Diane Setterfield: The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
A fat, Gothic novel full of ghosts and mysteries and lots and lots of plot. Yowza. Get yourself to the library now!
Kathleen Kent: The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel
It's such a cliché to say a book is heartbreaking. This is a story of a 9-year-old girl and her mother, imprisoned during the Salem witch trials. Finding a place in your family, in your community, in your own heart, seems like it ought to be simple, automatic even, but this girl's struggle cut right to the middle of me.
Simonetta Agnello Hornby: The Almond Picker: A Novel
What if the main character died on--or even before--the very first page? And everything you learned about her came second-hand, through the voices and memories of the people who knew her? And few of them knew her well enough to say or remember anything true? Well, you'd have a lovely mystery on your hands. And a compelling look at the human tendency to create reality instead of witnessing it.
Amy Bloom: Away: A Novel
I love a fat, 500-page novel with an eloquent, omniscient narrator who can see so far into all the character's futures that I'm left with no worries, only peace, at the end. This novel is pretty much everything I ever wanted, and it's not even 250 pages long. You'll be riveted. It'll take you three days, max.
Tracy Kidder: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
It's so hard not to look away from pain and suffering and poverty. Paul Farmer does not look away. He's right there, fighting on the losing side, because it's the right thing to do. I'm glad I read this at the start of the holiday season. I need the perspective.
Luis Alberto Urrea: The Hummingbird's Daughter
The first book for the new book-club year. I started early because it's a nice thick book, and I often have a hard time getting a whole book read in a month (so sad), but then I read it all in about four days. It's fabulous. Makes Mexico seem like it has a magic, majestic soul.
Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle
How did I manage to check this out of the library at the same time as Cold Comfort Farm? I must have seen them recommended together somewhere. Turns out, this is exactly the sort of novel CCF is spoofing. Happily, I'm enjoying it anyway. If you get a wild hair to read both of these, do read CCF first.
Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm (Oxford Bookworms Library)
I'd never read any of the genre of novels that this book is meant to spoof, but I enjoyed it immensely anyway. It was especially fun to read semi-aloud in my horrific British accent. The only thing I didn't like about the book was that my edition had awful cover art. I like this cow so much better.
Charles de Lint: Widdershins (Newford)
If you liked Neil Gaiman's American Gods, give this one a try. I liked them both, and think I need to check out The Onion Girl which is evidently the beginning of these characters' stories.
Lauren Groff: The Monsters of Templeton
If this book had sprouted an extra head or a bunch of tentacles while I was reading, thereby assuring that there would have been even more to read, I would have been ecstatic. This is a really good one!
Philippa Gregory: The Other Boleyn Girl
Fiction is definitely my preferred means of learning about history--that's awful, I know, but it seems marginally better than movies, yes? This book is great: very informative with plenty of um, well, OK, sex.... Sex makes history more interesting, don't you think?
Neil Gaiman: American Gods
I'm just a little way into this book and it's so mesmerizing--like watching a big spider weaving an impossible web. I can't wait to get back to it.
Jim Fergus: One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
A crazy, beautiful, utterly doomed solution to a problem that likely couldn't have been fixed any way at all. There are so many characters with so many conflicting opinions--all right, all wrong, all so human. I loved this book.
Lisa See: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel
I was mesmerized by this novel. The setting is so rich and the story so sharp. I'm not sure I can forgive the narrator, but I can definitely identify with her. Everyone has something to be ashamed of, don't they? Also, compared to foot-binding, high heels seem pretty inconsequential....
Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
I've said before that I'm not the gardener in this family, and I'm afraid I have that lifelong fear of dirt that Kingsolver disdains, but I've never read anything before that made me want to grow all my own food. And raise chickens. And maybe cows. Goats, too...
Michael Malone: Dingley Falls
I woke up one morning last week to hear Nancy Pearl on NPR say that she's been rereading this book every two years since it was first published in 1980. That's a recommendation I'm willing to take, and I'm loving this town and (almost) all of its inhabitants. Malone's narrator is removed but very tender, and all of these folks seem very, very real.
