I love...Monkey See

My nearest and dearest know that I spend an obscene amount of time reading blogs. So I'll be sharing some of my favorites from time to time.

One site I hit every day is NPR's Monkey See, which is the pop-culture blog from National Public Radio. It's not so much a matter of trying to keep up to date but rather to read the sublime writing of Linda Holmes (aka Miss Alli, the late lamented recapper from Television Without Pity). Linda is a brilliant, funny writer who can bring the snark like no one else and has an unabashed love for Reality TV. She's the only person other than myself who actually admits to watching Blush on Lifetime.

Girls, I give you Linda's 'Ten Surprising Wholesome Values Discovered In Old Episodes Of 'Little House On The Prairie'. Aren't you glad those weren't wasted hours?

For more Linda, visit her personal blog Things What Things.

Sick Days

Nothing beats being sick in bed when you have a stack of books to finish up. This week I managed to polish off:

'Tis the Season by Lorna Landvik--a novel written entirely in email format

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Lee Standiford--really well written. I was struck by how incredibly dismal life was in London during the Victorian era.

My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith by Benyamin Cohen--more snark than substance, but it was interesting to view so many different religions through the eyes of an orthodox Jew. Some of those southern churches are intense.

September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years by Maggie Scarf--looks like old age doesn't really suck after all

Here's the Bright Side: Of Failure, Fear, Cancer, Divorce, and Other Bum Raps by Betty Rollin--actually, life in general doesn't really suck after all

The Foxfire 40th Anniversary Book: Faith, Family, and the Land --a collection of essays from the past forty years. I will never take running water for granted again.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas: A Holiday Mystery by Agatha Christie--The thing I enjoy most about Agatha Christie is that I never can figure out who did it before I get to the end. Not sure if this relflects more on her supreme writing skills or my basic lack of imagination, but it makes for enjoyable reading.

The Winding Ways Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini --for the twelfth book in a series, it wasn't a total waste of time. Best I can say.

The Quilter's Kitchen: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel with Recipes also by Jennifer Chiaverini --the thirteenth book in the series was a total waste of time.

Actors at Work by Rosemarie Tichler, Barry Jay Kaplan, and Mike Nichols --interviews with famous actors (such as Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Kevin Kline), discussing the actual craft of acting. Lots of emphasis on their education. Gave me a real appreciation for the amount of sheer effort and practice that goes into the profession.

I love...Julia Child

It's that holiday time of year, when much of our energy goes into cooking. And you just don't cook around our house without Julia's help.

Ever since it was published in 1989, our default cookbook has been The Way to Cook by Julia Child. It was a huge investment for us at the time ($50!) and a bit controversial, because the Silver Palate ladies came out with The New Basics that same year. Lukins and Russo were considered to be much more modern and their book more inclusive. But Child wrote a wonderful, easy to use book with great pictures and a good set of recipes and skills that every cook should have at hand.

This is a book for the beginner as well as the more experienced cook. The Way to Cook is written in typical Julia style...she takes a basic recipe, teaches you how to make it step by detailed step, and then expands on it. So once you know how to make a pizza dough, you go on to make calzones. Start with a roast chicken, move on to boneless stuffed turkey and designer duck. Mike uses this book for pies (see above), soups, and meat, and I've never used another pizza recipe. There's even a simplified version of the famous french bread from Mastering v. 2

So thank you Julia, for making life in the kitchen a little easier these past twenty years.

But was it worth the wait?

November 25 was the release date for Book Three of Nora Roberts' Sign of Seven Trilogy. Needless to say, I was at Target bright and early, ready to grab my copy and start reading. Imagine the horror when all I found were five rows of empty bookshelves, neatly labeled with price stickers but no damn books to be found. And I wasn't alone...two other women were also staring sadly at the empty display. Take that, Harry Potter!

Three stores later, I was able to score a copy at Giant (hope my new-found friends were as lucky). And it was worth the effort. Nora Roberts is my escape literature drug of choice. Mysteries, love stories, even the trashy, oh-so-awful ancient Silhouette romances; I love them all.

The Pagan Stone is the third book in Roberts' latest straight to paperback trilogy. You have to admire a marketing strategy that basically takes one story, stretches it into three books, and then makes you wait almost a year to find out how it all ends. Sign of Seven hasn't been my favorite series. Yet another battle between ultimate evil and normal people rising to the occasion which was much more entertaining in the Circle Trilogy. But like all of Nora Roberts books, it's extremely well written. Good flow, good dialogue, and always a plot twist or two. Just when I think I know where the story is going there's a little jog to keep me interested.

Roberts' books may be a little formulaic (always have to have those matchy-matchy couples, nice mutt a bonus) but they never feel dashed off. They read as if some effort was made to craft a good story. You know that family (by birth or of the heart) is still the most important thing, that true love exists, and that it's possible to have hot sex late in life. Does a bathtub book require anything else?

"What's that girl? Timmy fell down an abandoned mine shaft?"

I picked up Santa Clawed by Rita Mae Brown (and let's not forget Sneaky Pie) to read while recovering from my recent surgery. Something easy was necessary and this book was certainly that.

Let me say right up front that I'm a big fan of Brown's. Loved Loose Lips and Bingo, and I even enjoyed the first few books of this series quite a bit. But Brown seems to have gone the way of all series writers; rushing to get a story in print without putting a whole lot of effort into it. Someone gets murdered? Check. Harry sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong and almost gets killed? Check. Animals save the day? Check and check again. Extra points if she can get a few digs in about how crass the rest of the country is compared to Virginians. I understand that Brown needs to make a living, but can't we get a little character development? We've become invested in these characters after all this time and I'd like to learn a bit more about them or else there's no point in reading on.

That said, it's a nice story for a rainy day. Certainly not wishing those two hours of my life back. And I totally want a corgi now. Or two.

I love...LibraryThing

I absolutely adore LibraryThing. For those of you who've never heard of it, LibraryThing is an online book cataloging service. You can keep track of all your books, add comments and reviews, read what other people have to say about the books, and more. If you're socially inclined there are plenty of discussion groups to join as well. Anyone can get a free account (which allows you to catalog up to 200 books) or get a lifetime subscription for $25.

One of my life goals is to get all our books entered on LibraryThing. I figure I'm about half done (700 and counting!). This would certainly be easier if a) Mike & I quit buying so many books, and b) I wasn't such a lazy slug, but I'm working on it. You can track my progress using the link to my library on this blog.

Pouvez-vous lire en français?

Today I read French Milk by Lucy Knesley. It's a journal covering a month she spent in Paris with her mother. I originally picked it up because Knesley wrote it as a senior at SAIC and the book itself is a combination of photographs and cartoons. Knesley has a real knack for capturing the essence of a person or place with her drawings, and I espcially enjoyed her snarky comments about the art she saw in France. Made me miss Beth!