Resolved

I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions. There's nothing special about the first of the year that will miraculously transform me into an efficient, competent go-getter. But after reading dozens of lists from other people, I thought I'd give it a shot. Start of a new decade and all.

1. Over on Salon.com, book editor Laura Miller makes a case for getting out of your literary comfort zone. Read something different from the ordinary. Choose a new genre. So I'm going to see if I can't expand my horizons a wee bit. Since I read very little fiction, I think I'll try to read one new bestseller every month.

2. Miller is also enthusiastic about writing down everything you read. She claims it's as effective as keeping a diary. While it's true that I do enjoy going back over books I have read, it's even more true that I really dislike making book lists. Probably stems from some grade school summer reading program trauma. You can see how diligent I am about this blog, right? But I'll try.

3. More than one resolution list I've read has had something along the lines of "Fewer blogs, more books." Sounds good in theory. I probably spend at least an hour a day reading stuff online. I doubt that will end any time soon, but I do resolve to keep up with the posts in blogs I love. I did purge a few non-essentials from my Reader, and if I notice too many unread posts stacking up I will happily delete them.

4. I refuse to waste any more time reading books I don't like just because I've started them. I've already ditched a couple this year: Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith and An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon. The first was so poorly written I couldn't get through it no matter how hard I tried (I have a special hatred for book chapters two pages or less). I enjoyed Gabaldon's other books, but it's been so long since I've read the rest of the Outlander series that I just can't remember who's who. Not to mention that at nearly 900 pages I can barely lift the thing. Think I'll wait until it's out in paperback so I can just buy a copy and take my time.

5. I could add my perennial resolution of getting all my books entered in LibraryThing, but it won't happen (I AM over 1000 books though!). Instead, I swear that this will be the year that all my books will have a home on a shelf somewhere. No more piles on the floor. Maybe.

Sigh...

Leo and I are sharing the same energy level these days.


Looks like Nora Roberts has managed to publish not one, not two, but damn it, three books since I updated last. This is why I never join those summer reading programs that make you keep track of what you read.



Speaking of Nora, there was a great article about her in the New Yorker last month. When asked the secret of her pretty amazing productivity, her simple answer was "Ass in chair." One of the many reasons I love her.

What about the books? The first one was Promises in Death (written as J D Robb). If you like Eve and Roarke, you'll like it--if you don't, you won't. I think of the In Death books as one really, really long story anyhow.

Next up is the first story in the latest paperback series: Vision in White. This one is going to be a quartet, and it's about four friends who own a wedding business. It was entertaining, which is all I ask of my escape literature.

Wish I could say the same for the new full-length novel, Black Hills. This one started out well, but by about half way through I got slightly (hate to admit it) bored. We're told who the killer is mid-book, which takes care of any suspense. And I've pretty much had it with cops who've gone through a traumatic experience and need a lifestyle change as a plot device. My biggest problem is that the heroine, in spite of being on hell of a kick-ass, brilliant woman, gets absolutely no credit or respect from her family or lover. This one reads like it was written twenty years ago.

Fortunately for me, Nora Roberts will probably have another book out before I manage to blog again. And I'm looking forward to it.

What's a Picture Worth?

Just read Annie Leibovitz At Work by Annie Leibovitz. In this book she describes the history and technique behind some of her most famous works, starting with the pictures she took for Rolling Stone through today's images for Vanity Fair.

Leibovitz is certainly one of the more recognizable photographers out there today. I wouldn't go so far as to say all her pictures look the same, but they do share many elements. Reading about the research she does and how she sets up each shoot helps explain this.

One of the more interesting things about this book was learning how photography has changed so much in the past forty years. Even little things like a change in page size or paper quality at Rolling Stone made a huge difference in how a picture looked. I was really fascinated by how Leibovitz makes all those composite pictures for Vanity Fair, and how difficult those were to create before digital came into being. Someone who understands a bit more about the technical process than I do would appreciate this book. I enjoyed it very much.

The buzzard picture is mine. It has nothing at all to do with the book. I just enjoy them!

Food for Thought

I don't read much fiction, but The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister was recommended on a blog I follow so I though I'd give it a try. This turned out to be a lovely story. Set in a restaurant cooking class, each chapter focuses on one of the students and how the food they prepare is a reminder of something important in their lives. The book has an easy pace. Bauermeister has a beautiful way with descriptions (the sort of writing often described as "lush") and there were many paragraphs I went back and read again just for the sound they made. The theory that food has magical qualities and is a reflection of the soul isn't new, but when handled correctly can be a great reminder of the many levels of nourishment we receive at the table. If you liked Chocolat (the book, not that pathetic excuse for a movie) or Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (note to self: read more Anne Tyler) you will like this book.

Eat, Memory is a collection of essays from the Sunday New York Times. The authors of these stories were given a simple task: write about an important event in your life that involved food. The results include the heartbreaking (cooking for a dying mother), the hilarious (a summer job spent in the B&M baked bean factory) and the historical (Julia Child's failing her Cordon Bleu final exam). Fun to read, but if you always read the Times Magazine you've seen them all before. Edited by Amanda Hesser with lots of recipes.

The subtitle of this book is "A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes." Sigh. In The Year of Eating Dangerously, British food critic Tom Parker Bowles travels the world looking for extreme things to eat. It's been done before, and done better. At least Parker Bowles comes straight out and admits that he's no Bourdain. Tom seems like a nice enough man, and he writes very well, but I just didn't need another story about durian and dog. For me, the most interesting part was the introduction when he talks about the food his mother cooked (Camilla, as in wife of Charles, as in Prince) and the crap he was fed at boarding school. If you haven't OD'd on food/travel literature the way I have give this one a try.

No time for books!

Seriously, both Survivor and Amazing Race are starting new seasons this week. Who has time to read? Not to mention Last Restaurant Standing (new sets this year, and subtitles for Raymond), Hell's Kitchen (so far no shirtless Grrr shots), and now that they're finished with tryouts, American Idol.

It's hard to believe that this is the eighteenth season of Survivor. Thankfully no beach this year. Brazil is gorgeous! But is it just me, or are the players getting a bit dimmer as each season goes by? And could Jeff be any more obvious with his interfering comments? Let them play the game, Peachy!

Whew!

I know, I know! My attention to this blog has been shameful lately. Just haven't really been in a reading mood. Not sure if it's the weather or the fact that I've got a dozen other things hanging over my head, but I haven't managed to finish a thing in over a week. But I've got seven or eight books going now and should have some stuff written up by next week.

To try and get myself excited about books again, I took an afternoon and entered almost 100 of them into LibraryThing. Sad to say it was only ONE bookshelf:



Now obviously I left a couple of stacks off the shelf just so you could see all the others tucked up in the back. And quite a few of Mike's books (a dozen Graham Greene and John LeCarre thrillers) got shelved elsewhere with the hardbacks by those authors. But who would have thought that so many books could fit on one shelf?

I'm really trying hard to pare down and organize things this year. I did find one book to put in the donation pile (a duplicate), which makes me feel very tidy.

Only ten bookCASES to go!

The Name Says it All

Can we just say I'm really not feeling the love right now?

Time to Vote

Ballots are now available online for this year's Bloggie Awards. It's a great way to check out a wide variety of blogs in many different categories. There really is some wonderful writing being published online--I should know, I subscribe to over thirty different blogs these days. Probably the reason I don't have as much time to read "real" books as I used to.

There are cooking blogs, travel blogs, blogs that feature gorgeous photographs, even minimalist blogs (maybe someday we'll be voting for Beth). Don't forget to visit the pages for previous years to find even more fantastic sites. And if any of you have a favorite blog, I'd love to check it out.

http://2009.bloggies.com/

Busy Week!

Things have been pretty hectic around here, what with the inauguration (even though I was smart enough to celebrate from home), and birthdays, and the ramshackle creation of a new soap blog. So very little time for reading!

I did inhale the latest story by Janet Evanovich, Inc. called Plum Spooky. It could have been worse. At least I didn't finish it wishing for that hour of my life back. And you can never have too many bird-flipping monkeys in this world.

Bathtub Books: January 19

So it's that time of year again when I spend every evening in the bathtub, reading a stack of books and recovering my sanity. So here's what I polished off this past week:



What's Age Got To Do With It? Don't ask me why I bother with this crap. I can't stand Dr Phil and his perky wife Robin drives me up the wall (so much for sane tubby time). Robin McGraw's book is all about how to be fit, healthy, and happy at any "advanced" age, but she really uses this book as a way to boast about how wonderful she is (hasn't had refined sugar since she was 26? Bet she never sleeps in her makeup, either). Life's too short to worry about how best to apply mascara to thinning lashes.



Winging It : This book is the sequel to Catherine Goldhammer's Still Life with Chickens. It talks about her daughter leaving the nest (gotta keep with the bird theme). Goldhammer, a single mother, had a rough time dealing with the separation and with the freedom that comes once the responsibilities of motherhood are over (or less--we're never completely free, are we?). The one thing that hit me was that we both attended the same Edward Hopper exhibit and had the same favorite painting: Sun in an Empty Room. I could look at it for hours. (You can look at it too at this site: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/hopper.sun-empty-room.jpg) It's part of a private collection so we were very lucky to see it at all. The book was a decent read.

Finished The Magician's Book (see fucking elf below). Also read the Chronicles again. And after hearing all those Tolkien stories I have a feeling Lord of the Rings is in my near future. Maybe I'll cheat and see the movies instead.

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers is the autobiography of Marcella Hazan. It was fascinating to read how a scientist became the leading Italian cooking teacher and author. I had never known that her right arm is useless due to a childhood accident and that she rarely showed it, even during televised cooking demonstrations. Interesting, but to be honest I prefer to read the cookbooks themselves.

And finally, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. I loved this book, and not only because I totally wanted to look like her when I was fourteen years old (the hours spent in front of the mirror with a cake of Max Factor eyeliner! Can you even buy that stuff anymore?). This is an expanded version of Fisher's stage show. She talks very openly of her fishbowl childhood, the crazy fame that came with Star Wars, and her mental health issues (addiction, bipolar disorder, and electroshock therapy). It shouldn't be funny, but the way Fisher tells her stories is hilarious. There's great warmth in the book as well. I give it an A.

"Not another fucking elf!"

Quote from Inklings member Hugh Dyson when faced with the latest installment of Tolkien's work.

I'm reading all about C S Lewis (and his Oxford friends) in The Magician's Book, a literary critique of the Chronicles of Narnia by Laura Miller. Really a must if you're a big fan, which I of course am.

I want Dyson's comment on a t-shirt.

Vacation Reading

This pretty much sums up what we did on our Christmas vacation .

Can't believe it's been so long since I've posted (well, actually I can) but between all the traveling and soap-catching-upping, I haven't really had time to cozy up with a book.

I always have a hard time reading books on planes and while on vacation. Too many interruptions (as opposed to being home where all I do is let animals in and out every fifteen minutes). I did read a lot of magazines at Tania's (Health, Prevention, and Cooking Light) and Mom's (Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Real Simple). You can get a real feel for a person from the magazines they read.

With that in mind, here are all the magazines that Mike and I subscribe to. This doesn't include the odd glossy picked up at the grocery store or airport. This stuff is coming into our house at least once a month:

The New Yorker

The Economist

The Week

Domino

O--the Oprah Magazine

Ladies Home Journal

More

Elle

Harper's Bazaar

Vanity Fair

Vogue

Good Housekeeping

Woman's Day

Family Circle

Redbook

Washingtonian

Southern Living

Loudoun Magazine

So what does that say about us?

(And don't worry, every single issue is passed on to another reader or two before being recycled).

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!