Reading Update: September 9

1. Aryn Kyle -- The God of Animals

2. Gillian Flynn--- Sharp Objects
Disturbing. It creeped me out, and not in a delicious thriller-ish kind of way. Can't say I recommend it.

3. Sarah Hall -- Daughters of the North
Eh. Do yourself a favor and read The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, instead. This book covers the same emotional and intellectual ground, but not nearly as well. It was a short book, but it still took me several days to read, which is a good sign that it wasn't doing much to grab my interest.

4. Frank McCourt -- 'Tis
Sequel to Angela's Ashes (which I tried to read once and gave up on after about 20 pages). I picked 'Tis up off of one of those book exchange shelves in a coffee shop in the tiny hamlet of Boulder, Utah. I had finished my book on vacation and couldn't wrap my head around the only other one I'd brought (Crime and Punishment -- not exactly light vacation reading. I don't know what I was thinking). Dan was about ready to kill me before I found this book. He wanted to lounge around the campsite and read, but I was whiney and grumpy, having finished my own book. And then we found the book exchange. So, in a way, 'Tis saved my relationship. How's that for praise? All kidding aside, this was an enjoyable little read, though far from my favorite of the memoirs I've read. One thing -- the narration suddenly changes from present tense to past tense (and becomes completely stylistically different) about 3/4 of the way through the book, which bugged me. I might go back and give Angela's Ashes another try.


Also, I'm about 50 pages into Crime and Punishment, and I don't get the fuss. So far, all that's happened is that I've gotten thoroughly annoyed with Rasholnikov's interior monologue. Anyone want to convince me that I should keep reading? Or even just explain to me why people think this book is so darn wonderful? I really feel like I'm missing out, since everyone raves about Dostoevsky, but it's just not doin' it for me . . . Instead, I've been reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which I am absolutely loving so far.

The Only Thing I Liked About Vegas

As previously mentioned, I found Vegas to be, well, horrifying. I just don't GET why people love it there so much. It was full of incredibly drunk people acting incredibly stupid. Loud. Dirty. Gross weather. Did I mention absolutely filthy? D. insisted that we at least TRY gambling, so we dropped 10 bucks in a slot machine. That has to be the most boring way to lose 10 bucks EVER. Seriously.

However, I did take some really lovely pictures of the neon sign at the Paris casino. And the Bellagio fountain was pretty cool. And, finally, when we stopped for the night in Vegas again on our way home (staying well off the strip, thank you very much), we had a fantastic dinner at Table 34, an unassuming little family-owned place in an office park near the airport. Their mac 'n' cheese was, I think, the best I ever had. Yum.

So, in conclusion, having spent a little over 8 waking hours in Vegas, I don't feel the need to EVER go there again!

Vacation, Time to Get Away

For the past week, D. and I have been having wonderful adventures in the surprisingly lovely state of Utah. (Seriously, who knew that Utah was actually gorgeous? Vegas, on the other hand? Hell on earth. We stayed a night on the Strip on our way to Utah and OMG after about 5 minutes I was on the edge of a anxiety attack. Ugh.) The above picture is me relaxing in Bryce Canyon. Those crazy rock stacks behind me are called hoodoos, which is one of the best names EVER for a natural phenomenon. The colors were astonishing. Anyway, more pictures soon! (Which probably means, um, that I'll get distracted with other stuff and you'll be lucky to see a picture or two sometime next year)

Connecting Threads

So I've been learning to sew lately. That's one of my very first projects above -- the ubiquitous tomato pincushion. It's been such an interesting process. I grew up in the 80s, with a high-powered corporate attorney mother. She is a brilliant, talented lawyer, but she certainly didn't sew. And while one of my grandmothers was actually quite an accomplished craftster, we weren't especially close, so I never learned any of this from her. I wish now that I HAD asked her to teach me to sew, knit, crochet, etc when she was still alive. I think it would have been a wonderful way to get to know her better. But, alas, I wasn't all that interested in this sort of thing until recently.

So, at the start of this process, I could not have been more of a beginner. I could sort of sew a button on a shirt, but I'd never actually touched a sewing machine before. I started by taking this class called "Crash Course Sewing" at a local sewing shop, StitchCraft. It was a 2-hour course on the basics of using a sewing machine, and I cannot recommend it enough. Nicole, the owner of the store, is a fantastic teacher! She made it all SO easy and non-intimidating, even for an utter newbie like me. After I took the class, I immediately went out and trolled ebay for a sewing machine. Then, last weekend, I took a second course with Nicole, on making a summer blouse. I used this pattern, by Mahnee Titus and this was my result:




(Please ignore the off-center buttons, I need to pull them off and reattach them. Or add a second set parallel to them. I haven't decided which yet. Since they're purely decorative and don't actually have any fastening function, either is a possibility)

And here I am wearing the shirt. (Sorry for the out-of focus picture -- my camera would NOT cooperate). But, do you see? It FITS! And for any of you who actually know me you can see that it is totally, as my friend Lisa would say, a Chris shirt. I even wore it to work on Thursday!


I was very glad to have someone walk me through the process. Nicole gave me lots of hints about working with patterns, cutting fabric, etc. that were SO helpful in getting around some of the things I had struggled with with my very first project -- a dust cover for my sewing machine.

So, anyway, I was laid up all weekend with this crazy summer death cold (In August! WTF?!?) Here is what I spent most of yesterday and today making:



Isn't it SO cute!? It's the Birdie Sling from Amy Butler, and it is a ginormous bag. Much bigger than I usually carry, actually, but it was so cute I couldn't resist. And I'm glad I made it. It can fit books and a water bottle and a sweater and all kinds of stuff all at once. And it's made of quilting cotton with a layer of fusible interfacing to give it a little more strength, so it's pretty light-weight. It turned out so well that I'm actually planning on making several of them to give as Christmas presents. So, uh, if you're a girl who is likely to be on my Christmas list, pretend you never read this. Uh yeah.

For any of you who are interested in the details, the main fabric here is from Amy Butler's Midwest Modern Line, and the polka-dotted fabric for the handles is from Mary Englebreit's line of quilting fabrics. You can't see it in this picture, but the bag is lined in pale yellow and has two big pockets. The pattern had a lot of steps, but was quite easy to make, actually. I only had to Google one thing -- how to make gussets (The folds that square up the bottom of the bag a bit so it sits flat). And I'm getting better at using my machine, too -- I also only had to "unsew" and redo a couple of seams that I messed up. I am just thrilled at how this turned out! It's completely made me want to run out and buy more patterns and make more and more and more cool things . . . I think this hobby could get out of control!

But anyway, the thing I wanted to say is that in this weird way learning to sew has made me feel this closeness with my grandmother that I never really felt while she was still alive. She and my grandfather, my dad's parents, were typical midwest farm types -- stoic, practical, not especially warm. Wonderful people, but I always felt sort of . . . distant from them, especially in contrast to my mother's side of the family -- effusive, raucous italians. When my grandmother died a few years ago, I saved some of her old sewing and craft materials. Something about them just called out to me. And so I sewed this purse using my grandmother's measuring tape, seam ripper, straight pins and I felt, I dunno, almost like she was there with me. My grandmother stored her sewing pins in a small plastic compact that was once filled with face powder. Every time I open it, her scent wafts up to me, bringing back memories of her, wearing a sweatshirt she had made herself, bringing us jars of cherries preserved from her own back yard. Her working at one of her many looms, making a colorful rag rug. The green velveteen stuffed frog she sewed for me before I was ever born, which is in so many of the earliest pictures of me in this world. I wish I would have asked her to teach me to sew when she was still alive, but at least as I'm learning now, I feel like there is a little bit of her here with me, anyway.

Random thoughts

1. Why does the little weather thingie in the toolbar on Firefox always say that there is "light rain" in Petaluma when I am looking out the window at perfect sunshine and blue skies. (And, when y'know, it doesn't actually RAIN in this part of the world oh, all summer).

2. Why can't I have a job that allows me to jet away to the Bahamas and get paid to learn how to SCUBA dive?

3. I have discovered that my neighbors have an absolutely lovely lemon tree in their backyard and I have struck a deal with them. They will provide me with all the lemons I could possibly want in exchange for a few jars of my lemon curd. Score! Now if mother nature would just get on with it already and ripen the darn things!

4. I am learning to sew. I have been composing a post in my head for, like, a week, about this, so I won't say much more than that. Oh, except that I made a shirt on Saturday that actually looks like I bought it in a store. I KNOW! Who'd've thunk I'd be capable of that particular feat of home-ec-ness.

Reading Update: July 22 -- August 11

Chris Adrian -- The Children's Hospital

Hmm. Don't know quite what to say about this one. I really enjoyed parts of it, and even though it's over 600 pages long, I never once felt like I was ready to bail on reading it. (Rare for me in a book of that length). However, Adrian desperately needs a better editor, if you ask me. This novel could literally have been 200 pages shorter. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that cutting this book way back could have taken it, for me anyway, from a merely good novel, to a really great one. There was just so much here that felt like the author was being allowed to be overly self-indulgent. So much unnecessary verbiage to muck up the lovely bits. Ugh.


David Benniof -- The City of Thieves

I really enjoyed the main story of this book, but I was thoroughly irritated by the "frame" bit at the beginning. Completely and totally unnecessary. Especially since the author doesn't even come back to it at the end. Basically, the only purpose for it being there is to allow the author to finish the book with a cutesy little surprise ending. SO not essential to the book. I wish that Benniof would have just trusted his amazing writing ability and let the story stand on its own.


Jeanne Birdsall -- The Penderwicks

Cute kids chapter book, of the variety that I would have adored as a kid, if it had been out then. It reminded me quite a bit of the Narnia books, in terms of the sibling relationships in the story, but it's not a fantasy book.


Hillary Jordan -- Mudbound

Quite lovely, really, in a melancholy, grey-skies and rainy days kind of way. The scene at the beginning of the book with the two brothers burying their racist ass of a dead father drew me in immediately and I was hooked. And the ending is quite wonderful, too. Jordan does the best job of any author I've read, I think, of recognizing our very human desire for a happy ending, even while she is simultaneously aware of the reality -- happy endings aren't always a part of real life, even when they're really, really deserved. Highly recommended.

Junot Diaz -- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Tried and failed. I just don't get the hype. I read about 20 pages and was so freakin' irritated with the postmodern pretensions that I couldn't take it anymore. Mr. Diaz, please repeat after me: "Footnotes do not belong in fiction. Footnotes do not belong in fiction. Footnotes do not belong in fiction. Not even if they're trying to be wryly self-aware and funny." Blech!

Laura Kasischke -- The Life Before Her Eyes
Another FAIL. This one came off the recommended shelf at my local indie bookstore, Copperfield's, where they have never before steered me wrong. However, I found the main character of this book so very smug and self-congratulatory that I wanted to reach right into the pages and smack the beejezus out of her. Too bad, too, as the first few pages are quite lovely and haunting.


Also: Dozens and dozens of very easy chapter books, for work. Seriously. Pretty much every "first chapter book" out there, I've read it! My current Excel grid of notes on books I've read for this project is hovering at 119. Urgh. So you can understand, perhaps, why most of my at-home reading of late has consisted of craft books and travel magazines that can be read in 5-minute bites.


(I have been trying to post this stupid reading update for literally three+ weeks now. I think the inevitable summer lethargy has set in or something)

dumb and dumber

Dumb: The fact that only 4 women of 22 on my soccer team showed up for our tournament today. It was six-a-side, and not really a competitive thing, so we just begged and borrowed players from other teams, but still . . . annoying.

Dumber: The fact that this bee-yotch from my former team (which I left after 1 season because it was full of mean girl cheerleader types) totally tried to get all snotty with me today. We were sitting next to them in between games and I was about to step in and play on a team that's not mine, because they were also short people. So this woman from my old team sees that and was all like "yeah, Chris reeeeallly likes to switch teams. She just floats around wherever" in this totally snotty voice. WTF? Are you really that upset that I left your team? Seriously?

Dumbest: The fact that I managed to well-sunscreen my face, neck, ears, etc and yet somehow completely forgot to do my legs. My calves were covered by shin guards and socks, but OMG are the backs of my knees red. Owwwww.



In other, non-dumb news, this women's athletic wear catalog, Athleta, is having a warehouse sale in my town this weekend. I went this morning and scored some SWEET deals -- fabulous Isis ski pants, a one-piece athletic swimsuit for lap swimming, a couple workout shirts, yoga pants, and a warm base-layer shirt for winter sports. All for, like $50. Seriously. The ski pants alone would have been 3-4 times that regularly. SCORE!

Grief

The first time as an adult that I had a pet die, I was blown away by how much grief I felt. We always had pets when I was a kid, and while I have vague memories of sadness when one of them passed away, I don't remember the loss really affecting me that much. The only pet death I even remember explicitly was when I was in 8th grade and my hamster, Pavlov, killed my other hamster, Skinner. (Yes, I was that geeky). I remember discovering them, bloody in the cage, and then sitting on the dirty steps in the garage, sobbing hysterically while I waited for my dad to get home and comfort me. But other than that, nothing. Maybe that's just the blurring of time, or that kids are just really resilient creatures, or that those pets were not as much mine as the pets I've had as an adult. I dunno.

But when my cat Kermit died a few years ago, I was devastated. He had a seizure in my arms out of the blue one afternoon. Though we rushed him to the vet immediately, it was too late. He'd had a congenital heart defect and his little heart finally just gave out. I remember walking around in a teary daze for days. Weeks even. Missing the way he always had to be touching me. I'd raised him from kittenhood, working hard to socialize him and overcome his skittishness. He'd been with me through multiple moves across the country. Through my breakup with my ex-fiance. Through the beginning of grad school (and, as it turned out, the end). It felt as though I had lost a person in my life. But I always thought it would be easier the next time around.

I don't know if that's turning out to be true. Sure, I know what to expect more this time, because I've been through it before. But I miss Scout pretty terribly at the moment. Last night, I dreaded going home from work, because I knew she wouldn't be there on the porch, waiting to be let in and fed her dinner. I knew she wouldn't be there to curl up with my just as I was trying to go to sleep. To lick and lick and lick with her rough little tongue until I paid attention to her. I realized that I didn't have to put away the ball of yarn I was working with on a project, because Scout wasn't there to bat it all over the house, tangling the red wool around the sofa legs, under the dining room table, into the coat closet. Three days in, I'm still breaking into tears at random moments, hit by sudden aching bursts of missing her. Scout moved with me across the country, too. From Chicago to DC and then from DC to here. She was always good for a funny story or six. She was the longest cat I ever saw, stretching her skinny body out as she craned to look at whatever she found interesting in the moment. Everyone who met her loved her. I feel terrible guilt over letting her be an outside cat. If I'd only kept her inside, this wouldn't have happened, the voice in my head keeps telling me. But she was always so much happier outside than she was in. And I don't keep myself inside just because I might get hurt. And, really, let's be honest, Scout used up her 9 lives long ago with all of her escapades. She had a good life, short as it might have been.

And losing her has reawakened fears that are always lurking there for me -- terror over the possibility of losing my parents, my sisters, D., all the other people I love in my life. Fear of getting old and dying myself. Frankly, the circle of life scares the crap out of me. And sometimes I worry that I don't feel things as much as other people -- that I bounce back more quickly than I should from anger, from sadness, from whatever I'm feeling. My moods feel so . . . transient, so quicksilver. And then something like this happens and suddenly I fear that I feel too much. Fear that the sadness won't go away this time.

I guess what I want to say is this: My heart hurts. I'm hanging in there, but it's hard -- so much harder than I expected.

Not the post I hoped to write today

Today, I went to the county fair with some friends. Much fun was had by all, and I'd planned on writing a wonderful post with lots of pictures.

Unfortunately, life decided to up and bite me in the ass, instead. A little while after I got home, I got a call that my cat, Scout, had been hit by a car and that she didn't make it. Obviously, I'm devastated. RIP Scouter. I miss you already.

Not quite doing wheelies, but moving in the right direction

Today I did something I've never done before -- I rode my bike someplace that I would normally drive. This is a big deal, because I am an extremely nervous bike rider. I very nearly learned to drive a car before I learned to ride a bike, for starters, so I don't have that deeply ingrained childhood "feel" for being on a bike. Plus, until a few weeks ago, I had never even ridden a bike on the road before. I bought my cheap-ass Target bike when I lived in DC, but only ever rode it on the C&O canal towpath, which is pancake flat gravel, with no cars.

But dating someone who rides his bike constantly has helped me see just how many places I could get to on my bike instead of in the car. So today, I was brave, and I rode to the library. It's only a couple miles away, but the ride involved multiple left turns, crossing two major streets, and riding across a drawbridge. I cheated a little, riding on the sidewalk when I had to go across the scary bridge (that metal grid stuff it's made out of freaks me out even in a car -- there was no way I was riding a bike across it!). But I did it! Go me! And as I was riding, freaked out about impending left turns, hectic intersections, etc, I realized that I was feeling pretty much exactly like I did as a new car driver. Back then, I would sometimes go miles out of my way just to avoid a left turn onto a busy road with no light, and my heart would pound in the same way it did today on my bike. But I learned to drive a car just fine, and now I'm not even (very) afraid of driving in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, or any of the other major cities I've lived in and visited. The fear is, I realized, an unavoidable part of the learning curve, and the important thing is that I did it anyway. (And my only injury was a minor scrape on my finger from when I snagged it on something sharp locking my bike up. Clutz!)

I doubt I'll be commuting to work on my bike anytime soon, but progress is being made . . .


P.S. I have been watching lots of old kids TV shows lately for work. Do yourself a favor and go YouTube Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader on The Electric Company. I promise you won't regret it!

Where I spent my weekend

This is where I spent my weekend. Campsite in Stanislaus National Forest, just outside Yosemite.

Lovely, no? Longer post soon with many lovely pictures . . .

Yum, Yum, and More Yum!

I made these Plump Pea Dumplings from 101 Cookbooks for dinner last night and OMG were they good! It's amazing that something so simple can taste so damn good. And they're pretty healthy, too! I have seriously been thinking all day about how soon I can go home and eat some more. YUM!

Reading Update: July 8

Per Petterson -- Out Stealing Horses

Quiet and lovely. Not a lot happens, but I couldn't stop reading.

Mark Dunn -- Ella Minnow Pea

For my book group. After 100 Years of Solitude, The Road, and Middlesex as our last three books, it was time for something lighter. I read it in about a day, and it's both fun and serious at the same time. The book is set on the fictional island of Nollop, named after the man who invented the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," which includes all letters of the alphabet. The trouble begins when a letter falls off the statue of Nollop in the town square. The town council decides that this is a sign from beyond the grave and bans use of that letter in all writing and speech. As more letters fall, the citizens' language is restricted further, and the letters also disappear from the book itself. It's totally clever and fun, even as it tackles the dangers of censorship.


Joan Didion --The Year of Magical Thinking

Honestly, I don't get the hype. Not at all. The book is the story of the year after her sudden death of her husband and her daughter's terrible illness. The idea, I think, is that Didion is looking death and grieving straight in the face and writing about it in a way that no one else has. I really wanted to like this book. I did. But I find Didion so freaking annoying that I couldn't even pay attention to the book. I couldn't feel even a lick of sympathy for her, couldn't empathize with her (which seems like sort of the point of the whole book). I dunno. Maybe it's just me, since the whole world seems to think this book is amazing. I've never much liked Didion's writing, though. Way back in high school, a teacher gave me a copy of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, thinking I would really enjoy it. But I couldn't even make it through the first essay there.

Do you think it's bad . . .

. . . that I have consumed almost a full jar of jam since I made it yesterday?

What if I ate most of it standing over the sink, spoon in hand, straight from the jar?



(perhaps I should give away several of the 12 jars I made yesterday? My waistline would probably thank me later)

Cookin' up a storm

This weekend was full of lovely weather, good food, and lots of cooking. What else does a girl really need?

D. and I had dinner on the Fourth at Ubuntu in Napa. It's this fancy vegetarian place, and yes, it really is a yoga studio, too. (Only in California, people. Only in California). I thought the food was decent, overall, though a little fussy (look at the menu -- you'll see what I mean). The dessert, though, was spectacular -- a corn pudding cake with grilled peaches and some sort of honey ice cream. It came garnished with this super-thin wafer sprinkled with sweet popcorn. And the best part? When the waitress came over to our table and told us that they had a back patio, and would we like to have our dessert out there so we could watch the fireworks? All the fireworks with none of the beer-swilling crowd? Hell yes!

As for cooking, on Saturday we made grilled pizzas. Yum! This might be my favorite thing I've cooked in a while, and it was so easy. We used Trader Joes Pizza dough, and then experimented with toppings. The best combo was proscuitto, gorgonzola, and figs. Y. U. M. We also made a grilled veggie version and one with caramelized onions and ricotta. Making the onions was fun -- it's totally magical to me the way the character of something can change so much just by cooking it slowly. That version of the pizza, though, lacked pizzaz. We decided that next time we'd add some gorgonzola to it and maybe something with a bit more crunch. The fig and gorgonzola pizza was the clear winner of the night, and we liked the super-thin crusts we did the best.

To actually make the pizzas, roll out the dough into thin, small pizzas, which are easier to work with. brush with olive oil and toss onto an oiled grill for a few minutes. Take off the grill and flip onto a plate so the cooked side is up. Add your toppings (pre-cooked or no-cooking needed, since they don't get a ton of heat) and then put back on grill for a couple minutes, uncooked side down. You'll want to keep the flames low, so you don't burn it. Here's directions from someone who is better at this recipe thing than I am: Grilled Pizza on 101 Cookbooks.

Yesterday, after D. had abandoned me for the cooler climes of Portland (A 7 am flight! On a Sunday morning!!) I heated up my kitchen with a great big batch of strawberry jam and, once it had cooled down enough for me to even contemplate turning the oven on again, chicken stock.

Chicken stock is such a fun thing to me. When you tell people you make your own chicken stock, they tend to be rather impressed, as if you've told them that when you were fifteen you ran away to join the circus and you are really quite good on the trapeze. It always makes me laugh a little, because chicken stock is just about the easiest thing anyone could make in their kitchen. All you need is a few hours when you don't need to leave the house, so you can keep an eye on the pot. This is cooking even my dad could do. (Sorry, Daddy! You know I love you, cook or not!)

Here's how I do it: Throw a chicken carcass into a enormous stock pot with 16-20 cups of water. (I toss the leftover bones and meat into the freezer whenever I make a roast chicken and pull 'em out when I want to make stock). Also toss in a couple scrubbed carrots, broken in half; a couple ribs of celery, a big onion cut into quarters (no need to peel), parsley, peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Add a bit of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer very gently for several hours, until the chicken falls off the bones. Strain and freeze to use whenever. If it tastes bland, add more salt. Tada! You'll impress all of your non-cook friends to no end. (Even more so if you also feed them the chicken you roasted in order to get the bones -- another simple recipe, for another day).

I also very much enjoy making jam. I feel like my grandma would be proud of me, if she could see me canning like a pro, even though I wasn't smart enough to ask her to teach me before she passed away. I like freezer jam the best, which is convenient, as it's the simplest to make. Basically, you just mush together whatever kind of fruit you want with sugar and a packet of freezer jam pectin from the grocery store and then dump it into jars. It'll keep forever in the freezer, and it's wonderful in the dead of winter to spread strawberry freezer jam on your toast -- I don't think anything could taste more like summer. Plus, when you're making freezer jam, you can add herbs to it without them tasting over-cooked. I like a little bit of fresh mint in my strawberry jam. Sounds a bit odd, but it's SO good. And today's peach-strawberry jam got some sliver-thin ribbons of basil.

But I also like the more complicated kind of jam that you cook on the stovetop till it gels and then can in a hot water-bath. There's something very soothing to me about cooking down strawberries and sugar till they get thick and lava-like, bubbling languidly on the stove. And then the sealing process! It's like magic -- boiling the jars, hearing the 'ping' of sealing lids, popping them open with a can opener weeks or months down the line. And it's nice to live someplace now where this is not such an odd thing to do. Once, when I lived in DC, I spent an afternoon making jam. When I mentioned it later that night, one of my relatives responded, with some horror in her voice, why would you want to do that, as if I had spent my day cleaning the poop off the hindquarters of a not-so-meticulous dog. Here, people just ask when I'm bringing them a jar :-)


P.S. I've been on a regular cooking binge lately. Along with this weekend's wonders, last weekend I made a rustic plum and port wine tart (from the June issue of Bon Appetit) and pickles, for the first time ever (pretty good, but too sweet, even though I cut the sugar in the recipe in half).

Reading update: July 2

Despite the lack of updates on my reading, I actually have found quite a lot of time to read lately. (Funny what happens when your social life consists almost entirely of a boyfriend who is 600+ miles away most of the time and 6 or 7 friends who are currently all completely snowed under at work). Here's the list, to the best of my memory. I'm sure I'm missing some, but if I can't remember them, they probably weren't all that great, anyway.

Amitav Ghosh -- The Hungry Tide
Lovely throughout, not all that satisfying in the end. Hate that.

David Mitchell -- The Cloud Atlas
This one was a surprise to me. I normally hate super-postmodern/experimental books, and Mitchell definitely falls under that category. But after hearing several friends whose taste in books I really trust rave about how great this book was, I finally gave in. Boy, am I glad I did. The Cloud Atlas is a series of 6 or so stories, set in all different time periods and worlds, linked only tenuously to one another. Each story is a different genre, from futuristic sci-fi to 18th century epistolary novel and so on, and the book has a sort of nested set-up, in which each story breaks off suddenly, only to be resumed again in the second half of the book. Hard to explain, but lovely, lovely, lovely to read. Every single one of the stories grabbed me and pulled me in, and I am still utterly amazed at Mitchell's ability to write so eloquently in so many different voices and genres. Not a top-5 book for me, but definitely way up there in terms of favorites.

Jennifer Sey - Chalked Up
Had a brief period of minor obsession with gymnastics. Something about the Olympics coming up, I'm sure. This just came out, the memoir of a former US gymnastics champion. Interesting, not great. I found it to be a fairly typical lambasting of the gymnastics world and its negative effects on little girls' bodies, minds, and spirits. I will say that Sey places more accountability on herself than most books of this type -- she doesn't just blame all her misery on the coaches, so that was refreshing.

Joan Ryan -- Little Girls in Pretty Boxes
Not much to say about this one. Part of the same momentary obsession as the above book. (And you know what the silliest part is? I don't even have a working TV, so I probably won't watch even a lick of the Olympics this summer).


Jack O'Connnell -- The Resurrectionist
Very interesting novel. I'm struggling to even describe it. It's very film-noir, in a way, and it makes me feel like you feel when you hear the words "It was a dark and stormy night." In other words, in my head, the book is all wrapped in blue-black sky and menacing clouds. Basically, it's about a father, Sweeney, who brings his young son, Danny to a hospital where the doctors claim they'll be able to wake him from the coma he's been in since a tragic accident. O'Connell interweaves the story of Danny and his father with the world of a series of dark comic books that the boy was reading before he lost consciousness, and it's the blurring of fantasy and reality that's most interesting. I loved the way O'Connell leaves us wondering what is real and what is the grief-fueled fantasy of a devastated father. Really enjoyed it.


Lee Martin -- The Bright Forever
This book left me feeling a little . . . dirty. (No, not in THAT way!) More like . . . complicit. Basically, it's the story of a little girl's tragic disappearance and the ripples of its aftermath out into the world of those around her. Martin does a masterful job of revealing the story bit by bit so that the reader only gradually realizes that the solid ground beneath her feet, and her clear understanding of "what happened" and how the various characters were involved, is little more than quicksand. You're left feeling like you bought into the lies the characters told themselves, and like you're somehow complicit in what happens to the girl. I didn't find the characters in this story likable at all, in the end, but they were real, to be sure. And, in fact, I didn't much like the story, but I like the mastery behind it. This is not a book that leaves you feeling good when you've finished it, it's not beautiful. But it does make you feel unsettled, uneasy, and it sticks with you, and I think that takes, in fact, more talent, then just writing something that makes your reader feel good.


Lloyd Alexander -- The Book of Three
A book I loved as a kid. I still enjoyed it this time around, but didn't find it nearly as compelling. Reading it did, however, make me totally nostalgic for the Black Cauldron PC game my dad bought for me in the late 80s. Of course, he was the one who spent most of the time playing the game -- he kicked ASS at it, and I was, unfortunately, too easily frustrated.

Robyn Scott -- 20 Chickens for a Saddle
I listened to this one on CD in my car, and it was a good book for that approach. First of all, Scott has a beautiful, lilting New Zealand accent, which I could listen to for approximately, oh, forever, without tiring. But it was also a fascinating story. I've read many white-person-out-of-place-in-Africa books before, but usually they feel much more distant from my life. (The Poisonwood Bible, for example, is set in the '60s, and Out of Africa somewhere earlier, even, than that). But Scott is actually a few years younger than me, so her childhood in Africa was happening so close to my own childhood in a world as far off as imaginable. Really, really funny, but also poignant, and Scott has a real ear for description of a landscape. I've never been to Africa, but I could imagine it all in my head so easily. It also totally made me want to run away and live in a converted cowshed in the African outback for a while. :-)

Beverly Cleary -- The Mouse and the Motorcycle
For work. Never read this one as a kid, but it's cute.

Beverly Cleary -- Ramona the Pest
Also for work. I'd forgotten that Ramona's cat is named Picky-picky. What a great name! I'm totally naming my next cat Picky-picky. (Aside: I have a friend that named his cats Beezus and Ramona. So cute! I wish I'd thought of it first).

L. Frank Baum -- The Wizard of Oz.
Yep, for work. The slippers aren't ruby in the book! I feel betrayed by the movie industry!

Astrid Lindgren -- Pippi Longstocking
Yep, my job involves reading lots of kids books. Didn't like this as much as I did as a kid. Now Pippi seems sort of annoying, whereas then she was totally jealousy-worthy because of her freedom and complete disregard for the rules.

Trenton Lee Stewart -- The Mysterious Benedict Society
Best new kids chapter book I've read in ages and ages. Loved the characters, loved the writing, loved the story. Stewart's writing reminds me a bit of Roald Dahl, in terms of both style and quirkiness. I actually picked this one up from a display in a bookstore -- not for work! Can't recommend it enough, for kids of all ages.

Jeffrey Ford -- The Shadow Year
This book creeped me out. Seriously. It gave me nightmares. I made myself finish it, but I can't say I really enjoyed it that much.

These are totally not in order, and I'm positive I'm missing some, but oh well. Right now, I'm trying to plow my way through 100 Years of Solitude for my book group, and I'm also reading Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.

I want

That is all . . .


more cat pictures

What I did all weekend

I pretty much spent my whole weekend sitting on my postage-stamp-sized porch, drinking lovely icy cold drinks. This is my favorite -- a watermelon margarita. Can you see that the ice is heart-shaped? I love you, Ikea, for enabling my adorably shaped ice-making! Oh, and I also read a whole lot. And cleaned my office, which was dangerously close to being eligible to be declared a FEMA disaster zone. Woo!

Warning: Slacking Ahead

Argh. I am clearly not responsible enough to have a blog, as I don't seem to be even remotely capable of regular updates. In my defense, things have been hectic. I was in Michigan for a week, helping my mom recover from surgery, which included an oh-so-lovely day spent at the horribly over-air-conditioned emergency room at St. Joes in Pontiac, Michigan. And then when I got home, I turned right back around and flew out to Portland a few days later. And while I was in Portland, I was really preoccupied, what with the eating of enormous amounts of delicious food and the drinking of enormous amounts of delicious margaritas (spiked with watermelon aqua fresca -- TELL me who could possibly think of their blog with an icy cold watermelon margarita in their hand???) And also with the watching of my hot boyfriend racing on his bike against dozens of other cute-but-not-quite-so-hot-men in spandex. And I hiked 12 miles in one day, too, while I was there. Up hill both ways! Doesn't that count for something? Plus, I have totally written, like, eighteen blog entries in my head in the past few weeks. (What do you mean you can't read my mind?!? Slacker!) So, um, yeah. Today, I turn over a new leaf. Regular posts, at least three days a week. Yes, a new leaf today or, uh, tomorrow.

Have I ever told you how I feel about otters?

This clip of a commercial from the Minnesota Zoo (from Cute Overload) totally made my morning. I'm fairly convinced that if they wanted to, otters could take over the world with their cuteness. I dragged D. to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium a few weeks ago for the otter show alone. And it was TOTALLY worth the 50 bucks it cost the two of us to get in!