Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Handiwork – Sara Baume

Cover of Handiwork by Sara Baume
handiwork – Sara Baume

I can’t remember where I first heard about this book, but I do like a ‘craft memoir’.

Here’s the blurb …

handiwork is a contemplative short narrative from acclaimed writer and visual artist Sara Baume. It charts her daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. handiwork offers observations at once gentle and devastating, on the nature of art, grief and a life lived well. Baume’s first work of non-fiction offers readers a glimpse into the process of one Ireland’s best writers, written with the keen eye for nature and beauty as well as the extraordinary versatility Sara Baume’s fans have come to expect.

This is beautifully written – I will have to read more of Ms Baum’s work. It’s also a very personal account of making things, family, collections of objects, and out space – how we fill it and how we use it.

I do this too – knitting or stitching in front of the TV.

The television flickers and I listen to it. In most cases, a story can be followed from sound alone, but I glance up every now and again in order to identify speakers, in order to maintain some kind of visual momentum through each programme.

This too withe post its

[…] several post-its glued to the window frame – they are luminous pink, green and yellow; they are measurements and calculations, instructions and reminders; they are mantras, spells, codes.

Surely all craft’s people know this

it is not always a case of finishing one thing and going on to the next.’

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Filed under 5, Digital, Format, Miscellaneous, Non-Fiction, Recommended

With her Own Hands – Nicole Nehrig

With Her Own Hands – Nicole Nehrig

This book was all the rage among my crafty friends. Who doesn’t like to read a book about textiles, grief, mental health, etc.?

Here’s the description

A rich and intimate exploration of how women have used textile work to create meaningful lives, from ancient mythology to our current moment.

Knitting, sewing, embroidery, quilting?throughout history, these and other forms of textile work have often been dismissed as merely “women’s work” and attached to ideas of domesticity and obedience. Yet, as psychologist and avid knitter Nicole Nehrig wonderfully explores in this captivating book, textile work has often been a way for women to exercise power. When their voices were silenced and other avenues were closed off to them, women used the tools they had?often a needle and thread?to seek freedom within the restrictive societies they lived in.

Spanning continents and centuries, With Her Own Hands brings together remarkable stories of women who have used textiles as a means of liberation, from an eighteenth-century Quaker boarding school that used embroidered samplers to teach girls math and geography to the Quechua weavers working to preserve and revive Incan traditions today, and from the Miao women of southern China who, in the absence of a written language, pass down their histories in elaborate “story cloths” to a midcentury British women’s postal art exchange. Textiles have been a way for women to explore their intellectual capacities, seek economic independence, create community, process traumas, and convey powerful messages of self-expression and political protest.

Heartfelt and deeply moving, With Her Own Hands is a celebration of women who have woven their own stories?and a testament to their resilience.

This was incredibly well researched – a PhD thesis, but still accessible to a casual (uniformed) reader. I did get a bit stuck with all of the terrible things that happened and how women used textile craft to find solace and meaning. There is only so much misery I can read about it one go.

If you are at all interested in social history, textiles, women’s history, then you will find this book fascinating and insightful.

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Filed under 3, Digital, Miscellaneous, Non-Fiction, Paper, Recommended, Serious

John of John – Douglas Stuart

John of John – Douglas Stuart

Someone recommended this online and I immediately downloaded the Audible book.

Here’s the blurb …

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

I have been having a bit of a Scottish islands thing – this novel, and the movie The Road Damce. This is my first Douglas Stuart novel, but it won’t be my last. I loved this story of religion, family, community, and forbidden love. The writing is beautiful – I particularly enjoyed all of the references to colour. John is a weaver (as well as a farmer) and he and Cal have an extraordinary eye for colour. The descriptions of the landscape and the farming practices are brilliant. It is a small, poor, very religious community with not a lot to keep the young people at home – fishing and farming. Cal is gay, openly on the mainland, but not out at home. His community is presbyterian (of the old sort) and he would be demembered if anyone knew. However, his father, who leads the singing at church, has a secret.

John, with his casual violence, would be a monster, but we see things from his point of view and can appreciate his struggle between faith and love.

This is the story of many remote communities where the living is hard, money scarce and opportunities few. Yet it is not depressing to read and in the end there is hope for a better future.

A review.

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Whistler – Ann Patchett

Whistler – Ann Patchett

I listened to this one – it is narrated by Ann Patchett!

Here’s the blurb …

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

This was a lovely story – no one had evil intent – it was about ordinary people doing the best they could. It’s about family, forbidden love, sibling relationships, and societal expectations. I do like to read a story where the author is kind to the characters – shows multiple sides so we can understand their behavior.

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2025 in Review

My 5 star books for the year

According to Storygraph, I have read 88 books this year (A bit less than last year).

I did a range of audio (40%), digital(16%) and paper (44%).

My favourite book of the year was Audition – because it was beautifully written and had an interesting (shocking?) structure.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a crime fan, but there were many crime books with a 5 rating (particularly those by Louise Penny)

My only plan for 2026 is to read more of my book pile.

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The Lion Women of Tehran (Chapters 15, 16 and 17) – Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran – Marjan Kamali

Chapter 15 1960 October

Homa and Ellie meet at the bottom of the Alborz Mountain. It’s a beautiful day and lots of people are preparing to hike.

Homa is taken with the beauty and fresh air.

