Garlic and Sapphires (Ruth Reichl)

I always wondered what it would be like to be a food critic. There are many reasons I would not be a particularly good one: a) my adjectives wouldn’t go much beyond “not good,” “good,” and “yummy,” b) at many restaurants I’d be limited to one or two choices due to my personal eating habits, so the reviews wouldn’t be representative, and c) I’d get tired of all that eating out. Yes, even though I am, when tired after a long day, the first person to suggest we go out or get take-out, I know I’d really rather have a home-cooked meal.

In her latest book, Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl chronicles her time as the New York Times food critic. Even before she officially begins her work, she realizes that NewYorkers take their restaurants way more seriously than they do in Southern California where she had previously worked as a critic. So much so that almost every restaurant in New York had her picture in their kitchen and were on alert before she started her job. Reichl goes to great lengths to disguise herself when on assignment so as not to be recognized, and the disguises are so good, in fact, that she even fools her doorman and her coworkers.

The restaurants she reviews during this time may be high-class expensive places few of us will ever eat at, but this book is more about this particular moment in her life. In all of Reichl’s books she contemplates the place food has in our lives, how it connects people, and revives old memories and traditions.

After graduate school I stopped reading for the most part. The books that I did read (slowly and uninterested) were books left over from grad school or ones I knew I was supposed to read and like because they were “literary.” This went on for over a year. Then one day I found Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone (her first book) at the library in Wisconsin, and I spent that afternoon comfy on the couch, reading the entire book in one sitting. It had been a long time since I had read a book like that. There’s something in Reichl’s writing voice that I find very comforting. Some people may find her too passionate or perhaps over the top in her descriptions. And even though most of the food she describes is nothing I would eat, we still share a great love of food and she conveys that love so well through her writing.

Next book up: Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott

Noncommute Books: Gardens and Crafts

McGee and Stuckey's The Bountiful Container

I've been wanting to have some version of a garden for years but a) I have no expertise at all, b) I'm lucky if I can keep a plant alive, and if I do, I believe it's more because of the plant's will to live than anything else, and c) I've never had any space. Our apartment has a large fenced-in patio that is perfect for plants, so over the past few months, I've been checking out books from the library about container gardening. The majority of them either have beautiful photographs but very little helpful content or overcomplicated content that is not helpful for a novice like me. I finally found the perfect book for anyone who wants to grow something edible in a container. It's so good, that I plan to purchase it for my own reference. The Bountiful Container is incredibly user friendly, tells you how to get started and what works best for where you live (or how much effort you want to exert).

Denyse Schmidt Quilts

Last year I learned how to sew and later purchased a sewing machine. And while there are plenty of people who love to quilt, I had never really had much desire to do it. (That said, I do appreciate all the hard work and skill of those who have made me quilts, and I appreciate them immensely.) Quilting is tedious, exacting work, and lots of books on the market are very country-fair-ish in design.

Then I found Denyse Schmidt Quilts, which I believe to be the most fabulous modern quilt book out there. To begin with, there are projects I can actually do in the book (simple and small, but still creative and beautiful) and there are also full-blown quilts if I ever get brave enough. Schmidt has a graphics design background and uses colors and patterns in a unique way. (She also gives a good brief primer on how to work with color in her style of quilting.) I don't think this book is for someone who is completely new to sewing (while she gives good instructions, there are some smaller steps she leaves out), and I wouldn't say the projects are necessarily easy (it's still a form of quilting, and there's a lot of steps before you actually sew), but it is the first quilting book I actually love.

Book Doctor (Esther Cohen)

I have to begin with a major disclaimer. I am not a fan of books about writers writing books. That said, there are sometimes exceptions to this (such as John Irving's The World According to Garp, which was the first book I read in high school that completely wowed me because it was considered "literature" even though it was so amazingly good).

One of my first jobs was as a managing editor for a national literary magazine. Our circulation was small, but we were listed in The Writer's Market (think of it as the yellow pages for a writer aspiring to be published), and we received a good deal of submissions. The best part of the submissions (from my point of view) were the cover letters, not the ones written professionally, but the ones who were trying to "grab our interest." It didn't help that, at the time, the example cover letter in The Writer's Market was so humorously off-target as to what magazines/journals were really looking for.

The query letters Arlette, the main character in Esther Cohen's Book Doctor, receives reminded me of the especially priceless cover letters we received. While they may seem over the top (such as the lawyer who has an idea for a book Firm: A Lawyer's Exercise Guide), she's nailed the tone and content perfectly. The letters are interspersed among the narrative, and to me they are the most entertaining and interesting part of the book.

Arlette is a book doctor, helping others write their stories, but of course she has a novel in her that she's trying to write. For me, the book wasn't visual or descriptive enough, and the characters did a lot of talking about big questions in big ways that didn't really ring true to life to me. But again, remember my disclaimer above.

There was also this really funny joke in a query letter Arlette receives. It's from a man who wants to write an Alzheimer's Joke Book:

"George Bush was upset. He hadn't been the President for a while, and he craved attention. A friend suggested he visit an old-age home in California. A guest appearance. The friend arranged for the visit. George got there and the people in the home were thrilled to see him. He shook hands all around, and listened to their praises. He felt much better very quickly, and was about to leave when he noticed an older woman in the corner, sitting all by herself. He walked over to her, intending to cheer her up. He smiled at her kindly, then said, 'Do you know who I am?' 'No,' she said, looking him in the eye. 'But if you ask at the front desk, they'll tell you."

Next book up: Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

23 Days in July (John Wilcockson)

If you relish saying "Ivan Basso" the way that one OLN announcer does, if while barely going 15 mph on your own bike you feel like a daredevil, if you wake up early in the month of July to see the 7 am broadcast of the Tour, then 23 Days in July is for you. I think this would also be a good book for Tour novices who want to learn what this race is all about.

