I have seen flowers come in stony places

There are advantages to being a slummy gardener, such as when your sunflower heads that you'd carefully been preserving for the birds collapse with the growhouse, and you don't properly clear up either them or all the soil that came out of the pots that also came down with the growhouse, then one day in nearly-spring you go outside and find sunflower seeds valiantly sprouting in the spray of soil on your back yard, and it brings almost untellable joy to the heart.
Treasure Island was pretty good though it could only be described as a boy's book.
Last night I was feeling slightly Sunday night-ish and in need of some fiction that wasn't going to tax me too much to read, so I picked up 18 Anne Enright's The Gathering, which I found won a Booker prize a couple of years back (so helps in my quest to read them all).
I don't know what to say about it, quite - I mean, it did the job of removing me from the world a bit, and kept me interested enough that I didn't want to do anything else this morning until I'd finished it, but perhaps I'm losing my appetite for modern novels a bit, just because they're just too dam' short - you've not started before you've finished. And all the trend for a really short timespan - this one covers current events of about a fortnight, though with plenty of flashbacks - means you don't quite get to develop into being interested in the characters since you're not seeing them change, only getting additional revelations from the narrator. When this works, it works gorgeously and captivatingly (should I start on again about Gilead and Home?) but when it's not quite successful it can mean the book doesn't really haul you in, and this one didn't. OK, so I cried a little at the end, but already I am over them - there's no part of me wanting to carry on thinking about any of the characters. I don't want to spoil any plot for anyone, but it's set in rural Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, and there are darkly buried secrets, so you might not find it too hard to guess what it's about.
I will spare the feelings of the reader, by the way, by promising not to write about the economics textbook that I'm wading my way through today.

We need to talk about Gilead

Anonymous asked me what to do if you started Home and didn't like it.
Of course, I don't really know how to answer that because I can't imagine how you could start it and not like, but then, Gilead was written first so I suppose you should read it first, really.

The thing is that I loved it even more than Home, but so much of that was because Home is told from what turns out to be such an incomplete perspective. Home is all hints at the past and part-stories and implication that terrible things have happened, so reading Gilead after it is like shining lights into all of the corners, only that's wrong, because it's still only glowing, not really lit.
The voice in Gilead is more real, and John Ames becomes a character that you have to care so deeply about and, through him, you care about Jack too, in a way that you can't so much in Home. The reverend's internal wrestlings, his tortured attempts at honesty with himself, and the piles of regret about how and why things have happened in his life and that of others - they all pulled me in, in a way that made the behinds of my eyes hurt. If you didn't like Home, I'd say you should try again, because I think this was a fortunate and lovely way round to read the two, but if you can't, then I implore you to try Gilead.

I think I've reached 15, which was Verne's Around the world in eighty days. I did enjoy it, though not in an eye-hurty way, and of course I was a little let down by the fact that there wasn't a lion in a top hat dancing round a lamp post.

Still on what you might call the classics, and making good use of my ebook reader, I went straight on to the very very quick read of 16 The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - atmospheric and fun and actually with plenty of food for thought, and since I'm ashamed to say I've never read Treasure Island it's moved me on to starting that, number 17 and promising to be another speedy read, but no less good for that.

Completer-finisher weekend - part 2

By dint of barely leaving my chair other than for domestic necessities, I've managed my goal of finishing number 11, Crime and Punishment, this weekend. I always get to a point of wanting to finish something even when I'm loving it, and this one has kept me engaged and troubled for weeks at about 5 pages a night, but I was ready for a bit of immersion and have finally had it.
I wasn't expecting a happy ending! (Though you must admit he's no Agatha Christie - I mean, I'd worked out who did it almost straight away....)
The welshman has done his part by completer-finishing some shelves, so all's good and organised and I get to start thinking about new things. Knitting-wise, it's a sock, I suppose I should say a pair of socks, though one seems hard enough; on the reading front I'll be choosing something else from the ebook reader, though I don't yet know what, but perhaps I'll take a day or two away from fiction and start 14 Galbraith's The Affluent Society which I found in a pelican the other day and is calling to me.
Why have I skipped 13? Not superstition: I just haven't talked yet about Gilead, which is essentially a sequel to Home but left me so bereft that I've not yet geared up the strength to write about it. I will.

Completer-finisher weekend

The cardigan is finished!
(Well, not technically absolutely finished, it's just on top of the wardrobe blocking (being blocked?), but the ends are all sown in, and the button's on, so as soon as it's dry it's good to go).
Please send me wishes that baby Caitlin isn't going to have, while waiting for it, grown too big to fit in it. I can't bear to find out in person: I'm going to stick it through the letterbox in an envelope tomorrow morning.

I also finally finished The uses of literacy which was the first book that I started this year - I think it will go into the area that I'm glad I've read, but probably wouldn't rush back to. It's just a little too closely of its time and some of the attitudes shown in it are a little bit off-putting to me, now. Having said this, it's definitely enthused me to continue both adding to and reading through my pelican collection.

It would be brilliant and not entirely unachievable to finish Crime and Punishment this weekend, too, and if I do then I'll be going on and on about it.

What are the chances...

...that this will ever turn into a cardigan?

They seem remote. It doesn't help that I'm a week behind on the economics, I have a needy and demanding cat, and am feeling parched from a lack of reading. I think the problem may be this whole full time job thing, which in itself springs from some other stuff, and so on.
These may all just be excuses for not wanting to knit an interminable button band.

On hope of spring

We all know that TS Eliot had it wrong and that February is, in fact, the cruellest month. There's nothing to be said for it, no light, no warmth, no comfort - the only thing to do is huddle up and wait for spring.
So this morning I went through all of my seed packets writing down the earliest possible dates I could plant them and pulled out, cackling, all that allowed the possibility of February.
39 cells of my propagator are now full of potential and the possibility of redemption. And I think my fingers should recover movement within the next few hours.

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