Food Matters by Mark Bittman

After living in L.A. for about a year, I noticed that our diet had gotten pretty sorry. I was buying a lot of frozen food because it was fast and easy to get on the table, and my cooking was turning into a mishmash of processed food products. Frozen fish sticks with rice-a-roni and steam-in-the-bag frozen vegetables. Spaghetti with jarred sauce and frozen meatballs. That sort of thing. It was time to make a change.

I got Food Matters from the library a few months ago after reading about it on Mark Bittman's website. It's the first food-philosophy book that I've read, even though I keep an eye on what comes out from Michael Pollan and the like. Before this, I couldn't bring myself to read about the hows and whys of what we eat. I don't want to be a vegetarian, and I am afraid of those books that graphically describe the horrors of livestock agriculture. I don't want to be shocked into making changes. I want to be convinced. [My feelings toward the politics of food is complicated and hard to describe. I guess you could call it "selfish moderation" combined with a dose of "informed skepticism," very similar to my feelings about being "green." They are closely related.]

I'll rant about being green some other time, but when it comes to food, I have some pretty firm beliefs in what constitutes healthy eating. I'm also not naive enough to believe that producing food for the millions of people in the US isn't hard on the planet and on the plants and animals we eat. I know this, but I don't want to be guilted into acting rashly. I want to make rational decisions based on what is right for me, what I believe are my rights and responsibilities, and what fits within my finite budget.

Here's the Food Matters philosophy distilled into one sentence: eat less meat, more vegetables and whole grains, and no junk food.

It's so simple. It doesn't involve huge sacrifices, it's less expensive, and it's delicious. It's also healthy, slimming, and reduces my impact on the earth.

Since I decided to follow Bittman's food philosophy, I have completely stopped buying frozen entrees and boxed meals. I meet my two best friends every Sunday morning at the farmer's market (which is cheaper and much fresher than the grocery store-- and if it's local and/or organic, hey-- even better), and I incorporate twice as many vegetables into our daily meals. I cut our meat intake by about half, and substitute whole grains for processed grains a few times a week. It does mean that I cook every meal from scratch now, which is a chore for me, but the improvement in taste alone is worth the trouble.

The surprising thing is, my life hasn't really changed much. I don't really feel different (Mark Bittman says he feels more energetic and all that, but I don't). I also don't really notice the extra time I spend cooking every night, either. Food shopping does take an entire Sunday morning now, but I consider it social time with my friends, so it's no chore. I might have lost a little weight, but I can't really tell, and I don't much care.

I simply like knowing that I'm doing the right thing for my own health, spending less on food, and making a smaller impact on the environment than before. It's a win-win all around.

Food Matters by Mark Bittman

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

When I heard that Libba Bray had a new book coming out, I was intrigued. I had read A Great and Terrible Beauty, which I thought was pretty good, given that the genre wasn't really my thing. Going Bovine, on the other hand, seemed to be exactly my thing: Mad Cow Disease, punk angels, dwarfs, yard gnomes, road trips, happiness cults, parallel-universe-hopping physicists... what more could I want? Then I saw this promotional video Libba Bray made:


And suddenly, I COULD NOT WAIT to get my hands on this book.

Now, I am a terrible influence upon my friend M. I was the one who introduced her to the Twilight series, Hunger Games, and yes, Emma Boyle. Whenever I read something really good, she's the first person I foist it onto. So of course, I immediately forwarded the video to her.

That was a few months ago. It wasn't until last week that M asked me if I had read Going Bovine yet.

"Oh yeah, I read it," I said. "Do you want to borrow it?"

"Was it good?"

"Well, I don't want to say anything to influence you before you read it."

Pause.

"Should I read it?"

"Um, I haven't recommended it yet, have I?"

"Yeah..."

"Right."

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Two truths became clear to me soon after I started reading David Levithan's Love is the Higher Law. The first was how accurately and concisely Levithan was able to convey the gamut of emotions we all felt on and after September 11, 2001. The second was that his target YA audience would have been in elementary school that day.

From there, my thoughts jumped to the next most obvious truth: Levithan is telling a story that these readers don't yet know.

Sure, everyone knows what happened on September 11. And those kids, in first, second and third grades, certainly had their own impressions and their own stories (especially those that lived in New York City). But they couldn't have experienced the day with the full comprehension of how our country and its people would be irrevocably changed, nor with the capacity or opportunity to act.

As someone who watched the horror from 3,000 miles away, and then spent the next weeks glued to the television, I could relate to every emotional response of the three main characters. Levithan uses three people with very different personalities to convey the whole range of feelings over the course of that year, and I know that I felt them all. I could relate immediately and viscerally. To a young adult reader today, how much of this is new?

It's obvious that Levithan has meant to chronicle exactly these feelings, to set them down permanently so that we do not forget what it was like. Then those that follow can also understand, even if they hadn't even been born in 2001. I'm actually surprised that no one else has done this yet. It needed to be done. The voices of teens during the days following September 11th needed to be remembered.

We can overlook Levithan's two-dimensional characters and lack of real plot because this book is really a chronicle of our human reactions to an incomprehensible act. The romance and friendship that blossoms between the characters feels forced, and nothing really happens, but that's OK. Even Levithan's eventual point, something vague about love and friendship, is secondary to the importance of the real story: what we as a country felt on that terrible day eight years ago, and how we loved one another and moved into the new, changed future holding hands.

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

What is a book club but a gathering of more than one person discussing the same book? I don't want to join any book clubs, but that doesn't mean I don't love talking about books. Luckily, my friend EJ, who shares my passion for YA and middle grade fiction, feels the same way. So last year, we officially started our own club called "The Two Person Book Club." The use of the phrase "book club" cracks us up every time we say it. It's our tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that when you recommend a book to your friend and then you talk about it, it's really not a club. Or it really is a club. Whatever.

The thing that amuses me to no end about our "club" is that we've only officially only traded books and met to discuss them once before. However, we're constantly on the phone with each other, rambling on about this and that book, sharing recommendations, and picking them apart as we read them. Just last week, EJ called after finishing two chapters of Impossible by Nancy Werlin. "What did you think?" she asked me warily. I replied, just as warily, that it wasn't really my thing. And when we figured out that we both hated it (she, the two chapters that she had read), I was more than happy to launch into my diatribe about how overrated it was. "I'll keep going," she said, "and call you back when I'm done!" A few hours later, she called back and we happily trashed the novel to pieces.

EJ is visiting me in L.A. this week, so naturally as soon as she arrived I loaded her up with an armful of books to read. On the top of the pile was Rebecca Stead's middle-grade novel, When You Reach Me. "This is the BEST BOOK EVER," I told her.

When You Reach Me is about Miranda, a sixth grader whose simple and predictable life in 1979 New York City begins to unravel the day her best friend Sal gets punched on their walk home from school. Sal begins to ignore her, the apartment key that they keep hidden for emergencies is stolen, the crazy man on the corner seems more menacing, and then the mysterious notes begin to arrive. "I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own," the first note reads. Subsequent notes reveal that the writer knows details that no one could possibly know... at least at that moment.

At this point I have to admit that from a objective point view, When You Reach Me is, yes, an excellent book (sweet and intriguing, funny and sad, every character and plot point filled with layers and layers of nuance, so well-written that every sentence is a butterfly). However, most readers would probably look at me skeptically when I assert that it's the BEST BOOK EVER.

And I will tell you a secret that makes all the difference. I must warn you, it's a bit of a spoiler, but I think it will benefit you to know. I did not tell EJ this before she started, so I think she read the book with a certain frame of mind, and we agreed afterward that her enjoyment of the book might actually have been greater had she known. So skip the rest of this post if you must, but I think it's better to know: the book is about time travel.

Now, you know how I feel about time travel. Obsessive, perhaps? It's not necessarily the science of time travel, or the visiting of past/future that I like. It's the exploration of the consequences of time travel, and the Time Travel Paradox, which addresses the possible consequence of doing something in the past to prevent yourself from going back in time in the first place (for example, going back in time to kill your grandfather). It's an unsolvable conundrum! My brain LOVES this feeling of unsolvable paradox. It's like a jacuzzi for my neurons. Mmm.

Not that When You Reach Me involves an actual paradox, but all good time travel stories inherently need to resolve the paradox with their own internal logic. I love the figuring out of the looping chronology of time travel stories.

When you combine the wonderful characters, the lovely and playful language, and the quiet intrigue that runs throughout When You Reach Me with the extra added bonus of time travel, the result is a hybrid genre that exists squarely in both realistic fiction and science fiction, and tingles the brain in a most delightful way. EJ may not have thought it was the BEST BOOK EVER, but we still had endless lists of details we absolutely loved, enough to keep us chatting and rereading for the duration of her visit.

