Lint in Literature: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

My book club recently picked this book, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, for our January book. Since I read like a turtle (well, I'm not sure turtles actually read but I read slow, like a turtle moves), I decided to start reading it now. 

I'm about done, only about 200 pages to go. I'm reading the large print version so it's over 700 pages! But it's so worth it! This book is wonderful! The author is a fabulous writer, the story is unique and compelling, and it's gentle and soothing to read.

Basically, I love it!

Here is the excerpt that contained lint:

Yes, generally speaking such a remark falling from the lips of a statesman should be swept from the floor with the dust and the lint. But when it fell from the lips of Soso, one had good reason to lend it credence.

I've also learned from reading this book that Soso is a childhood nickname of Stalin. That's just one of the hundreds (thousands?) of tidbits you'll pick up. Of course I don't retain such stuff but it's a fascinating historical look at Russia and our world from the early twentieth century through the 1950s (I think, I'm not done yet).

Check out A Gentleman in Moscow if the real world is driving you crazy. This book is a balm against the daily bullshit.

Lint in Literature: Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day

I just finished reading Lori Rader-Day's novel Little Pretty Things, literally, like 10 minutes ago. I loved this book. And there's a nugget in there, on page 180. A lint nugget!

"My own house is too clean now, you know? I see a piece of lint, and I have to stop and pick it up, and I look at it, try to decide where it came from."

Lint aside, this novel is a mystery that had me stumped till the killer was revealed. Well, I sort of had an idea but it was so good! Read it! With more than 24 5-star reviews on Amazon, it's not just me who likes this one.

Little Pretty Things

Lint in Literature: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I found some lint! I was reading the novel Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng last night and came across this line:

Lydia hugged her knees under the dining table, 

cookbookless; Nath picked lint from the carpet and glowered. 

This book is really good so if you love a good read (and lint), you might want to read it, too.

Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Lint in Literature: After the War is Over and Now Write! Mysteries

I read this lint in literature in After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson:




After the War Is Over: A Novel

His hair, rather charmingly, was standing on end, and his days-old beard had a thread of lint caught up in the hairs.

I've been reading a lot of nonfiction books lately and found lint in one of them. Oh happy day!

The book is titled Now Write! Mysteries. In it Harley Jane Kozak, a funny writer of mysteries, wrote a section called The Telling Detail. A telling detail is one thing a writer says about a character to keep them in the reader's mind. Here's her linty entry:

"Elderly" becomes "She had grandmother hair, so fragile and fine and soft it might have been lint plucked from the clothes dryer and stuck atop her head."

Love it!

Now Write! Mysteries: Suspense, Crime, Thriller, and Other Mystery Fiction Exercises from Today's Best  Writers and Teachers

The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott

I've had shingles for a week now and had, what my doctor thought was a sore or blister near my right eye. So, I've been having to wear gauze over my eye during the day and an eye patch at night. This one-eyed situation made it really hard to do certain things, like read!



So, I figured out, with my daughter's help, how to download an audiobook onto my iPad to listen to instead of reading an actual book. I quickly chose The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott from my library using the Overdrive app. I am loving this book!

Last night while lying in bed, they mentioned lint. The ladies work in a textile mill in 1832 in Lowell, Massachusetts so there is lint flying from the cotton used to make the fabric. I didn't catch the sentence since I was listening, instead of reading, but it was a wonderful use of the word lint and had to share it with you.

If you like historical fiction (and lint), you can't go wrong with The Daring Ladies of Lowell.

Lint in Literature: The Keep by Jennifer Egan

I recently read the novel The Keep by Jennifer Egan. If you want to read what I thought about it, visit my book blog where I sort of reviewed it / sort of moaned about how confusing it was!

While reading it, I came across this passage:

It's about the size of a shoebox--in fact it is a shoebox, I can see the Adidas logo right through the paint. He lifts off the top and I look inside the box and see dust. Lint, hair, fur. Dust of every color and thickness. A lot of dust balls all clumped into one big clump. Davis holds the box right under my face.

Again, it's a weird book (in my opinion) but it does include lint, so it wasn't all bad!

Make Fire Starters with Lint and Toilet Paper Rolls

Okay, I saw this easy project somewhere online (Pinterest probably; everything's on Pinterest) and have been meaning to write a blog entry, so here goes.

It's so easy and when you're done, you'll have handy fire starters for the fireplace in the fall or the campfire this summer!

Here are the steps:

1.  Save your lint and your toilet paper rolls.

2.  Take some lint and stuff it inside a toilet paper roll. Paper towel rolls would also work if you like to start big fires!

3.  Store them somewhere dry until ready to use. 

If you want to jazz this little project up a bit, let the kids draw on the toilet paper rolls with crayon to decorate them. They can also help stuff the tubes with lint since they have those handy little-sized hands.

I don't have a fireplace and don't go camping but I have friends with a fireplace. I think I'll save my lint and toilet paper rolls and make up several of these for them. I think three of them stacked in a pyramid tied with string would be a fun little gift to give. I have no idea if they'll like receiving them but I think so!

In case using lint as a fire starter sounds familiar, you're right. I blogged about it way back when, but the toilet paper roll to encase it is new!

Lint in Literature: City of Thieves

I'm reading City of Thieves by David Benioff (very good!) and last night read this passage:

Abruptly he released me, shoving his hands into my coat pockets, pulling out scraps of paper, a bit of string and lint, nothing close to money. Koyla sighed and turned to the vendor.

Do you ever watch for certain words in books you read? If so, what are they? Do you find them very often?

Friendly Lint

I went to a friend's house the other day and we were talking about lint (among other things). She said she'd washed and dried a white cotton blanket that really had a lot of lint on it when it came out of the dryer. And it left a lot of lint in the lint filter.

See? That's the lint in her trash can. The brownish lint was already in the lint filter she said then she added the blanket. The white was all from the white blanket. I think it's interesting how different fabrics throw off more lint than others. It makes sense that natural fibers like cotton would offer up more lint. Because have you ever seen a  polyester lint wad? Me neither.

Have any lint stories to share? If so, please do!

Snopes and Lint: The Real Dirt

I did a quick search for "lint" on Google and didn't see much interesting but on the third page found info from Snopes regarding lint. Yes, Snopes, the Web site subtitled "Rumor Has It." Snopes verifies or nullifies gossip, emails, and the like.

The Snopes lint entry is regarding the claim of lint filters on clothes dryers getting clogged when you use dryer sheets. Turns out, it's true. Dryer sheets can clog the mesh screens on dryers with a film that causes the heating element on the dryer to overheat and go out.

I personally don't use dryer sheets, so I guess my dryer's good to go. Do you use dryer sheets?

Lint's Favorite Candy for Christmas?

Maybe I like lint so much because we both like Lindt candy so much. I only buy this delicious treat once in a great while because I'd just eat it. It's so delicious, creamy and smooth and so tasty.

What is your favorite Christmas candy? Or other candy for that matter?

Merry Christmas to all.

Lint in Air Filters

Baby, it's hot outside. I'm sure it is where you are, and it sure is where I am here in Phoenix. A high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit here today. Ugh. I hate it, but I mostly stay in but that means my air conditioner is running almost nonstop some days. It's a necessity here though, for me anyway. Otherwise I would be a lethargic puddle, so I bite the bullet and run the AC.

And since it runs so much, I try to be diligent about changing my air filter. I bought one of the 3-month air filters last time and put the little reminder label on my calender here by my desk. But, it's dusty here in the desert and I have a cat and I'm not a great housekeeper (I vacuum every week or so whether it needs it or not), so I decided to take a gander at the air filter the other day. It was gray. See? It's supposed to be white.

So, I checked the measurements, wrote them down, and went to the hardware store for a replacement even though I was 3 weeks early from the 90-day target. Maybe it'll reduce the utility bill by a buck or so, I reasoned. I asked the clerk where I could find furnace filters (old habits die hard). She directed me to the wall where they are stacked in boxes without correcting. Furnaces? We don't need no stinking furnaces.

Well, I found a coupon at the store for buy one get one free, so I bought two air filters. The wrong size. I had written down the right size, but they didn't have that size so since I had the coupon, I guess I just had buy some filters so I could use that coupon! The two air filters are both 2 inches too wide. Oh well. I've done it before; I cut off 2 inches and shoved it in with the little arrow pointing the right way and everything. Works fine and I didn't want to return the suckers.

So, on the paper label for the new air filter, it says that it traps animal dander, LINT!, plant spores, dust, and pollen. And instead of 90 days, I'll probably change it after 60 days or so again.

Have you changed your air filter lately?

Skully Darkmoon Lint Clay Art Doll

Okay, here's a new one to me. Lint clay art! Who knew? Not me. This guy (it's actually a gal!) was created by Etsy artist DarkMoonDoll. And here she is:

The Etsy description follows:

Skully was created by making clay lint. Clay lint is a type of clay that can be made using dryer lint,and glue. I formed the shape of the body and head all in one mass. I let it dry for a week. After the form dried I applied acrylic paints on to create the creepy face, striped skull shirt, black pants shirt, and white streaked hair. Skully is very sturdy and and as hard as concrete so she is not extremely fragile. She stands 7 inches tall

Check out DarkMoonDoll's Etsy shop.

So cool! I never ever thought of combining lint and glue to make clay, but then again, why not?

Lint as Fire Starter

Lint. It really is useful stuff. I post links to my blogs and online articles to RedGage to get more exposure for my writing. Another RedGage user, Kinderhook, recently commented on one of my earlier lint blog entries. She said that lint is great as a fire starter. Well, I guess it would be! Lint is, after all, little bits of fabric that flies off our clothes in the drier and gets caught in the lint filter.And fabric, especially little bits of it, will burn so it makes sense that lint would too.

So, here's what my current wad of lint would look in a campfire setting:

So... the dog sniffed out the campsite, the donkey hauled the lint and vittles, the singing pickle provides the entertainment, Cookie the chef is ready to make dinner once the poodle gets the fire started, with the lint, of course.

Going to start collecting your lint now, aren't you?

Bedpan or Lint Filter? You Decide.

I took a picture of my lint filter and decided it looks like a bedpan. See?

What shape is your lint filter?

Lint in Literature -- Under the Dome

Okay, I might be stretching it to call Stephen King's new book Under the Dome literature, but you can't beat the alliteration:  Lint in Literature. Oh yeah.

I'm in the home stretch of this huge book, fewer than 50 pages to go. But last night as I was reading, this jewel jumped off page 1027:

"Big Jim, his back now to Carter sighed. 'But I'll be eating roast beef at the Lord's table in a minute or two, so that's all right.' He raised a pudgy finger and pressed it high on the back of his neck. 'Right here. The brain stem. All right?'

Carter swallowed what felt like a large dry ball of lint. 'Yes, sir.'"

Priceless!

To check my blog about books, click A Good Book is Awaiting.You never know when more lint's going to roll through.

Are you a Cootie Queen or a Lint Licker?

Just saw that Orbit gum commercial again. You know the one. The two women are fighting over a man. One woman calls the other a Cootie Queen then the Cootie Queen calls the other a Lint Linter.

Who, I ask, licks lint?

Guest Lint -- Coin Laundry No. 1

I was out riding my bike today (yes, really... the high here in Phoenix today is 72 degrees F), and I rode through a parking lot to get off a busy street.

I smelled it before I saw it--laundry soap and fabric softener fumes. The air was scented nicely, not of flowering trees or fruit, but of good old laundry. I looked up and saw the sign:  Coin Laundry. To keep the nice smell a bit longer, I rode around the back and snapped this picture. Lint was trapped against the side of the building, in the grass, just about anywhere leaves would accumulate.

All of the lint I saw was this color--gray. Isn't that amazing that with all the colors of clothes, most lint devolves to gray?

Composting Lint

Did you know you could compost lint? I didn't until this week when my friend Barb wrote in an email:  "Did you know that lint is a perfect addition to your compost bin?  Seems weird, I know."

So, I looked it up and found this wonderful red worm site that talks about how the worm dude put a lint ball in the worm bin. I used to raise worms for the castings (worm poop), which is great fertilizer. And that's what compost is, great fertilizer. 

Beware! The site has graphic images of red worms feasting away on lint and other organic crap. Fascinating!

I'd say you can probably add lint directly to the compost pile too, if you have one of those going. Lint is after all mostly flecks of cotton, which is a plant fiber. Just be sure to tear it into small pieces, spread it out, water it, turn it, basically all the good stuff you do to your other composting material. 

Let me know if YOU use lint in your compost.

I got a nice picture to add to this post from Liz. She composts lint! Thanks, Liz!

 

Merry Linty Christmas

Merry Linty Christmas and Happy Lint Year.