August-October 2009 books

Oh hello. I’ve still kept a list of books I’ve read. It’s just that motivation takes a very long vacation around the halfway mark. In the meantime I’ve acquired a taste for YA fiction and Diana Wynne Jones, not necessarily in that order. If you read Diana Wynne Jones (of Howl’s Moving Castle fame– trust me when I say the novel is much, MUCH better than the movie), please do not be discouraged by the covers of her books. They are not really very accurate of the tone of her novels (she’s mostly fantasy, but of a fun and amusing kind, not the eyerolling- cliche-plotholes kind. and sometimes the books she writes are parodies of the genre itself).

Books Read:
73. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, Tiffany Baker (fun read. a bit of letdown near the end, i think.)

74. Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman * (finally finished this collection of amusing essays about, what else, books.)

75. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate Dimillo (YA- this sounded a LOT like the velveteen rabbit. it also had extremely strong Christian overtones that I was not overly fond of, but then again, I’m a pretty cynical reader who got subjected to velveteen rabbit ad nauseam at bible studies.)

76. House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones * (YA- love, LOVE this book. it’s got a dog and magic spells for conjuring a meal out of thin air. among other endearing situations only DWJ would think of.)

77. Tide, Feather, Snow, Miranda Weiss * (started out beautifully, has a lot of vocabulary words (mostly describing nature of Alaska), but got a little depressing near the end. )

78. Castle In the Air, Diana Wynne Jones * ( YA- really entertaining and feel-good.and has a very cute kitten named Whippersnaper)

79. Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman * (YA- fun, short story about a boy who outwits the giants.)

80. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli * (GN- I really liked this, though I must admit I skimmed the art/architectual/visual explanations.)

81. Hunter (Richard Stark’s Hunter), Darwyn Cooke * (GN- really well done graphic novelization of Richard Stark’s hard-boiled? ham-handed? highly unnecessary but also highly effective cold, ruthless violence? novels.)

82. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 1, Diana Wynne Jones * (YA- first volume in Chrestomanci series, includes Charmed Life and Lives of Christopher Chant, and you will understand why cats say “Wong!”)

83. A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick * (Wonderful flow and gripping story.)

84. F-stop, Anthony Johnson and Matthew Loux (GN- older graphic novel, kinda okay, amusing to read.)

85. The Eternal Sunshine, Gene Yuen Lang and Derek Dirk Kim (GN- fun three short stories to read)

86. (partially finished, had to return to library) Don’t Cry, Mary Gaitskill (some of the stories were over my head. some of them were quite good. take your pick!)

87. Prayers for Sale, Sandra Dallas (fun read, quilt-bee type of story)

88. Graceling, Kristin Cashore * (YA- love LOVE this book. I call it the anti-twilight. and no vampires. and oh yes, there’s sex, but it’s not gratuitous or hinted at in 2000 different annoying ways. It’s a cross between Buffy (in terms of strong female roles) and a myth-fantasy genre.)

89. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson * (good. intense. make sure you have a free weekend to read this, because you will not put it down.)

90. The Diary of a Part time Indian, Sherman Alexie * (YA-really great YA- about identity and finding yourself, on an Indian reservations. Also made me giggle b/c of the illustrations)

91. Alex and Me, Irene Pepperberg * (touching story of a parrot who literally changed the word birdbrain. also, wonderful human-animal interaction)

92. Fire, Kristin Cashore * (YA- prequel to Graceling, can stand alone on its own. A darker story of Fire (still a strong heroine, though not necessarily strong in the most stereotypical way). Lovely complicated situations (no, really, it’s done very well)..)

93. Catherine, Called Birdy, Karen Cushman * (YA- Corpus bones, this is a really great book. seriously. Also, any book with a curse called “God’s Thumbs” gets my vote.)

94. The Entomological Adventures of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone, Dene Low (YA- this almost got a star except for the ending, which fell rather flat. It’s not that ending itself was bad, it was fine, it’s just that it was rather abrupt, stylistically.)

95. (Re-read) The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman * (YA- It’s one of these books that get better the more you read it- the story is familiar but you pick up the more amusing nuances. Absolutely perfect October book.)

96. The White Queen, Philippa Gregory (grown-up historical fiction to make up for all the YA historical fiction I’m about to read. Story of Henry VIII’s grandmother, whose sons mysteriously disappeared while in the Tower. )

97. The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope * (YA – wonderful, wonderful book about a legend. Also the perfect Halloween book. The ending is one of the most perfect I’ve read.)

98. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. II, Diana Wynne Jones * (YA- the first is a spoof off Romeo and Juliet, involving white and black cats, the second is about witch week, which i think is pretty self-explanatory)

99. Ballistics, Billy Collins (good, makes me want to look up his earlier works)

Currently Reading:
About Grace, Anthony Doerr
The Serial Garden, Joan Aiken (so much fun!)

Bought Recently:
-an embarassing amount of used books at Wonder books (great used bookstore in Fredericksburg, MD. really wonderful selection of old, seconds, and used.) Most were older works by Diana Wynne Jones (her works are hard to find because they are primarily sold in UK).
-Persephone books: Someone at A Distance, Dorothy Whipple; Mariana, Monica Dickens; Good Evening. Mrs. Cravens, Molly Panter-Downes
-Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, Billy Collins and David Sibley

Whew. That should teach me to delay blogging for so long.

June-July 2009 Books (in which I blame everything on Sookie Stackhouse)

Forgive me for not posting in so long. You’ll have to blame it on Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, which are absolutely addictive and just the thing for dealing with a topsy-turvy month– they are great distractions, comfort reading (well, after a while sardonic and handsome vampires, wereanimals, and fairies become pretty good escape route a la harry potter).

The Books Before Sookie Stackhouse:
58. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party, M.T. Anderson (eh. nicely written period piece, even imitating the language remarkably well, but overly glossed over subject matter).

59. Last Night in Montreal, Emily St. John Mandel * (a good, engaging read)

60. I’ll Scream Later, Marlee Matlin (more hilarious than I expected it to be, and appropriately juicy for a hollywood bio.)

61. Doubt Manga Series #1-6, Izumi Kaneyoshi (good mindless reading about airheaded girls and handsome guys you want to smack. really counts as one book since they go too fast.)

62. The Beach House, Jane Green (happy ending summery book. takes place in nantucket and reminds me of our time there last summer.)

The Actual Sookie Stackhouse Books (should come with a surgeon general warning):
63. Dead Until Dark
64. Living Dead in Dallas
65. Club Dead
66. Dead to the World (pretty much. Almost every evening, when I’d pick up the book, Seth would look at me and say “It’s been nice knowing you.”)
67. Dead as a Doornail
68. Definitely Dead
69. All Together Dead
70. From Dead to Worse

Post Sookie Stackhouse letdown (not really, but there is a bit of a slump):
71. Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons * (before there was Secret Life of Bees, there was this book.)
72. The Most Beautiful Book in the World: 8 Novellas, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt* (how can you not like a book in which there is a happy ending in EVERY one of the novellas?)

Bought/Acquired (yay for sales and for lifting of buying-of-books-ban!):
Tender to the Bone, Ruth Reichl
Vegan Soul Kitchen, Bryant Terry
Babycakes. Erin McKenna
Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
Rustic Fruit Desserts (thanks GirlReaction!)
A Drifting Life, Yoshishiro Tatsumi and Adrian Tomine (GN)
The Eternal Smile: Gene Yang and Derek Kirk Kim (GN)
An Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

Currently Rotating Reading list:
Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
Ballistics, Billy Collins

Currently tempted by, or Rather Library Books to read before their renewal contract expires:
(just a sampling- let me know which one i should read first. I’m actually having a hard time).
Fiction:
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
Vanessa and Virginia, Susan Sellers
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, Tiffany Baker
Don’t Cry, Mary Gaitskill

Nonfiction:
Summer World, Bernd Heinrich
The Moreville Hours, Katherine Swift
Wildwood, Roger Deakin
Alex & Me, Irene M. Pepperberg

(This is actually a good thing, as August looks like it’s going to be a very long month. Humidity, wanderlust, and seemingly endless home projects are kind of driving me up the wall. I really, really empathize with this post.)

