Thursday, 21 February 2008

I'm a winner.................................

Ok I am a little late in posting this as I received my goodies last week but I needed to be home in daylight to photograph them to do them justice.

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This was my prize for making an entry on the Kinterati blog - Londons only knitting reading group held on the last Tuesday of each month at Iknit London.

Thank you Cavefelem (aka Izzie the cat) for choosing such lovely personal prizes and gifting me with my first skein of Posh yarn. Everytime I have ever tried to buy from Dee's site someone has always gotton there before me. I know have to choose very carefully a suitable literary type project to use it for. Maybe a luxury book bag! I am also very much looking forward to reading Wise Children. I certainly felt thoroughly spoilt.

This month we are reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck, also author Of Mice and Men. (The book I had heard of.)
This is not something I would normally pick up to read so being part of the book group is challenging my usual reading habits which tend to be children's and teen fiction of and of course an abundance of Chick Lit. (We all need to let our brains go sometime.)

I haven't started reading yet but as my copy only arrived through the post from another kind member of the group who is now unable to come on Tuesday. (Knitters really are lovely people - thank you Whichit.)

Scanning the intro and blurb has been interesting and I am looking forward to sitting down with a cup of coffee and getting started. I love half term.

A little info on John Steinbeck if you like.....
Born in Salinas, California, in 1902 he grew up in an agricultural valley twenty five miles from the Pacific coast. He went to Stanford University in 1919 but never took a degree just a series of literature courses. He then worked as a labourer and journalist in New York City. He died in 1968 having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962

The book itself is described in the blurb as
John Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, a Mexican pearl-diver finds 'the pearl of the World' he believes that his impoverished life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in the church and their son, Coyotito, will go to school. Obsessed by his dream, Kino is blind to greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in his neighbours - and in himself. Written with haunting and lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilised world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

Right on that note I am off to do some reading. Further posts can be found at the Kniterati blogspot with opinions of the group and a summary of the discussions.

1 comment:

shaz said...

The Pearl is a wonderful short story... I can't wait to see what you think. Steinbeck is my absolute favourite author. It's my mission to got to Monterey/ Salinas one of these days and experience the world he describes so vividly.

xx