Rant and review

What kind of inconsiderate idiot dog ears pages in a library book?   A lot of pages.  And leaves them turned down!
 Hanging is too good for them.

But now, on the the review.

Isn't it funny how some authors can be excessively wordy but you still want more?  Diane Setterfield is the Lay's potato chip of authors.  I recently "read" George Eliot's classic, Middlemarch, which is 904 pages in paperback.  ("read" = listened to the audiobook)  At a rate of one hour per day, Middlemarch took six weeks, but after a few days I'd become so engrossed that I didn't want it to ever end.  But it did, and I was glad--

Because my next audiobook was The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield.  I was engrossed from the first page, and it just kept getting better.  Madness, mystery, literature, love, obsession, ghosts.... 

Ghosts?  Can cats see ghosts? 

Undetermined.

Can't do it

I'm going to do something uncharacteristic and embarrassing.  I'm going to give up on a book.

The Death Of Adam:  Essays On Modern Thought by Marilynne Robinson




I can't read it.  No doubt it's erudite, coherent and mind-expanding to some readers--but not to me.  I guess I'm too stupid.  If I read it out loud and stopped at every other paragraph to look up a word in the dictionary, I might be able to follow her arguments.  I pride myself on having a decently large vocabulary, but, "tendentiousness"?  "asserted advantage"?  "hermetic"?  "which were occasioned by the promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility"?

I give up.  I can follow Stephen Jay Gould, with difficulty, but I always find him worth the work.  I'm not so sure about this.  I couldn't even read the introduction, which is 27 pages long and doesn't tell you squat about what the book is about.  Then I tried a few of the more interesting looking essays, but even the last one, which appeared to be about global warming, didn't seem to say anything deep or insightful.
So I give up.  Undoubtedly it's me.  Or as she would say,
  "...indubitably, the fault engendered by lack of understand in in the mirror of the inscrutable reader."

I don't have much to say about

         

                                   Godless by Pete Hautman



It was an unusual story and well written, but most of the characters were kind of flat.  Or maybe the right word is compressed...flattened...hemispherical.  Missing the why.

The story showed nicely how some people can sort-of believe in something even when they know it's nutters .  Other people, slightly unbalanced already, go nutters over it--some with absolute belief, others with absolute rejection (because it conflicts their own nutty beliefs.)   It's the rare but sensible soul who recognizes the nuttiness inherent in a belief in things that cannot be seen, heard, felt, or subjected to scientific experimentation.  But hey--that's my own belief..

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

I had gotten the impression that this book was a crossover between Captain Horatio Hornblower and Eragon, but I was wrong.   It's Captain Horatio Hornblower x How To Train Your Dragon.

As a teenager I used to read and re-read the Horatio Hornblower novels constantly, so I was pleased with the similarities.  And the historical accuracy--assuming that C.S. Forester did his research well, Ms. Campbell did, too. Whole sections might have been borrowed directly from the earlier Hornblower novels, only in a tactful way that wouldn't compromise copyright protection.   In one case I thought I'd caught her putting a quote in the wrong mouth: 
[Regarding Bonaparte invading England]
                  "I don't say they cannot come, but they cannot come by sea."

But when I went back and looked it up, she'd attributed it to Lord St. Vincent, which is probably correct.
The Wikipedia article on C.S. Forester says that he deliberately kept Captain Hornblower away from major naval battles in order to "avoid entanglements with real world history."   I'm not sure how true that is, but there's no such reticence in His Majesty's Dragon.  Captain Laurence and Temeraire are right in the front lines.   Battling--cannon balls, muskets, talons and all.

Q: is it talons or claws?

Food of the week

Kale!



I made braised Kale with onions, tamari and Mirin, from the Cookus Interruptus website.





Starting with Kale on counter

 

I proceeded to Kale in bowl

In pan







On floor


















And finally, (slightly overcooked) Kale on plate!








I wasn't crazy about it.  Maybe that's because I cooked it a little too long, or maybe it was absence of garlic in the recipe.  I like my greens with a healthy dose of garlic--I'm not aware of any vampire-ish tendencies in them, but the garlic seems to give them something warm and friendly that these greens were lacking.

