Book Review: The Interestings

Title: The Interestings
Author: Meg Wolitzer
Format: Hardback
Reading Dates: Feb 25, 2013 - Apr 13, 2013
Rating: ****

If there is one thing we have all learned from American Idol, it's that the idea that you can be anything you want to be is patently untrue. Some people got it and some people don't. 

Some people learn that ugly truth, early and hard, like those obscenity-spewing teenagers who have just been told that not only will they never be the next American Idol, they should give up singing all together. Other people learn it much later after they have spent year after futile year pursuing a dream that never comes true.

And then there are the others. Those who find their talent early and end up in the company of just the right people who can help them capitalize on it.

What if you are one? What if you are the other? What if you are one and your best friend is the other?

That's the premise of The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer. Six teenagers meet at a summer camp for the arts, each with dreams of pursuing an artistic life. They call themselves the Interestings and form a fast friendship. Out of this magical time, however, some become outlandishly successful while others live regular lives and still others become life long enemies. 

Being of a certain age, I enjoyed this book and its exploration of how life can seem "fairer" to some people than others and how some people with talent waste it. Wolitzer's characters are fully drawn and engaging and the situations they find themselves in seemed authentic. At some points Wolitzer's tendency to time jump several times within one chapter was disconcerting, so I took one star off for that, but all in all I would recommend this book to others. Good stuff!

Hollow, My Baby! Hollow, My Honey!

Flowers were some of the first things I made from book pages. In fact, my first bouquet still sits in my office.

One of the nice surprises from my day at Eggstravaganza was how quickly people snapped up the flowers I folded for when my baby got married. They were gone before noon.

These flowers are called kusudama flowers and there are tutorials all over the web for how to make them, like here and here.

Recently I saw some hollow kusudama flowers on this blog. I did a little digging around on the Googles and found that you make them with square frames instead of solid squares, so I tried my hand. Here's my first attempt.

Compare the back of one of these hollow flowers with the back of a regular flower.

So many possibilities with that flat back! Much easier to glue onto things.

And then I started to think about one of my other ongoing dilemmas--how to add color to my flowers. Most of the time I add a pretty bead to the center of the flowers, and I can still do that with the hollow version, but that's a really subtle color add. So I thought to myself...what if I combine a hollow flower and a regular flower and combine book pages with scrapbook paper?

And voila! Color and words!

 And I can do them the other way, too!

I really like these and I can't wait to make more.

The hard thing about creating hollow versions,however, or these combined versions, too, is creating a paper frame. Cutting out a square is pretty easy, but a square within a square? Not so much.

But my fancy-dancy new Silhouette Cameo comes to the rescue. I can make squares within squares within squares and cut them out of book pages or scrapbook pages. Whoo-hoo! Now I can't decide what to do next--fold more words or fold more flowers. What a wonderful problem to have!

I Shop, Therefore I Buy

Don't you hate it when you go to Goodwill to look for books to fold and you find a book you really want to read? And it's about making stuff with paper? And it's only $1.99?

And then you walk next door to 

and you find another book you want to read? And it's about making stuff with paper, too?

And you realize that "paperie" is actually a word? And more than that, you realize that in this store...

I mean, don't you hate it when that happens? Yeah, me neither.

It was a fun day!

So my first craft show is under my belt and it was a great success.

Here I am in action.


I lucked out because my table was right in front of a stage and I was able to use it to display my wares.

I even got a fancy-dancy sign to hang on the front of my table.

Wanna know where I learned to fold or where I came up with the idea? Just ask the booths around me because they heard the answer several hundred times I'm sure.


Special thanks to Debbie for helping me out with staging and watching my booth while I went to shop. Captain America told me the goal was to sell more than I bought. I think I made it. Maybe.

I sold several books and got orders for more, but the thing that sold the fastest interestingly enough were the folded flowers I made for the wedding. Need to have more of them at the next one, for sure.

I had a lot of fun and can't wait to do it again. Whoo-hoo!

Come to Eggstravaganza! Quick Before Captain America Checks My Trunk.

<-- This is an old picture. My "library" is now much fuller. You can't see any wood on the shelves anymore. I need to move some more merchandise because...









the trunk of my car looks like this again -->

So...
Reading With Scissors will have a table at the Klein United Methodist Eggstravaganza!


When: March 20, 2013, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Where: 5920 FM 2920, Spring, TX 77388

More details here. Come join the fun!

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung in the Bayou City. How do I know? Well, for starters pots are overflowing with pansies.

And it was 82 degrees yesterday so my vegetable and herb garden is finally in (about a month late).

Even our bottle tree is starting to bloom.

So what better time to update my circle flowers. First, I added a center button with a bold "spring" on it from my gigantic dictionary.

Then I got out my fancy-dancy new Silhouette Cameo machine and tried my hand at my first cutting project. It may be my new addiction, although I may just love it because it gives me another excuse to smell my scrapbook paper. 

After a few test patterns, I cut this from a piece of variegated scrapbook paper.

And now I have this...

And now you know where the flowers is.

S-P-I-R-I-T, Spirit Let's Hear It!

I'm still madly folding to get ready for the craft show next week.

School pride is big here in Texas, so I made these this weekend to help people express theirs.

This one is for all my Aggie brethren from Texas A&M (Grad School Class of 2000). Whoop!

I will not explain here how many times I had to cut the paper to cover the end papers because math has never been this Aggie's forte. 

This one is for all my friends from that other school in Austin.

Please do not tell anyone in my family that I actually folded that one.

And these... well these are my favorites, of course.

Rah Oklahoma. Go OU!

What school would you like to see?