Worst pick-up line ever: "Read to me baby and take my mind off this pain." - uttered by the dude sitting next to me on the bus tonight (damn, knew I should have moved to one of the empty seats once the other passengers got off)
A very late Resolution review - I did make it to a ballet class (after minding a visiting pediatrician for the week) but Dad did interrupt my plans to hit the gym; I got a new kitchen faucet out of the interruption, so it's not all bad. I'm not covered in water in the mornings anymore. I ate a little better this week but I need to hit the grocery store to stock back up on my staples.
I picked up several new books this week. Our little group at the store is reading Three Bags Full - a mystery told from the perspective of the flock - and it sounds very cute. I picked up Alison Weir's new book Mistress of the Monarchy about Katherine Swynford, the Duchess of Lancaster; I like her biography of Eleanor of Acquitaine so much I couldn't pass this one up. I also picked up Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood to add to my The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorrit, and The Pickwick Papers so I have more Dickens to read (in my spare time, hah!). I bought a new book of knitting patterns, Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarns, that has some really nice sock patters. I also came across a new Oxford edition of Christina Rossetti's poetry and prose - couldn't pass that up, either.
I finished Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction. She has some interesting ideas on Theory of Mind and metarepresentation and how that ties in with our preference for stories. I don't think she quite sold me on the idea because her given examples bounced all over the place without truly going into detail on more than just two titles - Clarissa and Lolita - both of which represented novels with unreliable narrators. Her section on detective novels was woefully short and superficial (and feature two still photographs from the film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon which really didn't belong in the book because the movie wasn't discussed at all). She did spend a great deal of time detailing how Theory of Mind works from a psychological standpoint but she really didn't "prove" (as much as it can be proven) why we read fiction.
Current book-in-progress: Silas Marner (for LbW - February starts next week) and Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann; I seem also to have gotten into a Dickens phase
Current knitted item: Bollocks on that scarf, I started a pair of socks from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarns (the "Puntuated Rib Sock" pattern)
Current movie obsession: John Adams
Current iTunes loop: Lucky by Jason Mraz and Colbie Calliet
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