Category Archives: Reading

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Favorite Things, Reading, Thoughts, Writing

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Emotional truths can sometimes
be conveyed more effectively,
more compellingly, through fiction.
[Diana Ossana]

Journey to MunichI’m a reader. I read volumes of non-fiction—history and wars in which the United States has participated. But mostly, I read fiction. Mysteries are my favorite.

Jacqueline Winspear, one of my favorite authors, developed a character, Maisie Dobbs, who weathers hardships and tragedies by using life events as learning experiences. For me, the books about Maisie are examples of how truth can be effectively represented in fiction. It is like the difference between illustration and photography. Scientific illustrators tell us that illustration can often represent a specimen more accurately than a photo would.

Ms Winspear’s website includes the following about her most recent Maisie Dobbs novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed):

Journey to Munich
12th Maisie Dobbs Novel

Traveling into the heart of Nazi Germany, Maisie encounters unexpected dangers—and finds herself questioning whether it’s time to return to the work she loved. But the Secret Service may have other ideas.

VestsI am a writer. I mainly do technical writing and have been working on my knitting pattern collections. The image at the left shows six of more than a dozen vest patterns I am working on. The one on the dress form is the latest and was knit using silk and marino yarn that my daughter spun. I am also immersed in producing patterns for a textured knitting collection that I call Great Lakes Chill Chasers.

The greatest challenge for me in writing patterns is assuring accuracy. I have over seventy designs for which I could produce patterns, but assuring accuracy slows me down … which brings me to my last point.

Calculator I am not so good with arithmetic. There is a lot of calculating involved in writing patterns in different sizes. The best helper I’ve found is a calculator app for my iPad.

MyScript© Calculator is magic for sure. It was free! How does Vision Objects© do that? Also it works well and is fun to use. Write numerals and function symbols (+, -, =, etc.) with a finger on a touchscreen and then watch your writing change into real equations with the correct answer. It even charmed my five-year old grandson. When I used it in a knitting class to help people figure their stitches and rows from their gauge, it was fast and accurate. Some students even downloaded the app for their smart phones during class.

Brown-thumb alert

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Favorite Things, Reading, Thoughts

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I want it said of me by those who knew me best,
that I always plucked a thistle and
planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
[Abraham Lincoln, birthday February 12, 1809]

Orchid

A friend who knows me well enough to know that my gardening thumbs are not green gave me this orchid for my birthday last November. I’ve always wanted an orchid but figured it would only last a week if consigned to my care. I’ve posted this to prove my lovely orchid is just as pretty after two and a half months!

Valentine gift advice: Buy her an orchid. It lasts longer than cut flowers and is so elegant (like her, I’m sure).

Side effect warning: I’ve developed an urge to read all of the Nero Wolfe books I can find (Rex Stout wrote over seventy). Both Nero W. and Rex S. were orchid lovers.

“There’s an app for that…”

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Favorite Things, Learning to Blog, Reading, Review, Technology, Thoughts, Writing

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One must be an inventor to read well.
There is then creative reading
as well as creative writing.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

iPad-apps

Since I live in relative solitude, my blog gives me a place to share things that one would normally share with a person in the same room. This is a, “You’ve just gotta see this…” post. The thought has crossed my mind that I’m likely the last to learn all of this, but I’ll share it anyhow. I’ll make bullet points of my disjointed thoughts.

