Reading

Lots of reading done in the last couple of days, although mostly on the web.

I've been doing some further 'work' on the Steiner Education side of things and beginning to spend some serious time looking into Antrosopophy. I'm finding it quite hard going, mainly because there is a lot of pholosophical language in use and I don't have much background in that. Anyway I've found www.waldorfanswers.com a good place to begin unknitting stuff, and the links are good. Its by no means comprehensive though.

I've also spent a fair amount of time with the magazine pile. I'm now up to date with Prima, Country Living, The Vegan and Real Simple. I've re read a pile of Mothering magazines as well.

I've also read (cover to cover, none of this picking in and out stuff) the newest copy of The Mother Magazine. It came through the door on Christmas Eve and made me very happy - been waiting ages for it as the publishers had a problem with the printers and apparently a number of issues had problems with half pages, things being upside down etc. So very happy to see it. Probably the best value-for-money of everything I subscribe to as well (more details at www.themothermagazine.co.uk)

I've given up on G.P. Taylor for the moment. I'm finding Shadowmancer just too derivative of so many other fantasy fiction books. My personal take on this is that Mr Taylor is relying on a lot of his readers coming to his brand of Christian fiction without the background reading of 2 and a half decades of reading this sort of thing. Every plot twist seems to belong somewhere else, although the whole is reasonably new. But it doesn't seem to manage to stay within one fantasy genre or writing style and his editor could have done more work on it. Pity, because as a person he's quite interesting (I sat in on a press conference with him at Greenbelt this year). Anyway - if you want to read Christian-orientated/inspired fantasy fiction I'd suggest C.S. Lewis' Narnia series to begin with.

Lots of books given to the children for christmas - variations on a fairy theme for DD1, Mr Bounce for DD2 and DS got the latest Wibbly Pig (complete with a Wibbly Pig soft toy, which he adores). I bought DP the latest Pratchett paperback (Monstorous Regiment) although I'll admit that that was one of those 'I want to read it for myself' presents, lol. I've got a wish-list running at Amazon atm, which has a lot of Permaculture books on it, which will be my next personal reading project once I've got my feet under the Steiner thing :-)

Off to do some more reading now - probably a re-read of Knit One (a new US knitting magazine - I'm one of those who read a lot of craft/handcraft magazines, but the amount of handcrafts actually done shrinks as the number of books/magazines increases). and I need to remember to talk to the bank tomorrow about how much a money transfer to the US will be because I'd like to buy a couple of curriculum books that I can't get here and the company in question doesn't take paypal!! Ho hum......