May 2009 Books

Guide:
GN= graphic novel
YA= young adult/tween
* = recommended
[]= on hiatus

Books Read This Month:
44. Memorist, MJ Rose
45. Not Becoming My Mother, Ruth Reichl
46. Verses, Ani DiFranco*
47. Love Comes First, Erica Jong*
48. Local, Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
49. Pretty Little Monsters, Kelly Link*
50. The Sweet Life in Paris, David Lebovitz*
51. Izzy and Lenore, Jon Katz*
52. A Year in Our Gardens: Letters, Nancy Goodwin & Allen Lacy*
53. Evidence, Mary Oliver*
54. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
55. The Color of Earth Kim Dong Hwa (GN)
56. BlackJack Vol. 5, Osamu Tezuka (GN)
57. Valeria’s Last Stand, Marc Fitten*

Currently Rotating Reading list:
Tunneling to Center of Earth, Kevin Wilson
Coop, Michael Perry
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, M. T. Anderson (YA)

Bought:
BlackJack Vol. 5
The Color of Earth, Kim Dong Hwa
Moomin Vol. 3, Tove Jansson

Currently tempted by:
Last Night In Montreal, Emily St. John Mandel
The City & the City, China Mieville
Wicked Plants, Amy Stewart

Notes/Observations:
1. I read a lot (maybe faster) when I am sick and don’t feel like moving around. Hence the longer list this month.

2. Some of the books in this month’s list would make for interesting movies: The Time Traveler’s Wife (in a sort of Benjamin Button way, only sweeter ending), Valeria’s Last Stand (sort of like Chocolat, but without the chocolate.)

3. Valeria’s Last Stand is what I’d call comfort reading, kind of like comfort food. It’s not going to make you smarter or wiser, but it’ll make you feel good and respect old women. Not to mention, it is really meant to be read for fun. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a book to ease into the leisurely world of summer reading.

4. I can’t listen to music when running. So I bring poetry books instead, and if you like Ani DiFranco’s music you would probably like her Verses (some of them are songs, some of them are not). Mary Oliver’s newest book of poetry is already a favorite.

5. David Lebovitz will make you laugh, and he will also leave you feeling very, very hungry. Unfortunately, he also has a blog. Why unfortunately? Because given the scary number of blogs that I subscribe to I have pretty much given up catching up on anyone’s blog. Though it is nice to have a reference.

6. Jon Katz has somewhat restored my faith in him with his latest book. I thought his last book was a little trite, but his newest book is simply beautiful. And no dogs die in that one- though a lot of people do die (such is nature of hospice work). And dogs get my respect, again, for their extreme sensitivity and ability to provide people with just exactly what they need. And yes, he has a blog (sigh), with incredibly nostalgic photographs of the farms and the dogs.

7. It’s that time of year– a pile of books by the reading chair for the summer, along with a tall glass of iced herbal tea, or a long summer reading list, or even simpler, summer fiction issues (looking forward to the new yorker one, and the granta one looks interesting). I’m not sure there’s a specific requirement for summer reading– it doesn’t necessarily have to be light-hearted or be easy reading. It just has to be a good story, the one that you are most comfortable listening to and want to listen to. Do you have special requirements for summer reading?

raw strawberry pie recipe

since a lot of people asked…

the most recent one I made the past weekend

possibly my second time making this pie, because the first one went a little too quickly that would be three years ago.

In nc, strawberries come into season relatively early, like in april and with them, immediate sweltering summer temperatures. this recipe is absolutely perfect because it doesn’t require using any heat and is eaten cold, thus providing an enormous cooling benefit. Also, everyone can eat it– it’s vegan and easily gluten-and-dairy free. And it’s so good…guaranteed to make even the pickiest strawberry eater consume the whole thing (I should know, the boy doesn’t like strawberries as much as I do, but he will eat the whole pie to every crumb and drop.)

Raw Strawberry Pie (adapted from Domino Premiere issue, Spring/Summer 2005)

2 lbs fresh strawberries, tops removed, quartered (or sliced- it doesn’t really matter. what matters the more strawberries, the better. this would be roughly 2 pints of strawberries, but I’ve made it with 4 pints.)

1 tb fresh lemon juice (about 1/2 of a lemon)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup brown sugar (you can reduce this in half if you’re watching your sugar consumption- or if the strawberries are particularly sweet, but if you put in more strawberries, that’s just less sugar per slice

2 cups almonds, ground (the best way is to grind sliced or blanched almonds in an electric grinder- whole almonds take longer)

1 3/4 cups pitted dates (I prefer organic Medjool dates with pits- taking the pits out is not hard, and besides, you have to chop them anyway. Do not use chopped dates that are covered with oat flour- you need the stickiness of fresh dates, and the oat flour will defeat that purpose)

In a bowl, combine strawberries, lemon juice, vanilla and brown sugar. Mix well and put in refrigerator.

Grind the almonds if you haven’t already. Put them in another bowl and start working on dates. Remove pits from dates by slicing them in half (not all the way) and removing the pits. Flatten the dates and mince them into little bits. Your knife will get a little sticky, and date slices might stick to the other side of knife, but that’s okay. Just move them down to the cutting board and keep mincing them. Place minced dates into the bowl of ground almonds. If your hands are sticky from dates, don’t bother washing them.

Use your hands to mix the dates and almonds together into a dough. It will take some kneading, but it will work out, I promise. It should have a consistency of a slightly dry play-doh or clay. Form a ball.

Place the date-almond ball into a pie pan (if you are worried about things sticking, put a little bit of canola or grapeseed oil on the pie pan and grease thoroughly) and mold it into the pie pan as best as you can. Take the strawberries out of the fridge, and using a slotted spoon, pile berries into the crust, leaving liquid behind. You can save the liquid to put into sparkling water with maybe some sliced limes or for making a small batch of strawberry lemonade, or if you are feeling particularly plucky, you can drink it straight up- it’s so good!

This is the hard part…you have to put it in the fridge to set for two hours. Try to tell everyone in the house not to touch it until then (ha….).

You could serve it with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, creme anglaise, or sprigs of mint. Or just eat it straight up.

Additional note: The crust is basically a larabar, but better. You could make a date and almond mixture, flatten it, cut up into smaller pieces and chill to make your own larabars. Though the crust is just divine when it’s already absorbed strawberry juices.

April 2009 Books (in which I refuse to grow up)

Guide:
GN= graphic novel
YA= young adult/tween
* = recommended
[]= on hiatus

Books Read This Month
36. MW, Osamu Tezuka (GN)* {BSG plot devices, take note}
37. Goldengrove, Francine Prose*
38. BlackJack, Vol 4, Osamu Tezuka (GN)
38. Song Without Words, Ann Packer
39. Outside beauty, Cynthia Kadokha (YA)
40. One Secret Thing, Sharon Olds
41. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart (YA)*
42. Brisingr, Christopher Paolini (YA)
43. All in A Day, Cynthia Rylant and Nikki McClure * (picture book. but still fun and a great pick-me-up.)

Axed, due to lack of interest/increasing pretentiousness:
Central Park in the Dark, Marie Winn
The Book of Animal Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong by John Mitchinson and John Lloyd

Currently Rotating Reading list:
A Year in Our Gardens, Letter by Nancy Goodwin and Allen Lacy* {I don’t wanna finish. I don’t want this to end}
The Red Leather Diary, Lily Koppel {keep picking it up and then picking it down}
Tunneling to Center of Earth, Kevin Wilson
Pretty Monsters: Stories, Kelly Link

Bought:
DK Guide to Sewing
Tunneling To Center of Earth, Kevin Wilson
All in A Day, Cynthia Rylant and Nikki McClure
Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs, ed. Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard
BlackJack Vol 4, Osamu Tezuka
Adventures in Cartooning, James Sturm, Andrew Arnold & Alexis Frederick-Frost

Currently tempted by (or, how I love my library for carrying these books):
Wildwood, Roger Deakin
Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, Anne Mendelson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, M.T. Anderson

Notes/Observations:
I feel like I should explain something. When I say I’m totally a bookslut, I really, really, REALLY mean a bookslut. I’m not talking about the range of nonfiction that I read, I’m also talking about all sorts of books, including YA, somewhere-in-between, and oh the glorious picture books that I never outgrow. (that might explain why I am never able to spend less than 5 minutes in a bookstore. I need to see the bestsellers, what’s new, then move on to nonfiction, then to YA, then to picture books. I have to look at everything. I’m really a terrible bookstore companion that way. and uhm. i might just treat libraries the same way as well.)

So this is why you see something like Francine Prose (why have I not read her before? She’s a wonderful writer!) along with the third book of Eragon series. It may also explain the constantly overflowing bookshelves. Ah well. The life of a bookslut is always fraught with such… problems, er, I mean, pleasures.

The book list is a little shorter because I got distracted by poetry month (and knitting deadlines). And because I ended up reading really long novels, even if they were YA novels (which I consume like crack. And normally go through in about 2 hours or so). I really enjoyed A Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and it is so amusing. Secret Order of the Basset Hound? Oh yeah. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the third book in Eragon series, even if it is clearly a ripoff of all things LOTR (including long tedious prose asking for Peter Jackson to edit it), its still an absorbing story and I like stories.

It’s getting to be May, and I think I’m going to try to stop buying books (stop giggling. I can hear you from all the way here!) until July (my birthday month. I always get a book. or two. or three. or what usually happens, the same books that everyone wants to get me. oops). That and I have rearranged my shelves and discovered gems that I forgot I had. And I’m going to try to stop carting around 20 or so books from the library. Just borrow what I can read in the meantime and stop renewing for the nth time.

Right.

If you’d like to amuse me, you can tell me what your book-related vices are.

April 30: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
(more of the poem here.)

–T.S. Eliot

And thus concludes the poetry month. Whew…

April 29: History of Hurricanes

History of Hurricanes

Because we cannot know—

we plant crops, make love in the light of our not-knowing

A Minuteman prods cows from the Green with his musket,
his waxed paper windows snapping in the wind,
stiletto stalks in the herb garden upright—Now

blown sideways—Now weighted down in genuflection,

not toward,

And a frail man holding an Imari teacup paces at daybreak
in his courtyard in Kyoto

a cherry tree petaling the stones pink and slippery
in the weeks he lay feverish

waiting for word from the doctor, checking for signs—Now

in the season of earthenware sturdiness and dependency
it must begin, the season of his recovery

No whirling dervish on the radar, no radar, no brackets
no voices warning—no Voice—fugue of trees, lightning

Because we cannot know, we imagine

What will happen to me without you?

I know some things I remember—

the Delaware River two stories high inside the brick houses
cars floating past Trenton like a regiment on display
brown water climbing our basement stairs two at a time

Like months of remission—
the eye shifts

the waxed paper windows
burst behind the flapping shutters—

and how could he save his child after that calm,
a man who’d never seen a roof sheared off?

Across town the ninth graders in their cutoffs:
Science sucks, they grouse. Stupid History of hurricanes.

No one can remember one;

velocity, storm surge—
abstractions
the earth churns as Isabel rips through Buzzard’s Bay

A hurricane, as one meaning has it:
a large crowded assembly of fashionable people at a private house

The river cannot remember its flooding—

I worry you will forget to check
the watermarks in time

An echo of feet on stone is all the neighbors
knew of their neighbor,
a lover of cherry trees

and of his wife who prayed for him at the shrine,
her hair swept up in his favorite onyx comb

–Teresa Cader

April 28: Walking the Dog

Walking the Dog

Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.

We stand while he’s enraptured by a bush
Till I can’t stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for our relationship
Is patience balancing to this side tug
And that side drag; a pair of symbionts
Contented not to think each other’s thoughts.

What else we have in common’s what he taught,
Our interest in shit. We know its every state
From steaming fresh through stink to nature’s way
Of sluicing it downstreet dissolved in rain
Or drying it to dust that blows away.
We move along the street inspecting shit.

His sense of it is keener far than mine,
And only when he finds the place precise
He signifies by sniffing urgently
And circles thrice about, and squats, and shits,
Whereon we both with dignity walk home
And just to show who’s master I write the poem.

– Howard Nemerov

April 27: The Flaw

The Flaw

The best thing about a hand-made pattern
is the flaw.
Sooner or later in a hand-loomed rug,
among the squares and flattened triangles,
a little red nub might soar above a blue field,
or a purple cross might sneak in between
the neat ochre teeth of the border.
The flaw we live by, the wrong color floss,
now wreathes among the uniform strands
and, because it does not match,
makes a red bird fly,
turning blue field into sky.
It is almost, after long silence, a word
spoken aloud, a hand saying through the flaw,
I’m alive, discovered by your eye.

–Molly Peacock

April 26: Maybe Alone on My Bike

more about "bikeride", posted with vodpod

Maybe Alone on My Bike

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!–
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

William Stafford