Bogormen

Title: Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World
Author: Clara Parkes
Genre: Essays, Crafts
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 160
Date read: March, 2016

Awesome book to live vicariously through! Clara Parkes takes the reader to Rhinebeck, Knitting Vogue, the Edinburgh Yarn Festival, Maryland Sheep and Wool and a number of other places where there's yarn and knitting to be found.

The most common criticism of this book is that there's a lot of name-dropping going on, and that is very true. But as I was interested in reading about most of the people whose names Clara dropped, that didn't bother me at all.

"Knitlandia" is a nice combination of essays about going to festivals (both as a participant and a teacher), and behind-the-scenes insight into websites like Ravelry and Craftsy.

I wouldn't expect a non-knitter to like the book much (and possibly not even a knitter who wasn't part of the online knitting community), but for somebody like me, who's a member of Ravelry and Craftsy, and who loves knitting podcasts with all the background given there, it's a trip through my knitty bucket list.

Title: Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara?
Author: Jenny Bond
Genre: Essay, non-fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 336
Date read: June, 2015

A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world.
-- When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4' 9 1/2" author
-- Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi's Enigma code
-- Leo Tolstoy's wife copied War and Peace by hand... seven times

From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J.K. Rowling, "Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?" offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.


50 short essays about the life of the authors up to and including the time where they wrote either their first book or their most popular book. I skipped the chapters about books and authors I knew and/or cared nothing about, but had fun reading the others. Probably not a book I'll reread, but it gave me a lot of interesting information.

Title: Dear John, I Love Jane
Author: Candace Walsh
Genre: Essay
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 272
Date read: September, 2014

The new buzzword in female sexuality is "sexual fluidity" - the idea that for many women, sexual identity can shift over time, often in the direction of same-sex relationships. Examples abound in popular culture, from actress Cynthia Nixon, who left her male partner of 15 years to be with a woman, to writer and comedienne Carol Leifer, who divorced her husband for the same reason.

In a culture increasingly open to accepting this fluidity, Dear John, I Love Jane is a timely, fiercely candid exploration of female sexuality and personal choice. The book is comprised of essays written by a broad spectrum of women, including a number of well-known writers and personalities. Their stories are sometimes funny, sometimes painful - but always achingly honest - accounts of leaving a man for a woman, and the consequences of making such a choice.


I picked this book up, not really knowing what to expect, and put it down again, not really knowing what I thought. I'm obviously not the target audience, and as such I thought it fell a little flat... or rather, it was a tad one-dimensional. I would have appreciated essays from the ex-husbands and children as well in order to tell the full story.

The essays were all well-written though, so all in all it made for a solid average read.

Title: Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting
Author: Various
Genre: Essays
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~6hrs
Date read: April 2014

Why does knitting occupy a place in the hearts of so many writers? What’s so magical and transformative about yarn and needles? How does knitting help us get through life-changing events and inspire joy? In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Barbara Kingsolver describes sheering a sheep for yarn. Elizabeth Berg writes about her frustration at failing to knit. Ann Patchett traces her life through her knitting, writing about the scarf that knits together the women she’s loved and lost. Knitting a Christmas gift for his blind aunt helped Andre Dubus III knit an understanding with his girlfriend. Kaylie Jones finds the woman who used knitting to help raise her in France and heals old wounds. Sue Grafton writes about her passion for knitting. Also included are five original knitting patterns created by Helen Bingham.

Various authors write about their experiences with knitting. I didn't know many of the others, but it turned out not really to matter. Some of the essays were sweet and endearing, others left me totally cold... so pretty much like any other essay collection I guess ;) I wasn't quite as enamoured with the collection as I had hoped to be - my expectations had been set too high by the Yarn Harlot's essays - but there were enough good ones included that I wasn't left disappointed by the collection as a whole.

Title: All Wound Up
Author: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Genre: Essays, Non-fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 240
Date read: December 2013

...a sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting - laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it's not cracking you up.

In her trademark style, McPhee talks about knitting, parenting, friendship, and--gasp!--even crocheting in essays that are at times touching, often hilarious, and always entertaining.

Unfortunately by far the weakest of her essay collections. She might have discovered herself 'written out' when it came to craft essays, because there were a number that had othing at all to do with crafting, and two that I skipped entirely.

But when she's good, she's still good, so there were enough essays in this collection that I wouldn't consider it a disappointment.