When I was growing up I remember my dad was a big bike enthusiast. He once road the Ragbrai, which is a week-long ride across Iowa. I also remember he had some big heavy rollers in the basement he used in the winter to ride on (looking back, those seem way more dangerous than today's bike trainers). Myself, I grew up with a banana seat pink Huffy but apparently gave up trying to learn (I still blame this somewhat on being the 4th of 4 children. I also think there must have been a winter in there somewhere where everyone forgot I didn't know how to ride). But I did finally learn how at age 25 (in the Jewish Community Center parking lot across the street from my apartment. Jim taught me. It took about a half an hour). Now I ride everywhere I can.

Wilcockson thinks we all have a little bit of that bike craze in us, and this is one of the reasons Lance is so popular. Most of us know how to ride a bike and while coasting down a hill we can all feel, even if just for a moment, a little taste of what he must feel on his bike. The book chronicles the 2004 Tour de France, with each chapter giving a snapshot of each day of racing. There is more about the Tour's history and other riders (including Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton) and less about Lance than I was expecting, but that wasn't a bad thing. And all that added information helped fill out the chapters, especially on the sprint days because, really, sprints aren't that exciting until the final end, and even then, those who are contending to win the Tour aren't usually involved. They're tucked away someplace safe in the pack surrounded by their teammates.


Other good books: Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King. O'Nan and King didn't know the 2004 season was going to be historic when they set out to write about it--they just really love baseball. I thought this was an enjoyable read, especially if you're a baseball fan (Well, I guess I can't really picture a non-baseball fan reading a book completely about baseball). There's a lot of great behind-the-scenes information and action in this, including when O'Nan came to be called "Net guy" by the Fenway crowd.

Next book up: Book Doctor by Esther Cohen

What Should I Do With My Life (Po Bronson)

When I originally picked up What Should I Do With My Life? I thought it was going to be full of success stories, you know, all those people out there who managed to make it. I thought it would be ultra-inspirational about the hard-won path to ultimate success and happiness. That's not what it is. And I think it's a more successful book because of that. Instead it's about people trying to answer that question. Some who find it easily, others who are still searching, and some who have answers presented to them many times but for various reasons choose to ignore them.

He uses the analogy of the box of assorted chocolates to discuss a particular group of people searching for their ultimate meaning in life. "Frustrated by their inability to see inside the dark chocolate coatings, they hang out around the box, watch other people's faces as they bite into the choices--'What did you get? Is it good? Is there another in the box just like it?'" He refers to these people as trying to "X-ray the chocolates," and he states (aware he may lose these particular people as readers), "I am not trying to X-ray the chocolates. I AM NOT GOING TO X-RAY THE CHOCOLATES."

Bronson wanted to interview a diverse group of people for this project. Friends of friends of friends passed along word of his project (via word of mouth and e-mail), and he met people all over the world who wanted to tell their stories. He became more than a journalist, had deep conversations with people, gave them advice, became their friends. He becomes so involved that he tells his own story as well.

He presents these people as the real people they are, and I came away from this book with a huge sense of empathy. He says the process of writing this book make him a better person. I think reading this book will not only make you more introspective on your own life, but will also help you relate even more to those around you.

Other good books: Very new-agey, a lot of fun if you embrace it, is The Artist's Way, a book that guides you to opening your life to your own creativity. There are daily and weekly "exercises" that help you discover your own creative self. I originally got this book when I was in college, and every once in a while I pull it out again and go through the program.

Next book up: 23 Days in July by John Wilcockson

Hidden Kitchens (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson)

I’ll admit I’ve made plenty of fun at the George Foreman grill, especially when the assortment of colors became a major selling point. But after reading Hidden Kitchens, by Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson (a.k.a. The Kitchen Sisters), I discovered how important the George Foreman grill is to the homeless and those who have lower incomes. In one of those governmental paradoxes, low-income persons who are granted SROs (which are single occupancy rooms) don’t have access to kitchens and aren’t allowed to cook in their rooms, which means they have to eat out all the time (leading to less money saved and less healthy affordable food choices). To get around this, people in those situations have embraced the George Foreman grill. It can be stored easily, leaves no mess, and can make a hot, simple meal in a small amount of time.

Hidden Kitchens is a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition that travels the country (their locations are based mainly on voice mail messages left by listeners sharing their local hidden kitchen) searching for such varied kitchens as church fundraisers, streetcorner food carts that only operate at night, NASCAR kitchens, and the original chili queens of San Antonio. They’ve collected many of their stories, along with recipes and listener recipes, in a handsome hardcover published by Rodale. I’d almost put this book into the coffeetable category as the text is sparse on each page and there’s lots of photographs.

I liked this book, I didn’t love it (I’m afraid I’ve been spoiled by Calvin Trillin), but I thought it was well-produced and would be a good introduction to thinking about food more than just sustenance. I especially enjoyed the chapters on the urban forager Angelo Garro. Originally from Sicily, now living in San Francisco, he takes friends on wild fennel hunts (wild fennel grows all over coastal California) leading them around parking lots and under freeway overpasses. (Now I finally know what the plant is that smells like licorice on the bike path and by PacBell stadium). I was moved by the chapter about Georgia Gilmore, a lady who worked with Martin Luther King Jr in the civil rights movement, only the way she helped was by feeding everyone she could (including MLK Jr).

I appreciated that when the Kitchen Sisters asked for listener stories for their hidden kitchen quest, they requested no grandmother stories (not because they were mean spirited, but because they were afraid their staff wasn’t large enough to handle the amount of stories that would come in if they were allowed). Even then, people still called in with stories about their grandmothers. My grandmothers weren’t big cooks, but I’m lucky enough to have Jim’s grandmother who makes him cookies for his birthday and tells him he has to share with me (I consider myself very lucky indeed).

Next book up: What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson

[Note: I feel the need to point out that this is not a self-help book (as the title implies) but rather an exploration of that big question and those who have tried to answer it. I’m adding this note because I feel very strange carrying around a book with that title and reading it on the train (though less weird than I would reading 23 Days in July (the book I'll be reading after this) about Lance Armstrong while riding in the bike car on the Caltrain. That's going too far.]

The Nudist on the Late Shift (Po Bronson)

When I first moved out to California, it was the summer of 2001. It wasn't the best time in the tech industry---the bubble had burst, as people were fond of saying, and you could go to work every day with a strong chance you (or a coworker) would be laid off. I managed to quickly (and luckily) find a job that wasn't in the tech industry, but I watched others I knew who were. I still love to have Jim retell stories from the two Internet companies he worked for: the one who had a man in management who had been seriously involved in the 1980's radio payola scam and the other that treated its employees to a party on a yacht and soon after began laying people off until they were down to a handful. There's relics from that time all over the area: The old Silicon Graphics building is now the Computer History Museum and there were public auctions of expensive office furniture and computers. But of all the companies that failed, many succeeded and are still around today. Both Yahoo! and Google are two of the main powerhouses that compete with each other in terms of employee benefits (including, in Google's case, free gourmet, onsite prepared meals).

But the experience of the late 1990s, that feeling that anyone can be a millionaire with a great idea, that excitement, is gone. In The Nudist on the Late Shift: and Other True Tales of Silicon Valley, Po Bronson captures the spirit of that time by presenting indepth studies of people who gave everything to be a part of it. Bronson, who used to be an investment banker (so understands the money side of these businesses) and also writes for Wired (so understands the tech side), also knows a thing or two about writing for real peole (those of us who do not know the intricacies of venture capitalists and Java programming).

An East coast reporter asks Bronson to capture the "Silicon Valley experience," and he realizes right away how different the experience is depending on who you are and where you work. "The experiences of working in, say, the New Age human potential culture at Apple is vastly different from working for Intel, where employees go through what is called 'confrontation training,' in which they learn to call one another names and brutally speak their minds, believing that only through conflict will good ideas emerge." He visits the Yahoo! campus and meets the co-founder of Yahoo! David Filo. Bronson asks Filo if he still sleeps under his desk (there's a famous picture of him under his cubicle, covered in a blanket, and surrounded by paper). Filo's answer? "Not much anymore. No room." "I did find amusing," Bronson says, "that he no longer slept under his desk not because he had doubled his money since then [for reference, at this point Filo is a billionaire], but because his trash heap had doubled in size and squeezed him out."

Reading the book you'll have the themepark thrill ride experience of watching a company try to become an IPO (I'm not kidding! Bronson makes it thrilling!). You meet amazing people through Bronson--the cofounder of Hotmail whose obstacle to his startup ventures became the startup idea, Java programmers who would rather be squirrel hunting in Tennesee, and salespeople, including Jim Yares. "What makes Jim Yares so Northern Californiaesque is that he grew up in the South, where congeniality is so nurtured it seems natured. Jim Yares is touchy-feely, but he's not sticky. He doesn't ooze any vibe. He is porch, a wicker chair, and a summer breeze." And you also meet a sixty-year-old woman who spearheads a tech dealer company. Bronson refers to her as "Mom," who has "because of a lifetime smoking Parliaments 100 has one lung left, fights emphysema, and a tube runs from her nostrils down to a portable respirator at her side." And this lady "is known as the number one closer in the software business."

I first heard of this book when I saw it at a used/new bookstore in Palo Alto last weekend. I had heard Po Bronson's name before, but I didn't really know what he wrote and had never read his stuff before. I feel like I'm on my way to becoming a real fan of his work, though. I thought The Nudist on the Late Shift (and yes, there is a real nudist) did an excellent job of capturing what that time here in the Valley was like, and I can't wait to read more of his work. (p.s. Bronson also has an excellent Web site that is worth a look.)

Next book up: Hidden Kitchens by Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson

Marriage, A History (Stephanie Coontz)

Marriage, A History, by Stephanie Coontz caught my eye on the New Book Rack at the library because of the title and the photograph on the cover. If I had actually opened the book (which is near Harry Potter--size in bulk) and seen the small font size and tight leading (which for nonpublishing geeks is the vertical space between the rows of text), I probably would have put it back on the shelf (but I’m glad I didn’t).

Near the beginning of the book, Coontz asserts that the reason many people get married today (that being for love) would have been thought absurd throughout most of history. Marriage was too important politically and economically to base it on something so irrational as love. She also offers many more reasonable alternatives to the myth that “marriage was invented for the protection of women.” (In other words, think cave men protection wives and children from wooly mammoths.) This was especially popular in the 1950s to the 1970s “because it closely resembled the male breadwinner/female homemaker family to which they were accustomed.”

I also found it interesting that the beginnings of dating had the women in control of the courtship. In the early 1900s, a young woman could “call” on a man to come to her home for some chaperoned conversation. (It was truly improper for him to suggest to be invited.) However, when official dating arrived, it took place in public, and since things in public cost money (and women had a “second-class economic status”), the man paid and hence became the one in charge.

Coontz isn’t taking the word “history” lightly. She means it, and she starts way back with the early humans and continues until today. I have to admit that it got a little too historical and academic for me after Chapter 4, and after carrying it in my backpack for a couple of days, I quickly realized that the weight of the book was far more than the progress I was making in it every day, so I left it at home and instead carried my much lighter Sudoku book on my commute, which only aggravated my current Sudoku addiction.

Luckily I picked up the book again and skipped ahead to Chapter 12 at the turn of the 20th century. (For those interested in the skipped chapters, they covered early Christians to the Victorians.) As this book is full of information, I’d say it’s probably not the best book to read cover to cover but instead to pick what interests you most and start there.

Coontz points out that people all throughout history people have believed marriage to be in crisis (and 2004 was not the first year that same-sex marriage was discussed). She gives detailed information and questioning behind the statistics and presents a lot of the information in a worldwide context. It’s a fascinating book on an equally fascinating topic.

Update: Read something great? Interesting in a book but don’t have time to check it out yourself? Or just not sure you’d like it? There is a new link on the sidebar where you can post book recommendations. Enjoy!