Travels with bears

Not--John McPhee wisely prefers his travels with bears visible but far in the distance.  The bear parts are the best in the book--

There is an old adage that when a pine needle drops in the forest the eagle will see it fall; the deer will hear it when it hits the ground; the bear will smell it.


Coming Into the Country is a rambling, three part book about Alaska. It doesn't try to be an encyclopedia or a reference work, but simply the story of The Country, as told through the minds and hearts of people who live there.  The first part recounted the author's journey via canoe and kayak on the Salmon river in the Bear Mountain range, and it was good, solid travel adventure.  I liked very much.

But the rest of the book didn't agree with me so well.  It was stories of people, mostly--little natural history but a lot of human stories about life and living and death and walking a razors edge in a cold, lonely country.  What kind of person builds a cabin on a stream a thousand miles from the nearest outpost, and lives there through the arctic winter?  What people come to live in the town of Eagle, population 300 or so, and why do they stay?

Usually I love this sort of storytelling (Blue Highways and Travels With Charley are two of my favorite books to re-read) but this one just seemed to go on and on, dragging without power to charm or amuse.  Possibly it's my fault, not the book's.  I just got tired of it.

Smaug is my new Sherlock

 

Long awaited, soon over.  How long till the next one?





I've not been doing very well with my "food of the week" post.  I've not exactly...uh...done any.  Unless you count processed foods--

When I first tried the fake provolone, it was on pita bread with finely chopped veggies.  It was okay but a little weird.  After a week in the cooler (during the refrigerator strike), I tried it warmed up as a topping on refried beans and quinoa, and it was downright nasty.  Note to self:  eat fresh and cold or not at all.

The Tofutti sour cream is excellent.  I like it better than real sour cream.  Lovely!

I'll miss my Middlemarch

After more than two months of listening to the novel, at a rate of about a chapter a day, it feels weird to have it finally end.  I'm going to miss it.

What a story.  What a masterpiece.  And what a reader--each chapter started off with a quote, and the quotes were usually in English--but sometimes German, Italian, Latin...I don't even know.  She sailed through them all.  And the various speakers with their varying tones, diction and dialects--she did 'em beautifully.   You could usually tell who was talking by the narrative voice alone.

The book was set in a place and time where people's lives were extremely different from ours, yet it was written with such skill and feeling that I actually cared about the people.  They pained me, poor dears, and I sadly wished I could help them.  Some things are truly universal--youthful idealism, disappointment, jealousy, gossip.  Crying all night and waking up determined to be a better person than the one who wronged you.

George Eliot was a woman but you can't tell that in her characterizations.  Both men and women are gently ridiculed and an occasional gentle joke at the expense of each is allowed--

"....And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better."

Is Celia being sarcastic?  In her own mind, not at all, as she goes on to explain.  But she makes her sister--who clearly feels differently--laugh and cheer up.

I find it interesting that she doesn't explicitly make the point that the regulation of womans' role to hearth and home is what almost caused the intelligent and ambitious Dorothea to throw away her life.  Dorothea was never able to imagine her life's path being more than a helper in a man's great work.  We all feel the phrase "what a waste!" in the back of our minds.  On the other hand, George Eliot doesn't denigrate the lifework of wife and mother; it was certainly suitable for Celia and Mary Garth and her mother.  I think she believes the chief evil in the world is to fail to be true to our chosen path.

I even enjoyed the author's periodic interruptions to moralize or instruct, which is one of the hardest things to endure in 17th and 18th century novels.

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!

>Nowadays, writing a novel doesn't give you permission to preach.

I have this one warning.  Don't--halfway through--get confused about who's related to whom and look up a family tree on the Internet.  It will be a spoiler.

Big Saturday planned

One thing I am going to do for sure tomorrow.  Make one of the 5 vegan ranch dressings I've saved.  And comment on it.  All 5 are different, significantly IMHO, and I can't believe they're all equally good.

I'll be the judge!

Finished an audiobook--does that count?

Over Sea, Under Stone (Book #1 in The Dark Is Rising Sequence)
by Susan Cooper


Aha!  No wonder this seemed so familiar.   I'd read the second book in the sequence, five years ago (or so.) 

I didn't like the second book all that much, but I did like this one.  Was the difference listening to it instead of reading it?  Possibly.