  • The image is a screen shot of one of my iPad folders.
    • I’ve never seen non-Apple devices, but am confident that they have reasonable counterparts to this.
    • It is worth the effort to learn how to organize apps in folders so you can find your stuff easily on one screen.
    • The desktop image is either (a) my backyard or (b) a tourist stop near Cardiff, Wales (UK). HINT: I have no backyard.
  • About the first row of apps in the image—these are primarily text readers. iBooks reads books from the Apple store, Nook reads Barnes & Noble books, and Kindle reads Amazon books. The apps are free and many books can be obtained without cost as well. There are also sale priced books available from such sources as BookBub.
  • The second row of apps in the image—these are specialized readers. Audible (an Amazon company) is an audio book reader and not only reads books from Audible.com, but also reads non-Amazon books from iTunes. Overdrive accesses the local public library. Using my library card, I check out both text and audio books using Overdrive. GoodReader could also be called Knitter’sHelper. I use this for my PDF knitting patterns because it allows me to easily mark my place and make notes.
  • The third row shows apps from Blackstone. These audio books are well produced and are now available with a built-in player as apps—one book per app. I bought these in the App Store for reasonable prices. There are many choices. One of my favorite mystery writers is Louise Penny. Her books, set in Quebec, present characters in such depth and with such sensitivity, that they make me want to jump into my little roadster and drive to Canada in search of imaginary friends.

Band of Brothers

22 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in History, Reading, Review, Thoughts, Writing

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Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?
[James Longstreet
about Ulysses S. Grant]

They were classmates and friends at West Point. They were army buddies and fought together in the Mexican War. Their high opinion of each other never wavered even when they were enemies during the American Civil War. They were friends after the war and then Longstreet paid his ultimate tribute to Grant upon hearing of his death, “General Grant was the truest as well as the bravest man who ever lived.”

I devour all sorts of history books—not only those about the American Civil War. Some books capture my interest enough that I go through them repeatedly. Most of these books are compiled, sorted and examined works by historians of a later generation. In my search for new histories, I came upon the memoirs of Grant and Longstreet at Project Gutenberg . Not only is the content of these books fascinating to me, but the prose is well-formed. These men who were raised without the most advanced of educational opportunities wrote in a clear, cohesive and interesting style.

From Manassas to Appomattox, Memoirs of the Civil War in America was written by James Longstreet and published in 1896. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant were written in two volumes and published shortly after Grant’s death in 1885. I am reading them side by side since they discuss events in a chronological order from opposite sides. I’ve noticed interesting details that that give insight into the authors’ ways of thinking. For example, Grant called the northern army, the National Army instead of the Union Army. As I continue my journey through these two books, I grow in gratitude that these authors shared their experiences with us.

Poignant is the word I’d use to describe this reading experience.

The Gentleman from Indiana

05 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Favorite Things, Reading, Review, Thoughts, Writing

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Cherish all your happy moments:
they make a fine cushion for old age.
[Booth Tarkington]

I’ve been scouring Project Gutenberg (source of the bookplate above) in my ongoing quest for free (or really inexpensive) eBooks. I’ve rediscovered an old favorite, Booth Tarkington. As a child, I read Tarkington’s Penrod and Penrod and Sam— stories about the adventures of little boys growing up around 1900. This time, I started with Tarkington’s first book, The Gentleman from Indiana. I enjoyed it and have now launched into reading his two Pulitzer Prize winning novels, The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. I’ll have plenty to read if I simply stick with Hoosier authors. A few of these include:

  • Lloyd C. Douglas, (Magnificent Obsession)
  • Ross Lockridge, Jr (Raintree County)
  • Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe series)
  • Kurt Vonnegut,Jr (Slaughterhouse Five)
  • Jessamyn West (Friendly Persuasion)
  • Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ)
  • Gene Stratton-Porter (Girl of the Limberlost)
  • James Whitcomb Riley (children’s poetry)

The Wings of the Morning

18 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in Reading, Review, Thoughts, Writing

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Anyone who says they have only one life to live
must not know how to read a book.

After spending my retirement savings (or so it seemed) on eBooks last year, I decided to find free ones this year. Project Gutenberg is a treasure trove. I have downloaded all of the available Louis Tracy books and am enjoying them a lot. They are kind of like Agatha Christy’s books. Tracy wrote at the turn of the last century in Great Britain. I’d never heard of him but am inspired to find more of this sort of book on Gutenberg.

(I wonder if this is the sort of book that was called a “penny dreadful.”)