In fact, we decided that this is a bona fide meeting of the Two Person Book Club, called to order, in which we read, discuss, then blog about a single title. So, this is my post. Here is EJ's.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

Two years ago, I discovered a blog called Dessert First, a beautiful and really cool blog about baking. I noticed, because I was especially interested in this blog, that the author was really fascinating: she went to pastry school in the evenings after work and after graduation, she eventually quit her job to work in a bakery-- one in Oakland that I had been meaning to visit. Not only that, but she lived in San Francisco and she had a Chinese last name. I felt a connection, though I realized that just because someone bakes, lives in San Francisco and is Chinese does not make one a kindred spirit. It's silly, but I had this vague idea that if I commented on her blog often enough, she would notice me among her hundreds (hundreds!) of other followers and we would become friends. Just like that. Of course that didn't happen.

A year later, I was taking an online writing workshop in feature article writing. One of our assignments was to write a profile of someone we did not know. That meant coming out of our comfort zone to ask someone we didn't know for an interview and then writing the piece. I thought that this would be the perfect excuse to meet this blogger, named Anita. And the perfect excuse to push me out of my comfort zone.

Since Anita is a very nice person, she agreed to meet me at a bakery for the interview, and we talked and ate and drank hot cocoa for about an hour. During that time, she mostly talked about herself, but I also said I was interested in baking and offered to share my lovely, big kitchen for any baking projects she had. She said she was baking out of a postage-stamp-sized apartment kitchen. I also offered to help her get information from Ten Speed Press about submissions, since I have friends there. We did that whole, "yeah, we should get together sometime" thing.

But I was persistent for once in my life. I made it happen. After a few months of email correspondence, we eventually spent a Sunday in my kitchen making cinnamon rolls and lemon bars. Then, I invited her along with me to go the Cheese School of San Francisco class I had been wanting to attend. I was being proactive!

Soon after that, Anita emailed to ask for advice. She had been approached by a publishing company to write a cookie cookbook, and I helped her negotiate her contract. Since the contract had a completely unreasonable deadline, she enlisted three of her friends to help test the recipes. Thus, I spent several months last year baking cookies and feeding my happy friends. Many, many happy friends. The book is Field Guide to Cookies, and came out last winter.

The pocket-sized volume is a brick packed with 100 cookie recipes from around the world, each with a short historical explanation and background information. It's really quite comprehensive, which is surprising for a cookie cookbook. A full-color section in the middle shows pictures of each cookie, and there are several photographs of cookies that I baked, packed in a shoebox, and handed over to Anita, who brought them on a plane to Philadelphia for the photo shoot! If you have a copy, check out the molasses spice cookies and linzer cookies. I made those!

Since she did such a great job on that book, Anita's publisher has asked her to do another Field Guide book for them. This one on candy. When she told me, I immediately offered to help test recipes again! And, well, that's another blog post entirely.

Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

I just got back from China last week. I was there for a week on some business in Hangzhou, and then stayed a few extra days to visit friends in Shanghai.

Before I left, it occurred to me to buy a Kindle, because it seemed like the perfect device for this sort of trip: one which would include at least 30 hours of travel time, none of which on red-eyes. 30 hours is a lot of books, and I didn't want to fill up half my suitcase with books. But $359 is pretty big expense, and it's not something I necessarily need. In the end, I bought the Kindle with the knowledge that I could return it within 30 days, and well, because I just wanted it so badly.

The Kindle is really as amazing as it advertises to be. In your hand, there is nothing surprising about it. If you have seen the descriptions of it at Amazon, you know all about it already: thin, light, easy to read, easy to use, EXTREMELY easy to load with books. Turned out my biggest problem was deciding which books to buy for it.

I don't buy books very often and I'm not very good at it, I realize now. The problem is that I'm overly risk-averse. I don't want to buy something if I'm not sure if I'll like it, especially if it's non-returnable. I get most of my books at wholesale cost, as review copies, free through Bookmooch, or from the library. But when I'm actually going to shell out money from my own pocket to buy a book, I want some reassurance that it's going to be worth the money. I know, this is a completely unreasonable position (it also might explain why I generally hesitate to go to the movies too). But there it is. I have issues.

Compounding the problem is the feeling that I'm not getting a tangible object in return for my money when I buy a Kindle book. I'm buying an experience. Sure, it's a reproducible experience, unlike movies or a restaurant meal, but still, it's not tangible.

Anyway, it took me a while to decide what to buy to load up my Kindle for the trip, and cost was a factor. I bought Stephen King's UR ($2.99), Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff ($8.76), and To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk ($9.99). I also downloaded a few Harlequin romances becuase they were free, and His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik, which was also free. I think I actually enjoyed the free books best, and not because of the price. I really did like them best.