Next book up: The Nudist on the Late Shift by Po Bronson

The Sweetheart Season (Karen Joy Fowler)

In The Sweetheart Season, Fowler brings alive a small town in upper Minnesota (in the middle of nowhere) right after World War II , a town full of young women--all the men gone from the war. These young women work in the town's mill, the main source of livelihood in the town, whose public persona is the fictional (yet very real to the mill's owner) character Maggie Collins, a sort of Betty Crocker. Besides being a whiz in the kitchen, Maggie was a popular magazine columnist where people wrote her such letters as "Dear Maggie, No one in my family will eat the end pieces of a loaf of bread. I have always eaten them myself, because I believe waste is wicked, particularly when so many in Europe are going without, but I don't really like them either and eating them makes me feel put upon. Any suggestions?"

The Jane Austen Book Club is sparse in many ways compared with The Sweetheart Season. This book is full of many characters, lots of tangents that weave their way slowly back to the main action some times, and full of lots of description. This book ebbs and flows in its action but is always entertaining and quite funny in places. There's the mill owner's wife who adopts Ghandi's teaching (during an American era where they're not sure what to do with a green salad or when to serve it during the meal and all the vegetables have meat in them), the mill owner himself who is searching for an ape who can bowl (yes, bowl, as in bowling), and Maggie Collins' recipes for keeping wallpaper clean (use a slice of bread) and polishing copper pots (ketchup, of course).

It's probably not a big surprise that I enjoyed this book: the girls work in the Scientific Kitchen at the mill where they test recipes all day and they also form a baseball team that travels around to surrounding towns. To end, here's a small excerpt from the beginning of the book. This sentence caught my attention and I knew I was in for a great read:

"He was not a local; he couldn't know that in 1882 Miss Opal May had thrown herself over the falls on the day of her own wedding, all dressed in white, and that her veil had been found more than five miles downstream with two fish netted inside it, and that Jeb Tarken had eaten one of the fish and from that day forward suffered from nightmares of suffocation that startled him awake, making him ditch the blankets and gasp for air."

Next book up: Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz

American Fried (Calvin Trillin)

After an especially busy day at work, I was packing up my stuff to go home and glanced at Calvin Trillin's book in my backpack. I immediately felt like hugging it. I can't say too many books get that kind of reaction from me, but there's just something about Trillin's writing style that is so comforting and entertaining, I can't get enough of it.

I looked for Calvin Trillin's Tummy Trilogy at the library (which is a collection of his first three books), but they only had the abridged version on audiobook, so I realized I'm going to have to read these early books free standing. The copy of first book, American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater, that the library had was very 1970s--a Penguin paperback with lots of handdrawn illustrations on the cover and on the chapter opening pages. My knowledge of American food history, which mostly dates the many versions of beef eaten by my family in my childhood and the extreme lack of anything remotely ethnic in our Midwestern town, is slim. In fact, I was worried that Trillin probably didn't have much to talk about in terms of food in the 1970s.

But Trillin believed then, just as he does now, in grass-roots food. He points out that at the time (before celebrity chefs and TV shows touting home-grown specialties) no one wanted to be special: If you were a food writer/food lover visiting a town, the locals would want to take you to their fancy "French" restaurant (the kind of thing that could make Trillin shudder) instead of letting you sample their great soul food. In American Fried, he searches for the best crawfish in New Orleans, tries a lot of chili in Cincinnati, has arguments with friends about who serves the best hamburger in the country, all while traipsing around New York city for the perfect bagel, fresh cream cheese, and mozerella.

There are a lot of things in this book that date it to its time. For one, when he mentions prices, sometimes I had a hard time telling if it was a high price or a low price (for example, he mentions eating "second-rate cheeseburgers" in New York that cost $1.75 each, which I'm guessing was expensive at the time). Also, he mentions that someone had collected information on 400 New York restaurants on a computer in California (this was revolutionary at the time), and the pre-Internet restaurant buzz was all about what favorite dive was exposed in the New York Times (to be ruined for all time by the great press, now fussy eaters would come there, Trillin and his friends lament) or a local restaurant newsletter for the devout.

Though Trillin is to me a democratic food man, he does still have some pretentions. This is also true of his wife, as he points out humorously: "There was a tense moment, I remember, the first time our older daughter asked for ketchup. 'How did you know about ketchup?' Alice asked, after informing her that we didn't have any. 'Those wild kids down the street probably told her,' I said. 'Maybe we oughtn't let her play with them any more."

But Trillin's main concern, above all else, is taste. He points out when someone scoffs at a dish for not being authentic, he doesn't really care if it's authentic. He asks, But did you like it? How did it make you feel?

Other good books: I'm probably going to work my way through all the Calvin Trillin food books available at the library because I really enjoy his work (see the previous review of Feeding a Yen). But I should point out that Trillin does not just write about food. He has been a New Yorker staff writer for many years, writing about food, politics, or whatever else he is interested in, and you can read all his works in that magazine in the newly available The Complete New Yorker, which has a fairly hefty price tag but is completely worth it if you enjoy the New Yorker (it has the entire archive of the magazine available digitally with great search capabilities). Trillin has also composed a book on the Bush administration that is in rhyme called Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme.

Next book up: The Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler

The Areas of My Expertise (John Hodgman), by Guest Reviewer Jim

This is one of those eccentric books that defies classification; on the cover it bills itself as “An almanac of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE compiled with instructive annotation and arranged in useful order by me, JOHN HODGMAN, a PROFESSIONAL WRITER, in THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE, WHICH INCLUDE: Matters Historical, Matters Literary, Matters Cryptozoological, Hobo Matters, Food, Drink & Cheese (a Kind of Food), Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels, Haircuts, Utopias, What Will Happen in the Future, and Most Other Subjects,” which is pretty good for starters.

