom contemporary Christians need to listen, it would be this unlikely source, a man with no important connections to ecclesial or political corporate power." I would say this applies for all Americans today: Berry is the great prophet of our time and place.
And I doubt Messrs. Bonzo and Stevens would mind if I recommend that those new to Berry begin with his own books. Get a copy of his collected essays, or the poetry volume A Timbered Choir, or his sweeping novel Jayber Crow. Go someplace quiet and settle in. Prepare to have your worldview—whatever it is—upset. That's what prophets do.

Wendell Berry

Nathan Coulter deserves a full book review, though I may read more of the Port Royal series before eulogizing the initial offering. But briefly, I greatly enjoyed the book. I've paraphrased the quote below to a number of friends already, and was happy to find it requoted online since I thought the book was so good that I gave it away soon after reading it. Really, can you find a better recommendation than that???

Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you’d left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth.