Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting

By a bunch of people, edited by Ann Hood.

Exactly what it says on the tin, including patterns. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the patterns, which annoys me greatly because how am I supposed to know if I want to make the thing without the visual? Just saying, publisher.

Memorable essays in this one:

• "looped yarn" by Martha Franke, about losing her best friend to a cult(!) and knitting her way through that situation.
• "knitting in kathmandu" by Jessi Hempel: Jessi is an out-and-proud lesbian knitter who, to her own surprise, finds herself attracted to a dude knitter she meets while traveling and it spins her head right round. I desperately want to spoil the ending of this, but I won't....darn it. But when I got to the last few pages, I was all "holy crap!" The world works in mysterious ways. 
• "judite" by Kaylie Jones, about her long time nanny and their relationship over the years. Another one where the ending made me go "awwww!"
• "i bought this pattern book last spring" by Elinor Lipman is a  delightful poem about unfinished projects. 
• "the supernatural power of knitting" by Alison Lurie, a combination article on the history of knitting and fictional knitters.
• "straw into gold" by Joyce Maynard, about her very smart mother being held back in  the use of her brains and how she turned to knitting. Her mother sounds amazing. 
• "failing better" by Bernadette Murphy, about how she got recruited into a project in which amateurs were to make a 4x4 square for a quilt, and amateurs did as they are wont to do, and how that got on her nerves... I hear ya! This is a great piece on dealing with imperfections.
• "how knitting saved my life. twice" by Ann Patchett, on being asked what she was working on at crucial times. 
• "the clothes make the dog" by Taylor M. Polites, on knitting sweaters for his fashionable little dog who is really into it. (If anything especially needed a photo, it's this!) 

Overall, three and a half stars. 

Grover Cleveland

By Henry F. Graff.

I have been dragging butt on my presidential biographies and at some point the library wants them back (circa June 30), so I need to get on it. Then I remembered "oh yeah, I have this book I haven't finished yet and it's been ages." So I finished it. Let's see what stood out about it enough for me to bookmark it, eh?

• Cleveland's being single for so long apparently made some people think he was gay and/or prejudiced against the married. 
• "It did not seem right or logical, he pointed out, that the paving, lighting, and cleaning of the streets should depend on the party affiliation of the working people." Good point.
• As mayor of Buffalo, he exposed a plot to overcharge the city $100,000 on a road-construction project, and he didn't go around greasing palms. He wouldn't permit the city to use money to celebrate Civil War dead, but did join in fundraising for it. 
• Cleveland had no truck with Roscoe Conkling, so cheers to him for that. 
• Quote from Cleveland: "It is no credit to me to do right. I am under no temptation to do wrong." 
• Then there's the Maria Halpin thing. I've got a much dishier book on the topic (rather horrifying) so I'll go into that later, This book claims that "Possibly Cleveland was seduced as well as the seducer," that Cleveland had Maria committed to a mental asylum and the kid to an orphan's asylum.  People knew about Cleveland's involvement, and that she named the kid after his best friend (weird choice there). This book claims that possibly Maria didn't know who the father was and just picked Cleveland, and hints that maybe it was the best friend's kid? 
• After a nasty article came out about the whole thing, Cleveland's response was to say "Tell the truth." Um, what was that? 
• Yeah, also creepy was his marrying his best friend's kid. "He had gazed on her lovingly from the day of her birth. Indeed, he had bought her her first baby carriage. No novelist could have concocted such a scenario." EWWWWWWWWWWWW.
• "The president-elect had never before set foot in Washington." 
• "One can only wonder as to what people thought they had accomplished in putting Cleveland in office. He had no "program" except a commitment to honesty and efficiency and an intention to staff his administration with worthy people from the Democratic ranks. He told Bissell that he viewed the four years to come "as a dreadful self-afflicted penance for the good of my country. I see no pleasure in it and no satisfaction, only a hope that I may be of service." Author's commentary: "Since no man has ever been dragged against his will into service as president, it may be safely assumed that the "martyrdom" Cleveland was about to suffer was pose, not truly his sentiment. He believed that Divine Providence had made him president," and also decided that "henceforth I must have no friends."
• "Close friends said he could tell a joke well, and that he was an amusing mimic of other politicians. The plain truth was that Cleveland had no gift for public relations." 
• Cleveland "was the last president who refused to give working space to reporters." 
• Frances was a much more personable person than her husband and she was very sociable.
• He was a dull speaker, a better writer, had a temper, and sometimes had "plain grossness." I'm afraid to ask.
• The joys of Benjamin Harrison: short, wore a high hat. "Where the Democrats sang: "His Grandfather's Hat--It's Too Big For Ben," the Republicans rejoined: "The Same Old Hat--It Fits Ben Just Right." "Still, nothing could make him a popular figure. Even colleagues regarded him as being "cold as an iceberg." Tom Platt once declared him to be "as glacial as a Siberian stripped of his fur."
• From the epilogue: "Cleveland lives in the national memory today almost exclusively as the president who had two nonconsecutive terms of office. He deserves a better fate, for he was once revered by millions of his contemporaries for genuine merits, especially integrity...The public understood that what the nation required, above all, was not brilliance but the cleansing honesty and straightforwardness that he provided." 

Three stars. Mildly interesting in reskimming it, but I do kinda wonder about some of the stuff said regarding Maria Halpin. But more on that later.