I would like it duly noted for the record that I spent most of Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday busting the slush on the left hand side of my desk so that I could open my shutters and look out my window at the pretty spring courtyard.
At which point, the Imps of Inconvenience said, "You think you can get rid of slush? Watch this!" And then they conspired to dump a load of a different kind of slush all over my pretty view. The bastards.
Book Report
Anyway, with all that paper off my desk, I felt able to read something other than a submission. So I finished the Harlot's new book, "Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting."
I've heard a little minor grumbling about this book, and I think I understand why. Don't get me wrong. I loved reading it. It's an extremely well-executed delivery of a high concept premise. It's clever, too, but we knew it would be. She's a clever writer, and she obviously thought through this book very carefully as she was preparing the manuscript.
She avoids the pitfalls that often trip up writers trying to deliver a high concept book like this. She kept the tone consistent, which must be hard to do, given the failure of so many similar books to remain consistent. And -- more important, to my way of thinking -- she kept it fresh all the way through the text. How many times have you read a nonfiction book and discovered that it was little more than a great first chapter, followed by various restatements of that first chapter? Books like that are thin and stale, and Stephanie's absolutely does not fall into this category. Her concept was strong enough and deep enough to sustain the entire book. It held my attention and never felt like it was repeating itself.
For those of you who haven't seen the book, the premise is fairly simple. She equates knitting to a foreign land, and the book is meant to serve as a travel guide for visitors. The book is broken into sections on population, geography, health warnings, customs and traditions, sports and culture, and so on, and each section talks about the bits and pieces of the knitting lifestyle in a different context from what we're used to. For example, the section on Politics talks about typical knitting debates -- straight vs. circular, acrylic vs. natural -- and classifies people who hate knitting as "enemies of the state." Clever. Witty, even.
So I really enjoyed the book. But it didn't quite read like the other Harlot books, did it? I've been struggling to understand what makes this one feel different, and I think I finally hit on it. Even though this book is meant for knitters, because it's a travel guide, it had to be written as if it were meant for strangers to knitting. Or, at least, it had to make a nod at that kind of tone. The other Harlot books have a very cozy, welcoming, "us girls" kind of feel to them. Apologies to male knitters -- that's not meant to be sexist, and her books aren't sexist. It's just the best way I can think of to describe the friendly, inclusive tone. Because those previous books are very friendly and inclusive, and I think some of that was necessarily sacrificed for this new book.
When you read it, read it with fresh eyes. Don't go into these pages expecting to find what's already been done before. It's new and different, and in this case, different doesn't mean bad. I liked this book, I laughed out loud many times, and I recommend it heartily. I admire the author for stretching, and especially for keeping her writing so fresh. I don't know how she does it. But she does, and the book succeeds.
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