Hodgman, who for those This American Life fans out there was also responsible for the brilliant "Flight vs. Invisibility" piece (available in streaming audio here and on their Crimebusters & Crossed Wires collection), and who also had a pretty funny recent appearance on the Daily Show, has turned out a lunatic and frequently hilarious invented collection of facts, historical essays, advice, predictions, and more (that it’s all made up is “an astonishing innovation that allows each entry to contain many more truths than if it were merely factual”), including entries like the following:

• The Fifty-Five Dramatic Situations (“Young, handsome cyborg Army officer kills his own family, blames hippies”; “Snakes lie in wait”)
• When Writing, Please Avoid These Failed Palindromes (“Slow speed: deep owls”)
• Diversions for the Asthmatic Child Who Cannot Play in the Snow
• History’s Worst Men’s Haircuts
• Short Words for Use on Submarines to Preserve Oxygen (“Counsie: The staff Creative Writing Counselor”)
• Nine Presidents Who Had Hooks for Hands
• Colonial Jobs Involving Eels (“Once our nation’s rivers were glossy and black with majestic herds of eels, but they proved too tempting a food source, and many found them to be just too spooky to tolerate”)
  

Elsewhere can be found discussions of lobster-claw vs. pigeon-foot deformities, ninja cons, lycanthropic transformation timetables, methods of predicting the future, extensive elucidation of the Depression-era “hobo wars” (they succeeded only in taking the Secretary of the Treasury), and some of the greatest photos and Zen-like captions ever put to paper. Hodgman has a particular obsession with hoboes (“I am not talking about the unfortunate homeless souls who do not choose that life, but those few willful wanderers and train-riding tricksters who still believe the hobo wars are going on”), and had the sheer insanity or genius or both to include a now-infamous list of 700 hobo names.

You can’t fill 230 pages with this stuff and hit every time, and it slowed a bit chugging into the finish line, but I probably had a higher laugh-out-loud-per-page ratio with this than any book I’ve read in the last five years. And at long last I know how to interpret the ominous portent of a cat consorting with a skunk.

The Wedding (Imraan Coovadia)

Well, I plucked this book from the library shelves in a hurry last time I was at the library (which was a few days before Christmas), and I had good intentions. It's not a particularly long book, and I should have finished it days ago. But it was Christmas and Jim's family was here, and, thanks to Jim's grandparents, I got hooked on the new puzzle craze Sudoku (which I hadn't heard of before) and spent the flights to and from Arizona doing that instead of reading this book. And then it was New Year's Eve, which we spent with my oldest sister and her husband playing Cranium, which I'm declaring one of the most fun games ever, and next thing I knew, we were back in San Jose where giant Pacific winds tried to blow us away and suceeded in knocking over our fence and lots of trees. And there was rain. Lots and lots of rain. All of which I found more exciting than this book.

The Wedding by Imraan Coovadia is an Indian book-length fairy tale of sorts, but if you're like me, a short, 2-3 page fairy tale is all you need. Ever. I once decided I was going to sit down and read a book of Brothers Grimm fairy tales like a regular book and quickly learned that wasn't going to work at all. They were too short, too similar, and there were too many of them. So given that experience, The Wedding probably was not a good choice.

The story is about the narrator's grandfather and how he met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, married her, and how she did everything in her power to get him to leave her alone. That's the gist, and I'm certain that someone who really enjoyed the book would give a completely different synopsis. There's lots and lots of dialogue that's often filled with colloquialisms and little other description (lots of "fiddlesticks" and "ur-ur mans"). Again, not really my style. I finished it not really sure what I was supposed to take away from it, but glad to be done.

Have a mentioned how much fun Sudoku is? I recommend it highly.

Next book up: This will either be American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater by Calvin Trillin or The Sweetheart Season by Karen Joy Fowler. I have both of these books on hold and need to stop by the library to pick them up. (After my experience with The Wedding, I decided to reward myself with a couple of tried and true authors.)

2005: Year End Review

2005 was the year of the chin-up courtesy of Monkey Bar Gym. It was my first official chin-up (in elementary school I did nothing but hang from the bar--that was the extent of my skills), and I still only have one. No matter where we were, if we were within shouting distance of a playground, I'd show the chin-up to whomever would pay attention. The playground chin-up craze extended briefly to Jim (who has many chin-ups), who was once at a park doing some and overheard a nearby six-year-old complain loudly, "Man! Now we can't use the monkey bars!" Monkey Bar is owned by Jon Hinds, son of Bobby Hinds (Madison's strongest 60+ year-old-man), and Bobby Hinds owns Lifeline USA, and if you buy a jump rope from them, you also get a handy instructional book.

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary this year by dining at L'Etoile, which was founded by Odessa Piper, who is one of Alice Waters's (owner of Chez Panisse) prodigees. (If that sentence didn't make any sense to you, you might want to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) The menu proudly featured the farmers' names along with the descriptions of each selection, and every Saturday morning at the farmer's market, I'd always see the L'Etoile red wagon stocking up at the various farmers' stands. If you can't make it to the Madison farmer's market or your local one, a couple market-friendly cookbooks are Deborah Madison's Local Flavors and Therese Allen's Wisconsin's Hometown Flavors.

Jim and I learned a valuable lesson this year: never move. The struggles and sheer pain World Moving Services put us through while we tried to move back to Cali after a 3-year stay in Wisconsin were horrendous. (It could have been way worse: they didn't end up with our stuff and we ended up getting our deposit refunded.) The good news is that we did finally get to use all the great camping gear we received as wedding presents. We learned it is way too hot in early August to camp in central Nebraska (and the bugs there are giant and abundant in number), that camping in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City isn't as crazy as it sounds, and that the State of California is just lucky I'd seen Lake Tahoe before because otherwise I could've driven off windy I-80 when I saw it this time, the view was so amazing. KOA (my kind of camping--a flush toilet, showers, your car nearby, and an adorable retired couple who make pancakes in the morning? What's not to like?) publishes a yearly book with all their campsites listed and helpful information and maps (it's also available online).

