Socks at last

I finished the Weasley Homestead socks last night:



I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Now if it would just get cool enough to make wearing wool socks a possibility again.

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Thanks to Lynne's comment, I went to my bookshelf and found my copy of "To Say Nothing of the Dog," which I bought back after I finished reading "The Doomsday Book." I think that's going to be the novel I take with me on break. I remember how much I enjoyed Doomsday Book - I don't know if it was just the story or if it was also Willis' style of writing, but a glance at the first few pages of this book suggest to me that I will like it. (Also, it's described as a "comedy of manners," which I generally enjoy. Many of the Victorian-era British books I've read would be similarly described.)

I think - upon re-reading my list - I think the reason why I read relatively little sci-fi is that I've read so much that wound up being a Dystopian sort of thing (Though I admit, I question the inclusion of "1984" in a sci-fi list. Though I guess it's considered speculative fiction...). I've read enough stories about dystopian societies to more than last me for my life. And I think I have the kind of vivid-bordering-on-morbid imagination that makes me susceptible to being depressed by those kinds of scenarios. It's too easy for me to imagine a world where, for example, people who read books are dangerously suspect. Or a world where society has collapsed (they've begun running ads for the second season of "The Colony."). Or a world where some of the youth turn ultra-violent.

(in addition to the ones on that list, I remember reading "Brave New World" and "We" - by a Russian author, similar in many ways to "1984.")

I guess I prefer books that tend to take a more hopeful worldview - Wrinkle in Time, for example, is a case where Love ultimately defeats Hate and Conformity. And ultimately, Doomsday Book is a "hopeful" book. And what fiction of C.S. Lewis' that I've read - the Narnia books (read multiple times), "The Great Divorce" (which is more of a parable I suppose), "Till we have Faces" - all of those are ultimately hopeful. I suppose I'm somewhat unsophisticated in that I want books with happy or at least hopeful endings - where the protagonist doesn't wind up going down in a hail of gunfire, or where he or she doesn't sort of shrug and accept whatever horrible thing has happened as a result of the main conflict of the book. I would have hated Wrinkle in Time if Meg and Charles Wallace had ultimately succumbed to IT, and the book ended with them sitting there, staring glassily forward, and mumbling the mantras of IT.