She admits that she doesn’t always work on a Friday sometimes she goes to the mosque. After he father went to prison her mother found religion.

[…] The world is ours. We stood there our heads touching. What she [Homa] said was absurd. The world was vast and broken and filled with strife. The world was chaotic and owned by men. Not by us.

Chapter 16 1960 October

Homa and Ellie join Mehrdad and his friend Abdol (also new from “downtown” – what is Mehrdad thinking?).

They eat and Homa gets the idea that they are trying to set her up with Abdol. She reacts with terrible table manners.

No offense to him; he was a nice obviously serious and studious fellow. But don’t try to set me up Ellie. I have my studies. I have my maman. I have Sara. And Ali Reza. I don’t need a boy. I am on a course, Ellie. I have plans. I certainly hope my rude eating put him off for good. I don’t have time for this nonsense.

She (Homa) did look into Mehrdad’s eyes and decided that he is a good man, Ellie will be happy. She makes a point of saying Ellie will be happy implying that she wouldn’t be happy.

Chapter 17 1961-1963

The pace of the story is picking up (finally).

Ellie, Homa and Mehrdad are all at Tehran University. Ellie is studying English and Literature, Homa Law and Mehrdad Chemistry.

In their second year Mehrdad takes Ellie to a “chelo kababi” (Dinner). He wants to talk about their future. He proposes, but he wants the wedding to be after they have graduated. Then he will get a stipend and they can get a place of their own.

Then it is the formal asking for permission to marry. Her mother has a bit of a moment – Ellie is her only child.

“She is mine”

The mother is also worried about the evil eye.

I sank further into the sofa. Wishing I could escape from the world the concept of an evil eye. Wishing I didn’t constantly have to worry about others jinxing me.

“Even those who love you the most can ruin your life, you know Ellie”, Mother said. “Even the ones you trust the most”

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The Lion Women of Tehran (Chapter 3) – Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran – Marjan Kamali

Remember lots of spoilers.

Chapter Three 1950

Ellie starts school. She walks herself to school following the directions of Uncle Massoud (is her mother depressed? sad? or just useless). She is hoping to meet an amazing girl who will become her best friend. She just meets an annoying girl.

Five weeks later, on a Wednesday, she is heading home for lunch (they get 2 hours!). Her mother makes her pick the stones and grit out of the rice (apparently the mother’s eyes don’t work very well from all of the crying). And then the mother is too tired to prepare anything else, so they have rice and yogurt. On the way back to school she meets the annoying girl, Homa, who, after calling her a donkey asks her to play – hopscotch, 5 stones. They race back to school (Ellie enjoys the running).

This is still a setting the scene chapter. Homa has just been introduced, any sympathy for the mother is declining and Uncle Massoud is taking at least minimal care of them.

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Filed under Fiction, Historical Fiction, Miscellaneous, Paper, Summary

2024

Some of 2024’s favourites

2024 was a good reading year for me. I read 118 books – a range of print, digital and audio. More fiction than non-fiction.

I had a soft target of 100 books.

My top four books are

  • There are Rivers in the Sky – Elif Shafak
  • Enlightenment – Sarah Perry
  • Intermezzo – Sally Rooney
  • You Are Here – David Nicholls

In 2025 I want to read some of the books in my print TBR (I think it would be impossible to read them all). And I would like to purchase fewer print books (not enough space), although this might also prove to be difficult. With paper books you can lend them to friends.

I have joined a book club, but we’re only meeting four times a year and I will need to buy the books for that.

I also plan to keep track of the books I purchase, can I do that on Storygraph? Actually, I think I will do it on Pinterest.

I will aim to finish 100 books this year.

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Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

I have wanted to read Barbara Comyns for a while and then I listened to a Slightly Foxed podcast about a Comyns biography and I was even keener. I found this one as an audio book from Borrowbox.

Here’s the blurb …

This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, “quacking their approval” as they sail around the room. “What about my rose beds?” demands Grandmother Willoweed. Her son shouts down her ear-trumpet that the garden is submerged, dead animals everywhere, she will be lucky to get a bunch. Then the miller drowns himself . . . then the butcher slits his throat . . . and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, “Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?” Through it all, Comyns’ unique voice weaves a narrative as wonderful as it is horrible, as beautiful as it is cruel. Originally published in England in 1954, this “overlooked small masterpiece” is a twisted, tragicomic gem

This was more like a novella – I think it was about 4 hours. And yet, there is so much packed in it. The characters – the horrible Grandmother, selfish son, put upon maids. The scene setting is fabulous – the sodden garden, various animals floating in the flood. It’s funny, but also terribly sad, and despite the seemingly happy ending does anyone get what they want?

A review.

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I didn’t do the Thing Today – Madeline Dore

I didn’t do the Thing Today – Madeline Dore

I have had a kindle version of this for a while, I do like a book that encourages taking it easy.

Here’s the blurb …

Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off, despite it being the most important thing. Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed.

After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn’t Do the Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal—by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life.

For anyone who has ever felt the pressure to do more, be more, achieve more, this antidote to our doing-obsession is the permission slip we all need to find our own way.

This book is good for anyone who gets a bit obsessed about their to do list, or their routine (I am guilty of that – although I do need a bit of structure in my day). We all only have 24 hours a day and we need to prioritise them to suit ourselves and not the rest of the world.

A review.

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