In the spirit of the Bionic Man and former Cubs third-baseman Ron Santo, my dad had his right leg amputated below the knee and got a fancy new leg (well, I believe the super-fancy permanent one might still be in the works, but it's still pretty damn cool). That may seem like a sad thing to some people, but considering he originally thought the leg might have to go in the 1980s and he's more mobile now than he probably has been for quite a while, it's not a bad thing at all. In honor of my dad, I'd recommend picking up a Kinky Friedman mystery novel (even Bill Clinton loves them) and soaking in some Texas culture.

And hooray for all the new babies! They include Ian, Lydia, a whole bunch of them in Wisconsin (Christie's son and Patty's twins, to name a few), and my newest nephew, Luke Carlos. Even though my sister rejected our name ideas (Wild Bill and Binomial, among others--okay, so maybe we had been drinking a few margaritas when we came up with those), we highly approve of Luke Carlos. Given that babies aren't very good readers, I don't really have any book recommendations here, though they do very much enjoy being read to.

That's it for 2005. I hope 2006 is full of love, joy, and lots of good books for everyone.

The Jane Austen Book Club (Karen Joy Fowler)

I would never have picked up this book unless I had heard a couple reviewers/fans (mostly on NPR, I think) say that it wasn't actually about Jane Austen. Not that I have anything against Jane Austen. I mean, I hardly know her. I haven't read any of her books, which given my two degrees in English may be alarming news to some.

But to say this book isn't about Jane Austen is a disservice to the writer, Karen Joy Fowler. While The Jane Austen Book Club is about the main characters who meet each week to discuss Austen, you also learn a whole lot about Austen through the course of the novel (there's a lot of research and work going on behind the scenes that is presented seamlessly in the book--that's a sign of a great author). This makes Austen accessible to those who haven't read her books.

This book is quiety wonderful. The writing isn't show-offy, gimmicky, or in love with itself. And for those who love Austen, this book will have yet another rich layer that should make it an even more wonderful read.

At the end of the book, there are a few nonfiction sections such as "Reader's Guide" that gives brief plot synopsis and "The Response" that gives the criticism both from Austen's family and friends and writers up to present time. I did skim much of this part, but that could be because I was at the train station waiting for the light rail to take me home and I was tired and cranky because I had strained a back/shoulder muscle that morning at the gym and had been sore all day. But a few gems from this section are Mark Twain's comment ("Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.") and a 1940 MGM advertisement for the movie Pride and Prejudice ("Five charming sisters on the gayest, merriest manhunt that ever snared a bewildered bachelor! Girls! Take a lesson from these husband hunters!") I also very much enjoyed the "Discussion Questions" at the very end of the book written from the point-of-views of the main characters.

I'm probably not going to pick up any Jane Austen very soon. For me, that kind of reading is not conducive to reading on the train. But I did see her novels at the library last night, and I paused for just a moment near them, so who knows.

Next book up: The Wedding by Imraan Coovadia

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke), by Guest Reviewer Jim

Your basic 800-page book falls into one of three categories. First are the ones that seem interesting in theory, but after it becomes clear around page 10 that no one has a gun to your head and you don’t have the first clue what the hell’s going on, can be safely set aside (see Finnegans Wake) (or actually, since this is Book Reviews for Real People, maybe don’t). Second are the ones that you’ve always heard are good, pick up, and turn out to love, even if as a tip it helps to skim the chapters where Russian aristocrats argue endlessly over “the peasant question” (see Anna Karenina). Third are the ones that when you’re done you actually wish were longer.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell falls into the third category. It’s no exaggeration to say that upon reaching page 782 I seriously considered flipping back to page 1 and reading it straight through again. It’s the kind of book that, to paraphrase one of the blurbs on the back, isn’t read so much as lived in. I’m not sure it’s to everyone’s taste (Maria glanced at it and shortly handed it back to me), but I for one thought it was so compelling and singular and terrifically well done that a Guest Review was in order.

It takes place in Britain in the early nineteenth century, partly during the Napoleonic Wars, in a world where magic was a formerly commonplace phenomenon. The tradition is now carried only by magicians who do no magic--theorists who “read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic,” “gentleman-magicians, which is to say that they never harmed any one by magic--nor done any one the slightest good.” Magic has the reputation of being a tedious and not particularly useful thing for a person to do.

Enter Mr. Norrell, a timid, fussy late-middle-aged man who has spent half his life tracking down every magic book he can find and the other half shut up in his library reading them, and has taught himself how to actually do magic. After some scuffling with the local magician society he moves to London to pursue his ultimate goal, bringing the magician profession back into respectability, by entering high society and assisting in the war. He’s not very successful at this at first (social skills are not Mr. Norrell’s strong suit), but does ultimately achieve renown as the Foremost Magician of the Age (mainly by default). Eventually a younger man, Jonathan Strange, having followed Norrell’s magic along with everyone else in Britain, takes an interest in magic, discovers he has an aptitude for it, and manages to convince Norrell to take him on as a student.

This much is covered on the jacket copy, and it would be unfair (not to mention impossible) to continue any sort of synopsis, but suffice to say much satisfying trouble ensues, particularly involving a cheerfully insane fairy-creature referred to only as “the gentleman with the thistle-down hair” and the semi-legendary originator of English magic, John Uskglass, better known as the Raven King.

The really marvelous things about the book are how absolutely convincing its world and characters are. Although this is never specified, the impression I had is that the book was supposedly “written” toward the end of the eighteenth century, and it has just enough anachronistic spelling (“chuse” for “choose,” “sopha” for “sofa”) to give the flavor of the time and place without being obtrusive. Footnotes scattered throughout offer, among other things, citations of books later written by some characters about other characters and amusing little side-stories about terms or incidents mentioned in passing in dialogue, which are generally delightfully weird and often hilarious. (At one point a character mentions a spell called “the Unrobed Ladies.” The footnote begins “Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a good deal less exciting than it sounded.” Heh.) It’s full of the dust and smells of the place, and seamlessly mixes imagination with history (the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron feature as prominent characters, and even mad King George III makes an appearance); it’s not a page-turner of the Harry Potter variety, but the voice is always compelling and the wit dryly British in the best possible way. Particularly striking are the descriptions of the magic when it happens, which tends to be unobtrusive and difficult to spot but is often accompanied by odd sensations--like, to give one example that for some reason leaps to mind, “it was as if the shadows had all turned and faced another way.”

