{ kass } an artistic journey

Look Me In The Eye

This is a book I just finished. It's called Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison, the brother of Augesten Burroughs who wrote Running With Scissors.

Robison was diagnosed at age 40 with Asperger's Syndrome, which is on the Autism spectrum. The book tells his life story, living with this syndrome as a child and growing up. He talks about how he was constantly told he would amount to nothing, that he was a freak and how he was shunned by his community and, in many ways, by his own parents.

While I found the first two thirds of the book interesting from a memoir perspective, it wasn't until he received his diagnosis and was thus able to understand his life, that I found the book really fascinating. For example, his childhood was varied and he lived with parents who were consumed in themselves - his father in alcohol, his mother losing her mind totally. He went on to become an engineer for the band KISS, designing Ace Frehley's guitars with special effects. This was all really interesting but it was not, in my mind, what I wanted to know about him - it was the way his Asperger's affected his life that fascinated me and when he goes on later in the book to talk about that more specifically, that's when I found this memoir compulsive reading.

I'd totally recommend reading this book - you'll enjoy it immensely but you may not learn as much about Aspeger's as you might hope so keep that in mind.

The Kite Runner

I finished reading this novel last night, and I have to highly recommend it to everyone.

The story revolves around an Afghan boy, Amir, and his friendship with Hassan, the son of their house-help, in 1960s Afghanistan. The book explores the politics of Afghanistan up to 2002 as a background to the story of Amir and Hassan's friendship.

I can't really discuss the plot because it would give away the twists, but it is a brilliant narrative which you will find difficult to put down.

I bought this book several months ago but couldn't get "into" it when I started it. Last week I tried again and had it read in 4 days - I guess this time I was in the right frame of mind.

If you are looking for a great novel to read over Christmas, definitely give this debut novel by Khaled Hosseini a go - you will laugh and cry and you will not put it down.

Has anyone read this? I'd love to hear your thoughts about it too.

elsie's book!

Earlier in the week, my copy of Elsie Flannigan's book, 52 Scrapbooking Challenges, arrived.

I have to admit, I wasn't running out the door to get this book. In fact, I spent my money on Ali's new book on Patterned Papers instead (which is also super fabulous and a great purchase!).

But I got a copy from Karen and I am SO GLAD I did now!

If you haven't had a look - it's very Elsie - and it's so inspirational! There are some gorgeous layouts in this book - in fact I haven't even finished looking right through it yet but I am in love already.

So if you dont have it and like Elsie's stuff (and really, how could you not - it's so fresh!), you should part with your hard earned because it's WORTH EVERY CENT!!

Tomorrow I am off to my interview with Melbourne Uni and tomorrow night I am cropping at Donna's crop. There I WILL be doing my pages for some special albums, as well as the covers...so lots to achieve!

The Big Picture - The Book!

This week my copy of The Big Picture by Stacy Julian finally arrived.  (I am so lucky I ordered when I did as it is has sold SO well that more copies have had to be printed and they are out of stock world-wide.)

I'll say from the outset - this is not an idea book and the layouts are great, but they are not going to set your world on fire.

What is amazing amazing AMAZING about this book is the concept behind it and the way Stacy is trying to encourage scrappers to think about their scrapping and about their lives. 

Stacy's concept is that you should not try to "catch up" on your scrapping or feel that you have to scrap in any order.  Her theory is that we should scrap the things that are important to us there and then.  Your kids dont need a layout of everytime they breathe, for example.  They dont need a whole album of meaningless stuff.  What they will look back on are the layouts that campture moments - MEMORIES.  For Stacy, scrapbooking isn't about the photos - photos are illustrations.  Scrapping is about memories and capturing those in the best way we can, while exploring our creativity.

THIS IS WHAT SETS THIS BOOK APART FROM OTHERS.

No-one is so together in their life, so mature or so wise that they cant't really get something from this book.  Stacy isn't preaching - she's enabling. 

So I am working on my mission statement by way of my tags (there are tags in the back of the book for this - you have to read it to understand how it works) so I will share those when they are done.  Although I have never been a chronological scrapper and have no desire to ever be caught up, this really opened up new ideas for me and the notes in my notebook (that Nic so kindly gave me for Christmas) have been flowing thick and fast!!

Do it - get the book when it's back in print.  You will NOT be sorry!