catching up

This week has been more about catching up from the week away than quilting.  Of course, I'm also procrastinating finishing (quilting) three quilts, so I suppose there's a method to my madness?

I did sew some for the cat rescue.

Two more pieces of fabric knocked out and a third is cut and waiting for the actual sewing part...

This one is really cute!  Actually, since one of the volunteers purchased these on the last day JoAnn's was open, they're all pretty cute.  Way better than a stash purge, which is what I more often get.  But it doesn't matter.  The kitties don't mind.

I finished the last book I started on vacation...

I've read at least one book by this author in the past and remembered it was fairly good, so when I found this one, I snagged it.

It started out a little slow.  It's an autobiography of sorts, sharing stories of his time as a high school English teacher in New York.  Of course, the stories are all entertaining and funny, because who wants to hear about the boring stuff?

He categorizes himself as timid and quiet, but anyone who can have a teaching career of 30 years anywhere must be much less timid and quiet than they believe.  I think I would have enjoyed having him as a teacher - he seems to really care about the students and wants to connect with them in a way that makes them want to learn instead of just slogging through the material.

It was a good book, but I came away feeling like I only got a few minutes of highlight reels and not a real sense of his teaching for the duration of his career.  And like I said above, the boring stuff would have been boring, but also maybe fleshed it out a little more to realize it was more than chaos and trouble.

And next up, please forgive the photo on the cover, I had nothing to do with it:

The blurb on the back made it sound better than it was.

The story of a younger man who finds himself in the advertising business, I think either I didn't get the humor, or it wasn't nearly as good (or funny) as the blurb made me think it would be.

The man gets a job writing advertisements for American products that are slowly starting to trickle into Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.  But it seems he is either drunk or high or both a lot of the time, so we get a lot of ramblings while he is inebriated.  I have no idea if things he says are happening really happened, as they often seem improbable, but are also probably possible.  (I know it's fiction, but still...)

Most of the advertisements I don't understand.

Okay, a lot of the book I don't quite understand.

And towards the end, it sort of becomes one big conspiracy theory as well.

I think it is supposed to be literary fiction, so, you know, fancier words and longer sentences and bigger concepts and all that.  I think the fact it was set in Russia did not help me.

Would not recommend.  I don't even feel like I learned much about the Russian culture, which is the least I can hope for a bad book.

I started a new one last night.  It seems better.

And this morning, I got up and harvested the ripe tomatoes and currently have seven quarts processing in my canner!  The plants are just starting to yield ripe tomatoes (we've eaten a few of the really early ones), so there will be a bunch more to come, but since I didn't just go buy a bushel, they'll be processed about seven quarts at a time - all my canner can handle at once.

They have been delicious to eat as well.  I'd about given up eating tomatoes because those from the grocery store taste awful - even the "vine ripened" ones - but these fresh from my garden taste like delicious tomatoes!

Happy quilting and gardening and reading and canning!

Katie

PS No kitty photos today - last night Finn got poo on my bed in the middle of the night, so I ended up on the sofa while my sheets went in the washer.  I think there's a nap in the forecast today.  And maybe I'll remember to take some photos of the stinker?