To My Dearest Friends was on my wishlist already because I thought the premise was so intriguing:

Two weeks after Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Bloom dies, her lawyer calls her two best friends, Alice Vogel and Nanny Wunderlich, to his office. Why? Because Bobbi has given them keys to a safety deposit box. And now the lawyer has a letter for them from Bobbi. Alice and Nanny–who have nothing in common but their friendship with the deceased–go to the bank. In the box, they find another letter. A love letter. To Bobbi. Undated. With no further instructions.

Sounds great, huh? What I didn't know was that, at its core, it was a story about women in their late middle-age coming to grips with the twilight of their lives. Totally not my demographic. I suppose it was a good enough book, but I couldn't relate to a second of it. And @#%&*, I just spent $9.99 to download it. Now I can't sell it to a used bookstore, Bookmooch it, give it to someone who might like it, or even donate it. It was a total loss of $10.

This is too much pressure. After spending $359 (plus another $30 for the cover) on the thing, now I have to worry about spending more money just to use it.

I have some other issues with the Kindle as well. Firstly, its proprietary format: while it wasn't a deal-breaker for me, it sure doesn't make me love it. I wrestled a bit with uploading the pdf of Stephenie Meyer's partial manuscript of Midnight Sun to it, with success, but that's about the extent of its capabilities. Also, in the end, I think I really enjoy holding a book and turning its pages. I also like having my books lined up on my bookshelf, their spines giving me just as much pleasure as their contents.

The Kindle's two biggest advantages are its capacity to hold a huge number of books in a very small device, and its instant gratification in acquiring a new book. While these are fun and useful under certain circumstances, they aren't enough for me, or for its $359 price tag. Once E finishes reading Bad Monkeys, I'm going to return it.

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Last year, E joined a group of UC Berkeley undergrads building a race car for the collegiate FSAE competition. The group built a Formula One race car, basically from scratch. That the team is comprised primarily of undergraduates with no formal training, university funding, or adult supervision, is to me quite an impressive feat.

The point, of course, was to enter the car in an international competition that takes place very year at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. Fontana is just outside of Los Angeles. A suburb of LA, really.

We arrived for the four-day competition and checked into our hotel in nearby Ontario. After visiting the racetrack and the car paddocks, I left E with the team and began my vacation.

I wasn't really planning to take a vacation that week. I was going to work from the hotel room during the days and then head to the racetrack to watch the events. That was my plan, so I had only brought one book for pleasure reading. So much for plans.

What I ended up doing was taking care of a few pressing work matters each morning, and then swimming in the hotel pool, sitting in Starbucks, shopping, hanging with the team at the track, and basically just reading a lot. On the second day, I finished the one book I brought. I had a problem.

Did I mention that I currently have well over a hundred unread books on my shelves? Here I was, with three days left in my "vacation," and I had no book to read. The situation was dire-- I had to take desperate measures and go buy a book.

There is a Borders Outlet, of all things, at the Ontario Mills Mall. It is full of heavily discounted remaindered books, and the entire store held only one book that interested me: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. (And score-- it was only five dollars!)

I loved this book. I would probably rank it among my favorite books of all time. According to Amazon,

"Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a hauntingly beautiful novel about two characters whose lives are woven together in such complex ways that even after the last page is turned, the reader is left to wonder what really happened. In the hands of a less gifted writer, unraveling this tangled web could easily give way to complete chaos. However, under Krauss's watchful eye, these twists and turns only strengthen the impact of this enchanting book.

The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed. "

This book is not for everyone. It is pretty difficult to follow because of its non-linear narrative and disparate styles. But that is exactly what I loved about it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, too, I made a connection between The History of Love and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. They both have that sensibility of intertwining disjointedness with an undercurrent of a darker tension, the Holocaust. It was after I read the book that I found out that Krauss and Foer are married. What a powerhouse literary couple they make.

I can't help but think that the similarities between the books are not coincidental. Yet, how can two people, no matter how close, transmit such a thing as a subconscious literary sensibility? Or is it that similarity that drew them together in the first place? Whatever the case, I for one am glad that they found each other.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Quick Escapes: Los Angeles by Eleanor Harris and Claudia Harris Lichtig

E and I moved to Los Angeles in September. It was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. I was a wreck for two months preceding the move, and I was a different sort of wreck for two months after. But that is not the point of this story.

E is getting his Master's degree at UCLA, so this move should be temporary (let's not even begin thinking about the move back). And while there are many, many reasons why L.A. was the right choice for us, and why living here is comfortable and fun, I still have no love for the city itself and am looking forward to returning to the Bay Area.

One of the best things about L.A., though, is that my friend M lives here. We were roommates in college and, until last year, she had lived on the east coast. We used to see each other twice a year, if that. Now we sometimes see each other twice a week!

Before I moved, M gave me the book, Quick Escapes: Los Angeles by Eleanor Harris and Claudia Harris Lichtig, for my birthday. It features twenty itineraries for weekend getaways originating in L.A.. Most of the trips sound great, from Catalina Island and La Jolla to Cambria and Lake Arrowhead.

Alas, E and I haven't been able to use the book at all yet. E's schedule and copious amounts of schoolwork make going away for two days difficult, and when we have been able to get away, we have gone back up to the Bay Area. I'm sure, though, that in the next two years, there will be opportunities to take advantage of the book. Spring break, perhaps?

Quick Escapes: Los Angeles by Eleanor Harris and Claudia Harris Lichtig

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, Part II

E and I met some friends for dinner at Flora's Diner in Oakland on Wednesday. Nice place, good food. Before I could turn my attention fully to the menu, I noticed the only piece of art on the one available wall: a huge framed poster in the early 1900's style, that looked eerily familiar. In huge letters across the top, it read, "Carter the Great."

Wait a minute...

"Hey! That looks like the cover of a book I have!" I could tell this was going to be one of those conversations. Where everyone looks at me like I've just arrived from outer space. "It's like one of my favorite books! Carter Beats the Devil!" They were all nodding just to be polite, it was obvious. I kept staring at it-- I'm sure it wasn't the same as the book cover. But then what what the explanation?

E caught my attention. "Look, they have a drink called 'Carter Beats the Devil." Curiouser and curiouser. Of course, I ordered it-- a no-brainer. (Excellent drink: spicy, with a kick.)

When I got home, I poked around the internet. I recalled that the book took place in Oakland, and I wondered if maybe Glen David Gold had anything to do with the restaurant. I couldn't find any links between them, though. Maybe the owner of the restaurant just really loved either magicians or the book, or both. Turns out that, according to Wikipedia, magician Charles Joseph Carter was born in 1874 in San Francisco.

Due to stiff competition from the number of magic acts on the American stages at the time, Carter opted to pursue his career abroad, where he achieved his greatest fame. Among the highlights of Carter's stage performances during his career were the classic "sawing a woman in half" illusion (an elaborate surgical-themed version with "nurses" in attendance), making a live elephant disappear and "cheating the gallows", where a shrouded Carter would vanish, just as he dropped at the end of a hangman's noose.

I also found a website that sold vintage magic marquee posters, and did offer the very same poster that was on the wall of the Flora's Diner. The book, Carter Beats the Devil, is a fictionalized account of his life. Glen David Gold also lives in San Francisco.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

I predict that The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson is going to be a hit. Unfortunately, it's coming out three days after Breaking Dawn so it won't get the media, but people will find it and they will love it.

An overview from the inside cover of my ARC: "Marianne Engel is a beautiful sculptress of gargoyles who appears in the burn unit one day and tells the narrator of this mesmerizing tale that they were lovers in medieval times, when she was a scribe and he was a mercenary. Is she simply mad? Or is she truly the angel of mercy who will save him from his suicidal despair?"

The first half of the book is incredible, in a visceral, shocking way. Plus there's a lot of mystery surrounding both the narrator's story as it is revealed, as well as Marianne's appearance and her story. It made for an amazing, exciting experience. My personal feeling was that there was no way Davidson could possibly keep up that level of tension and exhilaration for all 464 pages, so I wasn't too surprised when the emotions started to level out in the second half. I'm also not into the whole past-lives-fated-lovers thing. So I don't hold it against him. It's still a great read, even if I wasn't enamoured with the second half.

I got my copy at this year's BEA convention. E knew that I was interested in the book, so when he saw that Andrew Davidson was signing, he stopped and had Davidson sign a copy for me. "The inscription reads, "For Renee, Your husband is a lovely man... Andrew Davidson."

My favorite passage:

I once knew a woman who like to imagine Love in the guise of a sturdy dog, one that would always chase down the stick after it was thrown and return with his ears flopping around happily. Completely loyal, completely unconditional. And I laughed at her, because even I knew that love is not like that. Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyielding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words , or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn't a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur.

Yes, that is exactly what love is: a tiny, jittery primate with eyes that are permanently peeled open in fear. For those of you who cannot quite picture a pygmy mouse lemur, imaging a miniature Don Knotts or Steve Buscemi wearing a fur coat. Imagine the cutest animal that you can, after it has been squeezed so hard that all its stuffing has been pushed up into an oversize head and its eyers are now popping out in overflow. The lemur looks so vulnerable that one cannot help but worry that a predator might swoop in at any instant to snatch it away.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson