Book Meme

Saw this meme at Rachael's:

The rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 2 to 5 sentences, along with these rules.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual book. Pick the CLOSEST!
6. Tag five other people to do the same!

Surprisingly the book next to me wasn't The Little Red Train Storybook or some other kid book from Cat's current favourites. Few minutes previously I picked up Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' autobiography "The Wheel of Life" from one of the many boxes filled with books. Here is the quote from the book, if I follow the rules:

Dr. Braun's fate was as unclear as his whereabouts. Either he was hospitalized for one of his manic episodes or he was in jail. Who knew when we would see him again, and it turned out the answer was never.

I think you'll all agree that this isn't a very exciting quote and doesn't do justice to the book or its incredible author, so I thought I'll post the bit from the end of the book, which I loved:

It is very important that you do only what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may live in a shabby place, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days, you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do.

New author to discover

It may look now as if people educated to use our newest technologies efficiently are the world's elite, but in the long run I believe that people educated to have, as well, that point of view that used to be described as humanistic - the long-term, over-all, contemplative point of view - will turn out to be more influential. Simply because they understand more of what is going on in the world...
To my mind the whole push and thrust and development of the world is towards the more complex, the flexible, the open-minded, the ability to entertain many ideas, sometimes contradictory ones, in one's mind at the same time.
Doris Lessing Prisons we choose to live inside.
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I finished reading this tiny book by Doris Lessing and looking forward to reading her other works. She sounds like fascinating wise woman.

Flashbacks to my education

I mentioned previously that I worry about my parenting style, but at the same time I agree with Rahima Baldwin Dancy:

Our task is to do our best, and trust in the best. We need to trust our children to be resilient, to be able to heal, to be terrific people despite our flawed efforts and our most regretted actions. (from You are Your Child’s First Teacher)

I’m glad that before having a child of my own I accepted that my own parents did their best based on their knowledge, their resources and their emotional/psychological fit with me. I feel that my acceptance of their parenting style gives me more confidence in my own and allows me to be gentle with myself, to forgive my own mistakes faster. I know I’ll make many mistakes, but all parents do.

I started reading R. B. Dancy’s book as part of my research into various educational streams/theories: Montessori, Waldorf, homeschooling, unschooling, autonomous education. I just finished reading John Holt’s How Children Fail. Here is excerpt from his own foreword to it:

But there is a more important sense in which almost all children fail: Except for a handful, who may or may not be good students, they fail to develop more than a tiny part of the tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating with which they were born and of which they made full use during the first two or three years of their lives.
Why do they fail?
They fail because they are afraid, bored, and confused.

His book is so easy to read and I had no trouble agreeing with him throughout the book, because, despite being a good student, I disliked school and as result skipped some of it. Yep, I was a truant. According to my mum I even disliked kindergarten.

At school I was often bored, because the subject matter was irrelevant to me, too easy or plain boring. I still remember listening to my uncle’s stories about Catherine the Great when I was 10 or 12 and being surprised to discover that history can be interesting, that it involves real complex people, that it isn’t all about poor underprivileged people rebelling against the rich.

The whole life in Soviet Russia was full of fear and confusion to me. There were so many unwritten rules, that no one explained to me, but plenty of people were eager to tell one off for breaking them. I think my capacity for learning and creating was getting squashed long before I started school. But specifically at school, I was afraid of being presented as model example to the other students (it had great side-effect of cutting me off from the rest) and being ridiculed for the wrong answers. Being in the middle of the pack was the safest option. I still remember being asked to tell what the classic composer was trying to portray in a short musical piece and being laughed at by the teacher for saying that I heard a train speeding away and the sound of the train horn. The correct answer was the hunters on horses chasing prey and blowing a hunting horn. Trust me when I say that hunters and galloping horses weren’t part of my childhood experience in small Soviet town. So the whole situation seems totally ridiculous to me now. Actually all of us dreaded music lessons, which mostly consisted of learning patriotic songs, because our teacher was sadistic bastard. I learned a lot of things at soviet school like how not to show initiative, not to ask questions, avoid responsibility, hide my thoughts and feelings, cheat, pretend to be dumber than I am, not to stand out.

Yet while reading a book I was also trying to think about studying in Australia and I realised that I can’t form any judgement on their schools as by the time I got there I just wanted to get good grades at school to get into university and at uni to pass to get a well paying job. Learning wasn’t one of my goals. There were some great teachers, some average ones and only one I truly disliked.

