Christine Reads

Conversationally Speaking

2011-03-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Ah, you’re back. I know, I know. My caffeine high wore off and I couldn’t focus properly on your fuzzy green sweater anymore. I wonder where you go when I’m not paying attention to you…. Oh, but I don’t mean to interrupt. You’re leaning forward like you want to ask me something, tucking that wayward strand of reddish hair behind your ear as you frame your question.

Where do you find the time to read?

  I shift my weight, re-crossing my legs on the other side, buying a spot of time. It’s a oddly uncomfortable topic. As no doubt you know from our weekly contact, my baby is about five months old now.

Well, I lick my lips, he was a bit of a slow eater to start, and I was falling asleep waiting at least thirty minutes for him to breastfeed, ten times a day the first month. So I started reading a book during our sessions and was soon reading more than four books a week using only that time. Not small books either, I shrug. Took me one week to blow through The Help by Kathryn Stockett. He’s faster now, bigger too, but I can still get through at least two books a week that way.

Don’t you love that books are so portable? So easy to squeeze into whatever rifts shuffle through your day? But you’re right, during those ten minutes my eensy monster is asleep without me, I’m unlikely to spend my free time reading, I stop to breathe deeply. Forgive my ramble.

What about audio books? you ask.

How did you know? I wonder, narrowing my eyes. You know me so well, it's nearly evil.

Indeed I am now listening to audio books while rocking the little guy into one of the naps he so resists taking, lying next to him every evening as he drifts away. One per week, at least. That’s on top of the regular old, flappable, page-style books.

Just last week, I finally caught up with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — something I’ve been meaning to read for ages — which is beautifully read and whips smoothly along.

Oh and there he is now, cooing to himself from the bed. I’ll bet he’s sucking on one of his socks, smiling up at his old friend the ceiling fan. I scurry toward the bedroom. Grab you some more tea while I’m up?

Review: The Handmade Marketplace

2011-03-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Crafters are a genial bunch, helpful at the core. So who better to ask for business advice than several dozen of your crafting peers? The Handmade Marketplace is a commonsense guide to beginning a craft business given in an organized, start-to-finish format with pop-in tidbits from more than 20 craft-friendly neighbors.

Written nearly as informally as a roundtable discussion, Chapin's encouraging tone urges you along. Crafters often stumble into a business following a homemade product's accolades from friends and relatives. They then cluelessly navigate the business world with how-to books geared to brick-and-mortar stores, not small, handmade items made in living rooms.

Most useful sections for newcomers include publicity advice — blogging, putting together press kits, developing marketing networks. Use Chapin's tips on how and where to sell, with pricing recommendations, and your business will flourish from the start.

A few years ago, I launched a knitting business, selling hand-knit wares at craft shows and one brick-and-mortar store, which swiftly folded. If I'd had Chapin's advice, I'd have started the blog and online sales first and sold through the store with a backup plan in mind. But with limited resources, I spent money on the wrong ones and ended up closing shop within two years.

Here's what you can do instead: pick up The Handmade Marketplace and make use of professional, artisans' perspectives, flush with advice that's easy to follow.

Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell Your Crafts Locally, Globally, and On-Line
Kari Chapin
Storey Books, Paperback, February 2010
$14.95
View the book at Barnes & Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Vegetarian Option

2011-01-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

Laid out a bit like your grandmother’s holiday table — everything in its carefully doilied place —, The Vegetarian Option separates recipes by ingredient into more than fifty small sections. Despite this fusty approach, Hopkinson manages a feat most vegetarian cookbooks don’t even attempt: singular focus on the vegetables. While he turns to a handful of rice and pasta dishes at the back, Hopkinson embraces even unpopular veg like watercress, sorrel, and turnips with expert ease. Imagine what he does for the usual suspects.

Recipes range from quick, two-step prep to several complicated paragraphs of work before a final, though impressive, meal emerges. Simple dishes like spaghetti al aglio and peperocino (i.e. garlic and pepper) and broiled eggplant with pesto are hearty and manageable dinner options for even novice home cooks. Or spend a few hours creating the asian fried turnip paste or mushroom cannelloni, multi-step meals with breathtaking results.

Despite the high level of ingenuity in his recipes, Hopkinson’s ingredients are widely accessible and budget friendly. Some of the more creative dishes, the tomato jelly with basil and goat cheese for example, feature ingredients like agar agar — an easy to use vegan thickening agent rarely used outside of the raw food realm but available at a decent supermarket. It's the experimental pairings and texture variations that set this cookbook apart.

A few sample recipe titles:
Cheese-crusted fried parsnip stripes with romesco sauce
Cream of fennel soup with garlic butter
Red pepper and potato stew with jalapeno relish
Warm asparagus custards with tarragon vinaigrette

Hopkinson’s compiled a thorough, adaptive collection with enough diversity to keep you thumbing its pages seasonally. Though he's thrown in a few easy ones, his recipes aren’t the simplistic, 30-minute fare so popular lately. But if you’re looking for a vegetarian Sunday dinner that will impress people, start your browsing here.

The Vegetarian Option
Simon Hopkinson
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Hardcover, April 2010
$15.99

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Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

You Know You Love... Science Fiction

2011-01-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Okay. Time to talk science fiction. I know, I know, it’s old hat. Desperately unpopular territory now, felled by flashier paranormal titles. Which I also like. But braving a nerdy classification of my own, I say science fiction can be fantastic reading.

Let’s not pretend I’m turning to my battered Shakespeare collection with fifteen minutes to spare while the baby naps. My getaway reading materials are never romance novels and rarely chick-lit happy ending fluff. For comfort, I’ll reread a beloved Hardy Boys or Sweet Valley High title. But, most often, I turn to science fiction to carry me away. And, when it’s good, it always does.

Since reading Brave New World at thirteen, I’ve been an avid fan of the sci fi. Quality science fiction, that is. But what gives science fiction writing a sense of quality anyway? Apparently, the answer varies, since many titles are crap reading. For me, quality work means the writer creates an entirely new world. Whether it’s a parallel, post-apocalyptic earth, an entirely new planet, or the vast array of in-betweens that pepper the genre, the world created has different values/ideals, a rich history and, if the writer is excellent and thorough, a unique and distinct vocabulary. And that’s all alongside a strong central character. At least that’s what I like.

My prime example and all-time favorite being Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I read again each year, sighing and laughing and groaning throughout. Eerily relatable despite its strangeness, Huxley’s world promotes equality to the point of complete homogenization of the population — a theme that’s been replicated or outright copied in books and film far beyond the complimentary gesture.

Another author with a thorough imagination for detail and characterization is Margaret Atwood. While her writing spans several genres, my favorite tales can be categorized as science fiction: The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake and 2009’s follow-up The Year of the Flood.

Recently, I’ve loved two newer series: Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series and Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series, which starts with The Furies of Calderon (maybe I should dig into the Dresden Files series?). While both offer singular, visionary worlds, Westerfeld creates brand spanking new dialogue with its own cadence and slang — reminding me of (my idol) Joss Whedon’s writing style. His other books, though wildly entertaining, aren’t as thoughtfully crafted.

Lately, I’ve been catching up on all the great Science Fiction titles I’ve missed over the years. Yes, I read one of those votable book lists on GoodReads, then cross-referenced it with several other online lists of lesser popularity and finally added a few friends’ dog-eared faves. Recent recommendations included Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Stephanie Meyer’s The Host, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower —Is the book’s poor editing supposed to confer authenticity on the diary status of its main character? Even if so, it’s distracting.—, M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. And these are the ones I’m recommending of the larger bunch.

Feeling your way around the science fiction genre? Junior classics like A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams are crowd favorites for a reason, and easy entry to the genre, while War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, often raved as the pinnacle work, is imaginative but such a dry telling. Wells loses my interest in even the best audio version.

As for me, I’m still actively hunting for new worlds.

Next up, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (though it’s still working its way down my library hold list — #44 of 119 requests, so it might be a while), Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I’m thrilled that all three of them are series, desperate to love at least one and have several more books to look forward to.

If you’ve got a fabulous title I’ve missed, by all means, send me an (unscientific but handy) email. To wild future reading!

Review: The Devotion of Suspect X

2011-01-02T15:35:00.000-08:00

A smart whodunit with precise timing and alarmingly clever curveballs, The Devotion of Suspect X matches the murderous progression of a mathematics teacher's proof against a physicist's logic and a detective's intuition. Despite knowing what really happened from the first chapter, this book will have you quickly thumbing pages, eager to figure out the end.

When Yasuko and her daughter Misato strangle Yasuko's brutal ex-husband Togashi after a threatening encounter in their apartment, their quiet neighbor Ishigamo unexpectedly steps in to help, taking care of the body's disposal and carefully crafting the women's responses to the police questions sure to follow. As the formal investigation progresses, it seems that Ishigamo, a genius math scholar currently teaching at a local high school, has thought of everything. Kusanagi, the detective in charge of the inquiry, finds the facts flimsy and turns to his former classmate, Yukawa, a brilliant physicist with a predilection for amateur sleuthing and Ishigamo's erstwhile competitor. Adding Yukawa to the equation is a factor that even Ishigamo and his legendary logic hadn't considered, but will it matter in the end?

Normally, murder mysteries fall slightly outside my diameter of preferred reading materials. Perhaps due to a youthful overdose of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys novels. Mysteries fell off my radar entirely when I could guess endings or characters felt too shallowly developed, or, unfortunately, both. Higashino's novel avoids both pitfalls with ease.

Be warned that it may take a few chapters for the unfamiliar names to read easily and some trite phrasing plagues the translation from Japanese —or it might also have plagued the original —, but overall the book's unique premise and foreign culture add drama to Higashino's already charged pacing.

