Sister Trees

Little quilt I made in Frieda Anderson's fusing class at the Quilting Adventures spring retreat in Schulenberg, Texas.

Lesson 6 Abstract Landscape

My assignment in Katie Pasquini Masopust's Online Color Composition and Design Course was to create an abstract landscape.  This is actually my second attempt, as I didn't like my first one.  I found that it's true what they say - you learn more from your failures than from your successes!

Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

I don't read many mysteries, as it isn't a genre I usually like very much.  But one of the optional categories for the Back to the Classics 2014 challenge is a classic mystery, suspense, or thriller, so I asked my brother (who works in publishing and likes mysteries) for a recommendation.  Based on his comments (and the fact that it was only $0.99 for my Kindle!), I decided to read Dorothy L Sayers's first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Whose Body?  I'm glad I did; it's one of my favorite classics I've read so far.

A dead body is discovered in the bathtub of an architect on the same day that a well-known financier disappears.  Are these two events related?  Lord Peter Wimsey investigates.  The story was interesting and the writing was engaging; here are a couple of my favorite quotes (that I can sadly relate to more than I would like to admit):

He felt as though he were looking at a complicated riddle, of which he had once been told the answer but had forgotten it and was always on the point of remembering.

He pursued an elusive memory for some minutes, till it vanished altogether with a mocking flicker of the tail.

I rate it 4 out of 5.  I will probably be reading more by Dorothy L Sayers.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

I read A Farewell to Arms in 2012 as one of my selections for the WWI Reading Challenge.  I didn't care much for the story or the writing style, so I really didn't think I would read anything else by Hemingway.  But last year, I read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, which was about Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley.  I enjoyed that book so much that it made me decide to give Hemingway another try.  I chose The Sun Also Rises, which was Hemingway's first big novel and established his reputation as a great writer.  Which I have to say, I don't get.  His style is very terse, almost newspaper-like.  Maybe that was such a change from the writings of his day (The Sun Also Rises was first published in 1926) that it was revolutionary, but it doesn't do anything for me.  And the story wasn't any better.  It was about several American and English expatriates (the so-called Lost Generation) living in Paris who go to Pamplona, Spain for the bullfighting fiesta.  Their main activity is drinking and getting drunk (or "tight").  It is my 20th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics 2014 Challenge, and I rate it 2 out of 5.