What I'm Reading Now--Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Educaion of a Reluctant Chef

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton--I think I first heard about this book over at Books On The Nightstand. Michael loved it (his review starts at 18:02), and I'm sure I heard or read other good things about it, but every time I thought about adding it to my TBR list, I'd hesitate--I wasn't quite sure if it was something I'd be interested in or not. Well, I finally saw it on display at my library one day and figured I'd check it out. I'm so glad I did--I loved it!

Hamilton is the owner/chef of the restaurant Prune, in New York City, and the book's title pretty much says it all. She never really set out to become a chef, but, in one way or another, she's been training for it for most of her life. The book is broken up into three sections--"Blood," "Bones," and "Butter"--and each has a very different feel.

To break it down roughly, "Blood" is about Hamilton's childhood, who she is, what's in her blood; although she takes a turn toward the dark, depressed delinquent teenager eventually, I love the nostalgic sense of family that she portrays early on. Her father was a set designer for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus and "[p]rying back the lid on a fifty-gallon barrel of silver glitter--the kind of barrel that took two men and a hand truck to wheel into the paint supply room of the shop--and then shoving your hands down into it up to your elbows is an experience that will secure the idea in your heart for the rest of your life that your dad is, himself, the greatest show on earth."(p.9) Michael said that he often found himself with a big smile on his face while reading this book, and I felt the same way, especially during this part.

"Bones" is about Hamilton's adult journey to becoming a restaurateur (and includes, among other things, what I think is a highly useful take on balancing family and work life.) The magical childhood has, sadly, lost most of its magic, but we start to see other influences in her life. Although she doesn't realize it at the time, Hamilton's travels abroad are preparing her for her future position as a supplier of food, comfort, warmth, and welcome. Also, there is a great/horrific story about a rat. If you have ever thought about opening a restaurant because it would be "fun" you should read this book. There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears involved in getting a restaurant up and running and keeping it going every. single. day. If you don't think you have to be tough to open up and run a restaurant, think again.

"Butter" is largely about summers spent in Italy, cooking in the kitchen with her Italian mother-in-law, a woman who does not speak a word of English, but speaks the language of cooking and family and love. This comes back to family again, but with another feel yet again, this time with a realization of things that are slipping away.

I mentioned that I first heard about this from Michael over at Books on the Nightstand, but Michael mentioned it again (review begins at 20:52) when it came out in paperback...with a new chapter! Dang-I read the hardback; I would totally like to get my hands on the paperback because I definitely wanted some follow-up on a few things.

If you have reviewed this book, let me know, and I'd be happy to link to your review. I'd like to hear what other books have inspired people to cook. Books like this make me think, Yeah, I could do that! I could totally make my own pasta and use eggs to make things rich and savory instead of icky and egg-tasting. I'm going to start growing all my own vegetables and plant olive trees and become familiar with an actual butcher and raise chickens and stuff!

And finally, you know how I love my coincidental literature bits, and I have some for this book. Not too long after I finished reading this, I was on line looking for information about my tomatoes that were turning black (blossom end rot, as it turns out), and I found Keavy's 10 pound of onions blog where she talks about cooking all kinds of wonderful looking things (things that look like they have been inspired by Gabrielle Hamilton), and I saw an entry that started out with "Bill and I went to Prune today" and I thought, Hey! That was inspired by Gabrielle Hamilton! Then I clicked around on her blog a little more and found a recent post that starts out, "I've been obsessively reading Blood Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune for the last week." Hey! Me too! Well, mine was a month ago, but still. Also, I don't really do eggs, but after reading this book, Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce is the kind of thing I might get brave and try one of these days.

All The Weirdness I Encountered While Reading The Stand

**Edited 8/26/12--Augh! I just realized how much I suck. I wrote this big ole long..."review" and never even said thanks to Trish for hosting The Stand read-a-long, or the Standalong. So, thanks, Trish!  Please jump over to her blog to see what other readers thought about The Stand. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled programming:

Hi there! Thanks for joining me! When I started writing my review for The Stand, I mentioned that since the story starts around the middle of June, I often found myself reading things on the same day that they were happening in the book (so on June 30th, I'd be reading about the events of June 30th. I call this sort of thing coincidental literature.) I started writing about all the other weird coincidences that I encountered during my reading, and before I realized it, I already had a whole post's worth of stuff but hadn't made any real progress toward any sort of meaningful review. So, I moved that part of my review over here...and now I still have to write my real review...*sigh*

Weird Thing (WT) #1: As Trashcan Man was setting fire to all the oil tankers and fantasizing about watching the fire spread across the country, I had just watched the Waldo Canyon fire blaze closer and closer to my hometown of Colorado Springs, while several other wildfires continued to burn across the West and Mid-West. This drove home the chilling reality of Trashcan Man's "beautiful" fantasy in a way that the book alone couldn't.

WT #2: My aunt lives in Colorado Springs, and during a check-in phone call with her, she mentioned the book Watership Down; a day or two later, I'm reading about Stu trying to escape from the plague center, and he is thinking about Watership Down. "The thing he remembered most from that book was a phrase: 'going tharn,' or just 'tharn.' He understood it at once, because he had seen plenty of tharn animals, and run down a few on the highway. An animal which had gone tharn would crouch in the middle of the road, its ears flattened, watching as a car rushed toward it, unable to move from the certain oncoming death."

WT #3: As Larry and Rita were escaping the oppressive heat in New York and power outages were beginning to sweep the country, a heat wave was stalled out over the eastern United States and millions of people were without power for days due to storm damage.

WT #4: On July 2nd, Mike posted some photos over at Everything Under the Sun. Meanwhile on July 6th, I was reading about Nick Andros, who, ON JULY 2ND, was having this dream: "He was on a high place. The land was spread out below him like a relief map. It was desert land, and the stars above had the mad clarity of altitude. There was a man beside him...no, not a man but the shape of a man. As if the figure had been cut from the fabric of reality and what really stood beside him was a negative man, a black hole in the shape of a man." Whooooaaaa. Does that totally describe Mike's photos or what?

WT #5: My husband had just gone to bed right before I picked up at Nick's dream (above). Right before he went to bed, we had been sitting there talking, we had both stopped to listen, and he said, "Is that rain?" It wasn't...yet; it was the sound of approaching rain-the wind that moves through and rustles the leaves right before the rain hits. Anyway, Hubby was off to bed, and I started reading about Nick and his dream in which he was being tempted by the dark man. He "wanted all the things the black manshape had shown him from this high desert place: cities, women, treasure, power. But most of all he wanted to hear the entrancing sound his fingernails made on his shirt, the tick of a clock in an empty house after midnight, and the secret sound of rain."

WT #6: On his way home from work, Hubby stopped and bought two loaves of bread, a baguette for him and an olive loaf for me. The bakery is an out-of-the-way-for-us place that we don't get to often, and it was one of those things where he got the idea of the  baguette stuck in his mind and was dreaming about toasting it and slathering it in butter and peanut butter for breakfast the next morning. 'Cause we're all about the healthy eating around here. We didn't have any other bread in the house, and he won't eat the olive loaf, so the baguette was his, ALL HIS! He was tired and worn down from work, but he had yummy bread to look forward to in the morning! Later that night, we had to make a last-minute, hurry-up-let's-go-before-they-close grocery store run for some allergy pills or something. Had we been thinking about it, we probably would have bought some bread...oh wait, nevermind, we had two whole loaves at home! We came back, and saw that the sliding screen door was open--no big deal, our dog lets herself in all the time to go lie on her bed in the living room--and then I saw the wrapper on the dog bed. The empty wrapper. The one that had previously housed an entire baguette. Ohhhh nooooo. Hubby gave up and went to bed exhausted, allergy-ridden and defeated; I picked up my book, but I kept thinking about the bread. I probably read for a couple hours but I couldn't really focus--my mind kept wandering off to how disappointing the non-baguette morning was going to be so I finally decided that I could make a loaf of bread. How hard could it be? (It should be noted that I don't think I've ever actually made a loaf of bread, from scratch, start to finish, without the aid of some type of machine. Since Hubby was sleeping, I was trying to keep the noise level down, so I did it all by hand. At one point, I almost went and woke him up just so he could watch the spectacle that was unfolding in the kitchen, but I figured he needed his sleep. Also, I didn't want him to think he was being attacked by a dough monster.) So, dough kneaded and formed into a somewhat respectable loaf shape, I set it out to rise, washed the remaining eight pounds of dough off my hands, cleaned up a little bit, and resumed reading. I picked up where Stu and Frannie were walking home from the first Free Zone meeting; Frannie is tired and emotional and overwhelmed. Stu "held her, patting her back, remembering one time when his Aunt Betty had gotten a crying fit over some bread that didn't rise--"

WT #7: Okay, last one, I promise! I started reading The Stand while my husband was out of town. Then my bedside lamp started turning itself on in the middle of the night. Seriously?? Why does this stuff never happen when he's home? It's one of those lamps you have to touch, so of course my mind immediately jumps to the thought of someone creeping into my room at night while I'm sleeping and touching my lamp. Reading about Flagg's creepy omnipresence right before bed was not making me feel any better! Ghost girl was my next thought since Hubby and I had been talking a couple weeks earlier and realized that we had both experienced the sensation of feeling a little girl presence in the house. We couldn't pin it down exactly, but I think we both experienced it the same night, he in the bedroom and I in the office. Creepy, right? So, I finally braved turning off the light in the daytime (I didn't want to risk it snapping back on in the middle of the night only to reveal some shadowy, red-eyed figure lurking in the corner or, worse yet, standing directly over my bed staring at me!); when it kept coming back on in the middle of the day, I finally decided to leave it. I figured no one was sneaking around my house in the middle of the day turning my lamp on, so I felt better about that, and I didn't want to piss off a ghost.

So, there you have it! All the weirdness I encountered while reading The Stand. Anything weird happen to you?

What I'm Reading Now-The Angel's Game

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves-I never know whether to give credit to an author or translator when I feel that a book is beautifully written--was it as lovely in its original language as it is in English or did the translator add her own flair to make it sound better?  Either way, I thought it was beautiful--very atmospheric and disappearable (meaning it was easy for me to disappear completely into the story).  I suppose "engrossing" or "consuming" would work, but what better reason to make up words than to describe a story?  What words do you use to describe stories like this?

Well, David Martín had lots of words--he is a writer in 1920's Barcelona, wasting his talent writing serial novels for a less-than-reputable publishing house when a mysterious man comes to him with an offer--a hundred thousand francs for one year's work.  The commission is something I won't give away, but the money's good and David accepts.  I was fascinated by the job he was offered and was looking forward to how the project would take shape, but that's not really where this book goes; and while I'd still like to see that story played out, I'm not at all disappointed with where it went instead.  I liked David and was rooting for him, but at one point we get a hint that David might not be an entirely reliable narrator and that there might be a much darker side than what we've been seeing.  Throughout the book, things spiral downward into darker and darker revelations, and to the end we are left wondering what is really going on, but in a good, ooooh-was-he-or-wasn't-he? kind of way, not in a WTF?? kind of way.          

Although it's been on my TBR list for a while now, I haven't read Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, but I know that some of the characters carry over into The Angel's Game, and The Cemetary of Forgotton Books makes a reappearance.  All in all, I'm quite happy that I discovered this book on my library's "New Arrivals" shelf!

**Random Extra Bits***

The Cemetary of Forgotton Books is "a colossal labyrinth of bridges, passages, and shelves full of hundreds of thousands of books, forming a gigantic library of seemingly impossible perspectives."  The rules:  "Article one:  The first time somebody comes here he has the right to choose a book, whichever one he likes, from all the books there are in this place.  Article two:  upon adopting a book you undertake to protect it and do all you can to ensure it is never lost.  For life."  That in itself is cool, but what I thought was even cooler was that on the same day that I was reading about this place of forgotton books, I stumbled across a Care's Weekly Geeks post (prompted by this Weekly Geeks...prompt) that talks about forgotton words and how you can adopt one of your own...just like a forgotton book!  I haven't committed to anything yet, but I kind of like snollygoster.

What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up Edition, Part I

In an effort to cross some things off my aging to-do list, here is a wrap-up of my 2010 reading.  At some point, it all just got away from me.  I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, so here goes a giant exercise in brevity and creativity.

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1) by James Dashner-A boy wakes up in an elevator that dumps him out into a maze.  There are lots of other boys there.  Nobody remembers anything before the maze.  *Gasp*  A girl appears!  What does it all mean?  Don't go out into the maze after dark or you'll likely be killed by giant armored amoeba-y things.  Action ensues.  I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads, but I might downgrade it to 3.  Not sure if I'm interested in the follow-up.

The Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler-I picked this up because my favorite author, Mary Doria Russell, lists it on her  "Recommendations" page; and, by golly, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me!  It's about a women's wartime baseball (softball?) league.  The problem with that is that it immediately makes me think of A League of Their Own, which this was nothing like.  Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself but I went into it expecting it to be something it wasn't.  I think this is one that I need to reread, this time with no expectations.  Although I didn't walk away loving this, I did take copious notes on things that I liked within it, so...that's gotta count for something, right?  Give it a read, just don't expect it to be very much about baseball.

The Ask and the Answer:  Chaos Walking:  Book Two by Patrick Ness-Still dark and depressing, but not quite as bad as The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Don't get me wrong, it's still dark, just in a different way. It's been a while since I read this, but if I remember correctly, there might have been a tiny bit of hope at the end of this one.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller-This is another book that I was inspired to read after I found it on Mary Doria Russell's list of recommendations.  And now I am going to cut and paste from my Goodreads review: Although I didn't love this book from beginning to end, the ending affected me deeply and in a way that I totally did not expect, and that's what pushed it from 4 stars to 5 for me...even though I knew how the book was going to end since I read Norman Spinrad's Introduction in the 1975 Gregg Press edition. Thanks a lot for the giant spolier, Norman! (Note to writers: If you are ever asked to write an Introduction for a book, please don't include any version of, "the book ends with [insert final climactic event here:]..."  I'm just sayin'.)...I originally checked this out from the library. Time was up, but I knew I wanted to keep reading it and that I would want to refer to it later, so I returned my giant spoiler-filled copy to the library and bought a new copy. What do you know-I opened it up to find a new (spoiler-free) Introduction by Mary Doria Russell! [Which shouldn't have been a surprise, seeing as how she mentions it on her web site, but I guess I forgot about that part].  I enjoyed the book on its own merits, but I can also definitely see where it influenced her book, The Sparrow, which, I admit, makes me love it just a little bit more.  One more note:  There is a lot of latin in this book, and I finally went on line and found a study guide from Washington State University that turned out to be most helpful.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese-Ann has raved about this again and again on Books on the Nightstand (in 6 different podcasts and one blog post (the link takes you to a page where you can search for podcasts and posts by book title, but I can only get the two most recent podcasts to play-you might have to get the others from iTunes if you want to listen to them)), so I finally picked it up.  Again, from my Goodreads review:  Great depth of story here and I loved all the medical detail-enough to be fascinating but not so much as to lose the average reader. Also, when I started reading, I didn't realize that part of this story revolves around live-donor liver transplants. My husband's side of the family went through this process, all except the actual transplant itself-at the last minute it was determined that the vasculature of the intended donor did not line up with the recipient's and the surgery had to be called off. (In the end, a cadavar donor was found, and hubby's family is doing well and we are all very grateful.) With this family history, the story resonated for me in a way that I hadn't been expecting when I picked up this book about twin boys living in Ethiopia. A lilve-donor liver transplant is not something that most people have any familiarity with at all, so to randomly run across it in a work of fiction was kind of cool. 

The Magicians by Lev Grossman-Part Harry Potter, part Chronicles of Narnia, but then it finally gets its own legs under it and goes off in a darker direction.  Thanks to Jeanne's review at Necromancy Never Pays for finally convincing me to read it.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks-This is a fictionalized account of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated Jewish manuscript from the 1300s, that was thought to have been destroyed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Thanks to the brave efforts of the director of the National Museum, the Haggadah was safe, contrary to rumors that it had been destroyed or sold for arms.  The Haggadah faced a similar threat in the '40s when the Nazis came looking for it; again, it was saved, this time by the director and the curator of the National Museaum, both of whom risked their lives to save it.  People of the Book traces the Haggadah's history through various stories of narrow escape all the way back to its creation.  I started reading this on my Kindle months (years?) ago, and I finally picked it back up on the plane, on the way home from our trip to France, which included a side trip to Venice.  Turns out that part of this book takes place in Venice during the 1600s!  Imagine how psyched I was to recognize the places in this story that would have meant nothing to me one week earlier!  Heather J. gave the audio version a rave review, along with a better plot summary.

What I'm Reading Now-Unwind (also an unscheduled mini political rant)

Unwind by Neal Shusterman-I don't read much science fiction, but this story line intrigued me. For the life of me, I can 't remember where I first heard about it though. I thought for sure that a fellow blogger had reviewed it, but I can't seem to find a reference to it on any of the sites that I frequent, so perhaps Amazon.com thought I might enjoy it based on some of my other choices. I don't know. I would like to credit someone with my reading of this book, but I guess I will just have to take the credit myself for now!

Unwind is set in the semi-near future from what I could gather. At one point several of the main characters find themselves in an antique shop where there are items like iPods from their grandfathers' era and plasma screen TVs. Yeah, like those would still be working! I was thinking about this yesterday as I was shopping for a new digital camera. Ours finally went out after 6 years and approximately 8,000 pictures. That's not so bad, I guess, but wouldn't it be nice if ANYTHING were made to last anymore? There are still phonographs and Brownie cameras out there in use, items that have been handed down through the generations and cherished (or at least not abused) by their owners all these years. What is our generation going to have to hand down to future generations, our iPod playlists? But I digress.

After the Heartland War, which basically pitted the Pro-Lifers against the Pro-Choicers, a compromise was reached which, true to real life, seems to have been in nobody's best interest. The Bill of Life was passed and the gist of it is: Abortions are no longer legal. If you are pregnant, you must have the child and raise it until age 13. If, by the time the child reaches age 13, you still are not interested in raising him, you can have him unwound. Unwinding is sort of the biological equivalent of selling a car for parts except that the children just get taken, you don't have to sell them. Anyway, they are taken apart, piece by piece, and all of their parts must be given to others in need, so it's organ donation on a large scale. In this way, the child is not killed-all of him is still alive in some form or fashion (the Pro-lifers are happy) and the child's parents no longer have to raise an unwanted child (the Pro-choicers are happy). See? Everybody wins! Oh, um, except the kids. It kind of sucks to be them. They have lost both the right to life and the right to choose what happens to their bodies. Kids between 13 and 18 are subject to unwinding. Once you reach 18, you are considered an adult and can no longer be unwound.

Of course, the well-intended Bill of Life resulted in a lot of babies in dumpsters because there were still plenty of mothers out there who just did not have the desire or perhaps the means to raise a baby. In response to this "Storking" laws were put into place. If you had a baby that you didn't want, you could leave it on someone else's doorstep. Whoever finds the baby is legally responsible for it's upbringing. If you get caught in the act, however, you have to take the baby back. Most of the time this works out ok, but there is an ugly underbelly to this as well, which we find out about as the book goes on.

Most of the time, kids don't know that they are about to be unwound. The cops just show up at their door one day and no one ever hears from them again. This isn't always the case-there are special circumstances in which some kids know from the get go that they are destined to be unwound. The book follows 3 main characters who have found out through various means that they are going to be unwound and their subsequent attempts to avoid this fate. The reasons for their unwinding and their reasons for not wanting (or wanting) to be unwound are diverse, as are the stories of all the characters they meet on their journey.

Unwind falls into the Young Adult category, and the story kept my interest and was a pretty easy read, but it brought up some fairly heavy issues, issues which are certainly translatable and pertinent today like:

What constitutes being alive? If you have a soul and you are unwound, what happens to your soul? Does it get chopped up and doled out in various amounts to the recipients of your body parts, does it reside in a single body part, or is it stretched like a web around the globe when your body parts get distributed to others? If everyone has a soul, when do we get them-conception, birth, when somebody loves you? Does God give souls to unwinds? It also introduces some tough issues like murder, terrorism, and attempted rape.

This is one of those books that you read and think, boy that's crazy stuff! I'm glad this is just fiction! If I had read this book any other time, I think that would have been my reaction as well, but I've got to tell you, I don't see this as being that far out there right now. The thing that puts this out of the realm of possibility for me right now is the technology, not the moral climate of our country. I'm not much on politics, but the fact that Sarah Palin is thisclose to being in the White House scares the crap out of me. The fact that women are willing to vote for her just because she is a woman scares the crap out of me. That's like people with moustaches voting for Hitler because he has a moustache. Hey, I've got a moustache, he's got a moustache, he must have the same values I do! Gaaaaah! Come on people! Don't vote for Obama because he's black. Don't vote for Palin because she's a woman. Don't vote for McCain or Biden because they are old white dudes. Find out at least a teeny little bit about your candidates and make somewhat of an informed decision. You don't have to be able to recite their entire voting record, but pick SOMETHING, anything upon which you can take a stand and say this is why I support or don't support this candidate.

(Okay, unscheduled mini political rant over.)

If you've been reading regularly, A)thank you! and B) you know that I have become mildly obsessed with finding coincidences between what I'm reading and what's going on in my real life, and this book is no exception! So, in that vein, I am claiming the Heartland War/crazy political climate coincidence and the Banned Books Week coincidence which I explain thusly: I didn't actively "celebrate" Banned Books Week by going out of my way to read any banned books, but I may have participated without really meaning to. I will be shocked and amazed if this doesn't make it onto next year's list of banned or challenged books. There are plenty of issues for people who don't have anything better to do to freak out about in this book. On that note, I hope lots and lots of people read this book, and I hope that parents and children are actually able to have some meaningful conversations as a result of it.

