The Oxford Project

I troll for books. Shiny? Poignant? Ridiculously expensive? I'm interested. My coffee table is covered with books like Sibella Court's Etc., The Selby is in My Place and Love Hotels. This book is a welcome addition to that stack.

In 1984 Peter Feldstein photographed all but six of the residents of Oxford, Iowa. Twenty years later he did it again.

In a page or a paragraph and a picture, you find a story: love stories, tales of misspent youth, long held regrets and small but significant victories.

It is a beautiful, simple book.

The pillow plan

What do you do when your pillowcases get a little dingy? If you're me you decided to drown them in embroidery. This is one of the apparently 12,000 motifs I will have to finish in order to cover one side of a king sized pillow case. I am using water soluble stabilizer to transfer my patterns. I just trace the pattern onto my stabilizer, put it in the hoop with the fabric directly behind and start stitching.

This week's book is If the Buddha got Stuck. This is the second of the If the Buddha... books I've read. I also loved If the Buddha Dated. Dr. Kasl has an easy way of writing that asks you to look a little closer at what you hold true and why. She tweaks your thinking (if you let her).

I've also finished A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Though it was written 90 years ago, many of the points Woolf makes are still valid. Though at this point (at least in the West) a lot of the ideas that hold women back are self imposed rather than dictated by pipe smoking men reclining in calf-skin chairs. What I enjoyed most about this book was her humor. She compares the juice the seeps from prunes as what flows through the veins of misers. Who knew, Virginia. I may actually have to give To the Lighthouse another try.

Reading is Fundamental

Last week I discovered I am woefully under read. I've only read 10 of the Modern Library's List of the 100 Best Novels (the Board's List) and only 1 of the Modern Library's Best Nonficition Books (the Board's List). I fared much better on the Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels of all Time (thank you multiple centuries), but still ended up with 200 unread great books. Using the time honored scientific process of going through the list and picking titles I like, I compiled a list of 31 books I will read in 2011. They span from the voluminous (1536 pages) Clarissa by Samuel Richardson to The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. The complete list is on the sidebar.

Reading changes me. It expands my thinking, broadens my world and spurs my curiousity. I hope that by reading this span of books I will discover new things about myself and the world I help create.

Learning to love you more

Some books just get me. Like a person you've just met, but feel like you've known for years. . Days with my Father by Phillip Toledano I knew would be one of these books. When I saw it at the bookstore, I swooped it up like the last deviled egg at a 4th of July picnic. I read it and cried, and cried some more and thought about how small my own Dad is becoming.

The other book was a lark. Learning to love you more is based on the wildly popular (I didn't know anything about it) Internet visual art project. For 9 years, 9, people followed the assignments on the website and posted their results. The first assignment I saw was "Braid someone's hair."

I work with a girl I adore. She is smart and funny and precise in the way a twenty-something girl who not sure of her own footing is. Would I love her more if I braided her hair? Maybe. Her hair is always perfect. Mine is always not. The idea of her letting me do it. Mess up her perfection for however short a time (I imagine her fixing it in the car when she leaves work) does endear me to her. And what's more she'll let me do it. I'm feeling the love already.

The photo above is Assignment 27: Take a picture of the sun

It's in the bag

On family vacations no one offered to carry my suitcase even though I am the youngest and for quite a while, small. My family would stride briskly in front of me as I hobbled behind, listing to one side. And every vacation my Dad would say "What? Did you pack weights?". Until the trip to Lake Erie when I did pack 5 lb. ankle weights (Jane Fonda was popular. I was chunky). While my sister packed clothes, makeup and curling irons and my parents packed whatever parents pack. I packed books.

Nowadays I usually have 3 books on me at one time. I have something to read whatever my mood. Each week I'll highlight a book I am currently reading. Be prepared for a strange mix - I'm a complicated girl.