HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

It's New Year's Eve morning, I'm on five hours of sleep, needless to say I'm really really tired, so the post I was going to write about, about it being New Year's and all will have to wait until I'm awake. So instead I give you a book meme that I stole from Erin who stole it from Samantha who first stole it from Jennifer.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by Library Thing's users.

Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
The Blind Assassin
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales (I even read it in old English, yes I'm a nerd)
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
Emma
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved*
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

When Niels and I began packing for our first year in China I had to decide which of my small selection of knitting books I'd bring with me. I was working on a pair of socks for my Dad's birthday at the time (still not finished) and the pattern was from Knitting Vintage Socks, so bringing that was a no-brainer. I'm completely in love with my copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting so that also came along and I've a scarf thing so I also brought along Scarf Style. All three books have gotten quite a bit of use during our stay here.

Unfortunately, I no longer have Knitting Vintage Socks with me. I took it home this past summer because the plan was to finish a pair of socks while in the States (what was I thinking) and am now down to two books. I now have three pairs of socks on needles waiting to be finished, and godknows when that's going to happen.

I'm currently making the Midwest Moonlight scarf out of Scarf Style for one of the other foreign teachers, and since it's so close to being finished I'm starting to look for something to make that will match my new coat and I feel lost with out being able to look at knitting books.

I know I could find patterns on the Internet, but there's something about flipping through an actual book, oohing and ahhing over patterns that I just don't get from looking on the Internet. Knitting books are impossible to find here. In a way it's not surprising, most of the sweaters I've seen at the yarn market are all variations of each other, nothing with much creativity. Knitting here seems to been seen as a way to make functional things, not an outlet to be creative and functional. Which also explains why the yarn selection is mostly comprised of yarn that's 70% wool/30% acrylic. The upside is that I can buy lots and lots for a little amount of money and it's all still pretty decent.

I just want a decent knitting book. Is that so much to ask??

May you all have a wonderful holiday. Looking forward to being back in the States celebrating with you all next year.

Much love from the Middle Kingdom.

 

 

Niels & I have done some shopping the past couple weekends. We bought a new desk and chair for the office so I have my own work space. A photo of that will be forthcoming, right now it's too messy to photograph.

We also bought these to help brighten up the apartment:

I just took this test, I'm 56% Nerd, 47% Geek, 30% Dork.

Surprised?

Neither was I.

A couple weeks ago on The Office, Andy sang Take a Chance on Me in his efforts to woo Angela. Since then I've had the desire to listen to some ABBA. Yesterday I was able to find ABBA Gold Greatest Hits and I've been listening nonstop to it when I'm not sleeping or teaching.

Now if you will excuse me, I must go find my rollerskates.


 

It's been a rough week. Our best friend Chinese friend,Yiqiao, left for Singapore on Monday for the next 11 years. She was accepted into a very prestigious program that allows for her to go to school for free, receive a stipend, and be guaranteed job placement in Singapore once she graduates. So we are quite sad she's gone.

I've been feeling a little burnt out this week. We've not had any time off since the beginning of October and won't for another month. With all the teaching I'm doing, I'm in need of a holiday.

Yesterday I woke up to "drip, drip, drip" sounding from the office. The ceiling in the office in leaking. We told the school about it when we first moved in, but they didn't seem too concerned about it. But now someone is actually living above us, it is a problem. And this being China godknowswhen it'll get fixed. So we've taken somethings out of the office & have covered up what we can't move.



I was to be meeting with a former student, Dream, today, but we've not had a weekend to ourselves for over a month, so yesterday I sent her a message asking if we could reschedule. She called me back immediately saying that "she had to do something" so it's ok that we postponed. That other something? Preparing for her father's funeral. He was killed Thursday in a car accident. Dream's only 14, her Dad was in his early 40s, I am so sad for her and her Mom. This news put me over the edge for the day. If you can please send a good thought her & her Mom's way.

There was some good things that happened this week, although. I finished the take two on my mittens. The first pair were just too big and not warm enough, so I doubled the yarn, cast on 50 stitches, and knit them on size 4 DPNs, and they fit perfectly.

Here's the very long post about our trip to Xi'an two months ago...

Over the National Holiday, Niels and I ...   more »

Beer is good.

Chinese people are crazy.

And I drank a lot of beer.

HAHAHAHAAAA