Joss Whedon: Fray
Shocked, I am shocked to find myself recommending a comic book, but here's the thing: I loved it. It even made me cry a little. If you loved Buffy and Angel, read this.
Erin Hart: Haunted Ground: A Novel
A moody, modern-day archaeological mystery set in Ireland and populated with creative people--singers, musicians, painters, even a weaver who dyes her own wools. There are several storylines going all at once which keeps it interesting, and while some of the details are gruesome, it's never a scary book.
Ingrid Hill: Ursula, Under
This is so good, I almost can't stand to read it, because I know the more I read, the sooner it's going to be over. I'm going slow on purpose. And if you see me crying or laughing or grinning like a crazy person on the bus, this book is totally why.
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex: A Novel
Wow. This is a great book. You'd think that the narrator would resent his incredibly inbred family (grandparents are siblings; parents are cousins) for the compounded genetic mutations that result in his hermaphroditism. Instead, he's unfailingly warm, affectionate and empathetic. I couldn't help but love every character. But damned if I could figure out why his older brother is named Chapter Eleven...
I bought this jar of pickles on Saturday. Five days ago. Half a gallon of pickles. In five days. I had no idea my family loved dill pickles this much. I rarely buy them, but they seemed like something the kids might find amusing in their lunch boxes for a day or two, and sheesh, it's looking like maybe they ate them at every meal. Maybe even instead of every meal. They are strange children with peculiar eating habits...
I love to bake. This past weekend was so, so satisfying:
plus
I didn't get any knitting or sewing done, but that pie was everything I wanted it to be.
This is what happens if you slice your pie-crust cookies too thin: they all fall over while they're baking and you end up with pinwheels. Every bit as tasty.
We had dinner guests on Saturday and Sunday nights this weekend. We often have friends over for dinner, and we almost always include the kids in the preparations; they help with chopping or baking baking or setting the table. My parents entertained all the time when I was growing up, and while I wouldn't claim that I always loved helping with their dinner parties, having dinner parties always seemed like the most natural thing to do. I love planning menus, even simple ones like these two meals were, making food and then just feeding people.
On Sunday morning the kids and I went out to Target to get some more back-to-school clothes, and they were very keen to get some Halloween decorations. Ben picked out this jack-o-lantern window cling set, and Lyra chose a pack of Halloween paper plates. She set the table with them last night. They didn't really seem sturdy enough for eggplant parmigiana, so we ended up swapping them for our regular plates, but I'm hoping that her interest in setting the table is the start of a long love of cooking for her friends too.
When I went to college, I was (almost) completely innocent. The most decadent thing I had ever had on a pancake was whipped cream, and it was almost certainly out of a can, eaten after a full night in the car on the way to Walt Disney World for spring break. But in the fall of 1987, Pearsons dorm, Mount Holyoke College, the breakfast cook was more than happy to make you anything you wanted for breakfast every damn morning. There was no reason to eat toast or cereal or even donuts--though, to be fair, I don't think there donuts available, and if there had been, I likely would have eaten some. Anyway, she introduced me to chocolate chip pancakes, and then she made them for me every morning until Christmas. Yikes.
These days I almost never put chocolate chips in the pancakes. My darling husband aspires to hermit-like levels of ... whatever the stark opposite of chocolate dependency is. He swears he doesn't like it. I don't believe him for a minute, but I do try not to serve chocolate as a main course at any meals. You should see the way he looks at me when I put chocolate chips in the banana muffins. Yeesh.
Nevertheless, pancakes are one of my favorite standby dinners on nights when he's got class. This quarter his classes have been early enough that he's always home for dinner, so the kids and I haven't had pancakes for dinner in ages. But there was some special study group for Thursday's Stats exam tonight, and people, that bacon chocolate bar was practically burning a hole in the countertop. Let me be the one to tell you, if you have the slightest affinity for bacon, for chocolate or for pancakes, this is your dream meal. You may not want it for dinner, depending on your sensibilities about these things, but seriously: Yum.