What I'm Reading Now-Traveling Mercies (and, (finally!), a few pictures from our trip)

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott-When an atheist relative told me that this book sent her into the ugly cry on the treadmill at her gym, I figured it was worth checking out, and I'm so glad I did. I loved this book! I'm not big on religion; I don't want to be preached to, I don't want to hear about how I need to be saved and how everyone else in the world needs to be saved, I don't want to hear about how much better you are than me because you've been saved and about how now that you have Jesus in your life He will take care of everything and you never have to worry about anything ever again and how anybody who isn't on this path is Screwed.

What I do want to hear about is how religion or faith or spirituality has inspired someone, given her strength, caused her to see beauty in the world that she otherwise might not have seen, encouraged her to find a grace within herself that she didn't know was there, you know, the good stuff. Anne Lamott delivers all of this, and she's hilarious to boot. While she does have a pretty unshakeable faith, she also has plenty of, "You've GOT to be kidding me!" discussions with the Lord, which I found refreshing. I think that was what appealed to me the most about this book, the fact that it was written by someone who is not perfect in her relationship with God and does not claim to be. Absolute, unquestioning faith in something that you can't prove exists is tricky, even for the most sincere.

One of my favorite examples of this is when she is trying to explain the significance of Ash Wednesday to her child, Sam. She has turned off the TV and explained that if he wanted to draw or play with some of his other toys that would be fine, but just for today, in observance of Ash Wednesday, they were not going to watch TV. A few minutes later, he has turned the TV back on and Alvin and the Chipmunks are singing "Achy Breaky Heart," and Lamott LOSES IT. Personally, I think having to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks sing "Achy Breaky Heart" is a totally justifiable reason to lose one's mind, but I think this had more to do with Sam's blatant disregard of the somber speech she had just made about the importance of Ash Wednesday. Anyway, she proceed to shout, cuss, and then she

"grabbed him by his pipecleaner arm and jerked him in the direction of his room, where he spent the next ten minutes crying bitter tears.

It's so awful, attacking your child. It is the worst thing I know, to shout loudly at this fifty-pound being with his huge trusting brown eyes. It's like bitch-slapping E.T." (p. 93)

I've read that passage several times, and it cracks me up every time. Maybe that just means I'm warped. I don't know.

I've mentioned recently that I've noticed a lot of coincidences involving the books I'm reading and my real life activities. I was reading this book on our recent vacation in Oregon, which began with an ill-fated trip to Vegas, a drive over to L.A., and then a drive from L.A. up to Portland during which we stopped to check out many of the redwood forests and groves along the way.

(Me sitting next to the Founders' Tree in Humboldt Redwoods State Park)

For those of you who have never seen a redwood, they are amazing. For those of you who have, you know. They're so huge and stately and...and...I don't even know how to describe them. (However, Bob Neubauer did a pretty good job of it, so I'll let you read his article here.) For me, they're comforting and feel like home. I've always liked evergreen forests, and living in Hawaii has reinforced that love. As beautiful as the tropical forests (jungles? I'm not really sure what the proper term is here) are, they're messy. Evergreen forests are always neat and orderly and covered with that soft, springy, uniform covering of needles, not a disorderly mess of decaying leaves under which there could be hiding any number of creepy crawlies or decaying fruit. (Stick with me here; this does eventually tie back in to the book). They feel serene and tidy. Perhaps this appeals to me because I tend to be the exact opposite of that-our house is a cluttery mess. As much as we try to keep it up, by the end of each week, there is just clutter everywhere. I don't really know how it happens. I'm pretty sure it might involve gnomes. Anyway, evergreen forests are already tidy; you don't feel like you have to straighten anything up, so you can just be and relax. A redwood forest only amplifies this. Not only is it tidy and calm and serene, but the trees have been there for longer than we can comprehend and (hopefully) will continue to be there, standing guard, sentry-like, providing a calm, secure, safe retreat from the rest of the world for as long as there is still some good in the world.

All of this is to say that in Lamott's book, she talks a lot about the northern California area (through which we had just driven!). She also talks about a health scare involving her son. After an extremely nerve-wracking wait, she finally receives some good news on this front and calls her friend in order to share the news. His response: "Baby? Sometimes deliverance is as cool as the air in a redwood grove."

Of course, this was cool for me because I was like, "Hey, we were just in a bunch of redwood groves!" but it was more than that. It was a reminder of how lucky we have been to experience things like that. I realize there are probably millions of people each year who visit the redwood forests and there are people who live with redwoods in their back yards, so it's not like we are an elite group or anything, but that doesn't make the experience any less special. Also, there are a lot of people who have never found themselves surrounded by redwoods and probably never will, and so in that regard, I do feel lucky to have had that experience.

So, long story short, I would totally recommend this book. It's funny and uplifting and honest and heartfelt and just an all-around good read.

What I'm Reading Now-City of Ember

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau-This is a book for older kids/young adults, but I liked it anyway. At the beginning of the book we find out that Something Bad has happened, but we're not told what. The Builders have created an underground world, and when it is safe for humanity to surface again, certain events will unfold that will help guide them along. Well, there's a hitch in the plan, and the city of Ember ends up supporting it's underground inhabitants longer than it was meant to. There are power outages; they are happening more frequently and lasting for longer and longer periods of time. Supplies are running out, and people are starting to panic. The mayor assures the citizens that everything is fine, but there's something not quite likeable about the mayor. Two of Embers young residents, Lina and Doon find themselves in positions to help the city, and the search is on for a way to fix Ember or get out.

This book was a quick and easy read, and I enjoyed it. It is the first in a 4-part series, and I will probably read the other books eventually. As soon as I was done reading City of Ember, I thought, "I bet that would make a good movie." Lo and behold, what is coming out on October 10th? Okay, so I'm not always on top of what's going on in Hollywood, but I do know which kids' books will make good movies when I read them! I am going to chalk this up to one of my weird little reading coincidences, which I've mentioned a couple of times now, even though it's not a big one, it's still fun to have something to add to my collection!

Also, Ann discusses this book during Books On The Nightstand's podcast, episode #14, which you can listen to here. She and Michael discuss a lot of other books too, so don't skip it just because you've already read my post! I enjoy all of their podcasts, but this week's discussion includes the topic of banned books and Banned Books Week. This is something that just baffles me, so it's always interesting to hear people talk about it.

What I'm Reading Now-Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

Alright already! The library is sending me hate mail, so I guess I should get on the ball and get this book reviewed so I can take it back along with the library's standard check in the amount of $7.50 (the maximum fine they will levy against one item...THANK GOD!)

So, I've changed the format a little; instead of "What I'm Reading Now-(today's date)" I've decided to just do "What I'm Reading Now-(book title)." I think one post per book will be a better way of doing this since I tend to get a little wordy and more than one review per post can be a bit overwhelming for both my readers and me!

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan-Here's the thing that I've come to notice about Michael Pollan: His books are full of small fonts and they don't have any pictures. They read a lot like text books. On the one hand, I admire the fact that he really gets into whatever he's writing about and gives the reader a lot of information and doesn't just do the easy, glossy, feel-good write up about whatever it is, in this case working the neglected land of his property, which used to be a farm, and in the process trying to discover man's place in nature. What does it mean to garden? Gardens have had a lot of different purposes and definitions throughout history. When and how much should you garden? Is it "ok" to garden purely for aesthetic reasons, or should a garden be functional? Can it be both? What defines a weed? One man's beautiful tree can be another's eyesore and a strain on the local ecology. Where and how much should man interfere in nature? How "wild" should we allow our wilderness reserves be? Once we interfere, are they still considered wild?

Pollan delves into all of these questions and does a good job of exploring all of these issues. I don't think he comes to many definitive answers, but he does give the reader a lot of good information to digest in order that he may come up with his own answers. Oh, and I guess I should finish my "on the one hand..." statement that I started earlier. On the one hand I appreciate his thoroughness and his willingness to really get into a subject and study it from a lot of different angles. On the other hand, I feel his books are always more work than I expected them to be. I'm interested in what he writes about. I want to read his books. I want to enjoy reading his books, and I do-o-o-o...I just really have to commit to it. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

Something that surprised me about this book is that it left me wanting a lot of follow-up information. The book was published in 1991, and one of the things that Pollan writes about is his decision to plant a tree, a real tree, not a wispy willow or a fruit tree, but a mighty oak or a sturdy maple, something that will be there for generations to come. He quotes Russell Page, who said, "To plant trees is to give body and life to one's dreams of a better world." Indeed. If you are going to plant a tree which might not even reach a good, solid, shade-worthy size until it is 25, 50 or even 100 years old, you must have faith that it is worth planting in the first place, faith that future generations will A) be around to appreciate it and B) appreciate it, not to mention C) that the tree will survive that long in the first place. This requires a lot of faith in both humanity and Mother Nature. Pollan finally decides on a maple, a spindly little maple that will take years and years to come into all of its maple-ness even though he has a hard time seeing 20 years down the road, when he might see "a bit of shade." You can read Pollan's first-hand account in The New York Times Magazine article here. It's almost 2010 already, the time allotted for his tree to grow to adequate shade-producing size; I would like to know how it is doing.

Along the lines of the "how much should we interfere in nature?" question, Pollan tells of Cathedral Pines, a large stand of old-growth white pines that was wiped out one year by a massive storm. The big question was what to do with it after the storm. There were people who wanted to leave it exactly as it was because to do anything else was to mess with nature. To these folks, clearing out the fallen trees would be akin to building condos-human intervention is human intervention. Clearing the fallen wood, replanting the pines, introducing wolves, building condos, making it a nuclear waste site, clearly all of these things are on the same level. To these people, I would like to say, "Get over yourselves, you giant blowhards," but that is way more confrontational than I am comfortable with, so I will just think it quietly to myself over here behind my computer. Anyway...others worried about all that dead wood becoming a fire hazard to nearby homes, and others saw the fallen trees as resources-cabinets, flooring, tables, firewood, etc. Some wanted to replant, to try to restore it to its former glory, and some said let nature take its course. Ah, "let nature take its course"...what does that mean? In the case of Cathedral Pines, it could very well have meant allowing brambles and vines and who knows what else, to take over. Returning to the old-growth pine forest that it once was was probably not in the cards, and if any of the plants that were hypothetically going to take over this recently denuded, now-sunlight-flooded patch of land were to get out of control and spread to neighboring areas or start threatening other existing flora or fauna, then what? Then would it be ok to interfere or not? Well, the final solution was to leave it exactly as it was and then to clear-cut a huge area around it to create a fire break. That way none of the dead wood would be touched and the nearby homeowners could sleep at night. This sounds like the worst possible solution to me, but what do I know? Anyway, the storm was back in 1989, so again I would be curious to see what has become of Cathedral Pines. Is the forest slowly recovering or is it becoming something altogether new and more beautiful than it was before, or is it turning into a giant wasteland? Or has it been struck by lightening and burned up completely? If so, did the firebreak do its job? If anybody out there has any intel on this, please let me know.

Finally, Pollan makes the point that,

"Indeed, the wilderness ethic and laissez-faire economics, antithetical as they might at first appear, are really mirror images of one another. Each proposes a quasi-divine force-- Nature, the Market--that, left to its own devices, somehow knows what's best for a place. Nature and the market are both self-regulating, guided by an invisible hand. Worshippers of either share a deep, Puritan distrust of man, taking it on faith that human tinkering with the natural or economic order can only pervert it." (p.188)

Wow. Is that timely or what??

I have noticed lately that there tend to be a lot of coincidences between my reading and what is going on in the real world. I got this book thinking that it would be all about gardening in the "traditional" sense, if indeed there is one. You know, hoeing, planting seeds, harvesting vegetables, fighting off deer and ground hogs, and all of that was in this book; but it went so much further with an entire treatise on trees and their relation to society and the land. Since we just got back from our big tree adventure (which I will write about soon, I promise!) this was particularly timely for me, particularly reading about Pollan's maple. Also, the thing about human tinkering perverting The Market-I think I read that on 9/22 or 9/23, just on the heels of the announcement that investment banking as we know it is dead and that the government wants to give $700,000,000,000 to a bunch of companies as a bonus for failing. Oh, is that not what they're saying? I'm sorry, I might be a little fuzzy on the details. Anyway, I think Pollan hit it right on the head, and I think it's a bad, bad idea.

*Edited 7/27/12-I DID finally write about my big tree adventure (warning: it's a looong post, but I put a lot of pictures in it to make it more fun!)

What I'm Reading Now-August 15th edition

I wanted to break this up and do a separate post from my August 14th post for two reasons.

1) These are long-ass posts when I do them all together.

2) I felt like the subject matter of the previous reviews should have it's own post.

So, continuing on, here's more on my latest reads:

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones -I picked up this book because Michael over at Books on the Nightstand raved about it in a podcast and Ann followed up with a positive review as well; it's a book I would have probably been interested in but never actually read otherwise. I bought it in the airport at Sydney, not realizing that the author is a native of New Zealand and the book was published in Australia, so that was a nice surprise to find that I had a book that was somewhat relevant to my travels.

To summarize quickly (I know I'm not good at this, but I'll try!), it's about a group of island children who are introduced to Charles Dickens' Great Expectations by their new teacher who reads the book aloud to them in class each day, bringing to life a whole new world, completely unlike anything any of them have ever experienced. They live somewhere in the South Pacific, close to Australia from what I could gather, perhaps New Zealand, but I don't think a location was ever specified. There is a civil war of sorts going on (perhaps if I were up on my world history I would have been able to figure out where this takes place) and the book takes a rather dark turn that I hadn't expected. The narrator is Matilda, one of the students, and she is enthralled, fascinated by Great Expectations, particularly it's main character, Pip. As Pip becomes more real to her than her culture's beloved ancestors, more real than God Himself, Matilda's mother becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Mr. Watts, the new teacher, and his chosen material which leads to unfortunate circumstances colliding to create a misunderstanding between the islanders and enemy soldiers, and things go downhill from there. The book is basically broken up into two parts, Matilda's life on the island before things go bad and Matilda's grown-up years, off-island, after.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I wanted to love it since it had received such rave reviews, but, honestly, I kept forgetting that I was reading it. It wasn't that it was bad, it just wasn't anything I was ever excited about getting back to. I would be looking around the house, going, "I need a new book to read," and then I would see this book and go, "Oh yeah, I'm already reading a book." At the same time, I think it is worth reading, and I feel like there are a lot of things right below the surface of this one that I am just missing, like if I just sat down and really thought about it for an hour or so I could get all my thoughts together and come up with a great appreciation for its profound nature. Matilda is who she is in large part because of Mr. Watts, her teacher, and Mr. Watts is a complex character whose story takes an unexpected twist. It's hard to say too much about this without giving things away. I'd say go ahead and give it a read. It's an easy read, and I can see how it has the potential to be a book that you would really love. I may have to go back and re-read the second half again.

Bonus! Mr. Watts asks the adults of the village to come to class to share their knowledge. They can talk about anything they want, whatever they know about, and at one point Matilda's mother talks about the digging habits of beach crabs. She imparts this wisdom:

"'Wind and rain are on the way if a crab digs straight down and blocks the hole with sand leaving marks like sunrays. We can expect strong winds but no rain if a crab leaves behind a pile of sand but does not cover the hole.

'If the crab blocks the hole but does not scrape the mound flat there will be rain but no wind. When the crab leaves the sand piled up and the hole unblocked the weather will be fine. Never trust a white who says, "According to the radio rain is on the way." Trust crabs first and above all others.'" I think that's pretty sage advice. Now I will have to do some reconnaissance work and see if Hawaii crabs follow the same rules. Don't hold your breath waiting for the results though.

So, for the readers who found my blog by searching for "why do hawaii beach crabs dig holes" and "sideway sand shuffle crabs" perhaps this would be a good book for you to read! Or, perhaps not since I just told you all that it says about crabs.

**Updated 6/2/09 to include

Other reviews (many much more well-researched than mine):

Chris--Book-a-Rama

Chartroose-Bloody Hell, It's a Book Barrage!

Marg at Reading Adventures
Heather J. at Age 30+... A Lifetime of Books

Getting Started in Value Investing by Charles Mizrahi-Finally! I have been trying to read this book since...well, let's see, it was due back to the library on July 29th when my renewal expired...yeah, I'm THAT person, ok?? I'm not proud of it, but the library gets their money from me, so it's all good in the end. (Also, I had to share it with the cat, and he's a slow reader-all that math wears him out.) I'm sure that Mr. Mizrahi would say that paying $7.50 (my library's maximum late fee for an overdue book) for a library book is not a good example of value investing, but I'm not claiming to be his star pupil here. I almost didn't read this book (on several occasions) but I'm really glad that I did. I think it offers a lot of good advice, it breaks down a lot of the confusion about all those numbers you see on financial statements, and it does it all in layman's terms.
Mizrahi tells you how to look at a company and decide if it is a good investment, meaning if you put money into it, will it be worth it in the long haul. He is not talking about playing the market, he's talking about investing Warren Buffet-style and watching your investment grow over the years. There are a lot of common sense things that sort of correlate with how I've been choosing companies to invest in thus far, which made me feel like I'm not a complete moron and I do have a good general sense of what I'm doing...sort of.
I like to invest in companies that I like, companies that I would want to own, which is basically what you are doing when you buy stock in a company. Yeah, I could make lots of money in big oil or pharmaceuticals, but I'd feel icky about owning them. Not that there aren't some great aspects about both, but overall, it's just not my bag. Also, I want to be able to understand what a company does-Starbucks sells coffee, Home Depot sells building materials, Bank of America lends money, etc. I have a basic understanding of how they make their money, and that's another thing that the author and Mr. Buffet both advocate. If you can't figure out what they do or how they earn their money, don't invest in them!

Another piece of advice that Mizrahi gives is buy companies that are doing well and have a history of doing well. If they are not currently doing well, see if you can figure out why-did they have some huge capital expense this year, like equipment upgrades, that is draining all their cash but should result in better figures next year, or are they on their way out of business because they can't compete in their market? I think now is a tricky time to be trying to figure this out since virtually everyone is experiencing lower revenues in the current economy, so current figures aren't necessarily going to be representative of historical figures, but there should be some standout companies that are able to weather even the current economic storm, and those are the ones that you invest in!

Where I perhaps haven't been doing the best job, and where a lot of people get hung up, is picking stocks that are not overvalued. The author lays out a detailed process for figuring out what you should pay for a stock and explains it all very clearly, but I'm still a little confused about this part. I made an Excel spreadsheet and typed in all the numbers they gave in the example in the book, and I got my answer to match their answer, so I knew all of my formulas were right, but I'm just not convinced that I'm plugging in the right numbers, and that was the only problem I had with this book. For most of the examples he gives, Mizrahi has corresponding financial statements or bits of financial statements so you can see where he is pulling numbers from, but for this part, he just tells you what the numbers are for the given company, and I'm not sure that I'm not calling something by one name when on a financial statement it goes by another name. Google and Reuters team up nicely to provide financial information about companies (as an example, go to Google Finance, type in GOOG and hit "Get quotes." Now you can see Google's stock info. If you scroll down you will see "Financials" and "Key Stats and Ratios." Click on the "More ratios from Reuters" link and you get this. Between these two sources, you should be able to find all the numbers you need to come up with a valuation for a stock, but don't do dumb things like I did and enter the "EPS (TTM) vs TTM 1 Yr. Ago" figure (29.33) in your spreadsheet where you should be entering the EPS (15.22) or it will be wonky beyond belief. See, if you're scratching your head going, "What the hell does all THAT mean?" then you should read this book. By the time you get done, you will actually know!) Where was I? Oh yeah, Google and Reuters team nicely, but every once in a while you run across a company for which this information is not available (I think this tends to be for foreign entities), so then you have to go find the company's annual report and look at their financial statements on your own. While the basic layout and accounting principles should be the same, each one is still unique in its own way, and that's where I run into problems, especially when dealing with foreign terminology. Does this count as revenue? Should I count that as a capital expense? Do I need to know gross revenue, operational revenue or net revenue for this calculation? So, I don't know. There is still a lot for me to learn, but I feel like I learned A LOT from this book, and I now have a good basis to build on. Speaking of investing, I might actually invest in this book since I think it would be one that I would refer back to frequently, and I think the advice will remain pretty timeless.

John McCain, Elephants, and Courage

Here's a nifty little coincidence. As mentioned in my last post, I just finished reading Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Lifeby John McCain and Marshall Salter. One of the points that they drive home in this book is that courage means doing something that you know is right even if you are afraid of the physical, psychological, or social ramifications of doing so, even if, especially if, you KNOW that the outcome is likely to be not only unfavorable but possibly even dangerous, if not fatal. I read this book while I was in VA, visiting my mom. A few days later, while I was waiting around in the airport, I picked up Water for Elephants: A Novel.

On the plane ride home, I saw Horton Hears a Who! which is about an elephant (Horton) who is on a mission to save a community of people he can't see (the Whos of Whoville). They live on a speck, and Horton can hear them, but he can't see them; and the leader of his community is fit to be tied when Horton's nonsense about believing in life you can't see starts to influence the youngsters. She calls for his head on a platter, and Horton is facing real, physical danger; but he persists in his promise to help save Whoville because as he says,"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred per cent." As I'm watching this, I think, "Wow, Horton is courageous in the sense that John McCain would recognize and appreciate."

On the second leg of my flight home, I open up Water for Elephants: A Novel, and the epigraph reads thus:

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant...
An elephant's faithful--one hundred per cent!

--THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL, Horton Hatches the Egg, 1940"



I mean, seriously, what are the odds? What does it all mean? I recently read The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, and the author talks about paying attention to coincidences. In particular, he talks about his personal experiences with travel-related coincidences. So, seriously, what does this mean??? Am I about to face some situation which is going to require elephant-sized courage? That can't be good.