Title: Naked
Author: David Sedaris
Genre: Essays
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~4hrs
Date read: November, 2013

Abridged version, containing the essays "A Plague of Tics", "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out", "Next of Kin", "Cyclops", "True Detective", "The Drama Bug", "I Like Guys", "Ashes" and "Naked"

A lot better than "Holidays on Ice" and more like what I'd expected from David Sedaris after reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day". Possibly because these were all non-fiction essays rather than short stories made to sound like essays. I enjoyed it. David Sedaris will probably never by my favourite essary-writer, but I like him well enough that I'm very likely to pick up more of his work :)

Title: Don't Try This at Home
Author: Kimberly Witherspoon
Genre: Essays, non-fiction
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 278
Date read: October, 2012

From Gabrielle Hamilton on hiring a blind line cook to Michel Richard on rescuing a wrecked cake to Eric Ripert on being the clumsiest waiter in the room, these behind-the-scenes accounts are as wildly entertaining as they are revealing. A delicious reminder that even the chefs we most admire aren't always perfect.

Not as good as I had expected, unfortunately. It's a collection of essays written by several different chefs, making it very clear that while some chefs can write as well as they cook... others definitely can't.

Which is fine - I don't expect them to - but it does seem off in a book like this.

Some of the chapters were fun and interesting, but as a whole, it unfortunately fell somewhat flat.

Title: Free-Range Knitter
Author: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Genre: Essay
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 228
Date read: July 2012, July 2013

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee returns to pen another hilarious and poignant collection of essays surrounding her favorite topics: knitting, knitters, and what happens when you get those two things anywhere near ordinary people.

For the 60 million knitters in America, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot) shares stories of knitting horrors and triumphs, knitting successes and defeats, but, mostly, stories about the human condition that ring true for everyone--especially if you happen to have a rather large amount of yarn in your house.

I loved this essay collection :) It's the first book I've read by the Yarn Harlot (although I've read some of her blog), but it definitely won't be the last. I've only knitted "for real" for two years, but already I could see far too much of myself in it, and she gave me a lot of new ideas for how to 'knit on the go'.

It's a cozy read whose only fault was that it kept making me want to put down my Kindle and pick up my knitting instead.

Title: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Author: David Foster Wallace
Genre: Essays
Rating: 3/5
# pages: Read about 118 out of 355
Date read: March, 2012

In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.

An almost impossible book to rate and review, because I only read about a third of it, but what I read, I loved.

The title essay is an incredibly amusing essay on David Foster Wallace's experiences on a week long cruise in the Caribbean... only, the cruise could really be anywhere, because as far as I can make out, he never leaves the ship! Like the title reveals, he really doesn't think too highly of being on a cruise, yet he still manages to make me long to go on one! Probably basically because the things that drive him crazy, I'd love ;-)

So 5 stars for that essay alone, but unfortunately it was one of the very few that I managed to get through, as most of the others I couldn't get past the first few pages, so with about half of the book being a solid 1-star (my standard rating for abandoned books), it all averages out to this 3 star rating.

Title: The Man Who Ate Everything
Author: Jeffrey Steingarten
Genre: Non-fiction, essays
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: June, 2011

When Jeffrey Steingarten was made food critic of Vogue in 1989, he began by systematically learning to like all the food he had previously avoided. From clams to Greek food to Indian desserts with the consistency of face cream, Steingarten undertook an extraordinary program of self-inflicted behavior modification to prepare himself for his new career. He describes the experience in this collection's first piece, before setting out on a series of culinary adventures that take him around the world.

It's clear that Vogue gave Steingarten carte blanche to write on whatever subjects tickled his taste buds, and the result is a frequently hilarious collection of essays that emphasize good eating over an obsession with health. "Salad, the Silent Killer" is a catalog of the toxins lurking in every bowl of raw vegetables, while "Fries" follows a heroic attempt to create the perfect French fry--cooked in horse fat.

As the rating indicates, this is definitely a book to miss... the mere fact that I've been reading it for more than 6 months should be proof of that!

The book blurb - as well as the title itself - led me to believe that it would be a collection of essays about Jeffrey Steingarten eating weird things. I thought that sounded interesting, so when the library didn't have the book, I went out and bought it, even though I'd thought his other essay collection only so-so. And it did start out exploring just that, and was really interesting! Mostly to see which of Jeffrey's "will never eat!" I agreed with, and which I loved.

Unfortunately this part of the book was over much too quickly - in fact, it was only the preface to the book. The rest was much the same as "It Must Have Been Something I Ate" - essays about assorted odds and ends about cooking and culinary oddities - but unfortunately not nearly as interesting.

So give this one a miss, and pick up "IMHBSIA" instead if you really want to read Jeffrey Steingarten.