Now, number 12...

Pride and Prejudice 
and Zombies

 by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith


All you Jane Austen fans out there will spurn me, but I found the addition of "unmentionables" actually improved the novel.  Improved it to the point that I was actually able to finish it.  I've tried reading it a couple of times, but always get stuck on the utterly boring, inconsequential, nitpicking quality of their lives.  The heroines I create visit the poor and do good before they get swept up in the arms of a dashing, unsuitable suitor.

But P&P&Zombies is true to the form and spirit of the original, with the only changes being that the balls, visits, dinners and drives are spiced up with an occasional pack of zombies to be beheaded and burned.  Jane and Elizabeth are zombie hunters by nature and trained in the finest Shaolin style.  With sword, dagger, and musket, they hitch up their skirts and dispatch the undead mercilessly.  Plus a few not-so-undead (but that comes later.)

I would have liked if it had been a couple of chapters shorter and had a little more undeadly humor, but all in all, I wasn't disappointed.  It was LOL at times but maybe not ROTFL...plenty of snigger, smirk and chuckle.  (Which is good because I did most of my reading at work.)

The best part of all was the Reader's Discussion Guide at the end.  "We hope these questions will deepen your appreciation and enjoyment of this towering work of classical zombie literature."

Shopping I love not

Drat Whole Foods Market.  Yeah, Local Yokel.  All I wanted was a couple of pounds of free range chicken breast, but all I could find at WFM was "barn."  I assume that's the kind where they cram chickens into a shed so tightly they can only move in unison.  Maybe the chickens don't care, but I care.  I want a chicken who's been out in the air, scratching.  Eating grass.  And bugs.

Luckily Local Yokel had said chicken and I am now in possession of a couple of bags of it, plus a jar of Tikka Marsala curry sauce.  I was going to make it from scratch but I couldn't find all of the ingredients (another mark against WFM.)  It turned out that the "green cardomon pods" on my list were for the rice, not the curry, but I didn't know that.  I'm still planning to marinade the chicken before I grill it, but I'll cheat on the sauce.


Tune in Sunday for the results.

Unlike most of the books...

I had read A Wrinkle In Time as a kid.  I vaguely remembered how the children used mathematics to resist mind control.  The name Auntie Beast sounded familiar; and of course I remembered the five dimensions and the whole wrinkle/tesseract description. But I must have been too young for it, because my major recollection was that it was hard to follow.  (It's not!)

What I didn't remember was Meg's anger at her father--which so makes it a coming-of-age book.  A big part of the business of growing up is figuring out that your parents can't fix everything with a band-aid or a kiss.  It makes you mad at the time.  Only later--if you're lucky--you find out that just because a person doesn't have magic powers doesn't mean they don't have powers.  And that failing isn't the same thing as giving up  Maybe your parent can't stop bad things from happening, but they can help clean up the mess...and make it better next time around.

Another thing that I totally glossed over was the occasional mention of God.  The big 'G' God.  How odd to find it cropping up in a science fiction book, even one written in 1959.  And especially in a book that is saying that the loss of free will is the greatest of all evils.  Thank heavens it's not a religious book and it doesn't take the matter a step further, as most religious people seem to do--free will is a gift from God but you'll only be happy when you choose to surrender your free will to God's will.  Such a koan!

So, that's my take on A Wrinkle In Time--a fun book with some really cool images in it, one nicely rounded main character, and a message I enjoyed hearing:  Alike and equal are not the same.

And don't you got to love a mentor who sends you off into battle with the most powerful gift of all? 

I give you your faults.

NTR, so a couple of pics from the weekend

 Here's what happens when you ask the dogs to pose for a picture.

And here's what happens with the cat

And you wonder why I prefer to photograph food?

#9 on the challenge

After years of work with clicker training (and whistle training and "good pony" training and even "tap on the glass" training), she writes about it all--and finishes up with a trilogy of short training courses.   Train your cat to high-five, teach your dog to hand target, and teach your coach to tag you.  Although the technique she pioneered is called clicker-training, what it's really about is primary reinforcement, secondary reinforcement, and cues.  Not commands, cues.  It's a mindset.  Commands imply do-or-else; cues imply do because you want to.

Read this book.  You'll be converted, run out and buy a clicker, and start teaching your budgie to answer the telephone when a phone solicitor calls.  Go for it.

The absolutely most fascinating chapter (that's saying a lot) is on creativity.  Starting with a trained dolphin who already knew a bunch of tricks, they started reinforcing when she did something new and different--a wave of a fin; sticking her head up; making a funny jump. Repeating the new thing didn't get a reward--she had to come up with something new each time.  When she eventually rans out of new things to offer, she sulked for a day, then,

"...circles around the tank once, building up speed.  Then she rolls over on her back, sticks her big wide tail into the air, and coasts, without power, so to speak, about forty feet, from one side of the tank to the other."

None of them had ever seen a dolphin do that and it certainly wasn't trained into her.  She invented it.
The story doesn't end there but I'm not giving out any more spoilers.

I've started clicker training already, teaching Zack how to fetch my socks.  As expected, the hardest part is training the trainer.  Wonder if I could use her methods on eliminating some of my self-destructive behaviors?

My weekly food post a week late

Last Sunday's home cooked meal was:
Barbecued pork chops using Ina Garten's sauce recipe, potato salad, cole slaw and grapefruit for dessert.




As a sauce, her recipe was great, but I tried to use it as a marinade and it just didn't soak in.  Maybe slow-cooked at a really low temperature would have been the way to go...so many recipes call for a quick sear followed by slow cooking, covered.  For chicken, that just ends up with a runny mess, and for pork, it seems to draw all of the juices out of the meat into a nearly liquid sauce.

This recipe started the cooking with three minutes on the Foreman, then thirty minutes at 375 degrees.  The meat turned out moist but the sauce pretty much disappeared.  I want the juices in the meat and a crisp, caramelized sauce on the outside.

And if you haven't already noticed, this meal didn't even pretend to be healthy, other than the free-range pork and eggs.  But it was good.

Another book in the "leaving childhood" series,

and another winner!

Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret.  by Judy Blume

1970 cover

I don't think I ever read a Judy Blume book as a kid or even a pre-teen.  There was no especial reason for that, except I tended to chose adventure books, boy's books, and those starring horses in a leading role.  The Hobbit, Danny Dunn; Black Stallion;  Misty of Chincoteau.

But I should have, because I can really identify with Margaret.  I was happily content being a "kid" until  my eighth grade friend introduced me to makeup, fashion, and Vogue magazine.  It suddenly wasn't good enough to be me--I had to be "in" and to do that, I had to be noticed by boys.  All the girls in the class fell for the same, unbearably cute guy...the jerk who only noticed you to make fun of you.  I still wish I'd punched the lights out of Johnny Whats-his-name for messing up my chess game.

Margaret has other issues, just as I had at that age.  She's the child of a Jewish father and  a Christian mother, and they're leaving her free to make up her own mind about religion.  When she's ready.  I had a nonbelieving dad and a non-practicing mom so I, too, was on my own. I had a Christian great aunt; she had a Jewish grandmother.  I joined a Baptist church but found it disappointing; she, visited her friends' churches but didn't settle on one.  I also searched for God but only found him in the quiet of my room.

It's a book that girls of all times and all places will recognize as their own story.  Not the time or the place--the heart.