Paging Books

The Bookman's Wake

2006-11-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

I'm actually posting about a book that I haven't read--I got an audiobook of John Dunning's The Bookman's Wake to listen to in the car when I was going to take a long trip. I have now read most of the other books in the series, because I liked Wake so much. The reading, by the way, was OK--I didn't like how the male reader did the female character's voices.

It's hard to find a book-themed mystery series that isn't a "cozy." The Bookman series, with its detective Cliff Janeway, accomplishes the unusual--a hard-boiled, book-themed series. Janeway is a former homicide cop who leaves the force to set up shop as a used-book dealer. The series (and Bookman's Wake in particular) includes some fascinating detail about publishing quirks and oddities, and some insights on how the visual aspect of books influence our reading of them. This is the sort of thing I've had to deal with in my professional work with regard to early modern texts, but it's interesting to see it discussed in modern printing.

Dunning leaves some loose ends in the early books, and I'd like to see them addressed at some point in the series. The settings are well done, particularly Wake, which takes place in Seattle, and Dunning's sense of place adds to the artistry of the series nicely. If you like books, and hard-boiled, first-person detective novels, try the Bookman series.

What to do with leftover turkey? How about Mexican-inspired food? If you don't have turkey, roasted deli chicken will work.

1 cup chopped onions
2 cups shredded cooked turkey
8 flour tortillas, torn into quarters
1 big can red or green enchillada sauce
1 lb cheddar cheese
1/2-3/4 cup plain yogurt or sour cream

Layer in a 9 x 13 casserole. Pour enough enchillada sauce in the bottom to cover the pan, then place half of the tortilla quarters over it. Layer half of the turkey, half of the onions, and spread half of the yogurt over the top. sprinkle half of the cheese over the casserole. Repeat the layers: sauce, tortillas, turkey, onion, yogurt, cheese. Finish by topping with the last of the enchillada sauce. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes; let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Carr: The Alienist

2006-10-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

I promised that I'd give Caleb Carr a fair shake and tell you about one of his better books after *The Italian Secretary* got such a poor review. Mr. Carr's sales wouldn't be affected in any statistically important way if every single one of you went out and bought The Alienist (he's a pretty regular player on the bestseller lists), but I'll feel less guilty if I give him some praise.

The Alienist is set in late nineteenth-century New York City. The novel is in first person, told by Archie Moore, the journalist sidekick of the detective and title character, Lazlo Kreizler. Kreizler is a psychologist (the modern term for a profession then called "alienist" because mentally ill patients were seen as "alienated"), called in by Theodore Roosevelt, the Commissioner of Police, to solve a series of murders. Since the killer has been focusing on cross-dressing prostitutes, the police are not motivated to solve the murders of such unsavory people. The use of psychological tools to "profile" serial killers is now tired stuff in murder mysteries, but Carr makes it fresh again by showing us how an investigative team might have gone about it before such methods were commonplace.

The team consists of an interesting ensemble--Moore himself, Kreizler, two brothers surnamed Isaacson, Moore's friend Sarah (a secretary and one of the first female employees in the police department), and some of Kreizler's former patients now turned household staff. The team is well drawn, for the most part, although the brothers (one a forensic genius with cadavers, another expert at crime scene analysis) are annoying at first.

I would also like to say that Carr deftly plants a red herring that, had it turned out to be the solution, would have given the book a ho-hum "shocker" ending worthy of a mediocre slasher film. I spent most of the book afraid I knew who'd done it, and I'm glad to say that Carr didn't take it that way. It would have made the book much less a painstakingly researched detective procedural than a "BESTSELLER! WITH A SHOCKER ENDING THAT WILL LEAVE YOU GUESSING UNTIL THIS END!" sort of book. This was much more subtle. Kreizler is a neat detective, and I found myself with a mental picture of him that was highly cinematic (actually, I kept picturing Ben Kingsley in *Sneakers* for some reason, even though Kingsley's the villian in that film and it's not a period piece).

Carr still struggles with using "being as" instead of because, but it wasn't quite so egregious in this book. I think the editors did a better job (although it slipped by them a few times). I've got the second book in the series, and I'll let you know when I read it.

I don't really have a recipe that speaks topically to either psychology or serial killing. Actually, that's probably good. This is the best recipe for banana bread ever. The graham cracker crumbs are the key.

1 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 or 3 mashed bananas
1 c. graham cracker crumbs
1/3 c. shortening
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c. chopped walnuts.

Combine dry ingredients.  Mix sugar and shortening, then add eggs, dry ingredients,
bananas and nuts. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake in 350 oven
for 1 hour.

Beowulf: The monsters and the nutjobs

2006-09-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled bookblog to bring you the shocking truth about Beowulf! It's all real! And Michael Crichton wasn't even close!

I know, I know. I should be outraged at the author's perpetuation of some pretty weird flavors of fundamentalism. Truth is, though, I laughed so hard my asthma kicked in and I was actually wheezing. Here are some gems from the essay and my responses:

[Edit--an alert reader just told me that not all browsers are showing the different fonts I used to distinguish the original essay from my comments. I have now italicized the original essay.]

Beowulf liked adventure more than ruling the land. A band of warriors adventured with Beowulf. In those days warriors often vowed loyalty to their lord, or leader, and a group trusted and respected each other and risked their lives for each other. They shared the plunder they gained through victories. Beowulf with his band of warriors fought and killed monster animals.

Beowulf didn't actually go adventuring after he became the king. At no point was did he "like" adventuring in favor of ruling--the two options were not simultaneously available.

The main monster in the story of Beowulf is Grendel. That is capitalized as though it is a proper name like Fido or Black Beauty.

The manuscript doesn't capitalize any names, including that of Beowulf.

Later in the story Beowulf killed Grendel’s mother also. He returned to Sweden and was king for fifty mostly peaceful years. He died while once again conquering a monster.

This is the entire discussion of the two later fights. Guess that whole "magic sword" thing was a little inconvenient for our author.

Only one manuscript of the original poem exists. People found it, partly burned, in England about five hundred years after Beowulf lived.

Nope. The manuscript wasn't "found" in the eleventh century, it was written in the eleventh century. There's a difference. The manuscript also didn't get burned until the 18th century. We can be certain about this because a short while before it got singed, a Danish scholar named Thorkelin made a transcript, including bits that are now lost or illegible due to fire. If it was already burned, how come Thorkelin could read it?

Many literature books say that it is fiction, one of the earliest examples we have of an English novel.

I want to see the "literature book" that calls a 3000-line poem from the Middle Ages a "novel."

But if someone were writing fiction, he would not name so many real people; he would invent characters as novelists do. And if someone wrote it long after the events, he would not know all those real people who lived in Beowulf’s time.

Novelists don't name real people? Oh, man--guys, this is terrible. I don't know how we're gonna break this to Bernard Cornwell.

And if someone wrote it long after the events, he would not know all those real people who lived in Beowulf’s time.

Er, he read the many, many lists of geneology or regnal lists (names of kings) that still survive in medieval manuscripts? Just a thought.

But the basic story is historically true, and the animals are zoologically real. They are not called trolls or other fantasy names.

This is true! They're not called trolls once in the Old English! Of course, that's because "troll" is an Old Norse word, and not an Old English one. "Troll" doesn't enter the English language until the nineteenth century (yeah, you read that right--contemporary with Brahm's lullaby and the American Civil War). The poem doesn't call Grendel a flamenco dancer, either, but we can't claim, on that basis alone, that he didn't have rhythm.

No English kings or events are mentioned. This shows that the poem was written before the Saxons, Geats, and other tribes migrated to England.

Wait. She said that Beowulf was born in 495. The migrations happened in 450-500. How'd they write about him before he was born? And how come they could write in Old English when it didn't exist yet?

At least this is a break from the folks who claim Beowulf is a Tudor forgery. . . .

Carr: The Italian Secretary

2006-09-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

Oops! It's been a month. I have been getting reading done, but, due to technical difficulties at work, haven't had much chance to blog when I'm home. Things were resolved last week, so with luck I'll be a little more frequent.

Today's post is about a book I didn't really like. Yeah, I didn't mean to do negative reviews, and I'll still mostly focus on recommendations. Caleb Carr's The Italian Secretary, however, is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which means some readers might enjoy it anyway, so I'll go ahead.

The thing to know about Carr's book is that it originated in a request to contribute a short story to an anthology of Sherlock Homes pastiches centering on ghost stories. Yeah, you read that right. Carr's contribution was too long, but the publishers liked it so they put it out as a novel. It does, in fact, read more like a long story. Holmes and Watson get called up to Edinburgh to investigate two murders in Holyrood House that resemble the ancient slaying of Mary, Queen of Scot's music secretary, David Rizzio. They spend the train ride in exposition and back-story, have a mildly interesting interlude, and arrive in Edinburgh. When Watson wakes up the next morning, Holmes has solved the case. This lack of any development in the mystery is OK for a short story, annoying in a novel. True, several more chapters ensue in which our heroes try to trap the villain, etc., but as a mystery this isn't terrifically successful.

Holmes has suddenly developed a belief in ghosts, in direct opposition to his comments in Conan Doyle's original stories (the Canon, for those of you not familiar with the term), but that's not Carr's fault since it's the premise of the original collection. I think this could have been successfully cut back to a short story, rather than spun into a novella. Still, it's Holmes and if you're like me and you'll read just about anything with that character, it's probably worth picking up in a used bookstore.

Carr also has a bad habit of using "being as" instead of "because" or just "as." I will be honest with you all and admit that this is a pet peeve of mine. It's annoying in vapid teenagers. It's pretty poor in published novels, which ought to employ the fewest words possible. It's inexcusable in a book written in the first person before "being as" entered the language as a common speech tick. Shame on you, Carroll and Graf. This is something your editors should have caught.

Carr's own series of late nineteenth-century mysteries are far superior. He's a better writer than this; the premise was just too silly. I'll tell you about a good book of his next time.

The Brits can put curry in anything. I heartily approve. Here's my own suggestion for how your life can be improved through curry paste:

My Mom's Beer Cheese Soup

<>½ stick butter (4 Tbsp)
4 Tbsp flour
¼ - ½ cup finely diced onion
1/8 – ¼ tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
1 can (aprox. 2 cups) chicken stock
1 to 1½ cans beer
½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup finely dices carrots (optional)
¼ cup finely dices celery (optional)
¾ - 1 lb. shredded (or hunked) cheese (sharp cheddar or Velveeta)
½ cup (or so) broccoli floweret’s, chopped
2 – 3 slices bacon, crumbled
Shredded cheddar cheese
Green onion, chopped <>

Sauté onions in butter. Add flour, salt, pepper and dry mustard. Stir until bubbly. Gradually add chicken stock, beer and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add carrots and celery, if desired. Simmer 5 – 10 minutes until vegetables are tender. Add cheese, stirring constantly until melted. Add broccoli and simmer until just barely tender (2 - 4 minutes?). Garnish with sprinkle of bacon, shredded cheese and green onion (optional, of course). Serve with bread sticks or garlic bread. Enjoy!

Mom Notes: I prefer the flavor of sharp cheddar, but Velveeta melts a little smoother. If you use Velveeta,reduce or eliminate the salt added to your white sauce. I add enough cheese to make the soup a pretty light yellow color. Use more or less as you like. Better flavored beer makes better soup and you get to drink the 4½ cans left over so get a decent one.

My note: Try adding 1 tsp of curry paste when you add the dry mustard. It gives the soup a very nice flavor--not too overpowering. The only downside is that it makes the soup a bright orangey-yellow color that makes it look like you're using some weird preservative.

King: The Art of Detection

2006-08-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Er, long time no post. I guess I should just quit apologizing. We've moved, and I'm now blogging from my new home in the mountain south! We love it here so far.

I'm in the middle of several books, and am therefore not finishing any of them quickly. I may also have to resort to posting less-than-positive reviews. I suppose it was inevitable that I would have to quit only posting about books I really liked.

I did enjoy the Art of Detection. I've read King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, and like them (except for the most recent, which is why I didn't blog about it). I hadn't read any of the Martinelli books before this one, and I enjoyed it. Kate Martinelli is fun--a good, solid cop of the sort I like reading about. The bonus for this book is the inclusion of a "mysterious" typescript story that (readers of King's other series know) is written by Sherlock Holmes from the Mary Russell books. It's a mystery-within-a-mystery, and I have a taste for layered texts. The book moves along well, and the secondary characters, including a Sherlock Holmes fan club / re-enactment society is well done. King makes a nod to her real-life friend Leslie Klinger's New Annotate Sherlock Holmes (short stories and novels), a recommendation that I enthusiastically second for anyone who enjoys the Holmes stories.

Who needs to eat more vegetables? Yeah, me, too. I saw Giada making this on the Food network the other day, and tried it out. It's really good:

Tomato Vegetable Casserole

Let me know what you think! And a shout-out to any of my students who found this blog by poking around on my course blogs.

Cornwell: The Last Kingdom

2006-07-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

How did I not know that Bernard Cornwell was writing a series set in Anglo-Saxon England? I'm a biblomaniac and an Anglo-Saxonist, for pity's sake! I happened across the first book in the series, The Last Kingdom, in a bookstore and it was already out in paperback. It's set in Britain during the beginning of the Danes' (aka the Vikings') invasion, told by the first-person narrator Uhtred of Bebbanburg. The Danes sweep through England, capturing the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, and only Wessex remains under control of an Anglo-Saxon king, the man history now calls Alfred the Great.

I've heard of Cornwell's novels before, and one of my officemates had enthusiastically recommended the Sharpe series to me although I haven't gotten to reading them. The Last Kingdom lived up to what I'd heard of Cornwell. Most Americans don't know about King Alfred, and don't know what happened in England in the ninth century, so for many readers this can be read like any other novel, with the same suspense. I know the history already, though, so for me the pleasure of this novel was in the artistry and the choices Cornwell made as an author. It's a little like seeing a familiar play--Hamlet, say--you know what's going to happen, and you're watching to see how it's brought about on the stage. What will they do with the ghost? How will they stage the play-within-a-play?

Cornwell's largest problem may have been trying to write a sympathetic first-person narrator from the time period. Unless you want your book's audience to be limited to devout Catholics, it's difficult to have a historically credible narrator whose belief in the miraculous and reliance on the Church won't turn off the readership. Modern sensibilities don't mix well with ninth-century religion, for the most part. Cornwell manages this by having his fictional narrator be taken in by Danes at the age of 11 and converting to paganism. When the narrator ends up in Wessex, this give him the outsider's perspective on the religious environment that the modern reader shares. Such a tactic isn't new--Michael Crighton made his main character in Eaters of the Dead an Arab--but it works well. In fact, the narrator's disdain for the religious devotion was almost anachronistic and over-critical, but the character is still young and I'm looking for him to develop some idea of the value of literate and monastic culture.

The Danish background also keeps the novel from being oversimplified. The reader likes the Danes at times, although perhaps not enough to be cheering for them. I was curious about how Cornwell would handle some of the well-known incidents from these invasions, such as the interaction between the Danish leaders and King Edmund, and each time he deftly keeps the Danes from becoming unsympathetic. I have a few quibbles with his portrayal of Anglo-Saxon culture--for instance, he has a Danish character state that the Anglo-Saxons believe in father-to-son succession, which doesn't match what I've read about the politics of the day--but on the whole I'm quite pleased with this book and will read the next one soon. Relatively soon, anyway, since we're moving in a few weeks.

As it happens, I was reading from King Alfred's Old English translation of St. Gregory the Great's (Latin) Cura Pastoralis, and I came across the following command:

"Habbað ge sealt on ieow, ond sibbe habbað betweoh iow" 'Have salt within you, and peace among you'

Folks, if that isn't an injunction to drink margaritas, I don't know what is.

Margaritas:
1 slice of lime
margarita salt
1 shot tequila
1 shot triple sec
1/3 cup sweet-and-sour mix
1/2 shot lime juice.

Cut a notch in the lime and insert in on the rim of the glass. Run the lime around the rim so the rim has juice on it. Take the lime off and roll the rim in the salt. Add ice to the glass, the add the rest of the ingredients and stir. Peace be among you.

Off-season eating

2006-06-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't about the dietary needs of NFL players. I've noticed that, like most people, I tend to eat certain foods at certain times of year. Right now, I'm getting lots of pineapple. Pineapple slices with cottage cheese, pineapple chunks on shish kabobs, etc. The weird thing is, I could do this year round. I mostly use canned pineapple anyway, and it's not exactly seasonal in cans.

I have decided to rebel. Join me in breaking the seasonal-eating habit!

Libby's Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Post your suggestions for delicious foods that we don't usually eat in June in the comments section!

Kennedy: Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck

2006-06-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

This book is something of a departure for me; I don't think I've ever read a detailed military history book before. I read quite a lot of history books for my own research, but I don't tend to intersect with military topics and WWII is much later than my research period. Pursuit was recommended by my brother, though, who has always been interested in the Bismarck. So I thought I'd give it a try.

This book details the first voyage of the German battleship Bismarck, which encountered and sank the H.M.S. Hood and then was chased across the Atlantic by a large chunk of the Royal Navy, finally getting bombarded and sunk itself near France. Some of the blurbs on the back cover note that it's a "first-hand" account, which surprised me since it isn't at all in first person. Kennedy was apparently on the H.M.S Zulu, one of the destroyers which chased after the Bismarck, but I had to go digging into the footnotes to find that out. Kennedy himself seems to be an interesting guy; he has been a journalist and producer for the BBC for decades (I assume he's now retired since he's 97). The journalistic sensibility shows in this book; he includes several details from the ships' crews that make the whole thing much more readable than it would be without them. The producer sensibility comes out in the framing of the narrative--it opens with an intelligence officer who gets word of the Bismarck's sailing, then slowing introduces the "major" characters: the admirals and captains of the British and German Navies. The authorial decisions about what to include and how to structure things are effective, and if you think you might like to try reading about some military history, this is probably a very good book to start with.

Kennedy also works hard to keep the Nazi officers and ships from being flat villains, mostly by distancing them from Nazism itself. According to him, the German Navy was not as politically involved in the Facist party as other branches of the armed forces; the German admiral of the fleet gave Hitler the naval salute not the party salute and most of the sailors were indifferent to the positions of the party. He also provides human interest detail from the Bismarck and its crew, and by the end the reader isn't really pulling for the Royal Navy to find and sink her. Like most war narratives that I've heard, the whole operation was a series of a thousand little accidents and decisions that might have altered things: if UB 556 hadn't shot its last torpedo at a convoy earlier, if the Bismarck had fully fuelled when it sailed, if the the Hood and the Prince of Wales had changed positions, things might have been very different.

Kennedy has a striking aversion to the common conjunction, and hard-core adherents to Strunk and White will probably lose patience after a while. He runs sentences on badly, and I have to admit it was distracting for the first half of the book. If you push on, though, the book is a fascinating read. One final caveat--I found a used hardback version from 1974 that had a map of the Atlantic and the routes of the ships on the inside front cover. If you get this book, make sure it has that map printed somewhere you can refer to it often--the book would have been incomprehensible for me without it.

I'm going to have to confess that I haven't cooked much recently. Moving etc. is getting hectic (and we're over a month away from an actual move). I'll go ahead and post this, and put up a recipe separately sometime tomorrow.

Perez-Reverte: Purity of Blood

2006-05-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

As I promised a while back, I have read the second book in the Captain Alatriste series: Arturo Perez-Reverte's Purity of Blood. I enjoyed it very much; it is more evenly paced than the first book.

Alatriste's colleague, don Francisco de Quevedo, asks his help to aid a friend--a nobleman who has heard rumors that the convent in which his daughter is a novitiate is actually a seraglio for the confessor priest. The nobleman and his two sons propose to storm the convent and rescue her, accompanied by de Quevedo, Alatriste, and Inigo Balboa, Alatriste's ward and the first-person narrator of the novel. Things do not go as planned, the Inquisition gets involved (hence the book's title), and the bad guys seem to have the upper hand until--! But you probably know the genre and the fact that the first person narrator is speaking from later in his life makes it clear that things will end well, at least for some of the characters. While not descending into Disnified endings (unlikely from what I've read of Perez-Reverte), this novel stays true to the genre in having things work out for our swashbuckling heroes.

The book moves along faster than the first one, which I felt dragged in the middle. There are still quite a few explanations along the lines of "Such was our glorious Spain in those days, glittering yet corrupt" etc., which are less intrusive than they were in the first novel but I still caught myself skimming over them. However, this novel contains a great "sig-file" quote: "Never trust a man who reads only one book." I almost made it the masthead quote on this blog, and may still do so. And the last scene is letter-perfect--funny, dashing, and enjoyable. Purity of Blood is worth reading just for the last chapter.

If you want something long and meaty, a book to savor as you go, this probably isn't a good buy right now--it's actually quite short. I enjoyed it, and I will keep reading the Alatriste books, but I may end up buying them in paperback. It's hard to justify hardback price for a novella (although I seem to talk myself into it for Robert B. Parker novels).

I would like to take a moment to discuss perception. I have noticed that people generally think that their chicken salad is the best. This is because everyone will make it to his or her own taste: people who like sweet salads use fruit and Miracle Whip, people who like tangy salads use herbs and mayonaisse. I'm firmly in the savory camp myself, and my chicken salad is (suprise!) the best I've ever had.

Chicken Salad:
2 cups shredded rotisserie-cooked chicken (buy it from the deli and use the leftovers in something else)
1 cup finely-diced celery
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 to 3/4 cup mayonaisse (you'll want more if you use low-fat, less if you use regular mayo)
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 tbsp white wine Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup grated parmesan.
2-4 tbsp chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients and serve. This is excellent on toasted bread, but you can also serve it over fresh tomato wedges or in warm pita bread.

So, should I change my masthead, or just put "Never trust a man who reads only one book" in my sig file? Comments?

Fasman: The Geographer's Library

2006-05-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished the novel I've been slowly reading for the last month! I have to say that Jon Fasman's The Geographer's Library deserved a better, more focused reading than I gave it. This is the best "find the mysterious artifacts from the past to figure out whodunnit and why in the present" sorts of mysteries that I've read in a long time. I liked it much better than Lev Grossman's The Codex; I'd place it up with The Rule of Four. It's Fasman's first novel and I will watch eagerly for his next one.

The Geographer's Library has for a protagonist and first-person narrator Paul Tomm, 23 and fresh out of college, working as a journalist for a benevolent and caring boss at a small-town newspaper. Paul enjoys his job, which he drifted into, although he didn't have any desire to work as a reporter. In fact, he had no plans or desires for his post-college life at all, which he says "is what happens to the overachieving but essentially useless children of parents who raised their children to do well on tests but failed to equip them with the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition." A local man, who was a professor at Paul's college, dies mysteriously, and as Paul begins work on his obituary, the man's past and actions seem stranger and stranger. Who was Jaan Puhapaev (I don't know how to do diacritical marks in blogger, sorry), and why are people so concerned that Paul not investigate his death?

Paul is a likeable, although naive, narrator and his voice is enjoyable to read. The stand-out feature of this book, however, are the chapters that intervene between each chapter of Paul's narration, which detail a series of mysterious objects, their histories, and the machinations of a sinister group to acquire them. The chapters conclude with a catalogue entry on each object. Some of these are marvellous short stories by themselves, and these are what I wish I could have read more attentively, rather than stretching them out across a month and three states. I would have enjoyed the book more had I been able to start noticing some of the repeating names and characters in these chapters. One note--if you know Russian, and you pay attention, there's a big clue early about how these chapters will eventually intersect with the book's main plot.

If you like this sort of thriller, then read this book. It was on the 2-for-3 table at Borders, by the way, as was The Know-It-All, so if you get both then you can pick up a third book, too. Sometime in the next few years I'll have to re-read this one--it was that good, and like I said, I'd like to do a reading that gives it justice.

Since many of this book’s interchapters take place in the USSR or in post-Soviet Russia, I think this is a good time to reveal my family’s recipe for borscht. Yes, borscht. No, seriously, I know it has beets, but it’s really good and I want you to try it (Dan and Nathan, this means you). This borscht is superior to anything you’ve had before, and it’s because it (reportedly) is the aristocratic version, which is heavy in meat and tomato rather than consisting mostly of cabbage. My grandmother got the recipe from an acquaintance who fled from Russia during the revolution.

Madame Devornakov’s Borscht

1 tbspn oil
1.5 lbs stew meat
1 cup chopped onion
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 ¼ cup condensed beef broth
1 tsp salt
Pepper to taste
1 can undrained whole beets, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 cup grated carrots (you can get these from the salad bar if you’re pressed for time)
2 cups shredded cabbage (you can buy pre-shredded coleslaw mix or broccoli slaw)

Heat the oil over medium-high heat and brown the meat. Add tomatoes, onion, salt, pepper, the juice from the beets, and beef broth. Reduce heat and simmer, covered. After the meat has simmered for an hour, add the diced beets and shredded carrots. Simmer for another 30 to 60 minutes, then add the cabbage and simmer for a final 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve with gobs of sour cream. This really adds to the flavor, so don’t leave it out.

The end is in sight (we hope)

2006-04-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

Our house is officially on the market, so the worst of the madness is almost over. The semester is about to end, too. All this means that sometime in the next week or so, I'll return to a normal, work-busily-from-9-to-five-or-six schedule, instead of working on the house from 8 AM until 10 PM and getting grading done on top of that. I got a chance to get some reading done today, however, and might manage to post something new before Wednesday, when I leave town for five days.

I would like, however, to wish the manufacturers of pre-pasted wallpaper a 20-hour layover in an airport in Siberia, during which time the only English-language novel they can find to pass the time is Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford.

While you're pining away for new bookblogger posts

2006-04-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

The lighter side of the publishing industry. Look fast before someone sues him for defamation of trademark or something:

Romance Covers redux

We are continuing on in the quest to get our house on the market, but I am reading a novel. Of course, I've been reading it since last month. This is the longest period w/o finishing a book of my life, excluding the first 3 years when I couldn't read yet. Things will calm down here, sometime, maybe.

So coming soon will be a new post and my chicken salad recipe. Cheers, all.

Posting will be erratic

2006-04-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

Er, "more erratic" might be more accurate. The dream job has materialized! I've gotten an offer from a small, liberal-arts college and I intend to sign a contract with them as soon as it gets here in the mail (assume there are no surprises on it, and there shouldn't be).

This is all fabulous, and we're really excited. However, it also means we have to get our house ready to go on the market, sell it, house-shop in the new place (about 7.5 hours away), and move. While this happens, I need to finish up some articles I'm working on and prep new classes. The upshot is that I probably won't be getting much "fun" reading done for the foreseeable. My advice to anyone who checks this blog (hi, slowgirl!) is to sign up for a blogger account and set this blog as one that you'd like to "watch." This way, you'll get an email when I do post and you don't have to keep checking it yourself. I think blogger lets you do this? Anyone who's got more experience, please chime in.

I will still know when comments are posted because I have to clear them. So if anyone wants to post a comment, I will see it right away and can respond to any questions if there are any.

Keep reading--I'll be back to normal in a few months, I hope.

brackman1066

Parker: Sea Change

2006-04-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

First, I need to apologize for the hiatus. I've been in the throes of finding my dream job (keep your fingers crossed; I should hear later this week) and haven't been reading much fiction. Samantha Tippy has been much more dilligent, so everyone who's feeling withdrawal, go check out her site. I'll probably be sporadic for a month or so.

But first, a quick word on the new Parker novel, Sea Change. I've been impressed with Parker's Jesse Stone series, which feature a recovering (or is he?) alcoholic cop from L.A. who takes a job as a police chief in Paradise, MA. Jesse is funny, and interesting, and most impressively, he isn't Spenser (Parker's better-known detective). Spenser, although I enjoy reading about him and although he cooks a lot more than Jesse, is pretty static as a character, while Jesse actually has been developing. I think Parker's decision to write the Jesse Stone's in third person has been sound, because that way he won't have to fight the tendency to have Jesse's narratorial "voice" sound like Spenser, and the rest of the developments have worked out accordingly. Admittedly, Jesse and his ex-wife Jen have had some conversations that sound like Spenser and his girlfriend, Susan, but on the whole they have been kept distinct.

Sea Change features a murder during the big tourist / party season in Paradise, and Jesse has to solve the murder of a woman whose body washes ashore while dealing with the rich socialites who are in town on their yachts for the month. The interactions with the wealthy owners, some of whom are involved in shady dealing, make for fun reading--you know Jesse will get the better of them, and you're just waiting to see how. The plot takes a pretty dark turn, although I think this book is lighter than the last Spenser novel (see my review of School Days below). I do have to say that I'm disappointed in the editing of the book, though. Parker is a cash machine for his publishers, and has been cranking out a few (short) books a year. Given that he's on that kind of schedule, the press really ought to put more people on helping with the editing. There's a scene on p. 179 in which Kelly Cruz, a Florida cop who is helping Jesse, interviews a marina owner:

"Two of most things are better than one, " Kelly Cruz said.
"Absolutely, Detective Kelly Cruz."
"Kelly's my first name."
Bob grinned at her.
"I figured you weren't Irish," he said.

The only way that dialogue makes any sense is if you drop out the "Cruz" at the end of the second sentence. "Absolutely, Detective Kelly" would explain her comment that Kelly was her first name, and "Kelly" is an Irish surname, while "Cruz" isn't. This isn't the only editing flaw in the book, but this one actually takes all the impact out of the exchange between the characters.

Still, if you like Parker but think Spenser has gotten stagnant, try Jesse Stone. It's a fun read if you're willing to forgive the poor editing.

In recipe news: I made up another side dish!

1 bunch asparagus
1 pint radishes
1 cucumber
2 tbspn (?) sour cream
2 tbspn (?) fresh dill, snipped
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp olive oil

Trim the asparagus and put it in a shallow dish. Coat with lemon juice, then olive oil, and cook it on a broiling pan under the broiler for 5-8 min or until cooked to desired consistency. Allow to cool to room temperature. Peel and seed cucumber and cut into 1-inch pieces. Chop radishes into matchstick-sized pieces. Chop asparagus into 1-inch pieces, and combine the vegetables in a salad bowl. Mix together dill and sour cream, and combine with the vegetables (use more or less sour cream mixture depending on how much you like). Serve at room temp.

Of my 4 tasters, 1 didn't think she liked asparagus or dill, and 1 didn't think he liked dill and only sort of tolerated asparagus. The other two of us thought we'd like it. The bowl was empty after dinner, and the two biggest eaters were the two who didn't think they'd like it.

Perez-Reverte: Captain Alatriste

2006-03-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

Following on to the last post, allow me to observe that we usually like books that make us feel smart. We like the mystery novel that we solve just before the detective does (although we don't like solving it too early, or we spend the novel wondering why a detective character we are told is smart has such a bad case of the stupids). We like the book that explains a difficult concept clearly, making us feel good about our ability to comprehend the subject. And we like the books that refer to other books, films, historical events, or cultural phenomena that we recognize, particularly if they're obscure. Hey, who doesn't like to get the trivia answers right?

All this is by way of giving a caveat to my review of Captain Alatriste: I am predisposed to like it because I figured out a big secret of the book before I'd even opened it. The back cover tells us that Alatriste, a Spanish sword-for-hire in seventeenth-century Madrid, is given a commission to rob and frighten two travelers in the city, a commission that is almost immediately emended to include the assassination of the two. Thanks to a really good history class in college, I guessed who the intended victims were before I'd cracked the binding.

That ambush happens about a third of the way in, and after that, the action of the book slows down remarkably. The narrator, Alatriste's young apprentice (for lack of a better term), spends a lot of time foreshadowing future conflicts with other characters and lamenting the passing of Spain's glory. I assume actual Spanish literature from the 17th century is written in this style, although I haven't read any, but it made the pacing uneven. Captain Alatriste is the first in a series of books about the swordfighters and adventurers of Spain at this time, and the parallels to Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers books are overt. Perez-Reverte, who obviously enjoys Dumas, even directly refers to an event in the Three Musketeers at one point, and the book's last scene, an inteview between Alatriste and an oh-so-important statesman, has clear echoes with the final meeting between Richelieu and D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers.

When this book gets back to swashing and buckling, it does so gloriously. I could wish, though, for fewer apostrophes on the narrator's part to Spain, Fate, Fortune, the girl he has a crush on (who is the niece of one of Alatriste's enemies), etc. Captain Alatriste wasn't released in an English translation until last December; the second book in the series came out a month later. I'll pick it up sometime this month and report back to you all on whether or not it speeds things along any.

For the recipe of the week, I'm going to refer back to one I already posted: Rachael Ray's Veal Ragu. Ground veal is not in my budget most of the time, so I have modified this by using a pound of sausage (I used plain old breakfast sausage; you could use Italian sausage if you want--the kind that comes in the plastic tube). I omitted the olive oil--she browns meat in oil a lot, and it certainly speeds up the process. I don't want the extra fat so I omit it, although I then can't usually make the meal in 30 minutes. I have to say I liked this even better with the sausage than with the veal, and it's certainly cheaper and easier to find.

Got a comment about Perez-Reverte? The comments section has been deafeningly silent recently. . . .

Jacobs: The Know-It-All

2006-02-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

I picked up A.J. Jacobs's non-fiction book The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World because I saw that it was about a guy who reads all the way through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and I thought that sounded like a really fabulously fun thing to do. I mean, I used to love flipping through my parents' encyclopedias--so much so that it usually took me about 45 minutes to look anything up because I'd get so distracted reading other stuff. Apparently, this is not a universal reaction, because a large part of his book consists of the sceptical or scornful reactions he gets from the people around him.

As the subtitle implies, part of what Jacobs is concerned with is what makes a person "smart"--he acknowledges that reading the encyclopedia won't do it, but what does? Mensa membership? Skill at crosswords? The ability to impress his wife? Jacobs portrays himself, humorously, as trying way too hard to impress people with his facts in his own insecurity over his intelligence. A lot of people in this book have the same insecurity, most particularly Jacob's wife's brother Eric, who comes across as so egotistical, bombastic, and just plain mean that I wonder if Jacobs's in-laws still speak to him. Even though Eric has a sort of OK moment at the end, he's still the closest thing to a villian in the book. Eric and A.J. show what strike me as the two opposite poles of being insecure--A.J. tries too hard to show that he's smart by spouting facts, and Eric just belittles everyone to prove the same thing to himself. In a way, this isn't just a book about what it means to be smart, but a look at how people deal with insecurities. I think A.J. has come better to terms with not just being smart, but with feeling confident about himself by the end of the book.

After the introductory chapter, each one deals with a letter of the alphabet, and A.J. tells us about his life and his reading as he gives us some of the choice facts from each of that letter's Britannica entries. This makes this book a great volume of fun trivia, too. If you like non-fiction, trivia, or reference works, this is a good one to pick up.

Speaking of a little of everything, here's a really fabulous soup (or, rather, "stoup") from Rachael Ray: Chicken, Chorizo, and Tortilla Stoup. It got thumbs-ups from the gang around here--it's very tasty, and melting the cheese over the top in the broiler adds a lot of texture to the soup.

So what's the longest reference work you've ever read? I once made my way through the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, which was a treat to read. If you've never read a reference work, which one would you like to read? Drop us a comment and let us know!

Laura Resnick: Disappearing Nightly

2006-02-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

I picked up a copy of Disappearing Nightly because I flipped it open in the bookstore and the narrator's voice reminded me of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum (the One for the Money series), an opinion that I think is pretty well borne out by the rest of the book. In fact, next time Stephanie goes to New York, she ought to go shopping with Esther--Evanovich's series has taken a short spin through the realm of urban fantasty, after all, so they can probably share stories at the Sephora counter about maniacal magic users they've known, and the hardships of falling for a cop.

Disappearing Nightly, as its title suggests, has a struggling actress, Esther Diamond, as its heroine and narrator. It seems that the assistants to various stage magicians are actually disappearing during the "vanishing acts." Esther was the understudy to one of them, and her turn in the magician's magic box is next, so she has to figure out why the assistants are disappearing and what's happening to them. Fortunately she has the help of a 500-year magician named Max Zadoc as well as other enjoyable side characters such as a millionare Texan, an accountant, and four drag queens. This quirky cast spends most of its time trying to solve the case, without attracting the notice of Detective Lopez, the cop in charge of the first disappearance and Esther's love intrest. Lopez's behavior towards her when she's a suspect raised my eyebrows a bit, but the book never claimed to be a police procedural and his character was likeable enough. As in Evanovitch's series, the best parts were the dialogues between Esther and Lopez, particularly when he's also on the phone with his mother.

The book was lightweight--the mystery plot isn't overly taxing and the four drag-queen characters seemed particularly to replicate each other--but I enjoyed it. Apparently a whole series of books, called Manhattan Magic, is planned for these characters. If the location is important enough to feature in the series title, I'd like to see Resnick do more with it. This book could have happened in Vegas, L.A., Chicago, London, or Vancouver with absolutely no violence to the plot, since most of the action takes place indoors in fictional locations. That's OK for this first outing, but I'd like to see the future books develop a stronger sense of place. If you think Stephanie Plum is fun, and you like fantasy fiction, though, you might want to pick this one up.

Jumping to the recipe for this post: I will now reveal my super-duper burger recipe because it's quick, I actually made it up myself, and I don't think I've posted it already (I'd better start keeping a list, or I am going to repeat a recipe).

1 lb ground beef
1 handful crumbled feta cheese
2 chopped green onions
Lowry's seasoning salt, to taste (1 tsp to start)
1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce.

combine ingredients, mixing as little as possible so the meat doesn't become tough. Form into 4 patties and broil, 4-5 minutes a side for medium burgers. You can also fry these, grill them outdoors, or if you have one of those fancy grill pans, use it. I think to have the full experience, you should have some dill relish on them, as well as ketchup and mustard. My husband hates dill relish and mustard, so he disagrees.

Hey, anyone have a grill pan? I'm thinking about getting one since Rachael Ray calls for it a lot. Drop me a comment on that, burgers, or the book and let me know what you think!

An Open Letter to the Readers of A Million Little Pieces

2006-02-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

So last September, Oprah said that she’d be featuring a book about recovering from drug addiction on an upcoming episode of her book club. You like Oprah, and her book club—you always make sure to TiVO those episodes, no matter what Joe in your office says about her. You know, Joe, the guy who framed his MBA from High-Priced U in silver-inlaid mahogany and burgundy leather to hang it up in his cubicle (although you’ve noticed that all he ever has to say about his alma mater is how great the basketball program is). Joe makes a point to clip Doonesbury and show it to you every time it makes fun of Oprah and her book club, but you like the books—you’d never have read some of them if she hadn’t recommended them, and although Anna Karenina was tough going and kind of a downer, you’re glad you finished it. You ordered James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces from Amazon, and when it came, you read it right through.

It was amazing. This guy talked about what it’s like to be addicted, and the events in his life that led up to his substance abuse problems. You thought this book really showed how people can help themselves, and even though you’ve never had anything that awful happen to you, you still felt inspired by it. It’s important to read books that make us realize that we’ve been lucky, make us look around at what we take for granted, and you gave copies to your aunt and your mother-in-law for Christmas. You talked about it with your officemates. This was one of those books that just stayed with you after you read it, a book that mattered to you.

And now, you find out it wasn’t true.

Joe has been sending you copies of all the news stories with titles along the lines of “A Million Little Lies/Problems/Questions/Deceptions” with messages like “Why on earth do you read this trash anyway?” like it’s your fault the author was lying. He’s laughing at you, like you suspect Frey was laughing at everyone the whole time they were buying his book. You’re even hearing about it from your friends who know you read the book and liked it. You wish you hadn’t given it to your mother-in-law. You wish you’d never heard of it.

Next day you’ve got another message about it, from a guy named Meyers in Washington state who says he’s putting together a lawsuit against Frey for the cost of the book and for the time that readers wasted reading it, and what with Joe in the office smirking and asking you if you’ve “read anything good lately” and the rest of the emails, you’ve got half a mind to email back to this lawyer and say, “Sure, sign me up.”

I understand. But don’t do it.

Listen, I know how you feel. I have this blog because I believe that books matter, and I know what it’s like to have a book let you down. The last time, it was the most recent book in a series I’ve been avidly following for years. I looked up the release date, waited for it to come for months, and dashed off to the bookstore to buy it, hardcover, the moment it arrived. I read it in two days, which, when you’re in the middle of writing a dissertation, is practically one sitting. And when I was finished, I wasn’t glad I’d read it. I wished very much that I hadn’t read it—in this, the 13th book in the series, the author crossed (in my opinion) the line between mystery and horror and wrote a story so disturbing that I’m afraid if I ever visit the place where the novel is set, I won’t enjoy it because it will just remind me of that book. I was crushingly disappointed—I couldn’t even sleep the night I finished the book, in part because I’d just inadvertently read a horror novel (not my genre) and in part because I had looked forward to the book so much and it had been awful to read. I’m afraid to re-read the earlier books now, too, because the last book could easily flavor how I feel about a character who had been one of my favorite heroines, in some of the best-written mystery novels I’ve read.

That isn’t exactly how you feel about A Million Little Pieces, probably—at least I didn’t think that my book was true, and if I’m going to be fair I have to admit that in hindsight there were aspects of the previous two books that should have warned me the series was about to arguably jump genres. But believe me, I know what it’s like to have a book hurt you, and Joe and the rest of them don’t. I can tell you that the way to get over a bad book isn’t by joining a lawsuit. All that’s going to do is line the pockets of some lawyer, and keep the story in the news so that messages from Joe continue to find their way into your inbox. It isn’t by writing hatemail to the author or mailing your books back to the store, as some of Elizabeth George’s fans recently did, either.

No, the only way to get over a hurtful book is by reading other books. I’ve been in love with books my whole life; that’s why I have this blog and why I went and got a degree in literature. I’ve never wanted to do anything else. Take it from a woman who knows: read more books, right now. Like mysteries? How about picking up one of the Robert B. Parker novels, or maybe a classic Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh? Or finding some of the middle-of-the-series The Cat Who. . . books, when Lillian Jackson Braun was at her gentlest and wisest? For non-fiction, how about Melanie Rehak’s charming book about Nancy Drew’s creators? If you like to learn about different historical eras and you’re not afraid of a challenge, give Dorothy Dunnett or Jane Smiley a try. If you’ve just never developed a taste for fiction and you want inspirational stuff, why not read Seabiscuit; if you don’t mind seeing both light and darkness in what humans can do, The Devil in the White City was an incredible book. There are a lot of book blogs out there besides this one—Samantha Tippy’s is one I read, and you can also check out BookPage on-line (although these reviews are written by the people who run the bookstores, so they’re intended to sell you the book). Check out the “Our staff recommends” shelves in your library. You’ll find something for you.

Read books. Read lots of them. And, when you think you’ve gotten some perspective on the whole fiasco, when Frey has finally been displaced in the news, read Salman Rushdie’s children’s book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This is the first book Rushdie wrote after he had been placed under a death sentence by the Ayatollah for writing the novel The Satanic Verses. Written to Rushdie’s son, Haroun is one author’s courageous response to the question, “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” Think about his answer, and then consider whether reading Frey’s book, even if he was making a lot of it up, was really a waste of your time after all.

And keep your chin up. After all, the way they’re playing right now, Joe’s basketball team won’t even make it into the NCAA tournament.

Dunnett: The Game of Kings

2006-01-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

I keep meaning to write about something contemporary, but I haven't made it to the bookstore in a while. So this post will be about a classic favorite: Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings. This is the first book in the Lymond Chronicles, historical fiction set in 16th-century Europe; The Game of Kings is set in Scotland in 1547. Mary, Queen of Scots is a child; her father, the King of Scotland is dead and the country is ruled by her mother, Mary de Guise, as regent for the minor queen. The king of England is also a child, Edward VI, and his regent, Protector Somerset, wants to invade Scotland to forcibly marry the little girl queen to the boy king. The fate of Scotland is in the hand of its nobles, and perhaps in the mysterious figure of Francis Crawford, accused of treason against his native Scotland and now back at the leader of a mercenary force. Who is he, and what are his motives in returning to the country where he is an outlaw?

Some books, and series for that matter, are like roller-coasters. By that, I don't mean they go up-and-down repeatedly. When you think about the ride on a roller-coaster, it begins with a long, slow climb as you get up to the top of the first peak. This climb powers the rest of the ride, in a way; even the uphills result from that first big ascent. The Fellowship of the Ring is that way for me; the last portion of that book begins the quick drive through the rest of the trilogy. Game of Kings is another. The best place for slow-climbing books like this is the bathroom, where you can read them for short periods of time until the ride gets exciting (and if you're like me, you've got a few other books going at the same time, stashed on your bedside table and other key locations throughout your house).

Game of Kings, and the rest of the Lymond Chronicles, are worth pulling yourself up through--although I found the start a bit slow, this novel has one of the best finishes I've read (a bit of courtroom drama, for those who like that). If this whole being-a-professor plan works out, I'd like to someday teach an early modern literature class and assign this book as an extra credit project, ending the semester with dinner and a book-club style meeting at my house for all the students who finish the book. It's marvellously researched--you'll learn a lot about the sixteenth century, and you will also find yourself faced with some untranslated quotations in Latin (which I can read) and French (which I can't). Don't be put off-they add to the book, but you can usually figure out what they mean from context. And Lymond is worth knowing about--the back cover of the Viking ppbk edition calls him an antihero, but I would disagree. He's just a remorselessly pragmatic hero, which is startling if your idea of heroism begins and ends with Walt Disney movies but which makes him highly enjoyable if you have more nuanced tastes.

Recipe for this post: I invented a salad/side dish! You need:
1-lb bag of Green Giant frozen sugar snap pea pods
1 pint of grape tomatoes
2 tbsps olive oil
1 clove minced garlic
2 tbspns vinegar (red wine or sherry vinegar)
crumbled feta cheese
salt to taste

Cook the pea pods for 2 minutes in boiling water. Drain. Combine with the grape tomatoes--this is best at room temp, so I took the tomatoes out of the fridge and actually put them in the strainer, then poured the hot peas over them. Combine peas and tomatoes in a bowl. Heat the oil in a small saucepan, then saute the garlic in it for a few minutes (you're infusing the oil with the garlic flavor). Remove the oil from the heat and cool. Combine vinegar with oil, and pour over the peas and tomatoes. Add a few handsful of the feta cheese and combine and serve!

Hey, maybe if this whole getting-a-job-as-a-professor thing doesn't happen, I could go work at Every Day with Rachael Ray!

Forsyth: Day of the Jackal

2006-01-12T19:34:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking that I'll read something current and post about it, but my books-in-progress don't point that way. Setting aside the Walter Scott novel, my other current read, just finished, was Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal. It looks as thought it's still available in mass-market paperback. At least two movie versions have been made; I've seen the earlier one.

Although the book has been classified as a spy novel, it's not about espionage but rather about counter-terrorism. I can see why Hollywood wanted to make a movie out of this, and I enjoyed the film OK. But a screen version misses out on the marvellous effect of what I can only call an "intelligence procedural"--the painstaking, methodical methods of both the terrorists and the government services trying to stop them. Some of these methods are pretty rough on occasion, but the mass of detail moves the novel along, due in part to Forsyth's clean prose. It certainly pulled me along, and if some of the other reviews up on Amazon are at all accurate, it changed the shape of intelligence fiction. The emphases on detail and on the paper-chase that ensues as French police try to protect Charles DeGaulle from the assassin known only as the Jackal both serve as forerunners to LeCarre's classic Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (published in 1974; Jackal first came out in 1971). I assume that Robert Ludlum's Carlos the Jackal, the villain in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Ultimatum, also tips the hat to Forsyth's book.

I would like to question the comment in one of the Amazon reviews that the only funny part of the book comes with the assassin's visit to a gay bar. The humor is very dry and could be missed, but it's there. Describing the shop of a M. Groossens, a gundealer who custom-fits weapons for underworld characters, Forsyth writes:

"[The Belgian police] were aware of and highly suspicious of the small but superbly equipped forge and workshop in his converted garage, but repeated visits had revealed nothing more than the paraphernalia for the manufacture of wrought-metal medallions and souvenirs of the statues of Brussels. On their last visit he had solemnly presented the Chief Inspector with a figurine of the Manneken-Pis as a token of his esteem for the forces of law and order."

If you don't know what the Manneken-Pis is, you'll miss the sly humor on the part of M. Groossens and Forsyth.

Jackal is a fun read and a classic intelligence novel; if you like that sort of book, pick it up.

Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her

2005-12-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

No matter how old you are (or aren't), chances are that if you're female you've read Nancy Drew. In fact, even if you aren't, you may have picked one up. I'm a mystery novel addict, and Nancy Drew contributed to my life-long love of the genre.

Melanie Rehak's nonfiction book, Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, will delight anyone who was ever a fan of Nancy, Bess, George, and their adventures: if you're looking for a gift for a woman who likes to read, this one is probably a winner.

Rehak details the inception of Nancy Drew, invented by Edward Stratemeyer, the head of the Stratemeyer syndicate which mass-produced children's books, and penned at first by Mildred Wirt (later Benson). When Edward died, his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams took over the development of the Nancy Drew plot outlines, and Mildred continued to write the books from the outlines the syndicate provided. The two of them contributed inextricably to the development of Nancy Drew as we know her.

A compelling portrait not only ofAmerican children's books publishing throughout the 20th century, but also of the relationship of Nancy Drew to the role of women in American life, Rehak's book stays interesting and lively throughout. Harriet and Mildred ended up at odds with each other, even appearing on opposite sides of a lawsuit between the syndicate and their long-time publisher, Grosset and Dunlap. I found my own reaction to this interesting--I wanted the two of them to get along, to work together and stand up as a collaboration, and I was disappointed that they didn't. Rehak does a good job avoiding any placement of blame; she presents their conflict as something that was probably inevitable given the collaborative nature of the work on Nancy Drew. Both Harriet and Mildred led fascinating lives, and their stories complement each other even if the two women themselves ended up on opposite sides of the argument over just who could claim to be the author of Nancy Drew.

Rehak has a real gift for writing non-fiction; she's one to watch. I look forward to her next project.

Since we're talking about a grown-up discussion of a children's series, how about a grown-up twist on a children's favorite: macaroni and cheese. I know a lot of people who cook, but who've never made their own mac and cheese! People, the stuff in the box isn't even close to what you can make at home, and it's not that hard to make from scratch. Give this version a try: Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese. The squash flavor isn't overpowering (my two tasters couldn't even detect it), but it adds something that at least resembles nutritional value to this festival of cheese and carbs. And the color of the squash makes the dish the same day-glo orange that those of you who eat the mac n cheese that comes in a box are used to (without the overwhelming flavor of preservatives). So if you're nervous about making the transition to home-made mac, this will at least look more normal to you. Go on--it's OK to put away the blue box and try this.

Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club

2005-11-30T18:15:00.000-08:00

Matthew Pearl is a shining example of how to make take one's scholarly research, parley it into a mystery novel, and make actual money out of it. Not everyone can do this; for one thing, his prose style is outstanding. However, on his way to producing an edition of Longfellow's translation of the Inferno, Pearl crafted a delightful mystery about the group of literati--Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell, and the American publisher J.T. Fields--who assisted Longfellow with his work. As they work on their translation, in the novel, a series of murders occur and they realize that the killer is modelling his victem's deaths on the Inferno. But who, other than they themselves, could know Dante well enough to do this?

Pearl's novel, The Dante Club (not to be confused with Arturo Perez Reverte's The Club Dumas), has several elements that recommended it to me: it centers on books, it blends the historical and the fictional, and it is one of those mysteries where knowing about medieval literature adds to one's enjoyment. My favorite mysteries are often those that involve a paper-chase, so I tracked this one down as soon as I saw it in Book Page.

I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this book's standout feature isn't any of those qualities that led me to purchase it, but rather the deft way Pearl takes these giants of American literature and makes them real characters. They squabble, make up, have flaws and overcome them, and in short they develop in the novel--without it ever seeming obnoxious or contrived to readers who know about the historical people. Pearl's handling of Holmes, in particular, is an affectionate look at an imperfect man and how he learns to act decisively and courageously (and for you lawyers out there, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. also appears in the book as a minor character, and is also handled well). By the end, Holmes Sr. has changed the most and is perhaps the readers' favorite character. The Dante Club's extraordinarily deft job with achieving a balance between a well-crafted collection of characters and the demands of historical accuracy is all the more striking because it is a first novel; I look forward to seeing what Pearl comes up with for an encore.

Pearl's edition of Longfellow's translation of Dante has also been printed, and his publisher had the savvy to design a cover that resembles the cover of the novel. I found that amusing.

Hey, while you're settling down by the fire to read a mystery about a translation of an Italian poem, why not munch on some wonderful Italian food? This is one of my favorites from Rachael Ray: Veal Ragu. Hey, when you've got a good book to read, who wants to spend too long over dinner?

Feel free to leave a comment on the Dante Club, Italian food, or historical mysteries!

Ngaio Marsh

2005-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the brief hiatus. I do intend to be more regular.

Someone recently asked me to recommend a "classic mystery novel." I had a harder time with that than I would have expected, because the most memorable ones are often those that somehow bend the genre--Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd or Murder on the Orient Express, or Hammett's Maltese Falcon. The book I settled on, finally, was Singing in the Shrouds by Dame Ngaio Marsh (that's pronounced "Nigh-oh" by the folks who produce the audiobooks). Naio Marsh gets my vote for "the best mystery author you're not reading," and I'd like to encourage you all to try her books. They've been re-released in America in paperback fairly recently, so they're possible to acquire.

Shrouds is, rather unusally for Marsh or her contemporaries, about a serial killer. It takes place on board a cruise ship bound for Africa; the police have learned that the "Flower Murderer," who leaves flower petals on his victems, may be on board so Inspector Roderick Alleyn (pronounced "Allen") boards the boat and spends the book trying to figure out which of the passengers is his killer. The book has the claustrophobic atmosphere typical of early mysteries, many of which feature oceanic voyages. Although Marsh writes with sensibilities not shared by most modern readers, her biases are not as off-putting as Josephine Tey's.

Alleyn shows up quite early in this book, which isn't always the case in Marsh--she often spends the first third of the novel setting up the characters involved, then introduces the crime and the detective. Normally, this would annoy me, since I read dectective series primarily because (and if) I like the detective. However, her vibrant prose and her interesting characters pull me along anyway, even if Alleyn is offstage. I use that metaphor deliberately, since Marsh was a well-known Shakespearean producer, and several of her novels center around theaters and/or plays. She was also a painter, and one of her novels, Artists in Crime, deals with a painting school. Artists may be my second favorite of her books, but it's hard to choose since I like them all (although her very last book, Light Thickens, is not up to the rest of the series--she didn't even live to see it published, I think).

A word of warning--many of her books were published under more than one title (I assume they had different names in the U.S. and in Britain). A Surfeit of Lampreys is also called Death of a Peer; Killer Dolphin and Death at the Dolphin are the same book. This can make it hard to buy them on-line, since you need to see a plot summary to be certain you haven't read it before.

OK, now, hands up--who's going to have half a jar of mincemeat left over after Thanksgiving? Here's a recipe that will use up the leftovers: Chicken Curry in a Hurry

Zorro (Isabel Allende)

2005-11-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

I have to confess to a fascination with Zorro, which began when I discovered that the Disney Channel had re-runs of the 1950s TV series starring Guy Williams on every night. I was working on an embroidered tablecloth as a Christmas present for my mother that semester, so every night I sat down in front of the TV at 11:30 and watched the show while I worked on my embroidery. I had seen a spoof Zorro movie--The Gay Blade, I believe--but this was my first introduction to Zorro that wasn't pure farce.

When I saw that the famous Chilean author Isabel Allende had written a version of the Zorro story, I had to read it. I had been wanting to read something of hers for a while, so this was my introduction to her books.

I enjoyed it enormously. I haven't been able to track down the original Zorro stories, so I can't say what she pulled from those and what she was lifting from the Disney series. She makes references to the title song, so I suspect that several other points are pure Disney as well. Her novel is mostly set before Zorro begins his work in Spanish California in earnest--I would describe it as "Zorro and how he got that way." The familiar group of characters are there--Diego, Alejandro, Bernardo, the future Sargent Garcia, and of course the villanous Moncada. Part of the fun is recognizing these characters from the series--the pleasure of recognition, I think, has to be one of the great joys of reading. However, most of the story is how Zorro becomes what he is, studying under a famous fencing master in Barcelona, joining a resistance movement to the French occupation of Spain, etc.

And, lest anyone worry about a "literary" author writing about a popular legend, let me say that the novel swashes and buckles quite satisfactorily throughout. This isn't to say Allende doesn't play with the legend--we learn, for instance, that part of the reason Zorro wears the style of mask that he does is because his ears protrude and the mask holds them flat--or change details to suit herself. I don't know about the original stories, but in the Disney series, Diego's mother was a) dead and b) presumably European (her no-good brother shows up at one point in the series, and he has a Spanish name). Allende changes this, and the racial tensions in California give the novel a serious tone in places. None of this takes away from the romping nature of most of the book, however; it only keeps it from being superficial (the Disney series also dealt with European cruelty to the natives in a few episodes also, for the same reason).

No, I think one of the big "literary" issues Allende brings up in this book is the whole question of fanfiction, for that is what Zorro unquestionably is--complete with Mary Sue and all. A Mary Sue (or, if it's a male, Harry Stu), for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a character in a work of fan fiction who is an obvious self-portrait of the fan fiction's author, often in a position of romantic attachment to the hero of the story. If I were to write a pastiche Lord Peter Wimsey story, in which his client is a Ph.D. in medieval literature named "Becca," who wrote her dissertation on a subject that is identical to mine, and they have a love scene, etc., that would be an example of a Mary Sue.

Allende's Zorro has a character named "Isabel," whose physical description (thick curly hair, etc) seems like Allende's own, and who becomes a sidekick for Diego (there are other clues that she's a Mary Sue, but they involve spoilers). In case anyone missed this, Allende's author portrait shows her in period costume, with a Zorro mask, the hat, and a sword--we are to identify her with the Isabel in the novel. Allende was smart enough to pick something in the public domain (I think) or at least to get permission to use Zorro--the legality of fan fiction is a whole 'nother issue that we need not deal with here. Rather, she demands that we consider the artistry of fan fiction. Must we write off obviously derivative works, even when a practitioner of Allende's skill produces them, as less "serious" than her other novels? Or, does Allende actually have a more authentic book than the originals, since after all she writes in Spanish about her Spanish characters, while the original stories and the Disney series were entirely Anglophone? Is it more original to re-do a familiar set of characters and their stock plots (prison breaks, rescues, etc) with a new emphasis on race, or to invent new characters entirely to think about these issues?

I'm a medievalist, so I have no problem with the idea that "originality" can include interesting new treatments of old stories (otherwise, you have to say Chaucer is un-original, which I won't concede). But some of the backlash against fan-fiction has tended toward that argument. What I think Allende could be suggesting here is that a sharp division between "original" and "derivative" works leaves out a lot of middle ground that authors could work in with great success.

And hey, what's more derivative than Americanized versions of Mexican dishes? Whip up some guacamole to munch on while you're reading Zorro:
2-3 avacados
3-4 canned whole peeled tomatoes, plus some of the juice from the can
1/2 tsp. Tabasco sauce (more if you like it spicy!)
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt.
1 tbspn lemon juice.
Scoop the pulp out of the avacados--when you buy them, make sure they're nice and soft (but not rotten). Combine them in a blender with the other ingredients, and blend until smooth. Or, if you don't have a blender, you can mash the avacado up with a potato masher and chop the tomatoes before you combine the ingredients. This recipe doesn't add sour cream to the guacamole, so it's much healthier than most restaurant versions (although the avacados in it will make it turn brown if you save it over night--it's still edible, just not as pretty).

Got a thought about Zorro, fan-fiction, or originality? Leave a comment below!

School Days (Robert B. Parker)

2005-11-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

I'm a mystery novel addict--I've been known to read mysteries in times of stress like some people chain smoke, starting a new books from the back cover of the last one. I discovered Parker a few years ago, and happily worked my way through the Spenser books over the course of a year or so.

I like Spenser. Yeah, they're really short--practically novellas--but they're fun. I like the 1st person, tongue-in-cheek narration: "It came the way I knew it would, a long slow looping right punch that I could have slipped while writing my memoirs" (Hugger Mugger). Part of what Parker does well is collect an ensemble of secondary characters that the reader enjoys seeing again--not just Spenser's girlfriend and his best friend, Susan and Hawk, but Martin Quirk, Frank Belson, Tedy Sapp, Bobby Horse, Chollo, Vinny Morris, etc. Most books involve some subset of these characters in some combination (Potshot has darn near all of them together).

School Days breaks this pattern, and I think it's deliberate. Susan is out of town for the duration of the novel's action. Hawk just doesn't appear, and neither do any of the other usuals. The only characters recurring from other books are Rita Fiore, a lawyer whom Spenser needs to talk to for plot reasons, and Major Johnson, who hasn't been in many books since we met him as a tough gang leader in the housing projects in Double Deuce. Neither of these characters are close to Spenser (although Rita would like to be), and as a result he's much more isolated in this book than he has been in any of the novels with the possible exception of Valediction. Parker's decision to leave Spenser on his own ties with the subject of the book's mystery--a school shooting, done by two teenaged boys at their high school in an affluent suburb. The parallels to the Columbine shooting are obvious, and since this book does not mention anything from the previous Spenser novel, Cold Service, and is coming out less than 12 months after it, I wonder if Parker didn't write this years ago and wait to publish it.

Spenser's client is the grandmother of one of the alleged shooters, who doesn't believe her grandson did it. Spenser's investigation brings him up against several people in the community involved, nearly all of whom are grasping hold of a collective amnesia as a way of dealing with what happened, and with their own flaws and mistakes that led to the violence in the school. The police, the school president/principal, the families of the two boys don't want to talk about what happened. Contrary to what we might expect, the other kids from the school, who knew the alleged shooters and the victims, are the only ones willing to talk about it and seem to be dealing with it better than their adult counterparts. Spenser's isolation in the novel mirrors that of the accused shooters, both before and after the crime. Parker's novel refuses the sort of canonizing / demonizing dynamic that the media leapt to when Dylan Kliebold and Eric Harris opened fire in Columbine. The novel still comes up with something like an explanation for the events in the school, but it isn't grounded in the saintliness of the victims and the unabashed evil of the shooters. Parker's novel isn't attempting a justification of Columbine, nor really an explanation; the book is more about people's reactions to "unspeakable" crimes than the mystery itself. As a side note, the presence of Major Johnson silently points to the question of why the shooting of rich white kids by other rich white kids should be "unspeakable" and shocking to everyone, while the victim and the accused in Double Deuce are about the same age as the kids in School Days and the press doesn't seem to care. I think that is why he, and not Hawk, serves as Spenser's underworld connection in this novel.

This is one of the darker Spenser books, due to its subject matter. Adults mess up--even Spenser makes an uncharacteristic mistake--with fatal consequences for the teenagers who depend on them. By sheer coincidence, this is the second mystery novel about a school shooting I've read in the last two months--the other, Ian Rankin's A Question of Blood, makes several open references to the Dunblaine massacre and seems to be another author's way of dealing with the terrible spectre of violence in school. I'll have a separate post in it some time in the future.

Normally Spenser novels involve him cooking up a storm, but I don't remember that as a prominent feature in this one. It's hard to go from such a dark subject to a cheery recipe selection, so I'll conclude by suggesting that you make the favorite dish for one of your family members sometime, and be sure you sit down together to eat it.

Susanna Clarke's Strange (and Norrell)

2005-11-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

I finally finished Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell last night--at 750+ pages (in hardback), it's not for the faint of heart. I've been reading it with several smaller books orbiting around it, as it were, for over a month. I confess I tend to be intimidated by very long books--not because I think they're too hard, but because I'm afraid if they turn out to be terrific and I can't put them down, I'll get myself into a mess not getting my other work done. I suffer from guilt every time I read for fun because I'm not working, grading, or doing laundry or housework, so it's hard to commit to a large book sometimes.

JS & MN was a delight, however. It's set in the early nineteenth century, during the Regency, and it mimics the diffuse style of the time--without ever getting to the point of irritating a modern reader. It probably wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but if you even think you can handle that style of writing, and you don't detest anything that smacks of fantasy fiction, it's worth a go. The premise of the book is that during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, magic actually worked, but it is lost so that the study of it becomes purely historical / theoretical. However, one person--Mr Norrell--learns to be a practical magician, and about one-third of the way through the book, he takes on a student, Jonathan Strange. I have to say the book is slow going until Strange shows up, but after that it's a fairly smooth read. Clarke's depiction of some of the historical characters of the time is a large part of what makes the book fun (as with most historical or alternative-historical novels, there's a lot of pleasure in recognizing historical characters and enjoying what the author does with them), especially in the brief appearance of a certain famous poet whose character she nails perfectly.

The book is stylistically remarkable for its footnotes, many of them little gems of short-short stories themselves. They're also excellent pastiches of the sorts of notes one would find in scholarly works from the time period, as several reviewers have pointed out (the web site linked to above has a whole host of reviews).

I wonder why my conception of any cuisine before the 20th century seems to be limited to roast meats and stews? I do, in fact, know better. At any rate, I think a few slices of good roast beef (I usually make a pot roast with garlic and red wine seasoned with thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and a bay leaf) between uneven slabs of chewy bread would be a good accompaniment to this book, with cheddar cheese (or, better yet, Wensleydale cheese if you can find it) and whatever other sandwich fillings you have on hand. Say what you like about English cooking, this is the nation that reportedly invented the sandwich, and they have perfected it. I enjoyed English food when I was there a few summers ago--any place where you can get Indian-spiced chicken for your sandwich is OK by me. I still think fondly of the little deli in Helmsley, Yorks. that had the most amazingly good coronation chicken sandwich.

Got a comment about JS &MN, sandwiches, or roasted meats? Leave one for us below!

Sunday food and football

2005-11-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

Ah, fall Sundays, when a young girl's thought turn to the sneak, the screen, and the long pass. I really enjoy football, but I don't understand it as well as I'd like. A book that has done much to alleviate that is Get Your Own Damn Beer, I'm Watching the Game: A Woman's Guide to Loving Pro Football by Holly Robinson Peete. The author, who has been in some TV shows I've never seen (I was probably off reading somewhere), married an NFL quarterback and writes about the game from the perspective of not only the fans (she was from Philadelphia and loved the Eagles even before she married Peete) but the players and their families. I found her style a bit labored in places--she tries too hard to sound all down-to-earth and real sometimes--but the book was fun, on the whole, and I know a lot more about football now than I did before I read it. I really liked the chapter where she explained what all the positions actually do, and she gave a lot of history that I found fascinating. Now my husband's reading it--he actually wasn't much of a football fan before we got married, but I've converted him.

Chili goes well with football, and this is my favorite chili recipe. Try it while you're watching (or reading about) the game:
1 lb ground beef
3 cans chili beans (hot or mild, however you like)
3 cans of tomato sauce
1 green pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped.
2 cloves garlic
2-4 tablespoons of chili powder (it depends on how hot you like it, and how old your power is)
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
Brown the ground beef and drain it. Toss it and everything else back in the pot, and simmer it for half an hour or so to combine the flavors.

I like the additional flavors of the turmeric and cinnamon (although I rarely get to include the latter if I make it at home because my husband doesn't like it). Be careful, though, because turmeric will stain clothes and old countertops. This chili is also more rich in tomato than a lot of chilis, but it's still nice and thick--I can usually get my spoon to stand up in it after it has simmered.

Drop us a comment about football, good books about football, or your favorite chili!

submission guidelines

2005-11-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

Now that I have an idea how to run this thing, I'll post the ground rules for paging books:

I've set the comments to "moderate," which means if you try to post, it won't actually go up until I check my email and allow the comment. This is not because I'm a control freak, but because 45 seconds poking around on blogger convinced me that spamming blogs in the comments is a big problem. I don't want my comments all to be "good blog i added it to my bookmarks :) check out my blog its really good and you too can start you're own busines form home," etc. If the moderating of comments becomes too great an annoyance, we can try opening the comments up later.
I want to talk about books on this blog; that's its main purpose. However, since it isn't an author- or series-themed blog, I don't think we can assume that everyone reading it is familar with any book. Not even one you're sure everyone in the whole freakin' world has read. No matter how popular it is, or how long it has been out, do not put spoilers in a comment. I will define "spoiler" as any information that you reveal that isn't on the books dust jacket back cover, even if you don't think it's that relevant or surprising.
If people do want to have more in-depth discussions and talk about the details of a particular book, we can form a yahoogroup mailing list so that anyone who doesn't want to have a book spoiled can just choose not to go read the posts there.
I want everyone who might find it to feel comfortable reading this blog. Slurs or any generalizations about a group of people's abilities or behaviours will not go up in the comments. No comments along the lines of "well of course the character does that because she's a women / a Jew / an Inuit and that's how they are, " please. Comments about defining characteristics of a system of belief are fine ("Most Roman Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, a Jew who was born during the time of the Roman Empire, was the Son of God") as long as they are not worded in such a way that they're inflammatory. I've had this policy for years in my classrooms and it's worked well, so I'm going to institute it here.

I'll post again in a bit with a more on-topic post.

Prologue

2005-11-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

Since this is about books, and possibly cooking, let's start with a combination of the two--a cookbook! Rachael Ray just published a new one--anyone tried it?
Rachael Ray 365
Got a review? The reviews on Amazon frequently turn out to be the publishers' press releases pasted in, not real reviews. Let me know if you have this; I'm going to be getting a copy myself in a few weeks. I flipped through it in a bookstore and it looks like it has an index, which her last book, Cooking Round the Clock didn't. Someday I may index it myself; when I do I'll paste it into this blog.

Drat. Now I'm hungry.

Paging all books

2005-11-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about books, and I suspect I will also talk about cooking in here also. I'm not connected to the popular writing / publishing industry at all, so I don't work for anyone who produces these books. I'm a life-long bibliomaniac, however, and I've recently defended a dissertation in English literature. I'm mostly looking for this to be yet another outlet for my bibliographic enthusiasm, a place to talk and hear about books that I don't work with professionally but still enjoy. This is where I will confess my addiction to mystery novels, talk about non-fiction (hey! someone just wrote a book about Nancy Drew's creators! cool!), sci-fi, etc. Once I figure out the mechanics of the site, I'll post again with some ground rules.