Slacks for Ella Funt

One of the most emotionally instense books I’ve read in a long time. Seth, escaping an abusive Midwestern childhood, ends up in New York and with a much older man, Jim, who is grieving from the death of his lifelong partner. Just as they come to terms with their relationship, Seth’s sister, Cassie, escapes to the city as well, and the truth about Seth’s past, which he had hidden from Jim, is revealed.

Shapiro’s character’s don’t keep their distance from the reader in any way. Somehow, even when they’re not honest with themselves or each other, they’re honest with the reader. I felt completely drawn into and overwhelmed by the thoughts and emotions of all three characters. After reading a few things where characters felt underdeveloped, it was exciting to read such a strong character driven novel.

Shapiro also captures the excitement of first arriving in New York and the difficulty of leaving where you come from, which are themes that always appeal to me.

I was really excited to read this when I first read about it—sounded a bit Harry Potter-ish, but with more of a puzzle. It ended up feeling more like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory mixed with The Westing Game—both books that I enjoyed when I was younger, but haven’t really felt much need to reread as an adult. This was the same way—it would be a great kid’s read, but it didn’t have enough development to hold my interest.

Specifically, the characters all seemed flat and one-dimensional. Each kid has a dominant personality characteristic that we learn about when we first meet them, but as the book goes on, we really don’t learn much more about any of them.

The forsythia plant has had a bit of a challenging life in that both I and E’s former roommates were convinced it was dead and attempted to throw it away. It does look extremely dead in the winter, but each spring it buds and blossoms in its scraggly way. We call it Earl and it lives on the fire escape. Apparently, it’s native to the area, and we don’t do anything for it—it gets watered when it rains, but that’s about it.
Last week, we noticed that a dove was hanging around in the pot. Eventually it left and we realized that there was a small egg in the pot. Over the next few days, the bird brought a few twigs in a half-hearted attempt at nest making, and sat on the egg during the days, leaving the egg alone at night. Since it’s been cold, we knew the egg couldn’t make it after being exposed at night. I looked up mourning dove behavior, and apparently she’s supposed to have a partner to take turns sitting on the egg. We’re not sure if he’s a deadbeat, or why he’s not there.

We’ve had torrential rain all day, and no sign of the bird. We assume she’s given up. It’s quite a nice little egg, but the bird seemed to not quite know what it was doing.

Progress is being made on the afghan. After taking it with me for Passover in Philly with E’s family a couple of cold yucky weekends spent entirely in the apartment in pajama pants, I now have one stripe of each color of yarn. It looks like I have enough yarn now to make maybe a third of the blanket if I can get three stripes per yarn ball, so I’ll have to restock at some point. It’s been a good activity for the non-spring we’ve been having—too cold to want to spend any time outside. And now that we have dvr on the fancy new tv, I can stock up on my favorite tv to watch while I’m crocheting.
Lately, this has been lots of Northern Exposure reruns which seem to be on every day. I always loved that show, but I don’t really want to watch them all in order on dvd—it’s better to be surprised with each episode when it appears. Besides, with dvd I feel obligated to start at the beginning and the beginning of Northern Exposure isn’t that good. Between dvr and the new chair, I’m pretty content.
The main problem with crochet is that, while I can crochet and watch tv at the same time, I can’t crochet and read at the same time. It’s one or the other. So I’m falling way behind on my reading. I’ve been picking up a slew of things from the library and they’re all sitting there while I crochet. I’m trying to balance, but I just can’t seem to find enough time to crochet or read as much as I want to. The whole job thing really gets in the way.