I hope my daughter will have better educational experience than I did. After I started working I made sure I enjoy my jobs most of the time and didn’t dread going to work every morning. I don’t see why a child should dread going to school where they spend so much of their time. To keep our options open we are trying to move to an area, which has a range of good public and private schools/kindergartens including Montessori & Waldorf.

On Saturday we actually went to the Waldorf kindergarten/school open day. How could I not like a place that is full of wood, balls of yarn, crayons, music, kindness and respect? I loved it and think I would enjoy chatting to the people, who work there, and creating my own things surrounded by its magic atmosphere. But I’m still not 100% convinced that it is perfect for my daughter, though she enjoyed playing with all their toys, was happy to be away from us and didn’t want to leave.

And since this is supposed to be a craft blog, here is a picture of the shoes I crocheted for her last week, since we were asked to bring slippers as outdoor shoes aren’t supposed to be worn inside the Waldorf school. Crochet pattern from DROPS Design - there are many other free crochet and knitting patterns on their website.

Reality check

I often worry about doing things correctly, what lessons I’m teaching my daughter unconsciously and if I can be a better parent. I’m faster at noticing the negatives than positives. I occasionally get into the complaining about everything mode. And then I’m violently pulled out of it by the reality check. This time it came in the form of a book – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The main character of the book is an orphan German girl and the action takes place in the small town in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. She has real Problems. In comparison whatever problems my family or I may have at the present moment are solvable with a bit of creative thinking; we don’t fear for our lives and have reasonable confidence in our child having comfortable and secure existence for the years to come; we don’t have to make any hard decisions; our morality isn’t tested on any big scale. Basically our lives are good, profoundly beautifully good, and I can see that easily if I stop for a second my fast chain of complaints and actually think about them.

Since I have no idea of how to write useful book reviews, I’ll just point you to the ones here. Hopefully they’ll give you a better idea of whether this book could be worth reading for you. Myself, I fall in love with the book from the first few pages and cried at the end of it, though I seem to be crying at books very easily nowadays.

Magic potions

The Book Book (bought after reading Soule Mama’s post, greatly enjoyed by me and waiting for the Little Girl to grow up a bit) has few small exercises to massage the imagination and one of them is to describe a magical potion. My latest one would be:
Some inspirational reading,
Followed by swirl of ideas,
Search for the handy materials,
Gluing down of some paper,

Painting over it with gesso and then watercolour,
Writing few words that feel suitable,
Finally sprinkling some shiny sparkles
And instead of stirring constantly contemplating my dreams.

What is your magic potion? I think Rachael’s one would include sewing machine, beautiful fabric, children’s laughter and some willing helpers. Please read her post to find out how YOU can help her to bring some Christmas cheer to Russian orphans and to WIN one of her beautiful creations.

Russian resources online

I was searching for information on English translations of Pavel Bazhov's wonderful Ural tales when I found some of them available online in Russian.

I also stumbled on this LiveJournal full of wonderful images including old book illustrations (more here), Russian embroidery and much more. Even if you don't read Russian, it's probably worth clicking around to see what inspirational design and paintings you may find.

Inspirational book

As parents, we’re given a tremendous opportunity to nurture, support, and encourage children in their early artistic expressions. A beautiful side effect of that effort is that we can nurture, support, and encourage our own artistic expression at the same time, even if we were never supported that way as children.
Amanda Blake Soule “The Creative Family”

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Finally my copy of SouleMama’s The Creative Family arrived this week. Just holding the book and looking through the photos made me feel happy: Amanda’s book, like her blog, is so full of love, respect and care for herself, her family and their creative spirit. I’m enjoying slowly reading through it – few pages everyday. The little girl loves looking at the cover of the book, pointing at all the kids and mama in turn. I wish I could show you a photo of her looking at the book, but every time I take my camera out I get this reaction:

Various everyday bits

This weekend, after months of trying, I finally managed to photograph my favourite locks in the whole wide world.


Cat’s favourite book at the moment is Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. We read it so many times that two nights in the row my dreams consisted of seeing different objects, pointing at them and saying “I spy …”.

I suspect tonight I’ll be dreaming of trains as I spent most of my free time today trying to figure out the easiest (and cheapest) way to book train tickets from Odessa to Kiev for 8 people. Ukrainian rail doesn’t make it easy for people outside Ukraine. As far as I can tell only Ukrainian travel agencies are allowed to sell the tickets and there aren’t many of them around on the web and some of those only deliver tickets to the addresses inside the Ukraine.

Clive recently stopped spending Sundays working on renovating his investment property, so the three of us get to do something fun together instead. I love all the extra time we have to spend together and enjoy every second of it, but it means that I’m too exhausted to blog on Sunday nights. Therefore I need to figure out a different day for my “quote of the week” post. I’ll try Thursday and/or Friday to see, which one works better for me.

Wire Pendant

After my unsuccessful attempt to crochet wire bracelet and while my parents were stil here, babysitting the little girl, I went to the big book store in search of the perfect book to teach me how to crochet with wire. (Is there a better place to spend few extra hours of freedom for a self-confessed book addict?) I loved Crocheted Wire Jewelry book by Arline M. Fisch straight away and am finally trying out one of the projects. I’m crocheting a small round pendant using copper wire over wooden bead following instructions for Cube Pendant by Eugene Keefer Bell. Trying to figure out the best placement for the next slip stitch to achieve random-pattern covering is so addictive that I don’t really want to finish it.

Sharing the love for books

Last week Clive taught Cat how to turn the book pages. She loves doing it and again is so proud of getting one step closer to the independence from her parents.



She definitely is growing to love books: the first place she crawled to was one of our bookshelves and it is one of the places she will consistently go towards. I guess it is high fun pulling the books of the bookshelves and trying to sneakily chew on one of them while no one is looking.

Another charming book

It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up firmly.
L. M. Montgomery “Anne of Green Gables”

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This book was in the kids section of the library, but I thought I’ll read it anyway since I heard good things about it (and I love reading kids books). I’m loving it! There are still so many books unread (even in my own small collection) and so many more wonderful treasures I may never get the time to read or may not even hear about. Do you have a favourite book or books? Is there anything else I should add to my extremely long list of books to read?

Books are everywhere

Yesterday I took Cat to the Baby Clinic after 2 months break. This time she was highly interested in other babies: she stared at few of them and even tried to grab the foot of the little boy sitting next to us. And I marvelled at how tiny some of the babies were – I don’t think Cat was ever that small, though I’m struggling to remember how she looked like as a newborn. Maybe it is time to look through her old photos again. I keep on meaning to organize them into the album; I even borrowed a book on scrapbooking from the library, but it probably will take me years to get it done.

She finally got weighted (8.96 kilos) after waiting for more than one hour (our area’s health clinic is severely understaffed). I had a chat with a health visitor and was given the first bookstart pack with two baby books and information on reading & local libraries for the parents. There are two more packs: one given at 18 months and one at three years. I think it is a great programme to encourage reading, although I’m unlikely to think anything else since I love books. The bookstart website also has song sheets with illustrations and lists of good book for children. From the pack I found out that there is a company which publishes bilingual books and now I have to resist the temptation to order some.

We already accumulated a good sized collection of children books (though not so many ones suitable for the baby) as I discovered many in good condition in the local charity shops. My latest favourite finds are Lion’s Precious Gift with the beautiful illustrations by Amanda Hall and a book of rhymes Twiddling Your Thumbs by Wendy Cope – I love her quirky poetry for adults and kids. Clive and I finally accepted the fact that there is no curing of my book collecting addiction and bought two more bookshelves.

I think I can go on and on talking about books (did I ever whinge about our library having a borrowing limit of 12 books? It used to be 7 until recently. Seven is a very small number!), but I think I’ll stop now.

The brightness of Brighton

On Friday we went to Brighton. As usual getting through London took a long time, so we entertained ourselves the best we could. Cat tried to get her socks off – unsuccessfully.

Then she tried to get her hat off – successfully


And eventually she and I slept. By the time we arrived to Brighton I was starving and as some of you know I become very unpleasant and dangerous when hungry. So after registering in the hotel and changing Cat’s outfit, we went in search of food. Ended up in Pitcher & Piano bar (surprisingly they have highchairs) and I finally had a good pub burger, which I was craving for awhile. Despite gloomy weather forecast the sun was shining brightly and the sky was mostly blue, so we took a nice stroll along the beach. My previous Brighton visit was in the middle of winter and I was able to compare the stark difference the winters and summers bring to the seaside town. It is so lovely in summer; there are things sold on every corner (freshly made donuts smelled very tempting), people everywhere and so much light.

Noel was brave enough to wade the water, while we looked in admiration and I wondered if my dad would be insane enough to go for a swim (he usually is). I miss them - my parents. The sound of waves crashing against pebble beach brought memories of our summer vacations at the Black Sea when I was little. It is totally different sound from the one waves makes against the sand.

Eventually we had to go back to hotel to feed the little one and put her to bed. On entering the room we were blinded by the brilliant light and had to close the curtains. They were heavy red one, but the sun still got through them creating Dracula’s cave atmosphere. Cat went to sleep surprisingly easy considering how weird and different the surroundings were. Since it was still very early Clive and his dad went out for a pint or two and I enjoyed reading Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth, which made me interested in visiting French towns of Toulouse, Carcassone and Beziers.

The next day Cat was up at 5 am (*cringe*) so I took her to the beach. There were just us, seagulls and a bunch of praying (? Studying? ) whitely clad Muslims. I felt so peaceful and relaxed and was happy to experience the magic of morning breeze, beach and water.

Once everyone else awoke, it was time for Cat’s morning nap (occasionally I find it amusing how much we manage to get done before other’s day starts). Noel was kind enough to babysit, so Clive and I had uninterrupted breakfast. And then we went to Royal Pavilion. I was happy to revisit it as it is truly stunning inside.

Afterwards we had time to look around the shops and finish buying presents for Cat’s Cape Town cousins. Toby Tiger had lots of wonderful brightly coloured items and now I regret not getting anything for Cat (but we really don’t have any more space for her clothes and most toys were for older kids). For lunch we decided to take the easy option of Carluccio's. And then it was back home.

The world of poetry

As well as having a mood meter I used to include and regularly change quotes in my email signature to reflect my mood, to highlight important experiences or just share some words that I found beautiful. So I thought I’ll add “Quote of the week” posts to this blog.

But in my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love.
J. M. Coetzee "Disgrace"
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At first my whole world of poetry consisted mostly of Pushkin, Lermontov and Esenin. And then one day I read Irina Odoyevtseva’s “On the banks of the Neva” and was introduced to the poetry world of St Peterburg at the beginning of 20th century. I was able to find a small tome of Silver Age poets and fall in love with exotic themes in Gumilyov’s poems, with romantism of Tsvetaeva, with quirkiness of Osip Mandelshtam. Few years later I had a chance to read most of the published poems of Anna Akhmatova in the chronological order and was struck by being able to trace her life through her poems, by the strength of her character.

I recently finished reading Odoyevtseva’s second book “On the banks of the Seine” (Ирина Одоевцева - На берегах Сены) and again was inspired to write down a long list of books I want to read, people I want to find out more about. I still sadly read too few of beautiful Russian poems.
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I also recently finished Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights. Mum, I think you’ll like it. How did I miss out on reading it before? Now I want to read Gaskell's "The Life of Charlotte Bronte" . Seems like every book recently leads to at least one other.

Elementary, my dear Watson

One thing I love about living in England is being able to see the places mentioned in the books, specially when those books were my childhood favourites. So today I decided to visit Sherlock Holmes Museum since I’m re-reading The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes at the moment. It is so tiny! I always imagined Sherlock's rooms to be cramped with various odd things, but much bigger than they are in reality. The English smallness still often catches me by surprise. As expected there were few Russians around. I wonder if Holmes is more popular and more loved there than he is in England. I wish I could re-watch Russian movies with Vasili Livanov as Sherlock Holmes. I can’t imagine him to be any different and therefore struggle to watch movie adaptations with any other actors no matter how good they are.

While I admire Holmes love for observation and logic, my favourite detective will always be Miss Marple. I adore her little English garden and constant tea drinking. Doesn’t it sound like a perfect way to spend ones elder years? (Joan Hickson was perfect in that role). I guess I should research if there are any Agatha Christie museums around.

The smallness of the museum was to my advantage as Cat seems to prefer outdoors and gets restless very fast inside. So after spending about 20 minutes in there I walked from Baker Street to St John’s Wood station via Regent’s Park. I’ve been to Regent’s Park numerous times, however I never been to that part of the park before. Why did I always walk from St John’s Wood station to Baker Street along Park Road instead of going through the park? Strange, very strange. The area on the left of the lake is beautiful, particularly on the warm sunny day like today (supposed to be 20 degrees!). The lake and the islands were teaming with the bird life and Cat was happy to watch flying, swimming, diving, mating birds. Sadly I could only identify doves, swans and ducks for her. The rest had to be labelled as “I think it’s a goose… it doesn’t look like a duck...”, “that looks like some type of stork… well it has long legs and neck, must be stork”. I think next time I’ll bring the camera along, take some pictures and with the help of Collins Bird Guide will try to figure out what are all those birds are exactly. Sounds like a perfect way to spend free time, maybe I can learn the names of most plants and flowers as well. I always wanted to do it, but there was never enough time. As mentioned Cat prefers to be outside, so in a way I’m forced to have time to study outdoors. Motherhood has its own advantages. I’m looking forward to the time when I finally get to play with a train set (one of my childhood dreams) and Meccano.

The mood meter revisited

I managed to find a photo of my old mood meter and grainy (but cute) photo of me at work (I think that’s the best haircut I ever had, too bad my hairdresser went into fulltime teaching career few months later. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be lucky enough to find someone as brilliant as her).



I definitely was in much better mood this week. Just thinking of my current life and my frame of mind helped. I have a plan for keeping myself happy and list of things I need/want to do (still need to write it down).

This week I started by having occasional afternoon nap and deciding to cook every work day (with “healthy body, healthy mind” reasoning behind this decision), while Clive volunteered to be responsible for weekend dinners. I love cooking, though I’m not all that good at it. I usually go through a phase of cooking too much followed by having no inspiration to cook. I may try to plan weekly menu in advance to simplify shopping and to make sure we get enough vegetables, iron, vitamins, etc.

I accumulated loads of loose change and so today I walked to Kilburn High Road to browse charity shops for cheap second hand books. You’d think that having a library in 5-minute walking distance and a bookshelf full of unread books would satisfy me, but I love looking for new books to add to my collection. I usually find few recently published ones in good condition in PDSA shop and this time left it with FIVE books. Now I just need to read them. I’m struggling with reading books lately and spend much more time reading blogs written by women with kids. Others experiences of motherhood (and balancing the rest of their lives) seem to hold my attention much better than most of the books I started reading.

Anyway enough about me. Cat laughed today! Twice! I have to admit that I was acting super silly today while playing with her. Hope Clive and I can produce the same result tomorrow, so he’ll get to hear her laughter before going to Hong Kong for one week.

My favourite pastime

During this week I finished reading my first book since giving birth to Cat – A Wreath of Stars by Bob Shaw Very nice simple sci-fi story. I love Gollancz SF series and always keep an eye out for their bright yellow book covers in second-hand bookshops and libraries. Sadly their newer books have normal “picture” covers and therefore are more difficult to spot.

I’m finally starting to get into Three Comrades by Erich Maria remarque after 60 pages. Really struggled to get interested in it, find characters interesting – could be reading it at the wrong time in my life. It also doesn’t help that I usually only manage to read 2-3 pages a day. This week I done more reading than average while holding half-asleep Catherine, but housework suffered as the result.

But the main news is that today Cat looked in fascination as I read/showed her two Russian baby books. Her first book reading! And she was interested enough for me to read them to her and talk about pictures in them twice! Until now she just screamed every time I tried to show her a book. I feel so happy, because I love reading books and any additional entertainment for her is highly welcomed, even if it only occupies her for 5-15 minutes.

Books, presents & weight

Early in the morning both my orders of Russian books arrived (yep, I’m using my baby as an excuse to feed my book addiction) and now we are out of bookshelf space again hence need to figure out where we can fit another one. Since it didn’t rain in the morning I sat in the garden with Cat and looked through the books. The best buys – Pavel Bazhov and Russian Folk Tales. Both made out of good paper, with good binding and have fantastic colourful illustrations. I love Bazhov’s tales – according to my mum as a child I would agree to do anything if my parents promised me to read from his book. Sadly his books are almost impossible to get in English. There are few other Russian books I would recommend, but sadly they are also hard to get. I wanted to use Roadside Picnic by Brothers Strugatsky as an example, but Gollancz re-publishing it next year (I'm very happy about finally being able to get a copy for Clive to expand his knowledge of russians as he has scary narrow stereotipical vision of us :-P ). The edition from 2000 is going for over £70 on Amazon! Now I have to figure out how many copies I want to pre-order -> makes good present for IT geeks.

We also received the cutest little outfit from Arnaud & Anne. My baby has her first French garment! She is definitely going to end up having better wardrobe than I do. Julia is already asking what type of clothes she should bring back from her January USA trip.

Went to the Baby Clinic in the afternoon. Catherine is now 4 kilos. Not bad for the girl, who had thrush (yeast infection) at the end of last week and wasn’t feeding well for few days. While she is gaining weight, I’m loosing it. I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight of 60.8 kilos – it is certainly good time to start concentrating on have additional lunch each day before I totally disappear.