Books I Read on Vacation

I've recently spent a week in North-eastern Spain.

In addition to Girls Like Us, which I had started long before we left and which I finished on a train ride from Figueres, I packed Your Voice in my Head (Emma Forrest, 2011) and Babette's Feast (Isak Dinesen, published as a short story in 1958).

I read Your Voice in my Head on the beach in Sitges, lying on a lounge chair, facing the sea, trying to stay hydrated with bottle after bottle of water. It is not a typical beach read, but in a way, reading it under the most brilliant white sun was the best way to read it.

My travel companion, Claire, and I had planned a second trip to Sitges before our flight home the following day. I read Babette's Feast in a Starbucks in Barcelona, where we took cover from the rain, trying to save the day with a latte and free Wi-Fi. Babette's Feast is a lovely short story (turned movie), which I finished before I finished my drink.

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I've read, in order:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2010); The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (2002); Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2010); Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards (1988); and Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller (2008).

Girls Like Us was the second 1970's music scene biography I read this summer. I began it a few weeks ago and just finished it on a train ride last week, breaking up the reading with many magazine and newspaper articles in the interim. It inspired me to buy a copy of Carole King's Tapestry at the record store yesterday, an album which topped charts for more than six years and won four Grammy's in 1972. Carole King was the first solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and the first female to win the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. Tapestry is still one of the best selling albums of all time.

Unwearable Muslin

I sewed a pair of shorts:

I seem to have cut the pattern for Simplicity 1887 View C,too small, as I cannot get them over my butt. Disappointing, but I suppose my sewing strategy is to make wearable muslins. As such, I shall take this to be the risk that comes with sewing that we mitigate by making a muslin first (which I generally think is wasteful, which is why I make wearable muslins). Thankfully I tested this pattern with inexpensive fabric first, as opposed to the $19/m fabric I'd wanted to buy.

I suspect they would fit someone with 34 inch hips, which mine decidedly aren't, and I am shipping them to someone they may fit.

Up North

I was lucky to be invited to spend this past weekend on Georgian Bay, and, it was glorious.

My top three favourite weekend moments were: roasting s'mores over a bonfire on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night; finally having sufficient courage to climb to the top of an abandoned lighthouse I'd been too chicken to visit on an earlier trip; and, cliff jumping into the lake.

I Made a Skirt

I sewed a skirt this past weekend:

The shape is based on Badgley Mischka pattern from Vogue, V1127, but I added an extra inch at the waist, and a waistband.

And I wore it to the Smut Soiree:

{Because I love Hollywood gossip.}

Favourite Things

Early mornings are one of my favourite things in life, and though I could enjoy them often, I don't. I did this morning, though.

Here is the view from 6am:

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I've read, in order:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (2010); We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2006), though I have yet to see the movie; The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks (2012); The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2010); and Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010).

After blowing through the first two books in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, I couldn't wait to read the third. It took a week of streetcar rides and late nights during the last month of my contract at work. It was far from the strongest of the three, but it helped me to love reading again.

I read We Need to Talk About Kevin on a long weekend at the cottage. It was a very troubling book. I'm not certain I can suggest anything that redeems it.

At the first opportunity, once back in the city, I bought The Social Animal and Just Kids, two books as different from the last two as I could find.

The Social Animal was so interesting I read passages out loud on a road trip Greg and I took to the coast in early May.

Everyone who read The Hunger Games told me that they read it in one sitting, staying up late, avoiding family and friends to finish it. I was no different.

And then I read Just Kids. Patti Smith, I had no idea I would love the story of your friendship with Robert Maplethorpe as much as I did. I loved it so much that I broke down crying at the end, in a public place, in front of strangers. I drank a glass of wine, and then read the ending a second time. The setting, the 1970's and 1980's music and art scene in New York City, suited my end of work mood and properly started my summer of being a flâneur in the city.