If you crave an unsolvable mystery, you'll find The Devotion of Suspect X rife with pretzeling facts and one mathematician's murky motives.

The Devotion of Suspect X
Keigo Higashino
Minotaur Books, Hardcover, February 2011
$24.99

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Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Divvies Bakery Cookbook

2010-12-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

There's no better motivation for creating allergy-free desserts than raising a wee one with serious health issues, as I found out myself several months after receiving this cookbook. Though it's written with children in mind, Divvies showcases a sweet collection for all ages, treats that inspire worry-free sharing — possibly the true definition of dessert.

From more traditional classics like Robin's Apple Pie to unique bake sale treats like her Popcorn Snowmen, Sandler's included an extensive list of allergy-free fare. Some of the Divvies Bakery's signature recipes, Benjamin's Chocolate Chip Cookies for example, are what you'll find for sale on shelves at Whole Foods. Especially enticing recipes include a Strawberry-Rhubarb Oatmeal Cookie, a nice update on the classic oatmeal-raisin, and Oh Fudge!, a dairy-free chocolate concoction with a pleasantly smooth mouthfeel.

Overall, the book's clean design and organization make it highly usable. I only wish there were photos of each dessert.

Admittedly, it is odd reviewing a cookbook devoted to allergies with you eat all of the missing ingredients. So I waited, asking the help of friends with dietary restrictions. And then, when my son was six weeks old, we thought he might have a milk protein allergy. Since I'm already vegetarian, that made me into a vegan for at least three weeks — plenty of time to miss my sugar rush! Of course, I whipped out this cookbook and brought vegan cookies to a friend's swap last week. It's true: no one noticed the difference!

Whether you use it occasionally or depend on it regularly, Divvies drool-worthy desserts will please the pickiest palate, leaving everyone at the table satisfied. Don't just take my word for it.

The Divvies Bakery Cookbook: No Nuts. No Eggs. No Dairy. Just Delicious!
Lori Sandler
St Martin's Press, Hardcover, July 2010
$25.99

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Review: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

2010-12-15T18:49:00.000-08:00

Nellie Oleson, Little House on the Prairie's rotten rich girl in ringlets, may have mellowed on the show's final years, but viewers could rely on a pinch of her savagery in every performance. As it turns out, the jack-in-the-box element of mean surprise that made Nellie compulsively watchable is actress and comedian Alison Arngrim's saving grace.

One of three television shows I was allowed to watch as a child, Little House on the Prairie, already in re-runs, was my favorite for several reasons, most pivotal being my braided and buck-toothed resemblance to Laura Ingalls. But even without such a fierce affinity for the show's central character, I couldn't deny Nellie Oleson's spoiled allure. I still remember episodes with such clarity, it's like I watched them only yesterday when more than twenty years have slid past since I've seen the credits roll. So when the actress who gave Nellie her edge from the wee age of nine writes a memoir, I read it.

Perhaps it's unsurprising that Arngrim's home life is dismal, fodder for snarling on-screen performances that purge the rage and confusion of her sexual abuse. The author fearlessly shares her motivations for taking the role with a comedian's sense for pacing and a crack punchline. Along the way, she divulges (mostly forgiveable) details about the Little House cast and crew. Arngrim's picture of the set makes it easy to see why the show lasted so long: truly familial ties. Her place on the cast firmly set, Arngrim finds a replacement family that buoys her self esteem enough to help her deal with serious personal issues, present and future.

In Confessions, Arngrim culls the best bits of a seven-year stint as Nellie Oleson, crediting the role for shaping much of her adult life. Readers who are fans of the show can look forward to behind-the-scenes antics and accidents that will have them laughing aloud. Despite some grisly material, Arngrim writes in such optimistic tones that this memoir won't leave you feeling undermedicated. A triumphant look back by a woman whose spirit saved her — and fully in line with the best of Nellie's snotty edge —, Arngrim's produced an entertaining read.

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated
Alison Arngrim
Harper Collins, Hardcover, June 2010
$25.99

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Review: The Good Daughters

2010-12-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

A two-sided tale of girlhood that lurches clumsily into womanhood from the perspectives of oddly matched "birthday sisters." Two women born in a small town hospital on the same day, Dana and Ruth couldn't be more dissimilar.

Wrapped in the Plank family's farm life, Ruth's life is driven by the seasons, dependable, regular. Taller and thinner with a strong artistic bend, Ruth struggles to fit in with her four practical sisters and gain the approval of her often-dour mother, Connie. The sunspot in her life is father Edwin, whose love of plant life is only overshadowed by his love for his girls. Connie often chastises Ruth using Dana as a guidepost, hoping Ruth might better mirror her "birthday sister." Edwin quietly buffers Ruth against Connie's aversion with his stolid support, ambling about the property with Ruth in tow, spending time with her more than with his other daughters, encouraging her interest in art.

Stuck in a life as predictable as a hailstorm, Dana organizes her family's bills, pays their rent and covers other practicalities that her parents don't seem to recognize as important. While her father, George, follows his next big idea down disappearing trailheads, awaiting paydays that never come, Dana's mother Valerie paints in her studio to the point of ignoring the rest of her life, existing rather vacantly on the outskirts of motherhood. Left on their own, Dana and her older brother Ray, a sensitive soul who excels at everything he tries, dream of leaving home.

It's Connie Plank who names Ruth and Dana as "birthday sisters," insisting they maintain a close-knit relationship for that reason alone, despite divergent interests. The Planks' only vacation each year is a quick visit to the Dickerson home, wherever that might be, and in return the Dickersons visit the Plank family farm stand each summer, around the girls' July birthdays. Why do these two families, with nothing in common aside from their daughters' birthdays, keep in touch? Neither of the girls knows, and it's a bond they question throughout their lifetimes while a quiet drama brews beneath the surface.

It's on one of these farm visits that Edwin Plank takes an interest in Dana Dickerson as an unofficial understudy, sharing his farming know-how built up from six generations, which leads to Dana's burgeoning interest in farming herself, and, ultimately, connects her to Ruth in a way their shared birthday never did.

A tender, compelling read, Maynard has interwoven the girls' stories beautifully. Two heartfelt portrayals of the outsider that will be easily enjoyed — even by readers who aren't — and embraced by book clubs everywhere.

The Good Daughters
Joyce Maynard
William Morrow, Hardback, August 2010
$17.99

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Review: Spiced

2010-12-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

For those of you who, like me, often dream of swapping a desk job for a pastry station, Dalia Jurgensen's Spiced is a revelation. Literally. Who knew the waters of kitchen politics would be as difficult to navigate as those of the typical office?

While Jurgensen begins her journey, intending to become a chef, her experiences lead her to ultimately choose pastry. The mainly male-oriented profession leads to some predictable, testosterone-driven antics, and the restaurant hierarchy seems, at times, genuinely medieval. But the author's passion for food shines, as does her occasionally unflattering honesty.

Jurgensen's hopscotching through disparate jobs for famed and failed restaurants in a lengthy, resume-building tour of New York City hotspots proves an interesting read, whether or not you have a culinary career in mind. From working the pastry station at Nobu to freelancing as a recipe developer for Martha Stewart, Jurgensen shares industry insight and a few dirty secrets along the way.

And if at the end of the book, you're still itching to cook, don't say you weren't warned.

Spiced: A Pastry Chef's True Stories of Trials by Fire, After-Hours Exploits and What Really Goes On in the Kitchen
Dalia Jurgensen
Penguin Books, Hardcover, April 2009
$4.48 (bargain price)

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Review: Creative, Inc.

2010-11-18T08:25:00.001-08:00

When my sister and I run the world, all college students, no matter their chosen field, will take a basic business course as part of the mandatory freshman curriculum. Having zero business skills is a good way to invalidate any degree. In the freelance world, there’s much more to staying financially afloat than having all the necessary skills to pull off excellent work.

Creative, Inc. is a crash course in business for creative folk, and it’s refreshing to read authors who don’t pretend starting a freelance business is simple. It’s not.

Authors Mateo Ilasco and Cho hit every key point a person needs to build a start-up creative business, including a superb mix of practical advice and personal success stories.

With well-rounded advice for beginning freelancers, even those who’ve already leapt into freelancing will find help navigating the dark waters of taxes, billing, finding clients, and other business practicalities. Written in a neighborly tone, you’ll find solid, practical advice from the authors, who tackle issues like establishing your hourly rate and hiring employees from an educated perspective. Author interviews with a range of seasoned professionals — from prop stylist to designer to photographer — offer alternate views on how to get started and what worked for them.

The spirit of invention is only one ingredient in a successful business venture. Drive counts more than your skillset and talent level. If you’re already motivated, Creative Inc. offers everything else you’ll need to begin freelancing full time.

Creative, Inc.
The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business
Meg Mateo Ilasco & Joy Deangdeelert Cho
Chronicle Books, Softcover, September 2010
$16.95

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Review based on a free copy of the book courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Butcher and the Vegetarian

2010-02-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

Rife with ethical dilemmas, The Butcher and the Vegetarian follows author Tara Austen Weaver’s struggle with eating and health. Raised on a strict, vegetarian diet she’s been happy to follow into her thirties, Tara suddenly finds meat-eating the doctor’s orders. And then multiple doctors’ orders. What to do? How to start? Weaver’s meandering tale is pure foodie flip-floppery, as she eats in ways that defy a label, trying to take her waning health in hand.

What we’re eating is a charged choice these days, ethically speaking, from winter tomatoes to organic labelling issues. It’s rare to grow up veg and not have your choices challenged by friends, relatives, and even medical personnel, though you, like me, may be a nonconfrontational person who doesn’t object to others’ carnivorism and simply prefers a face-free, guiltless diet. Weaver’s embracing approach to all the major eating groups — meat-loving to raw — sets the tone for a truly unbiased memoir of one woman’s journey to find her ideal diet, food to replenish sapped energy levels and fuel her adventurous spirit.

Weaver balances the scale between improved personal health and minimized environmental impact by thoroughly researching her food’s origins. Even if it means visiting a grass-fed beef ranching operation on slaughtering day and then downing a burger afterwards, Weaver proves it’s possible to make to make food decisions — meat or veg — that one can proudly defend.

In the end, Weaver shares a personal experience and ends with a personal choice, one she admits is far from where she began and never expected to find herself. While Weaver’s eating habits may not be my own, this is a woman I’d invite to dinner for her thoughtful, open approach to both food and friendship.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian
Tara Austen Weaver
Rodale, Hardcover, February 2010
$23.99

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Review based on a free copy of the book courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Lucid Food

2010-02-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

Lucid Food arrives, already a present, gorgeous with scrolling artwork and vibrant images, wrapped and ready. I am enamored. Also, I am hungry. Thumbing past photography for Chickpea Cakes with a verdant green Cilantro-Jalapeno Sauce, Fall Fruit Focaccia succulent with apple wedges, Crispy Yuba Rolls that look toasty brown and crunchy, ready to dip, I confess to some absent-minded lip licking. On the second pass, I’m stuck on the Ash-e-reshteh, or Persian New Year’s Soup with Beans, Noodles and Herbs, all the colorful, herby bits crowded into a steaming bowl.

Louisa Shafia knows how to eat well, fashioning meals from quality produce and local fare. Nestled amid the recipes are the nuggets of valuable health information that expand Lucid Food from a mere (heavenly) cookbook to kitchen notebook. Shafia’s voice, warm and genuine, weaves her decades of food knowledge throughout the book, sharing her notes on sustainability, locality, and old-fashioned DIY values.

I’ll admit I am obsessed with the new wave of seasonal collections. Particularly, I enjoy the variety of produce that pop up in these, even if it isn’t always available in rural Kansas. These are people bedeviled by produce. (My kind of people.) Shafia adds a rich reference to the home cook’s stash, reimagining tired winter vegetables into savory staples.

Poised to win a spot on my shelf of beloved, dog-eared cookbooks, Lucid Food serves up nearly 100 delectable recipes, only about a dozen featuring fish or meat. (It’s not frowned upon, don’t worry about harsh words; it’s simply not the focus here.) There aren’t photos of every recipe, but the photos included showcase lush preparations of plump, perfectly-cooked veggies with occasional animal proteins tucked in.

Shafia is one of the rare chefs able to communicate her intensity about quality, seasonal ingredients in amiable terms. No lectures here, simply facts and considerable inspiration for making dinnertime shine. And extraordinary food, with a little help from Shafia, speaks for itself.

Lucid Food
Louisa Shafia
Ten Speed Press, Softcover, November 2009
$22.50

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Review based on a free copy of the book courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Lost Symbol

2010-01-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

Oh, come on! Everybody reads a thriller now and then, and who's going to pass up The Lost Symbol from the ever-controversial Dan Brown? Not me.This time, Brown marries science and religion in an unforeseen twist, with the part of reluctance played — inexplicably — by Robert Langdon.

The Lost Symbol is another fast-moving tale starring Brown's now-famed, both inside and outside of the book, symbologist Robert Langdon. This time, the action occurs here in the states as Robert is lured to Washington D.C. under false pretenses with a friend's carefully sealed, decades old package, one left in Langdon's care more than a decade ago, and quickly finds himself delving into the leends and symbols of the Masons. What's inside the package proves an intriguing twist. Flanked by a scientist, with helpful and explanatory cameos by several Masonic brothers, Langdon's soon racing through national monuments, interpreting the clues on an ancient artifact.

Within Langdon's interactions and dialog, Brown effectively apologizes and explains his alleged defamation of church history, while twining in an extensively spiritual (and inciting) plot, propelled by the requisite madman. History buffs will appreciate the lists of Mason information, including historial figures, dates and events that meld seamlessly into the story and add the heft of truth to Brown's fictitious tale. Yes, the story lags in places, with long descriptions of artifacts and settings, but thrillers are all about pacing. Quit complaining and turn the page.

Well researched and solidly assembled, The Lost Symbol is a page turner with plenty of twists. Dan Brown doesn't disappoint.

The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
$29.99 (until the paperback edition comes out)

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Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

2010-01-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

I read Blue Like Jazz, Miller’s first and wildly successful memoir, in what seems now another life and another frame of mind. But Donald Miller is travelling with me in a freakish parallel universe. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years tracks Miller learning to view his life through a camera lens. This hook, life as a story, snagged my inner writer, pulling me through the book as Miller sharpens his point.

The book begins as Miller is approached to edit Blue Like Jazz into a movie script, turning his (mainly internal) meanderings into events that happen to a character named Don. As a writer myself, complete with an overactive inner monologue, I appreciated the irony of Miller reshaping his memoir to translate onscreen. Reconstructing his quiet, emotional growth into visible activity seems daunting. Yet realizing that movie moments are made when the character is doing something, not when he’s thinking, leads to Miller’s extraordinary personal growth in A Million Miles.

As he begins to edit, Miller posits, “My entire life had been designed to make myself more comfortable, to insulate myself from the interruption of my daydreams.” Instead of continuing that story, Miller swaps it for a new one, testing out action/adventure to start (he climbs the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu while struggling with weight issues), then drama (his first serious relationship), and finally mellowing into an arthouse flick (he bikes across the country with a group of misfits) to wrap.

A Million Miles is about the transition from an easy acceptance of life to scaring yourself out of complacency. Miller’s memorable characters — particularly the vivid Bob Goff — imbue his stories with clarity and an honest, translucent feel that let readers embrace the end lesson.

"If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story."

If most of life is forgettable, it follows that what we’ll recall — easiest or most or fondly — are the absurd moments, the unscripted. Miller’s voice has matured, maybe with age, maybe just with the change in story. His weaving, multi-layered tales build a message powerful in its simplicity: Self-editing is within our power.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:
What I Learned While Editing My Life
Donald Miller
Thomas Nelson, Hardcover, September 2009
$19.99

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Review based on a free copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, courtesy of Zondervan.

Review: Good Mail Day

2010-01-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

Innovative, bright ways to re-invent your junk mail and build relationships via the old-fashioned art of correspondence wait for you in this book. Gone are the days of the pony express, sadly. Yet we humans still loiter around the mailbox, rallying our hopes if the postal worker's bundle looks interesting. If I received any of the resourceful and occasionally stutter-inducing missives pictured in Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art, I'd probably give Phillip a hug. I'm not sure he would like it, but there it is. Mail as an art outlet is definitely the kind of mail you want to receive.

Enter this book. Authors Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler cover almost everything you might wish to know about paper salvaging and minimal skill, down-and-dirty crafting, leading into hardcore artistry. Included are tips for careful mailing, postal regulations that might affect your creative boundaries, guides for building envelopes and keeping your delivery person happy, even some starter postcards and "mailing seals" (I call 'em stickers) in the back. Those newly pondering a stamp-based relationship can even find a pen pal and kick-start a friendship by post, all within the bounds of this book.

Good Mail Day offers a scrapbook-style design, brightly-lighted photographs, scads of information and backstory, and puffy clouds of space to let the ideas drift straight off the page and into your brain. In back, a gallery by name, but, really, it's a museum of shiny ideas that didn't quite make it into the how-to section. Don't be frightened if there are umpteen things you want to make immediately.

What's fantastic about the book is how simple the ingredients are for such complex, memorable mail. Around 95% of the materials are free, gleaned from old cards, labels, catalogs, anything made of paper and then other things as well. Think of the book as a jumping-off point, portable inspiration for a lifetime of postal interchange. A primer indeed.

Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art
Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler
Quarry Books, Softcover, September 2009
$19.99

View the book at Barnes & Noble

Review based on a free copy of Good Mail Day, courtesy of Quarry Books.

Review: Martha Stewart's Cookies

2010-01-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, I was one of those twentysomethings who subscribed to Martha Stewart Living magazine straight out of college, tearing out recipes and scrapbooking them like precious family photos. It's no great surprise, then, that I'm delighted to be rid of those greasy pages in favor of this professional, tape-free collection of cookie recipes. And unlike some greatest hits compilations, this one actually includes all of my favorites.

Of the seven major cookie categories listed, I prefer. . . uh, many, multiple. I'm nearly equal in my benevolence. In the spirit of cookie madness, I'm highlighting the recipes I've already tried below, with their varied results.

Light and delicate
Peppermint Meringue – featherlight and deliciously minty candy cane replacements
Chocolate Meringue – my family disliked these, but I thought they were good

Soft and chewy
Chocolate Crackles – one of George's favorites and they look fun on a plate
Chewy Molasses Crinkles – mine didn't turn out chewy either time, but still great tasting
Snickerdoodles – a standout recipe, and probably my most often used
Cashew Caramel Cookies – delicious and beautiful
Almond Macaroons – super chewy with a delicate taste

Crumbly and sandy
Dried-Cranberry Shortbread Hearts – a hit every single time
Cranberry-Pistachio Cornmeal Biscotti – my favorite biscotti recipe
Icebox Spirals and Bull's-eyes – good, but more work than they're worth
Lime Meltaways – lovely, light and simple cookies
Rosemary Butter Cookies – you'll be blown away by these, I promise

Chunky and nutty
Pine Nut Cookies – soft and chewy and fun to make
Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies – my brother-in-law's favorite
Magic Blondies – I hate these, too sweet for me, but made them to sell over and over at the bakery; people love 'em.
Banana Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies – interesting texture and new take on choclate chips

Cakey and tender
Brown-Butter Toffee Blondies – yes, it says 'brown butter' so go ahead and drool

Crisp and crunchy
Lime Flowers – oh so good, very light mouthfeel
Chocolate-Pistachio Biscotti – surprising texture and very lightweight
Striped Icebox Cookies – good and pretty
Chocolate-Black Pepper Cookies – taste like a homemade oreo upgrade; these were the hit of my 2007 cookie swap and copied over and over
Hazelnut Jam Thumbprints – I adore anything with jam, and these are crisp and nutty besides
Sugar Cookie Cutouts – George's favorite sugar cookie recipe that I make
Gingerbread Cookies – great, pliable recipe for rolling and cutting; good flavor

Rich and dense
Coconut Swirl Brownies – eh, just okay. I wanted more from them than they gave me.
Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies – yummmmm
Rugelach – easier to make than I expected, crumbly and tender in the mouth
Lemon Squares – one of my summer favorites

My point? Loads of delicious recipes, ones I've been collecting for years, are now grouped droolingly in a softcover edition with gorgeous, full-color photographs next to single-page directions. Bake and enjoy.

Martha Stewart's Cookies:
The Very Best Treats to Bake and Share
Martha Stewart Living Magazine
Paperback, Crown Publishing Group, March 2008
$24.95

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Review: Cherries in Winter

2010-01-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

Punished by an economy in turmoil, the newly jobless Suzan Colón turns to a swath of family recipes, long buried in her basement, hoping to find some comfort in hard financial times. She quickly realizes how closely her current challenges parallel those of her predecessors.

Childhood tales seam pleasingly into past, future and recipes, a family history powered by food. Already highly relatable in content, Cherries in Winter feels like a worn-in leather armchair, its comfortable manner ensures a steady friendship with any reader who happens along. Her gracefully wrought 'lessons' of economy and cookery, things she learns from her mother and the sheath of unearthed recipes, brim with honest disclosures, both moving and humorous by turn.

And the recipes, country cooking polished by necessary economy, glow heartily as only family fare can, from Aunt Nettie's Clam Chowder to Nana's Lemon Meringue Pie, some reprinted in spidery, early-century handwriting and some typed in 50s secretarial style. What Colón uncovers as she endeavors to survive a layoff with grim prospects is that economizing has always been part of her family's heritage.

Her message? With strengthened family ties and a few good recipes, anything's possible after you've put up soup. A warm tale of hope and family, Cherries in Winter satisfies.

Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times
Suzan Colón
Hardcover, eBook
$21.95

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Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Green Mama

2010-01-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

A compelling, well-written book for aspiring environmental mommies, Green Mama manages to fulfill its "guilt-free" promise with solid, simple advice that's easy — for even the busiest moms! — to implement. "Leaving things better than I found them even started to seem, well, a little like something Jesus would do," says Bianchi.

Bianchi's appealing slice-of-life stories, which preface each chapter, document her struggle to balance consumerism with God's call to stewardship. Green Mama: The Guilt-Free Guide to Helping You and Your Kids Save the Planet encourages thoughtful, spendthrift behaviors that trickle down immediately to the next generation. Particularly helpful are each chapter's end checklist, where Bianchi repeats the behavior or spending changes she's introduced, letting a reader decide whether each item is important to her or even possible, given the situation.

If her goal is to leave her children and the planet they inherit infinitely bettered by affecting today's choices, Bianchi scores major environmental points here and readers will too.

Green Mama: The Guilt-Free Guide to Helping
You and Your Kids Save the Planet
Tracey Bianchi
Paperback
Zondervan
$12.99

Coming in March 2010

View the book at Barnes and Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: A Fistful of Lentils

2010-01-05T08:01:00.001-08:00

A curious legacy of Syrian and Jewish recipes, riddled with photos and a meandering family history, A Fistful of Lentils is much more than a simple cookbook. It's part memoir, the family memories wrapped up in food as so many good things are, and part how-to, divulging the secrets of Abadi's childhood Syrian-Jewish cuisine.

The book begins by relating the "secrets" of the Syrian cuisine: 42 heavily used ingredients. Most are common here in the U.S., like rice, salt, sesame seeds, tomatoes, though definitive of the region's cuisine. (A specialty grocery and spice store appendix is listed by state, making the few rarer items more accessible.) Abadi provides a glimpse at daily life with her thorough menu planning section, grouping recipes by meal, and then highlighting special occasion and traditional holiday menus. For example, this Jewish holiday menu for Yom Kippur dinner: Baba Ganush, Syrian Pita Bread, Tomato-Rice Soup with Stuffed Meatballs, Stuffed Squash with Lemon-Mint Sauce, Lemon-Mint Salad Dressing, Stuffed Date Candies and Mint Tea.

Abadi's recipes have a strong sense of balance, heavy on the cinnamon and cumin for warmth, sweet-spicy and comforting, often with the Syrian tang of fruit appearing unexpectedly. Recipes run the gamut from breakfast to dessert with yummy-sounding vegetable sides and flavorful, brothy soups.

Originally published in 2002, I find the paperback addition much more usable for cooking with its flexible spine. I was surprised to find so few Jewish recipes, though I can see the influence of the holidays and style of cooking in the dishes Abadi does include here. Simple Syrian recipes like Lebnah (yogurt cheese), Syrian Pita Breads, Eggplant Dip with Pine Nuts, look easy to make and seem refreshingly different than the hummus and baba ganoush typical of Middle Eastern restaurants here in the states. (Not that I don't appreciate a good hummus and baba ganoush!)

Though the recipes don't achieve true hybrid status between the Syrian and Jewish cultures, with Abadi leaning almost entirely on Syrian flavors, A Fistful of Lentils showcases the balance and singular palate of the Syrian cuisine.

A Fistful of Lentils: Syrian-Jewish Recipes from Grandma Fritzie's Table
Jennifer Felicia Abadi
Paperback
Harvard Common Press
$16.95

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Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Reading Highlights, 2009

2010-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

When I'm not reading whatever review books come my way, requested or no, my shelves are usually stuffed with borrowed fiction. I'm lucky enough to have friends whose tastes either run in similar lines or overlap enough to offer excellent, personal recommendations. These, on top of my usual library line-of-vision choices and a few Barnes & Noble sale sprees, comprise my varied choices. To you, I offer a short list of my favorite reads of the year:

A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg
Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
Fine Just the Way It Is, Annie Proulx
Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
The Great Perhaps, Joe Meno
Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow
The Idea of Love, Louise Dean
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

I read a blizzard of titles penned by one of my flagged 2008 authors, Scott Westerfeld. All wilt in comparison to his famed Uglies series, simply because the entire world — speech to behavior to characterisation — isn't as fully imagined. Still, Westerfeld is clearly a visionary YA writer. Enigmatic and riveting reads, all, from the Midnighter series to the Peeps series to the adult Succession series. Published late in '09, 'Leviathan' is still rising on my library wait list.

Another author I stalked was Margaret Atwood, trailing her career through decades of high productivity. Happily, I ended my intrigue with the world of 'Oryx and Crake' by following it into this year's publication, 'Year of the Flood.' Both excellent, thorough explorations. 'Penelopiad' and 'The Tent' were the two weakest, least memorable books, while 'Cat's Eye' bored my eye sockets for two weeks as I gave myself 5 page/day assignments, determined the thing would pick up pace later. It did, but barely. 'The Robber Bride' started slowly, but built tension beautifully along the way and I cared a great deal by book's end. Same with 'The Blind Assassin,' though none of the titles are on par with Atwood's pinnacle story, 'The Handmaid's Tale,' where insightfulness meets creative storytelling.

Disappointments? I soldiered through Ursula Hegi's 'The Worst Thing I've Done,' which seemed out of character with a startlingly superficial plot. 'Under the Table' by Katherine Darling, a poorly organized but edgily marketed culinary school memoir that delivers none of its promised intrigue and falls flat by chapter two, despite my unkillable curiosity on the cooking school theme. Chris Bohjalian's 'Before You Know Kindness' mired its plot in a boggery of irony and ethics, before even introducing the hook. Plan to invest 100 pages or so before it gets interesting. I also desperately wished to like 'Confections of a Closet Master Baker' by Gesine Bullock-Prado, spurred by a love for all things bakery. But the meandering stories lead nowhere and the author stays cool, unfriendly and set apart, keeping to the kitchen as much in print as she attests to doing in real life.

Who I'm looking forward to reading more from in 2010: Joe Meno, Lauren Groff, Markus Zusak, Kiran Desai. I'll also be catching up on Carol Shields' and John Steinbeck's previously unread titles. As always, I'm on the lookout for quality food memoirs — please, oh please Ruth Reichl, write another! — and some great YA titles, alongside my hearty diet of nonstop fiction. And, yes, I absolutely take recommendations. How else would I find these gems?

Requested Books: January

2010-01-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

Yoga for Pain Relief
Kelly McGonigal
New Harbinger Publications

Transformative Yoga
Wade Imre Morissette
New Harbinger Publications

Athlete's Pocket Guide to Yoga
Sage Rountree
VeloPress (where I worked, once)

Good Mail Day
Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler
Quarry Books

Sweater Surgery
Stefanie Girard
Quarry Books

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes
Elizabeth Bard
Little, Brown & Company

The Butcher and the Vegetarian
Tara Austen Weaver
Rodale, Inc.

Lucid Food
Louisa Shafia
Ten Speed Press

The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker
Lynn Alley
Ten Speed Press

January Giveaway!

2010-01-01T06:20:00.000-08:00

Up for the giving today is a fabulous new copy of Robert M. Landolphi's Gluten Free Every Day Cookbook. Printed in April 2009, this softcover cookbook has never been used and boasts more than 100 tasty recipes for the home cook.

Oh dear, how do I win? the crowd is clamoring. It's easy. Comment to win! Polls are open through 5 p.m. on Monday, January 4, 2010. Winners will be chosen at random and announced on this website within the week. I'll follow up to get an address and send you the book you've won posthaste.

View the book at Barnes and Noble

*****************************************************************

Winner of the book giveaway is Wendy!
I'll be in touch today for contact details.
Thanks to all our entries. Check back for future contests.

*****************************************************************

Reading Notes:Knitting Brioche

2009-12-31T10:34:00.000-08:00

Having never heard of brioche stitch, despite five years of knitting experience, I delved into this book eagerly. I quickly realized that I've seen this when wandering aisles at yarn stores, fondling a knit section and wondering "how did they do that?" The answer is brioche. It's a whole new world of knitting.

Lovely pictorial step-by-step illustrations show not only right- or left-handed variations, but others as well — this is a first for me! I'm a left-handed knitter who ended up with a continental sort-of hand, and even I found an illustration that applies! Happy.
2-color, reversible knitting
Extremely details how-tos that don't skimp on directions for beginners
Multicolor knit techniques and stitch patterns
Brioche technique seems like an excellent way to build a seamless sweater pattern, as it lets you weave in a neckline and armholes without stitching together separate pieces of knit fabric.
Cool motifs, like flat cables, textures and waves of color created with brioche stitch
25 full projects from hats to sweaters, jackets to scarves
Complete start-to-finish tutorial for learning the stitch

I can't recommend this book for new knitters. It's quite complicated, and you should be able to read patterns already before attempting brioche. If you already know how to knit, this book offers a next step that will challenge your dexterity and make a great addition to your sweater-loving skillset.

Knitting Brioche: The Essential Guide to the Brioche Stitch
Nancy Marchant
Paperback
North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
$27.99

Coming in January 2010

View book at Barnes and Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Button and Stitch

2009-12-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

The button jar. Does everyone have a mason full of random, rounded gems? Or is it only me? It's not just me. To my relief (and surprise), Button and Stitch fully addresses makes brilliant use of my decade-long accumulation. Rather than toss them, Kristen Rask suggests low-skill, handmade gifts like a button-laminated picture frame or button-studded photo album.

Heavy duty projects, like Rask's fabric collage jacket, require sewing proficiency but utilize dozens of colorful buttons and scrap fabric to create a fanciful, personalized garment. Others, like her camera-shaped camera case or a multi-button ring, offer a clever way to practice burgeoning craft skills. Many projects make good use of other lightly used objects you may already own, a shrunken sweater, glass condiment jars, an ex-boyfriend's tie. Photo-heavy guides let you glide seamlessly from the materials list to project completion with a pictorial reference at every step. With this level of inspiration at hand, I may not have a button jar much longer.

Button and Stitch: Supercute Ways to Use Your Button Stash
Kristen Rask
Paperback
North Light Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
$22.99

Coming in January 2010

View book at Barnes and Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Reading Notes:Simple Compassion

2009-12-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

Weekly nuggets of reading, about 5-6 pages, great for busy readers and also for mental digestion; good pacing of reading to allow time for action
Author is a feminist who likes to challenge conservative viewpoints; I like it, but it's combative at times.
'Enough' is a quintessential topic in today's society, when to stop buying things, how much do I need and how new does it have to be, these are forgotten questions. This chapter has a lovely message.
Community step at the end of chapters for group discussion encourages women to read this book together, in groups, which also develops community; nice tie-in
'Moving' chapter applied specifically to me because I'm unhappy with my current digs and Wyatt Kent talks about living contentedly, wherever I am, how to focus on 'staying' as a concept. Ugh.
Week 16 is particularly impressive — seeing people as objects of love rather than just evangelistic projects
The book starts small, just motivating you, one woman, to feel secure enough, then equips you for action. As the book continues, the actions grow from neighborhood to outer community to world, and you begin to feel a part of things and a viable method of change.

My hope is that as you read, you will be infused with confidence and strength to change the world, one life at a time, starting with your own," Keri Wyatt Kent in Simple Compassion.

Simple Compassion: Devotions to Make a Difference in Your Neighborhood and Your World
Keri Wyatt Kent
Paperback
Zondervan
$12.99

View the audio book at Barnes & Noble
View a hard copy of the book at Zondervan

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Kid's Guide to Service Projects

2009-12-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

Stand by for change! Free Spirit Publishing empowers kids and teens with the power of service in The Kid's Guide to Service Projects. From animal safety to environment issues, this well-designed book lets kids flip to services areas that appeal their natural gifts and quickly implement programs to change a whole community.

Kids can do many of the projects without adult help, though most encourage teamwork with adults or peers or both. Particularly encouraging are the community-building aspects of the book, teaching kids about basic friendliness and kindness to neighbors young and old. Projects like the New Kid Survival Kit, a welcome box students plan and fill that helps acclimate incoming transfers, strengthen kids' empathetic responses and develop hospitality even in uncomfortable situations.

Reading notes:

Broken into ideas by category, like animals, community development, environment, health/wellness, service, etc.
Surprising, large section on politics and government for kids
Potential downside with spidey-sense activation in a crime-fighting section, just for the danger aspect, depending on where you live.
School clean-up idea is quite solid
New kid survival kit idea is generous and promotes friendliness among peers, community development
How cute — Adopt a grandfriend! I need to do that.
'I Care' kits for homeless people with myriad personal care items
Notes in the back with how-tos, checklists for nearly all the projects, startup funding ideas for kids to launch entirely on their own
Strong empowerment aspect to this book, with a wide grasp of what appeals to kids at a range of ages and what they can actually DO that will make a difference

The Kid's Guide to Service Projects
Barbara A. Lewis
Soft cover
Free Spirit Publishing
$11.99

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Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

2009-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

Long a fan of the Time Traveler's Wife (yes, despite its maddening plot issues), I hesitated to pick up Audrey Niffenegger's new book, Her Fearful Symmetry, because, as a rule, I do not like ghost stories. I quite dislike them, in fact. Science fiction, yes; ghost stories, no. Now you know. But it haunted me in that way books will when you quite enjoyed their predecessors, and so I eventually succombed.

The concept of mirror twins, one twin per set perfectly reversed in body, including organ placement, added to the curiosity those of us born singular will always have for twins. Two sets of mirror twins form the book's core. Elspeth and Edie have been estranged since Edie's twin daughters, Valentine and Julia, were three years old. Layered atop the curious dual dualities is a thick swath of fairy dust in the form of the girls' estranged aunt Elspeth. Following her death to cancer, Elspeth leaves her London and a substantial sum of money to the twins, Valentina and Julie, with the meager request that the they live in a flat for one year. Robert, Elspeth's mourning boyfriend and aspiring historian of the cemetery they're soon to live alongside, is named a guide for the twins' London life. As usual, Niffenegger draws a sumptuous setting for her pivotal characters, living in the flat adjunct a posh historical cemetary called Highgate, and the story builds from that connectivity between the living and the dead.

The delicate side story of OCD-suffering Martin, a crossword puzzle composer, and his patient, harrowed wife Marijke is used to waylay the book's major plot, though it deserves its own book with detailed treatment instead.

Niffenegger writes the way most people breathe, the prose simply falls away from the page as you're reading. If you're anything like me, you'll be gaga over the plot and characters, drowning in the beauty of the scene and overall interestingness until midway through the book. The dialog and the nuanced characters, all is spot on. Which is why it's so frustrating when it all goes to shit.

Without ruining the plot's major surprises, Niffenegger appears to confuse even herself with the mirror twin idea, complete with a flimsy bait-and-switch plan that might lose you brain cells sleuthing for rational motivation. Niffenegger ignores several key points. First, she hints, through Robert, that ghosts are missing an integral component of humanity, suggesting a sinister intent. This is one-off line that doesn't play through to later portrayals — though it should have — that whispers a more cohesive direction for the plot. Second, there should have been more to the idea of mirror twins than a simple plot twist. It feels affectatious, and I'm angry at being manipulated by it and at Niffenegger for letting that lone concept skew the story.

What I've written here may be more confusing than helpful, as a review goes. It isn't that I don't recommend this book. It isn't even that I dislike it. Instead I feel disappointed in a motherly sort of way, like my baby won't learn to walk, dammit, despite being ohsoclose.

In the end, much of the Niffenegger's descriptive detail is wasted, imperiled later by the crippling and rapidly deflating twin epicenter. Her conclusions fail several of the characters and the book's lush setting, but also feel unfinished, shortsighted.

View the book at Barnes & Noble

Review: Found Art

2009-12-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

An honest, thoughtful journey of the delicate relationship with self, Found Art is a book born of strange circumstance. Leeana Tankersley's memoir chronicles her whirlwind engagement to a Navy SEAL officer, the couples' brisk but memorable first married year stationed in Afghanistan at the brink of the gulf war, and ends with the shift to 'normal' life back in the U.S. — or as regular as it gets for the wife of a SEAL during wartime.

As she tries to process the bleary pace of navy life and reassess her goals, Leeana is forced to address her personal roadblocks. Loneliness, social anxiety, how God works, the existence of war, constant fear of loss, self-confidence, and death are all issues Tankersley wrestles privately, all smeared across these pages.

An easy read with some profound messaging, Found Art has some overworked prose where Tankersley mimics a freshman angling for extra points, though she's not lacking in sincerity. Her voice is calm and seasoned, just not quite settled or secure with itself. Which, at its core, is what she addresses here: coming to terms with oneself is a lifelong process.

View the book at Barnes & Noble

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: The Pioneer Woman Cooks

2009-12-01T14:58:00.000-08:00

If you've followed her blog as I have, you'll be pleased to find that author Ree Drummond sticks to her characteristic mix of wry humor and butter by the pound. I'm glad. It's been working for her. In The Pioneer Woman Cooks, her cookbook slash photographic memoir, Ree brings to life the story of her city upbringing with her farm woman reality, currently wrangling four kids and a husband on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma. Mesmerizing photographs of family members, get-togethers and muddy farm work blend well with humorous anecdotes — and serve to show you why her family is so hungry!

Cute, ranch-laden, photo-intense asides with amusing anecdotes leave you longing for a house on the prairie in a way that 'Little House on the Prairie' episodes never did. Miss Mustang International, my favorite of these sections, showcases the farm's haughtiest mares, snobby and cool as horses can be, deadlocked in imaginary pageantry.

What apparently didn't work was the step-by-step visual instructions Ree compiles for each recipe. Drummond's gorgeous pix can be viewed on her website, and it's this stunning photography that leaves viewers drooling for more. Normally. In this publication, however, her photos fall flat. Whether an error in photo correction or on press, it's a sad reality that the green tint of the tutorial pictures makes the food less than appetizing. (Let's flag this for correction on the second printing, Harper Collins. You're far too professional for this type of error. Unless it's just my copy. Hmm.)

Now I bought the book despite its meat-centered mains partly to support a fellow blogger, but mostly because Drummond's recipes can be counted upon to work. This is turning out to be a rare feat in cookbookery. For obvious reasons, I won't comment on the chicken-fried steak or meatloaf recipes, sticking instead to ones I've already tried.

PW's Creamy Mashed Potatoes: killer Thanksgiving staple.
Maple Pecan Scones: get this, already made them three times.
Cinnamon Rolls: yum.
Migas: delectable, eggy nachos. I know, right?
Egg in the Hole: something I've made before, but the extra butter does make it better. Like two days in row better.

And I've only had the book for two weeks. In short, Drummond's pithy writing style and remarkable large-scale photography make this book almost as much a coffee table item as a kitchen resource. If you like having cookbooks you can rely on with unfussy authors you'd ask over for lunch, pick up The Pioneer Woman Cooks. You won't be disappointed, especially if you like butter as much as I do.

Reading Notes:The Amish Cook's Baking Book

2009-11-30T14:41:00.000-08:00

So many interesting things about the Amish, but Williams' narrative style is dull, like he tried to oversimplify the words
'Funny Names' is such a quirky, relevant factoid section & I wish he'd matched that tone the rest of the way through
Why not edit? Instead of opting for 'authenticity' sometimes lack of reorganization makes Eicher seem slow/dull
No face pictures? Why? The entire book is of hands or the product or still lifes around the farm. At least address the reason for the absence, because it affects the connectivity with your readers.
Pat-a-Pan piecrust with no rolling! Tried it already on Thanksgiving and it works fabulously. Crisp and delicious. Even stayed crisp with a pudding filler.
Super quick pie fillings; some seem extremely economical, which sound rather adventurous to me, like vinegar pie - what?
Williams' prose reads like 6th grade history textbook, despite some fascinating back story.
Layout is bland overall ; muted, bland colors with long blocks of plain text. Even the often gorgeous photos can't uplift boring pages in their oversimplification. As a designer, I can think of several easy fixes for this book that would weave it together, give it the authentic Amish infusion they seemed to trail after, and still have it pack visual punch.
Hard to differentiate sometimes between Eicher and Williams' dialog. Either Williams grew a heavy hand in his fitful editing or is having a difficult time finding his own voice.
Soft pretzels recipe also works beautifully, though it made me long for dipping sauce.
Recipes seem efficient in method and ingredients, a rare find these days.

The Amish Cook's Baking Book
Lovina Eicher with Kevin Williams
Hardcover
Andrews McMeel Publishing
$29.99
View at Barnes & Noble

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Note on January 12, 2010: I've read some backlash about this particular post. The key comment being that I "don't know anything about the Amish." I laughed. That's absolutely true. Should only Amish folk purchase this book? People like me, the curious folk who want to know more, are the ones buying it. I run a farmers market booth come summertime, flanked by an Amish woman and her four daughters selling corn and pie on one side and an Amish man and his son selling meat on the other. While I've befriended both families, we're not close enough that I would feel comfortable asking them why their faces can't appear in photos. I'm not friendly to have my questions answered. I had hoped this book would offer more insight on the rich history of the Amish, and I'm disappointed not to have learned more, though I applaud the compendium of excellent recipes.

Reading Notes:Raw Energy

2009-11-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

Author's intro is practical, non-judgmental, and insightful; explains her diet choices and why they work for her (she's 70% vegan, 60% raw)
Loads of muesli/cereals to choose from
Smoothies with nut milks & soaked, dried fruit
Recipes for nut milk! — most expensive thing to buy
Dehydrated vegetable snacks and dips seem easy to put together, but time-saps
Chapter of soups look quick/easy/seasonal/yum
Short recipes with times included (some need overnight to soak dried things or set up for texture) and easy-to-find ingredients
Some of the cookies and bars seem sticky. Not sure they will taste good, but they look easy to put together
Good amount of full-color, food photographs, though it doesn't look like many actual recipe photos exist; just random fruit & veg bits like the cover artwork – maybe just because this is the review book? or else because lots of this stuff will turn out shades of unappetizing brown?
Smart writing and solid reasoning behind it, plus personal stories and notes about whether kids tend to like/dislike particular recipes

Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body
Stephanie Tourles
Paperback
Storey Publishing
$16.95

*Coming December 2009*

Reading Notes: The Home Creamery

2009-11-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

Encourages experimentation
Drawings only, no photos; illustrations are detailed
Surprised at how few steps are involved to create cheese; cottage cheese in 5 steps, ricotta in 3
Butter in the food processor!
1/2 book devoted to recipes that USE the homemade products, which isn't promoted in the title; recipes are not v. exciting
Covers soft, unripened cheeses
Tells how long it takes to make and how long to keep each finished product, plus tips for using
Need to make cheese molds — can I make them by drilling holes in plastic food containers?
I like my 'Home Cheese Making' book better, tho its barrage of recipes are often overwhelmingly long, because I feel Ricki Carroll knows everything about any kind of cheese (also published by Storey, hmm)
Practical for beginners with zero equipment necessary beyond what I already own
A good start for interested cheese lovers with limited time to invest
Made Farrell-Kingsley's recipe for sour cream, which took about 5 minutes of actual involvement, and it tastes great

The Home Creamery: Make Your Own Fresh Dairy Products – Easy Recipes for Butter, Yogurt, Sour Cream, Creme Fraiche, Cream Cheese, Ricotta and More!
Kathy Farrell-Kingsley
Hardcover
Storey Publishing
$14
View at Barnes & Noble

Final review will be published in Vibrant Life newsletter, January 2010

Review: Monsters of Templeton

2009-11-16T19:44:00.000-08:00

Part curious history and part quirky parable, Groff's ode to her hometown is anything but overwrought. Her charming prose and thick, overlapping plotlines weave an engaging history of Templeton.

Twentysomething Wilhelmina wanders home to regroup from a failed relationship and its resulting pregnancy, surprised and saddened to find the enormous corpse of the town's monster being craned out of the lake. Adding to her worries, Willie's mother admits to purposefully bumbling the facts of her parentage, tasking Willie with an ancestral scavenger hunt through the centuries of the historical flotsam her forebears, the town's founding family, donated to the local museum. Willie's sleuthing changes her ancestry with shocking regularity, drawing a creative, often vicious, backstory. She has only eight weeks to discover the identity of her father, someone her mother admits still lives there in town, someone she probably knows.

An admirably juggled mix of narrative, letters, folklore, and gossip, alongside Willie's mounting personal concerns, warm the tale of a young woman's search for belonging, her drive to find the weight of attachment that accompanies family. Something even the monster knows about.

From the monster whose pale corpse floats atop the lake to the slew of repurposed Cooper characters that pop up delightfully throughout, Groff directs a lively cast with a ringmaster's flair. As surreal and unexpected a story as your grandparents might have made up at bedtime, Groff's concoction is oddly comforting, radiating warmth and density suffused with pure imagination.

Reading Notes: Clean Food

2009-11-16T12:34:00.000-08:00

Promotes journaling food/mood/exercise to determine effect of different foods on you; personalized diet
"Clean food is naturally grown and minimally processed" p6
Straightforward description of the problem with soy products
Nice 'What's That?' list of less common foods w/ taste descriptors
Recipe lists by season!
Whole cookbook is mostly vegan without announcing itself as such
Spicy Thai Tempeh with Cashews! Need to buy basmati. . .
Walters' qualifications for clean food, i.e. minimal processing, don't seem to apply to condiments — how does she think soy sauce is made? or dijon? veganaise? et cetera
A few uncommon foods; enough to garner interest w/o having to buy a whole new pantry
Presents sea vegetables as integral & forgotten diet component, interesting
Overall, recipes are single-page, straightforward steps & simple prep; most are 30-min meals w/o bragging over it
Great balance of seasonal ingredients
Not an annoying, preachy, Kingsolver-esque cookbook about health foods, rather clear cut recipes that make it painless
Stopped midway thru reading recipes to grab my grocery list
Already made the Maple Nut Granola — delicious! Highly recommend.
Excellent gift for vegetarians/vegans/health nuts

Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source with More than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You
Terry Walters
Hardcover
Sterling Epicure
$18
View at Barnes & Noble

Final review will be published in Vibrant Life newsletter, January 2010

Review: When Autumn Leaves

2009-11-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

When Autumn, the mysterious shaman of Avening, solicits written entries from local women vying for a position as her apprentice, she's searching for her own replacement. But what, exactly, does Autumn do? the townspeople question. No one knows. Intuitively, everyone knows Autumn corrals magic. And so, one by one, curious letters arrive in Autumn's mailbox, each with a different woman's perspective on the job in question, what it might entail, and why she wants it.

In When Autumn Leaves, Amy Foster permits guarded entrance into Autumn's magical world, where women are trained to harness different magical gifts only to separate, and even less insight into the true purpose of the enchanted world she's envisioned. Leaving room for a sequel? A distinct possibility, though Foster's lack of clarity here may hurt the future of the franchise.

Will Autumn choose Sylvie, who recently lost her mother? Ana, a teacher in love with a married man? Ellie the invisible researcher? Stella, a healer who captures lightning in a bottle? Or another. The letters continue to arrive and, as each applicant's story twines into Autumn's, the story grows taut with suspense.

Foster creates an amorphously lovely town, one that strong women find curiously inviting for no singular reason. Slightly muddled and frumpy, though beloved, Foster's characters shine with crisp edges and clear purpose. If only the plotline could stand up to her character development.

A fun fall read with finely-tuned focus on the strength of women, though the real feat here is that, despite a tightly-wrapped ending, you'll wish there was more.

When Autumn Leaves by Amy S. Foster
Overlook Press ($14.95)
Paperback
October 1, 2009

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Reading Notes: Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home"

2009-11-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Equipment list that's practical essential, pared down
Harvesting timeline by vegetable
List of best and/or quickest methods, veg by veg, plus all possible ways to keep
Separate list for fruits
Tips for keeping produce fresh until there's time to put up
Herbs can be frozen!
Charts: reference for cook times, yields, canning times
Not the creative, mixed recipes of a food mag; instead they are the steps that come before, training-manual style
Wish I'd had this when I tried to can applesauce in Colorado
This book will be entirely scrached with pencil after a few seasons; an evergreen reference

The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home: Easy Techniques for the Freshest Flavors in Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Relishes, Salsas, Sauces, and Frozen and Dried Fruits and Vegetables
Janet Chadwick
Paperback
Storey Publishing
$11.96
View at Barnes & Noble

Final review will be published in Vibrant Life newsletter, January 2010

Reading Notes: The Adaptable Feast

2009-11-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

Convenient, yes, but not always practical — what if more vegetarians than meat-eaters? or someone wants seconds? Most creative meals planned for 1 veg/vegan person
Easy ways to cook a veg meal and then add meat at the end; v. basic
Loads of ingredients in many of the recipes
Good amount of world cuisine
Nothing really exciting or new here

The Adaptable Feast: Satisfying Meals for the Vegetarians, Vegans and Omnivores at Your Table
Ivy Manning
Paperback
Sasquatch Books
$19.16
View at Barnes & Noble

Books Purchased: Barnes & Noble, Round 1

2009-11-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, swamped in a tide of unnecessary spending, I stacked books on the counter of Barnes & Noble. I've had weeks, months, actually, of free books arriving by mail. Some I've requested and some otherwise, flitting over unannounced, a few of them looking quite alien on my countertops. There are still scads of books I'd like to read, books I'm unable to request with my tenuous freelance relationships. And so the bitterness of my earnest-yet-fruitless library searches slapped me full force yesterday, when I unfortunately had upon my person both my membership discount card and my business credit cards. Egad.

Normally I wait until December 31, review my business spending, and make a large web purchase to bulk up my tax deductions. Not this time.

What have I carted home? Oh a few new friends, definitely. I shall spend this weekend reading. Possibly nonstop. Behold the shelf-expanding titles:

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Austen and Grahame-Smith
Best Food Writing 2009, Holly Hughes
Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Fuchsia Dunlop
Confections of a Closet Master Baker, Bullock-Prado
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Under the Table, Katherine Darling
The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond

Requested books: November

2009-11-11T19:26:00.001-08:00

Raw Energy
by Stephanie Tourles
Storey Publishing

Get Out!
150 Easy Ways for Kids and Grown-Ups to Get into Nature and Build a Greener Future
Judy Molland
Free Spirit Publishing

Gaia's Kitchen
Vegetarian Recipes for Community and Family, Second Edition
by Julia Ponsonby
Chelsea Green Books

Fresh Food from Small Spaces
The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting
by R. J. Ruppenthal
Chelsea Green Books

Salty Sweets
Delectable Desserts and Tempting Treats with a Sublime Kiss of Salt
By Christie Matheson
Harvard Common Press

Anywhere, Anytime, Any Body Yoga
by Laura Carapellese , Emily Slonina

Handmade Home
Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures Includes 30 sewing projects from the author of The Creative Family
By Amanda Blake Soule
Shambhala Publications

Tomato: A Fresh-from-the-Vine Cookbook
by Lawrence Davis-Hollander
Storey Publishing

A Fistful of Lentils:
Syrian-Jewish Recipes from Grandma Fritzie’s Kitchen
By Jennifer Felicia Abadi
Harvard Common Press

The Handmade Marketplace
by Kari Chapin
Storey Publishing

Review: The Adaptable Feast

2009-10-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

As I am vegetarian and my husband an omnivore, the title of Manning's book hooked me like a noose. Who wouldn't want to quickly (and with excellent results, no less) adapt a meal for every eater at the table? I rushed to order a copy of The Adaptable Feast: Satisfying Meals for the Vegetarians, Vegans, and Omnivores at Your Table by Ivy Manning, knowing full well it couldn't be done. But, hey, I wished to be proven wrong.

Maybe a less confidant cook would need to be told how to make a vegetarian meal and then add roasted chicken as a finishing touch. I certainly do not. So let's just say I was disappointed with the recipes at first review. What won me over is how Manning balances protein and calories for both the meat and veg dishes in the recipe. Rather than re-imagining the entire dish and ending up in unfamiliar territory, she substitutes veg ingredients, adjusts the recipe, and continues to make the dish with flavors you'll recognize. Easy peasy, or at least it seems that way.

Pad thai to potpie, the major plus to this book is the world cuisine it offers up to both vegetarians and meat eaters. With a slew of fragrant spices, the Vegetable and Chicken Korma with Cashews smells and tastes authentic. A true weekend recipe with multiple steps, Moussaka with Lamb or French Lentils is a masterpiece of slow cooking that you'll savor, even if — like me — you're too tired to make it ever again.

Particularly exciting to me are recipes that don't include any variations at all, like the ingenius Indian Spaghetti Squash Cakes with Yogurt Raita, or a one-dish dinner of Quinoa-Stuffed Heirloom Tomatoes with Romesco Sauce, or the doubly nutty Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Sage and Walnut Brown Butter. I'm being generous if I say that a quarter of the recipes can easily be made vegan, though Manning's single dessert is chocolate vegan cake with vanilla frosting in a lilting recipe that sounds like a gathering dream. Yes, there's a photo of that one, folks.

Some of the recipes are a bit long and definitely not for beginning cooks, but overall Manning offers a solid selection of recipes to appease a variety of palates.

The Adaptable Feast by the Ivy Manning ($24)
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Publication Date: November 1, 2009

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Requested Review Books: October

2009-10-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

When Autumn Leaves
by Amy Foster
Overlook

Coffee Shop Conversations:
Making the Most of
Spiritual Small Talk
by Dale Fincher and Jonalyn Fincher
Zondervan

The Home Creamery:
Make Your Own Fresh Dairy Products; Easy Recipes for Butter, Yogurt, Sour Cream, Creme Fraiche, Cream Cheese, Ricotta, and More!
by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley
Storey Publishing

Obsessive Consumption:
What Did You Buy Today?
By Kate Bingaman-Burt
Princeton Architectural Press

The Beginner’s Guide to Preserving Food at Home:
Easy Instructions for Canning, Freezing, Drying,
Brining, and Root Cellaring Your Favorite Fruits,
Herbs, and Vegetables
by Janet Chadwick
Storey Publishing

Antojitos:
Festive and Flavorful
Mexican Appetizers
By Barbara Sibley, Margaritte Malfy and Mary Goodbody
Ten Speed Press

EcoBeauty:
Scrubs, Rubs, Masks, Rinses,
and Bath Bombs for
You and Your Friends
By Lauren Cox and Janice Cox
Ten Speed Press

Green Mama :
The Guilt-Free Guide to
Helping You and Your Kids
Save the Planet
by Tracey Bianchi
Zondervan

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas:
Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes that
Use Less and Mean More
By Anna Getty
Chronicle Books

Conversationally speaking

2009-10-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

What do you read when you're not reading review titles?

I can just imagine our conversation starting, and you're adorable in that green sweater. Well, I'd stop, gathering my thoughts, I'm rarely reading review books. In fact most of the books I do read are either purchased with my own sheckels — usually on a whim or cover design appear or annoyance that hte library hold list is too long for my scant patience levels — or checked out in scandalously large groups from various Kansas libraries.

If from the library, my books are chosen one of several ways. They are (a) prominently displayed in the New Fiction section, (b) written by an author I'm currently infatuated with or (c) screaming at me from the shelf where an absentee title I wanted should have been. I write lists of what to read based on friends' recommendations, reviews I read, and aggregate reqs from book lovers' communities like LibraryThing or GoodReads.

Bored, you ask, Have you read anything standout lately?

I have! But here we pause because I've inevitably run out of tea. Where we we? I say when I return, fondling a hot mug. Oh yes. I finally read Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. Maybe I'm the last one, but I loved the modern day werewolf tale and I'm not the werewolfing type.

It's superbly written, very clever. I read it without a clue what it was about — aside from dogs, obviously — and the mystery of what's up with these clearly dangerous people had me flipping pages frantically. I had to go back and reread the beginning once I figured it out. I mean, I'd thought Barlow was running on a bestial analogy. But.

I'm also reading Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence by Rebecca Walker. This was a next-to-the-book-I-wanted checkout example, though it's turning out to be interesting in a different way. Very honest.

I'm about to ask you what you're reading when suddenly I lose sight of the image of you I've conjured. And it's only me, again, talking to myself.

Venezia: Food and Dreams by Tessa Kiros

2009-10-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Glowing and bronzed, the book whispers from the shelf: open me. I am caught. It’s alluringly rich with memories and recipes, the food seductively photographed. I come away from the first read of Venezia: Food and Dreams enchanted.

You see, I have been to Venice, and this cannot be the same city I visited. I recognize it from the photos, but the food, the food!, so lush and local and homey and ancient. That’s not what I ate. Yet it’s exactly what I looked for when I traveled there, what I expected to find by scouring dead-end alley restaurants and tiny nook cafes for family fare. And the last day of my trip, just before the hours of rushing to the train station on crowded water taxis after carting unwheeled luggage over a thousand bridges, I found exactly the ingredients this sort of food is made of — fat chunks of parmesan, firm-tart olives, wedges of herb-flecked focaccia, handfuls of squid, and baskets of tomatoes, plums, apricots. If only I could’ve followed the food directly to the restaurants that cooked like this, the trip would have been heaven on a plate.

Organized by traditional Italian courses, Kiros empowers readers to create a full menu using whatever ingredients are freshest. As a vegetarian with limited fish intake, I was pleased to find so many things to make, at least one from every category. Mozzarella in carrozza, one of my favorite Italian appetizers, are droolingly photographed in their deep-fried glory, a dripping sandwich of mozzarella smashed between savory, egg-battered bread. An array of risottos, polentas, soups, and fried fish dishes had me salivating. Gnocchi di zucca, winter squash gnocchi, is a toast to fall with nutmeg and sage, though shaping takes a few tries to perfect. Almonds shine as the center of the sbriciolona, or crumbler cake, a divine addition to any casual dinner party as it perfectly finishes any meal without too much fuss.

Though I’m not certain it’s possible to replicate the flavors of some recipes, including Kiros’ intruglio, an appetizer specific to Sergia’s restaurant, without access to the produce and cheeses of Venice, I’m willing to give it a go. I imagine it will taste better if I close my eyes and remember dipping my fingers into the plastic bag of olives from the cheese mongers, following each with a fat bite of focaccia padded with fresh mozzarella. It’s simple yet exquisite, one of my standout meals, and this feels like Kiros wrote Venezia about it.

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Moosewood’s Multicultural, Accessible Vegetarian Recipes Satisfy

2009-09-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Moosewood Collective has promoted local, organic food since before it was popular. It’s no surprise to find they’re still a step ahead of the veggie curve, making a case for whole, plant-based foods. Their latest collection of more than 200 recipes showcases trendy, healthful ingredients like stevia, umeboshi, celeriac and more, with loads of vegan options and even raw foods. Moosewood Restaurant: Cooking for Health by the Moosewood Collective continues the tradition of accessible vegetarian cuisine for household cooks. Insightful ingredient descriptions preface ten different sections, highlighting, for example, the various kinds of beans and peas, how to cook them and cook times.

Even if you’re no stranger to healthy cooking, Moosewood’s often-adventurous ingredient lists may send you to the store before dinner. Mouth-watering recipes like Avocado-Citrus Dressing (which I’m drizzling over just about everything these days), Greek Tomato-Yogurt Soup (delicious hot and cold!), and Mediterranean Eggplant Casserole (a satisfying fall recipe) have already earned spots on my dinner rotation.

While I wish the folks at Moosewood understood the value of cookbook photographs — their books are notoriously artwork-free — I depend on their detailed serving information and accurate prep and cook time predictions. And since the collective blatantly encourages my recipe tinkering, I’m wholly sold.

As the temperatures cool, I look forward to sampling Maple Banana Oatmeal, Creamy Curried Pea Soup, Polenta Casserole with Winter Squash and Greens, and Sweet Potato Pie with Pecan-Oat Crust, just to name a few. Fall even sounds delicious at the Moosewood Restaurant, and I hope to echo a few of those smells in my kitchen.

Moosewood Restaurant: Cooking for Health by the Moosewood Collective ($35) Publisher: Simon & Schuster Publication Date: November 2009

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

Review: Delicate, Edible Birds

2009-08-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

I've never read "Monsters at Templeton," apparently Groff's masterpiece with rave reviews posted everywhere by some mighty minds. But I picked up "Delicate, Edible Birds" at the library during a bird phase, where I blindly gathered only books with nature-driven artwork. I returned home to find three bird covers, one butterfly cover and one tree with a bird cover. Odd but true.

Anyway, I hadn't realized the book was a compilation of stories, something normally unappealing to me, and didn't begin reading it until I was finished with the others. But the first few pages in I was already gripped with intrigue, flipping pages like a madwoman. I'm jealous of Groff's prose, how she wrangles words across the page. It's commanding yet subtle. Her stories are devastating, beautiful, cold, heartfelt, all, depending on the page.

I'll pick up "Monsters" on my next library trip and read anything else Groff writes.

10 Words or Less
Gorgeous prose elevate everyday stories of human shortcomings.

Author Review : Chris Bohjalian

2009-08-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Overall, Chris Bohjalian's tales cover serious ground. His interest in myriad topics, family struggles, and historical events offer plotlines that vary wildly from book to book. What's remained consistent so far is Bohjalian's female lead, his ability to tell most of his tales using a woman's perspective. I'm currently reading Before You Know Kindness, but below are brief synopses of other Bohjalian books I've read.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Gripping tale of modern midwifery gone awry. Despite being one of Oprah's book club picks, it's truly interesting atop the inevitable strife that's a guaranteed pairing with Oprah's approval. Touchstones of family and community keep the book relevent. ****

Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian

A homeopath's client dies and she — alongside her ancient methods — are investigated by a besotted detective. **

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

A social worker obsessively researches the photography left behind when a former patient passes away. Bohjalian interweaves characters from Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" as both stories simultaneously unfold on the north shore of New England. ***

Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

A family of rural Germans rush to escape their country as World War II comes to a violent close, befriending both Jewish and English soldiers on their trek. An insider's perspective about the ludicrisy of the war on Jews from the viewpoint of Germans not ensconced in townships, and also of the Russians' brutality. ****

If you like solid, interesting stories loaded with depth and well-defined characters, float a Bohjalian book to the top of your list. I'd suggest starting with Midwives or Skeletons at the Feast, depending on whether you're in a more modern or historical mood.

Review: Book of Clouds

2009-08-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you end up reading a book you're not in the mood for. Like Mexican dinner when you're craving Thai, it's just not satisfying, even when it's delicious.

That's how I felt about Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis. Though the pacing is a bit slow, it matches the tone perfectly. I read it, dying for something to happen. Anything. In the last chapters, something does happen. I won't tell you what, but I was past caring.

Tatiana, a Mexican expat living in unified Berlin, takes a job typing a noted German historian's dictaphone tapes. Obsessed with Berlin's separate histories during its division, the historian teaches Tatiana about the both halves of the city as she transcribes his notes. Frustrated and intrigued by how little she knows of Berlin's dual identity, Tatiana endeavors to connect to her adopted city and her employer.

10 words or Less
Tatiana wanders unified Berlin, imagining life with the wall.

The Calligrapher's Daughter : Eugenia Kim

2009-08-11T13:12:00.000-07:00

Synopsis
Soft, gentle prose shapes an unnamed girl’s story as she endures a diminished pedigree, loss of hopes and home together with a failed marriage during the Japanese occupation of Korea in Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter.

A traditional, upperclass Korean man, the girl’s father shows his disappointment at the birth of a daughter, by declining to name her when her birth coincides with the fall of Korea to the Japanese. Najin, as the girl comes to be nicknamed at age eight, struggles to understand her namelessness. Her future clouded by her father’s opposition and sweeping government reforms, Najin cobbles together a delicate balance of her father’s ideals and the reality of Korea under Japanese rule.

Kim’s sweeping tale offers a woman’s perspective on Korea’s strict patriarchal society. Heavy with sentiment, Kim tells her mother’s winding story in an uncomplicated way. It may be historically accurate that protestant religions flourished in Korea long before missionaries arrived, but the Christian motif runs a bit rampant here, overly pedantic and at times even pushy. Thorough as a sermon, the underlying religious aspect of the novel is inseparable from its characters and, in fact, largely motivates them. At the root of the book is the bond of family, which Kim beautifully displays. Holding true to the emotional restraint of the characters, Kim heightens a reader’s ability to infer meaning from tone, posture and word selection.

No one expected anything of her, an unnamed Korean girl. But her honest struggles with identity, education, marriage and faith will resonate deeply, striking a bright and surprisingly modern chord with readers.

The Pros(e)

Thoroughly researched with references American readers may find startling, in the best way.
Packed with information about Korea's struggles with Japan
Culturally, the book offers a broad look at Korea's class struggle before, during and after World War II as well as family dynamics, friendships and the educational pyramid. I found all of it fascinating.

Pitfalls

While the book isn't billed as Christian fiction, it could be. Prepare yourself for a mild conversion experience, or at least considerable guilt.
Sentimentality shouldn't be ridden like a horse. Let's just assume everyone's mother is beautiful, brilliant and amazing, so we can move along without all this foot dragging

10 Words or Less
Solid, sentimental story of a girl's struggles in occupied Korea.

Review based on a free copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.