I didn’t end up going back to page 1 just yet--it is a library book, after all--but I suspect this will be another of those ones I find myself coming back to every year or two (see Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, and Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), and as far as I'm concerned can't be recommended enough.

Lipstick Jihad (Azadeh Moaveni)

I'm not a big fan of the news (unless it's fake news from The Daily Show or The Onion). Mostly it makes me sad or depressed or laugh in a sort of hysterical way that helps me get through the current administration (a dear-God-what-have-they-done-now sort of thing). Also I find the media generally presents events in the abstract ("Iran offers U.S. a deal"), which makes me visualize Iran as an entity instead of the thinking about the individual people who live inside the country. Whenever things get more personal and human in a news story, I have a better understanding of the situation and that's when I want to pay attention.

In Lipstick Jihad, Azadeh Moaveni, who is Iranian-American, tells her own story of returning to Tehran in 2000 as an American journalist (she was the first American journalist based there, a feat she was able to achieve because she was also Iranian). While she still has a lot of family in Tehran, she grew up in Palo Alto, California, as an Iranian exile. At first she believes cultural assimilation will take little time, but once she realizes how the complexity and craziness of everyday life in Iran conflict with her own sense of American personal freedom, she knows this will not be the case.

To Americans, there seems like there's a whole lot wrong with everyday life in Iran. There's the Basij, the morality police, made up of 15-year-olds from the poorest areas of Iran with built-up anger and aggression, and oh, by the way, they're also armed. If your veil is a few inches too far back on your head, if they can smell alcohol on your breath, if you're standing too close to a member of the opposite sex in public, then the Basij will stop you and interrogate you, hold you for hours if they want, and even possibly beat you. There's also the dog kidnappers (the clerics running the government especially hated miniature poodles, they considered them "bourgeouis lapdogs") who will snatch your dog and try to resell it at a black market pet sale for ransom. And there's a show on TV where an ayatollah answers various "dilemmas of faith and extenuating circumstances" such as if "Islamic law would forgive unmarried men and women for huddling together for warmth, if they were in sub-zero temperatures and threatened with frostbite or worse."

And most Iranians would agree that there is a whole lot wrong with present-day Iran. But, as Moaveni points out, amidst the craziness, there is a lot change and progress. No longer do women have to wear the black, formless cloak and veil. There are more form-fitting ones in all colors. Iranian youth develop their personal lives via mobile phones and the Internet, using public holidays and celebrations to discretely pass their phone numbers to members of the opposite sex. Still, in this generation raised on segregated gender, they don't know how to act around the opposite sex, and the religious goverment that banned all things remotely sexual has accidentally created a society that constantly talks about sex.

I think this book is an especially relatable take on the current Iranian situation because Moaveni is Iranian-American and a journalist. There is a very interesting moment when she is in New York as part of the Iranian president's press corp and has to decide whether to wear the veil. And after reading the book, Iran isn't any less of a mess of contradictions to me (in fact, it's even more so now), but I have a better sense of the people in the country who have to live through these contradictions every day.

Other good books: These are both books I haven't read, but I still think they're worth mentioning given the sources and praise for both of them. My friend Ashley read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and couldn't say enough good things about it. And a coworker of mine is currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, which, like The Kite Runner, received tons of good press when it came out.

Next book up: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

The Effect of Living Backwards (Heidi Julavits)

I first heard of Heidi Julavits when I read her short story "Marry the One Who Gets There First" in Best American Short Stories 1999. It was my favorite story in the volume because it was so different from the others (e.g., one moment I remember from the story is when a character bakes shredded pieces of love letters into the wedding cake--love letters written by the groom that were NOT for the bride).

In The Effect of Living Backwards, the story takes place after the "Big Terrible" (otherwise known as 9/11) and is crazy over-the-top, which I think you would need to make it be if your book is focused on a plane hijacking after the Big Terrible and you want much of it to be funny. It follows two sisters (raised by an entomologist father and a population control activist mother) and their very complicated lives through a very complicated plot. The book reminds me of George Saunders' work, where he puts ordinary people in surreal circumstances or pushes the edge of reality. Julavits' writing is great and the story is very funny at times, but there are moments where things got a little too psychological for me (the book is very, very psychological).

There are many great moments in the book, and while my immediate reaction once I finished reading was a little closer to "okay" than "wow," I'm now feeling like it is definitely worth the read.

Other good books: George Saunders' work is great. I don't read very many short stories anymore, but I'd read his any day. People talk with ghosts, work in fake Civil War lands, and it's all very funny.

Next book up: Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in American and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

Books: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I thought I'd offer up some books that would make excellent Christmas presents for those you love.

McSweeney's
McSweeney's is a publisher run by my nemesis Dave Eggers. (Dave Eggers is my nemesis in the way every good nemesis should be: he's a published author, owns his own press, and many amazing nonprofits for kids and teenagers, and he apparently is very nice.) McSweeneys is like an old-fashioned candy store, full of amazing, one-of-a-kind finds. There's the Collins Library, an imprint which revives lost books such as English as She Is Spoke, an English guidebook written by two Portugeuse men in the 1800s who didn't know English (they had a Portugeuse to French dictionary and French to English dictionary). Mark Twain said of the book "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."

There is also How to Dress for Every Occasion by The Pope (a.k.a. Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket fame), Dear New Girl Whatever Your Name Is (a collection of student-passed notes confiscated by a substitute teacher who then sent them on to artists who illustrated and recreated them), and many more.

One caveat! Because these books are so one of a kind, they have limited print runs and when they're gone, they're gone (such as the first edition of Nick Hornby's Songbook that came with a fabulous CD and the falsified children's science book Giraffes? Giraffes! that stated giraffes were aliens from outerspace. Note that some used copies are still available through some Internet booksellers.)

McSweeney's also publishes the journal McSweeney's and The Believer, both available as a subscription.

