T3 - Plaid and Paisley

I'm struggling a bit to come up with something for Thoughtful Third Thursday. It's all about books, and although I've been reading almost constantly, I've only finished a couple of books in the past month. I ditched two books before I even got halfway through. Funny, they were both set in Washington State - my old stomping grounds. They were recommended by a colleague with whom I share lots of book and movie recommendations, but we don't actually have the same taste at all. Except I turned him and his wife on to Donna Tartt and Kate Atkinson, and they turned me on to Tana French and Gillian Flynn. Other than that we haven't been having much luck. I'll tell you more about the rejected books at the end of the post, for anyone who's interested in my sweeping and subjective opinion.

Right now I'm reading Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn. It's the second in her series of Jackson Brodie crime novels, and it's pretty good. I'm not a huge crime fiction fan, but I generally like her writing, although not always. She tends to throw in lots of characters and their musings and history while they're doing other things. It's easy to lose track sometimes.

The book is set in Edinburgh, so I decided to go with tartan for an outfit. Here's a quote from the book:

"The hotel was surprisingly cheap and unsurprisingly awful. Anything that could be decorated with tartan was, even the ceiling had been papered in a funereal Black Watch. On the walls were hung framed prints of Old Edinburgh and heraldic clan insignia mounted on wooden shields."

I mixed the tartan with paisley - another Scottish association. The design is Indian, but when it became popular in Great Britain quite a lot of paisley patterns were produced at mills in Paisley, Scotland.

The style of the book is kind of sardonic, wry, and self-deprecating. There's a bit too much death and blood for my taste, but I do like Jackson. The BBC has made a series of three Jackson Brodie books, and the character is played by Jason Isaacs - aka Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.

My shirt is a Michael Kors men's shirt, the scarf is Ray Strauss, which I bought from Bella at The Citizen Rosebud on Etsy. The yellow jeans are thrifted Shylo, and the suede leopard sneakers are Born.

Now, about the other books.

I started reading The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, and I didn't like it at all. The style was very aloof and pseudo-poetic in a spare kind of way. Lots of sentences seemed very clunky and immature, and I just didn't get into the characters. Glad it was only a library book.

I read two books by Jonathan Evison, well, one and a bit. The first one I loved - The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. It was a funny, sweet, heart-wrenching tale about a man's life being put back together (in spite of himself) after a tragedy. I definitely recommend this book, as well as another Evison book, All About Lulu. But the one I didn't finish is West of Here. I think it's more of a man's book, long descriptions about wild scenery and men moving through it. And mud. Just not enough human interaction to hold my attention.

Come on over to My Closet Catalogue or A Bibliophile's Style and see the other visual book reports!

Update April 30 - now linking up to 52 Pick-me-up for Yellow Fever.

Val

I haven't the remotest idea

I'm starting to use our fancier camera – a Panasonic Lumix. Mr. S got bored being my photographer, but he's given me a few instructions for this camera and keeps saying, "Now be very careful with it" as if I'm a careless teenager.  Geez, don't treat me like a kid – I'm a grown-up! He's so unfair!

After a little, tiny bit of wheedling, I got Mr. S to buy a remote for the camera. Yay, a remote! This is going to revolutionize my selfies! So the remote arrived quickly (from China, a company called JYC - they probably also make yPads and other knock-offs) and we tried it out. It worked, and we put the camera away again.

On the weekend I wanted to take photos, and the remote didn't work. Mr. S, my tech expert, was away. Typical! I've figured out that it must be a dead battery – already – and of course it's a special type of battery that I'll have to go searching for. So I ended up taking photos the usual way – set the timer and run. Here are the pictures I took while I was still trying to figure it out.

(I had to set these up and use the timer, so these are a dramatization.)

check the instructions

try to use the remote

try to use the remote with antenna pulled out

still not working - what the ****'s going on here?

okay, stop and breathe, and exhale, breathe, exhale

okay, I'm feeling calmer now

let's just get a nice close-up of the scarf and try it again

and then - #$&)!&^%#$@^!$#^%%^&%%#!!!

The details:

Jacket - Christopher & Banks
Skirt - Old Navy
Leggings - Hue
Boots - Sporto, thrifted
Scarf - gift
Brooch - thrifted

How do you take pictures, and are you satisfied with your technology?

Val