The action sequences are good, almost thrilling.  And the adventure of the three kids is well told and pretty much fun.  Only their personalities seemed a little flat--I didn't know them like I wanted to.   If I were the target audience, which I presume is 10 to 12-year-olds, I'd be panting to read the rest of the five books that seem to make a complete subset of a series that might go on forever.  But I'm not the target audience, and while I "kind of" want to finish it, I can wait.  Someday, if nothing else turns up, I might.

It's the little things that make us happy

Okay, it's the great big things too.

Yesterday I was jogging and staring at the IPod in my hand when a car passed by.  What he saw--the unseen driver of the unknown car--wouldn't have struck him as anything unusual.  We've all seen it; we see it every day.  The grocery shopper with a phone in one hand, yakking away as he loads up his cart.  The theatergoer with bowed head, doing a last scan of email before the curtain rises.  The table of teenagers in the food court, sharing time and space but each holding their own little world in their palm.

I never expected to be one of them, yet there I was.  In defense of myself, I have to explain that I was trying to figure out why my book was seeming to jump chapters--had it gotten accidentally set on "shuffle"?   Listening to a book with the Ipod in shuffle mode can be unusually challenging.   But whatever my excuse, I was choosing to look down instead of up.  Fixing my eyes on a 2x5-inch screen instead of sun and trees and clouds.  Keeping my brain firmly enclosed in the man-made world while my feet pounded pavement...and even the feet were wrapped up in plastic and nylon.  I was insulated--bound up in my bubble.

I read the other day about how vitamin B-12 deficiency was rare in vegetarians of the old days, possibly because poorer food washing procedures left traces of soil which contains the microorganisms that produce B-12.   It's also true that plants grown in healthy soil will absorb B-12, but I prefer to think that it's the dirt in the eyes of my home-grown potatoes that is bestowing a gift from Mother Nature.  We often treat Mother Nature like the fallen star in Stardust and apply the curse the witch put on--you will neither hear her nor feel her; you will not see her even if she is standing right in front of you.

Not that I want to see dirt.  I can't abide dirt on my food.  I wouldn't buy potatoes with clumps of sticky mud.  I wash spinach in three changes of water to eliminate any clinging sand.  When I bring in a bunch of bean pods carrying cute little "green loper" caterpillars, I banish the livestock to the compost bucket.  I'd rather pop a pill than eat a worm.

But I'm going off-topic here.  The point is, I am just as likely as the next person to banish Mother Nature from my daily existence. I'll turn on a book while driving on a limited-access freeway; text silly messages to my kids when I'm stuck in line at the grocery store; surf the web in my palm when I'm waiting at the movie theater.  But when I'm outdoors, in her world, I ought to be there.  To be looking up and out and around; hearing birds instead of words; seeing the litter at the sides of the road (otherwise how would I think to pick it up?) I should be thinking about the wind blowing against my cheeks and the uneven tilt of rocks under my feet; the funny scuffling noise my shoes make on gravel. 

And maybe if I didn't have the man-made world in my palm I'd spend less time driving on freeways, standing in line, or waiting for the movie to start.  Maybe I'd spend less time killing time.

First book of the new year, finally

I'm not sure if it's legal to mark down Forever Rose by Hilary McKay in the book challenge.   It's not on the list and not on the plan, not by the slightest stretch of imagination.

But I read it, so there!

Hilary McKay continues her sweet saga of the Casson family with this one, nominally about 11-year-old Permanent Rose but really about Caddy, Indigo, Saffron, Sarah, Mother, Daddy, David, Tom and Michael...and introducing Buttercup.
No guinea pigs were harmed in the making of this book.  Or tigers, I think.

Re Middlemarch:  there is nothing like an ah-ha moment three-quarters of the way into a long, sprawling story...oh, my gosh, I know what's going to happen!  He's going to do it--or is he--please no--

The new fridge...

may be coming Sunday.  I doubt if it will be hooked up for at least a week, but man can dream.

I just had scathingly brilliant idea for a blog-worthy project!  Once each week I could choose a new food that I've never eaten/cooked before, and try it out!  I say "eaten/cooked" to include both things I've eaten but not cooked as well as things I've never eaten.  And by "cooked" I mean prepared.  Like kumquats--I don't think you cook them, but I can include them if I cut them up and include them in a salad.   And I'll include things like collard greens, which I've eaten in a mixture but not as a main ingredient.

Maybe I'll call it the "ingredient of the week" post.  So here are a few things for the list.

celeriac, collard greens, fennel, kale, mustard greens, yams
crimini mushrooms, shitake
apricots, figs
lentils, flaxseeds, barley, buckwheat, millet, rye, spelt
nutritional yeast, seitan

Not sure about the seitan.   Here's anotherscary article about wheat.  How will I ever regain faith in my yummy whole wheat bread?

Fridge death!

We knew last night the freezer wasn't maintaining temperature, but when I got home today the temp inside the fridge was 60 degrees.  I cussed and fussed and blew the house down, then started pulling out what was salvalgable to put in coolers and boxes on the front porch.  Low tonight is supposed to be 36--it will get colder than that out here in the swamp, but the front porch will be warmer due to the heat leaking out of the poorly insulated house...should average out at 36 which will preserve my lovely lettuces and sprouts and maybe some of the salad dressings and bottled stuff.  I think the dogs deserve the leftover barbeque.  The sliced deli turkey is going straight to the trash--it's bloated like a dead rat.

The main problem is going to be tomorrow.  High of 50.  I don't think it warrants taking a day off work....but I'm tempted to.

No match for my red glare.

...

I will shine...

...my evil cat laser-beam eye upon you....

Ever since I found out about the dangers lurking in the highly-human-improved wheat plant, I'd been scared to eat "normal" bread. I'm still a little scared, but today I piled up a couple of slices of bread with lettuce, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber, zucchini, and Daiwa.  And I ate it.  And I smiled.

Just say wow

Saving Mr. Banks

Acting--story--music!  Funny and sad but it was the happy parts that made you cry the most.I'm running out of superlatives.  Just say wow.







Then I stopped at Whole Foods Market and got some fake Parmesan, vegetable "egg" rolls, and Daiwa "provolone" for me; some real beef barbeque and mayonnaisey potato salad for them.  I just tasted the potato salad and it is heavenly.  How can so much fat taste so good?

Caddy Ever After

I really hate the "half of a face" trend in book cover design, don't you? 


But I love this crazy, mixed-up family.  They never--never--do anything in a small way.  Left me desperate for the library to open so I could get the next one.

(Yes, I know I have a Kindle.  I guess I wasn't that desperate.)

Ahhhh....

Permanent Rose by Hilary McKay
Ahhhh....

Continuing the "saga" of the Casson family--Cadmium, Indigo, Saffron and Permanent Rose, this one centers on Rose's descent into a life of petty crime and her ongoing search for the faraway friend Tom.  It contains some of the funniest scenes I've read since Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and I can't tell them to you!  They wouldn't be funny if I told them out of context.

If the same reader who did Saffy's Angel did the audiobook version of this one, it would be almost worthwhile buying it.

Diet For A New America 25th anniversary edition

by John Robbins

Why couldn't I have read this when it was published in 1987, before I brainwashed two innocent children with the same screwed up fallacies about nutrition that I was raised on?  When I was pregnant, I faithfully read the pregnancy and "first year" books and believed all of the nonsense they taught--must have balanced protein.  Must drink milk.  Animal cholesterol required for growing brain.  Must take prenatal vitamins.

And all this hogwash is based on (1) Western cultural history (2) studies on rats who were fed milk protein (3) the wisdom of farmers.   The idea that cows' milk is good for human beings reminds me strongly of sympathetic magic--walnuts look like little brains, therefore they must be good for the brain. Kidney beans are good for the kidneys.  Powdered rhino horn makes you horny.

If I'd put the book together, I'd have inverted the order--first would have came the health section, second the one on big business, and last the ethical implications of eating the way we do. Pull people in by convincing them that a non-animal based diet is better for them; freak them out by pointing out how much power the American agribusiness giants have over our nutrition information; then show them what life is really like for the animals in a CAFO.

But that's me.  I skimmed the sections on animal farming--I already know just how screwed up the process has become.  Any more would bring on nightmares.  

I hope my new healthy diet will offset the unhealthy anger I feel every time I think about how we've let big business sell our society on "milk for healthy bones", "the incredible edible egg", or "meat will make us strong."   And if it doesn't, we'll find a drug to fix it.