How Stuff Works

Ever wonder how glow sticks work? Ballpoint pens? Rocket engines? Chain saws? Blimps? Caffeine? Well apparently you're not the only one. How Stuff Works started as a very popular Web site, so popular they started publishing books. There's How Stuff Works, More How Stuff Works, and a couple more offshoots. All have easy to read formats, are well-illustrated, and make you smarter!

Edward Tufte

Sometimes known as the man who loaths Powerpoint, Edward Tufte is a statistician turned artist, who does an amazing job combining art and science. He often tours the country with a one-day seminar on presenting information in graphic form, and if you can convince your employer that that topic somehow fits into your job description, you should definitely attend. Luckily Tufte has put his ideas into some beautiful books that are so stunning you don't want to get them dirty. In them he talks about the great books and illustrations of Newton, Galileo, and, among other things, a notorious chart used in John Gotti's trial. His books are available via his Web site, where you can also find a lot of other interesting information.

Books by People I Know

If you can't give a shout out to your friends who are published authors on your book review blog, then I don't know where else you can:

Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakapoulos
The Bright Forever by Lee Martin
The Last Day of the War by Judith Miller

Crafty Books

For all knitters, amateur and advanced, Stitch 'n Bitch is the best how-to guide out there. Debbie Stoller (Editor of BUST magazine, another great gift idea) talks stitches in plain English with great, helpful illustrations. Even after I had been knitting for over 4 years, this book finally made sense of gauges, blocking, and sewing pieces together.

Cooking

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is the best cookbook I own, and it's completely applicable to nonvegetarians. In it Deborah Madison gives not only recipes but cooking techniques and skills. I use this book for my most basic recipes including my standard tomato sauce, roasted almonds, pizza dough, blueberry muffins, and some cardamom cookies that are super yummy around Christmastime.

Everything Bad Is Good for You (Steven Johnson)

Two words: Monkey Olympics. That's what the low end of reality TV (with Fox as the ringmaster) has become in recent years. Remember Lorenzo Lamas's laser pointer on Are You Hot? The "couples" on Married by America? And that horrifying game show The Chamber that involved extreme heat or cold that the contestant had to deal with while trying to answer trivia questions?

I've watched a lot of TV in my life, definitely enough to call myself an expert. I grew up on 1980s' game shows (Tic Tac Dough, Bumper Stumpers, Card Sharks) and know most of the words to the theme songs to Charles in Charge, The Facts of Life, and Perfect Strangers. After countless seasons I've finally shook the habit of The Real World, but I still watch a lot of fluff (while I could use the excuses of cultural experiences in The Amazing Race and the craftmanship of the designers in Project Runway, I really don't think there is any such excuse for our series recording of America's Next Top Model).

I used to make excuses for what I watched (especially around the "I don't own a TV" people), but I don't feel the need to offer any arguments any more. And when I saw Johnson's book and read on the jacket sleeve that it would tell me how watching The Apprentice is making me smarter, I thought I'd give it a read. In Everything Bad Is Good for You, Steven Johnson argues that the complexity of today's popular culture creates more participatory situations for our brains. The old TV model was based on episodes in bubbles, no backstory, no foreshadowing, and nothing that might be considered offensive (though with hindsight much of it does seem slightly offensive. Benson as a servant? Really? The executives thought that was a good idea?). Today's popular TV shows have multistranded plots that usually involve heavy viewer participation (i.e., 24, Lost, any show where if you step in midseason you're probably not going to know what's going on). My only real problem with Johnson's argument is that I find him a little too pleased with how great TV is today: he says that even the crap TV has improved, but I'm really wondering if he's seen some of the stuff on these days (see "Monkey Olympics" above).

Besides TV, Johnson talks about films (Finding Nemo gets mentioned most of all--apparently one of the author's sons was 4 years old during the writing of this book), the Internet, and has a heavy focus on video games. Seeing as I'm a girl and, despite a brief fling with Sonic the Hedgehog on a friend's Sega, that I had the original Nintendo only, my gaming skills do not go beyond Dr. Mario--I couldn't beat Super Mario Bros 3 and that's where it ended (damn that level 8 with your flashlight view!). I found the video game discussion interesting, but I'm sure that those of you who played Zelda for hours on end will find it more so.

Other good books: Johnson's book is an interesting read and will definitely give you something to think about, but I found The Math Instinct more fun and engaging (the two books both talk about intelligence and how different kinds of intelligence appear in real life and the classroom).

Next book up: The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits

Banishing Verona (Margot Livesey)

I first heard of Margot Livesey at the Wisconsin Book Festival a few years ago, and I very much enjoyed hearing her read there. Livesey writes what have sometimes been called "literary mysteries," and I'd definitely say that is the case with Eva Moves the Furniture, the first book I read of hers, which I liked, definitely enough to go and read more of her books. As for the others I've read, literary? Very much so. Mysteries? I'm not so sure. I've read Criminals (all right), The Missing World (pretty good), and now Banishing Verona, which I have to admit is probably the one I like least of them all. In this book, her latest, there is still the very distinct Margot Livesey voice, which can be a bit too literary for me at times. But the story (house painter and seven-months-pregnant lady have a mysterious brief encounter and then become intertwined throughout the book without ever really seeing each other again until the end) didn't really work for me. Maybe it was too psychological or too literary, I don't know.

I know there are many things I'd rather talk about than Banishing Verona. Like how today, after 4+ years cohabitating or being married, Jim and I went and picked out our first ever Christmas tree (we'd always traveled to the relatives for Christmas, but this year, they're coming to us). It took three tree lots and two tree stands, but we found the perfect one, took it home, and decorated it. The cat's having a grand time drinking tree water to her heart's content, and the tree sure smells good.

Good books: I'd recommend both Eva Moves the Furniture and The Missing World over this one. The first one features ghosts (Scottish ghosts, nonetheless) and in the second one, not only does a main character have a major case of amnesia (we're talking years missing), she's in danger too.

Next book up: Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson