I read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell when I was in eighth grade, for a school assignment. I’m fairly certain I was too young to appreciate its literary merits and I didn’t enjoy it at all. What was to enjoy for a twelve-year-old? The book consisted of two main premises: 1. the story of a rich, spoiled brat who hurt everyone who cared for her through her own selfishness and 2. the destruction of half our country through war and the devastation that followed. Depressing. 1000 pages of depressing.
I had a friend at the time, H, who ate the book up—loved every word, watched the movie three times, and viewed Scarlett O’Hara as her personal guru. Now, here was a twelve-year-old who connected with something there that I just didn’t see. I should have realized then that our personalities were not compatible, but it was another three years before I stopped talking to her.
I have, over the years, indelibly linked Scarlett O’Hara with H in my mind. I’m not even sure anymore which annoying traits were Scarlett’s and which were H’s—the pouting, the tantrums when things did not go her way, the uninviting of people to her birthday sleepover parties. Was that Scarlett?
One day, during our junior year of high school, H smacked my friend S on the head with a notebook because S had expressed her disinterest in accompanying H to the mall. I watched in shock, and for a moment our entire dysfunctional friendship flashed before my eyes. I was done. I made my Rhett Butler decision and walked away. Forever. I didn’t even bother to tell her that I didn’t give a damn.
The short novel Silk by Alessandro Baricco is about a French merchant of silkworms who travels to Japan in search of the exotic country's legendary silk. There, he meets a woman whose spell enchants him long after he has returned to his own country. Silk is one of the most achingly beautiful books I've ever read, and I attribute this distinction to its many short chapters, and thus its many closing sentences.
What is it about the Final Sentence, bringing a chapter to a close, that holds more weight, more depth, and more power than the other sentences? The only other kind that comes even near to its heft is the Opening Sentence, but the Opening Sentence is a totally different animal--it is optimistic by nature, offering a taste of riches to come. The Final Sentence, however, has the ability to say so much more with so few words.
The book's entire first chapter:
Although his father had pictured for him a brilliant future in the army, Hervé Joncour had ended up earning his crust in an unusual career which, by a singular piece of irony, was not unconnected with a charming side that bestowed on it a vaguely feminine intonation. Hervé Joncour bought and sold silkworms for a living. The year was 1861. Flaubert was writing Salammbô, electric light remained hypothetical, and Abraham Lincoln, beyond the Ocean, was fighting a war he was not to see the finish. Hervé Joncour was thirty-two. He bought and sold. Silkworms.
Whatever gravity a chapter’s Final Sentence may have, it is always the very last sentence, the one that ends the book, that quite literally has the final word and trumps all others. It is always my favorite moment in novels, the springboard from which the book launches me back into the world.
Occasionally, on windy days, he would go down to the lake and spend hours in contemplation of it because he seemed to descry, sketched out on the water, the inexplicable sight of his life as it had been, in all its lightness.
The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect: When something looks great, but turns out to be very disappointing.
As far as dorm food goes, our fare at Adams House was pretty good. It helps that I eat and enjoy pretty much everything, and that there were always several entrée choices a the buffet stand. Of course, if you were really averse the options on a particular day, you could ask the cooks to fry you up a burger, and there was always cereal.
Periodically, our dining hall would offer a special meal that was out of this world. One of the best I can recall was the lobster-boil night, where each resident received a ticket to exchange for an entire lobster, straight from the big vat they set up in our courtyard. I ate three lobsters that night because I was lucky enough two know two picky eaters. Then there was the night a guest chef came to cook a full Thai meal, complete with tablecloths and dinner candles. We had regular specialties too: Sunday brunch was a meal we looked forward to all week (Belgian waffles, omelets to order, egg sandwiches, French toast… mmm).
Even with these specialties and our old favorites, there were only so many dishes that made it into rotation. By the end of the semester, most of us were eating at Tommy’s Pizza across the street several times a week.
One dish that appeared in the kitchen infrequently (but significantly) was turkey tetrazzini. In the buffet tray, it looked delicious: spaghetti in a cream sauce with large strips of turkey meat and assorted vegetables. I’m a pasta fiend, and who can resist a good cream sauce? The first time I saw it as a sophomore, I loaded my plate. And regretted every bite.
The noodles were cooked to a mush and almost beyond recognition as pasta, and the cream sauce was paradoxically bland and too salty at the same time. The turkey meat, which had looked so succulent, was the consistency of cork.
This should have been the end of it. A normal person would have said, “I don’t like turkey tetrazzini,” and never chosen it again. But I had a problem that became known among my friends as The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect. I think the dish hypnotized me into forgetting how terrible it was the last time I ate it. And whenever it appeared, maybe once a month, I would not be able to resist its temptation and would end up kicking myself again for my weakness.
After three years, the term stuck and The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect was used for anything that looked or sounded great initially, but was disappointing in the end (anything on NBC on Thursdays at 9:30pm, any movie by Quentin Tarantino after Pulp Fiction, Friendster).
Which brings me to a cookbook I received as a review copy from America’s Test Kitchen (during the good days), Cover and Bake. The entire cookbook is devoted to anything you can make in casserole dish, stick in the oven, and forget about. I was overjoyed when I was that turkey tetrazzini was one of the included recipes. Finally, I thought. A chance to prove the Turkey Tetrazzini Effect wrong once and for all. With Cooks Illustrated behind the recipe, it will be delicious and the TTE will go down in flames.
An afternoon of cooking ensued: pasta—al dente, fresh cream, turkey thigh meat, fresh vegetables. When I pulled the bubbly casserole with a crispy bread crumb topping out of the oven, it looked great smelled even better. E and I sat down to dinner and dug in.
Well, folks, it ain’t called The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect for nothing. Ten years after my first encounter with it, it still has not failed yet. The dish was fine. The flavor was OK. The noodles were a little mushy. Overall, it was a disappointment. Even E ate his dinner was unusual disinterest. It had not occurred to me that The Turkey Tetrazzini Effect could have reached as far as the editors of Cooks Illustrated, but I see now what I am up against.
I give up. I do not have the strength to fight it any longer. I will just eat turkey tetrazzini for the rest of my life and live with the disappointment.
My cousin, who lives all the way across the country, had a baby boy on Monday. He emailed the first pictures today, so I just found out. I normally would have found out earlier, but my parents are on vacation, so I suppose the speed-of-light communication system normally used for gossip, rumor, and other assorted family news disintegrated and this important news didn't make it to me until now.
But I know now, and I have a pictures. My favorite of the batch is a the one of baby's 2-year old big-sis standing next to his carrier. The two cutest beings on Earth. I wish I lived closer to them.
Despite the fact that newborns have no use for books, I am going to send him Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram's Guess How Much I Love You anyway. Every family needs one of these, and maybe a little bean bag bunny to go with it. While the text is sweet and sentimental and almost downright sappy, I still like it. But it's Jeram's illustrations that make this book such a favorite of mine (and millions of others, apparently). Jeram is a master at giving animals character and thoughts without compromising their essential animalness. The small sketches featured on her website say it all. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram
The mess on my desk has become almost unbearable. I say “almost” because I have not yet been pushed to the point of taking any sort of action about it. At the moment, there is approximately one square foot of workspace—actual desk visible—and the rest is covered by:
-1 wire in-basket filled with papers as old as three years -3 piles of papers, one of which isn’t really a pile- it’s more of a spread -3 piles of books, including one with a book open face-down on top -1 pile of shipping receipts, including tracking numbers but no other information -2 piles of full manila folders -standing folder rack holding 19 manila folders, a full clipboard, and 3 undeposited checks -laptop computer, on top of which is a pile of paper and my calendar -telephone, pencil cup, monitor, keyboard, printer, adding machine -box of notecards -empty plate from yesterday’s breakfast, napkin
[Actually, I can see now that the only reason there is a square foot of space available is that it is necessary for the mouse to function.]
It’s a good thing I just read A Perfect Mess by Eric Abramson and David H. Freedman. According to Abramson and Freedman, my desk mess is not necessarily a bad thing—in fact, it may be beneficial in surprising ways. The core of their pro-mess argument is that organizing, storing, and maintaining the order in the various aspects of our lives is often more time-consuming, expensive, and restrictive than living with a moderate degree of mess. In the example of my desk, these messes do have some order—similar documents may be in the same pile with more recent documents closer to the top, and I am able to find things surprisingly quickly. In addition, there is the extra benefit of the serendipitous find, or juxtapositions of documents that spark creative thought.
This all makes sense, and sounds like a really interesting five-page New Yorker article. Unfortunately, it’s a 304-page book that exhaustingly (not exhaustively) details, mainly through anecdotal evidence, successful businesses, marriages, and scientific efforts and how messy behavior contributed to the success. This gets old after a while, mostly because it is so obvious that one could find some aspect of messiness in any organization, and there is no way to effectively asses the exact contribution of messiness in a real world situation that is always going to be a mixture of various degrees of orderliness.
For example, Abrahamson and Freedman cite a successful restaurant that does not have a theme to its décor or menu. Different parts of the restaurant are decorated in completely different ways. The menu does not match any particular type of cuisine, but offers small plates for patrons to choose and eat together (according to the authors, family style=mess). The restaurant got off to a rocky start, however, because diners were confused about the overwhelming number of choices on the menu and tended to order fewer dishes until the owner added a number of 7-dish combinations to the menu. So what really is the cause of the restaurant’s success? The eclectic décor and cuisine is most certainly a contributor, but it wasn’t until they introduced an antidote to the “messiness” of the menu that diners felt comfortable ordering. Abrahamson and Freedman essentially ignore all the details in their anecdotes that are counter to their argument.
The most helpful conclusion that the authors do make is that there is nothing inherently bad about a certain degree of mess, and those who are ashamed of or stressed out by their desks or closets need not be. I do agree with their core argument that mess may have some benefits. But it seems to me that every individual or organization will function optimally at a different combination of messiness v. orderliness, so case studies of others’ failures or successes are not very useful. The concept, however, was interesting enough for me to finish reading the book, instead of spending that time cleaning up my desk.
According to my car, it is 108° outside. It has been so hot these last three days that I find myself fairly surprised to still be alive and lucid, having survived the ordeal of simply existing in this heat. On Saturday, I had parked three blocks from my hair salon and had started to walk in the 115° heat. Even in the shade, I could feel my lungs struggling to process the hot air and I swore I could hear my skin sizzling. I turned around, got back in the car, and drove the three blocks to a closer parking space.
Today I have left the office a bit early in a show of support for our air conditioner. The single window unit, which seemed perfectly adequate last year on the two days that were warm enough to necessitate its use, chugged along valiantly all day, ever since the temperature hit 100° at 11:00 this morning. I decided at 4:30 to give it a much deserved rest and I headed to Borders, where the air conditioner is big and strong, and always reliably frigid.
I am in the literature section of the bookstore, where I have been scanning the shelves for inspiration and memories to jump out at me. What did catch my eye was a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated displayed face-out. This edition is the movie tie-in version (not the one I own) featuring Elijah Wood sporting a pair of Magritte-esque glasses. My first reaction was the same dismay and sadness I feel at all movie tie-in covers. Then I thought, did anyone actually see this movie? Wasn’t it such a dud that they would be better off not using the movie marketing on the cover? Oh, it’s Elijah Wood. People seem to love Elijah Wood these days, even though he doesn’t do anything for me (especially with big hairy hobbit feet). I have to admit, it did cross my mind to see the movie when it came out. I had read Everything is Illuminated earlier this year and was blown away by every single thing about the experience. I laughed out loud, I cried, I wished it would end quickly and release me from its grip, and I wished it would never end. Foer’s writing was simultaneously literary-clever, gut-splittingly funny, and emotionally mesmerizing, a set of characteristics that aren’t often found tied so closely in postmodern literature.
The book has three interconnected story lines (my favorite type of book). One of the threads is a mythological telling of the main character’s (also named Jonathan Safran Foer) Jewish ancestry. The other two, told from differing points of view, follow Jonathan’s modern-day quest to the Ukraine to find a woman who might have known, and saved, his grandfather during WWII. All three are written in an entirely different vernacular, similar to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and Foer has an equally impressive facility with the different voices. More amazingly, his literary cleverness is serves to illuminate the humanity of both the main characters and of an entire village—their deepest joys and sorrows, their needs and wants, and their loves—rather than obscuring it. The threads are perfectly woven and timed to reach their peaks together in an amazingly powerful scene.
So when I read the reviews for the movie version of Everything is Illuminated, I wanted to hear the same great things from the critics, but I didn’t. The trailer I saw showed a comedic scene that was in fact quite funny, but I didn’t want the whole movie to be a funny, watered-down version of the book. I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. I would rather preserve my memories of this incredible book the way they are in my mind and heart. Besides, I have always found Elijah Wood a little bit creepy—I mean, have you seen Sin City?
In today’s Bookcrossing lesson, we go beyond book releasing to explore the Bookring.
Soon after Bookcrossing was invented, members began using the forum to organize the sharing of books. People browsed each other’s bookshelves to arrange trades, or gifts, and the bookring sprang out of the need to accommodate more than one person who wanted to read a particular book you had.
When one member owns a book that many others are interested in reading, she can organize a bookring. She will announce the ring in the forum and members can contact her to join the ring. She will then arrange a mailing list order and mail the book to the first person on the list.
Each person in the ring is responsible for journaling the arrival of the book, any thoughts they have, and its departure to the next member. In the end, the book should return to its original owner (a bookray is a variation where the book does not return, but may continue its journey indefinitely). Due to the vagaries of the postal service and the members themselves, it may take a long time to receive a bookring book. Sometimes you never get it at all.
The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett was a book I was lucky enough to receive early in a ring a joined. I had signed up for the ring because I had loved Patchett’s Bel Canto, but I knew nothing about this one. When it arrived, I didn’t even read the back cover before diving in.
I highly recommend not reading the synopsis of this book first. Ann Patchett’s wonderfully gentle story unfolds itself one petal at a time. It draws the reader in slowly, revealing the beauty and depths of all the characters in surprising ways, a completely different experience from Bel Canto.
In the spirit of ignorance, I will say only that the book follows the journey of a magician’s assistant who must look both inside herself and others when her magician passes away and some surprising aspects of his life are revealed.
Reading The Magician’s Assistant was like being wrapped in a comforting old blanket at one moment, and being caressed by wafts of warm tropical breezes the next. It is the story of a woman who could be me, could be us, under these extraordinary circumstances.
When I finished, I was sad to mail this book on to the next person in the bookring. I missed it so much that I subsequently bought my own copy, completely defeating the purpose of the bookring in the first place.
I have a cousin who, after graduating from UC Berekley, decided to become a chef. She enrolled in the California Culinary Academy and when she graduated at the top of her class, she scored a job at Restaurant Gary Danko, one of the three restaurants in California to receive a five-star rating from Mobil. Her tenure there was short-lived, but because of her, I have developed a love for that restaurant that surpasses all rational thought. If I had enough disposable income, I would just move in.
Soon after my cousin quit her job at Gary Danko, she moved to Taiwan to open her own restaurant with her sister. This restaurant, in the heart of a trendy section of Taipei, was called Wicked and offered the Taiwanese something unusual: high-end fusion cuisine. I never had a chance to dine there, but other family members told me how elegant and classy the décor was and how innovative the dishes were. In addition to the unusual cuisine, my cousins also wanted to offer a small retail shop in the restaurant, and came to our bookstore for a supply of the fancy cookbooks that are so popular in the States now.
It was because of this one shipment that I opened a wholesale account with America’s Test Kitchen, the publishing house that produces all of the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks as well as the Cook’s Illustrated books. I only placed one order—I guess the Taiwanese people never took to the lusciously illustrated (and expensive) books on Western cuisine. When my cousins sold the restaurant a year later, a library of beautiful cookbooks ended up on my cousin’s bookshelf at home.
The Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe was one of the books Wicked was unable to sell. It also happened to be one that I already owned and used often. The recipes in the book are all similar to (if not directly transferred from) the recipes featured in the Cook’s Illustrated magazine. There is quite a bit of explanation for each dish, including all the steps the experimenters used to reach the absolute best combination of ingredients and methods. And because it was such a huge tome, pretty much anything I ever wanted to make could be found in it.
Because of The Best Recipe, I have perfected omelets, homemade pasta, three types of chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, and cinnamon rolls. If E decides he wants to have roast beef, or pan-seared halibut, this is where I turn.
In 2004, America’s Test Kitchen published a new, expanded edition of the book called The New Best Recipe. As if it hadn’t been heavy enough already, this new edition was now another half-inch thicker with many more recipes added. I was torn—should I get the new edition when there was nothing wrong with the one I already had?
Before I could even decide, a package arrived at my office. A big, heavy package from America’s Test Kitchen. Sure enough, inside it was a free review copy of The New Best Recipe. Some days at work are hard to get through, but some days are like manna from heaven, are they not? Apparently, our company was on their mailing list for review copies because of that order we placed for Wicked. The New Best Recipe was simply the first in a string of packages that arrived over the course of a year, each bearing a beautiful new cookbook. They did stop coming after a while—I guess they figured out that we were not buying anything. But for that short time, it sure was exciting.
One of the towns E and I visited on our ten-day honeymoon in Europe was Bellagio, Italy. We had decided on this small touristy spot on Lake Como because we were getting married at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, and what could be a more fitting honeymoon destination?
We were planning to spend two days in Italy, both of which at Lake Como, so I pulled out my 2002 edition of Rick Steve’s Italy. In the short chapter pertaining to Lake Como, Steves strongly recommends staying in the tiny town of Varenna, close to the depot for the Milan-bound train and only a short ferry ride to the other towns on the lake. We booked a room from one of the listed hotels, and were glad we did. After an overnight train ride from Vienna, it was a luxury to check right in without having to figure out the ferry system as well.
Rick Steves is known for his “back door” philosophy to travel, and Varenna is a perfect example. Varenna is Bellagio’s smaller, quieter, lovelier, and therefore more charming neighbor. It consists of a few hotels and restaurants on the waterfront, a tiny commercial district up the hill, and a network of stone stairs winding between the yellow and orange stuccoed houses bringing pedestrians up and down the hill. In theory, this should have been a great opportunity to see Italy through its “back door” and get a more authentic taste of Italian culture than in the over-touristed Bellagio, where the entire waterfront is lined with gift shops, swanky hotels, and overpriced cafés.
We noticed right away, however, that something was amiss in paradise. During our first lunch in Varenna, everything was picture-perfect: the lapping waves of the lake on the narrow beach, the outdoor café tables, the thin-crust pizza and amazing espresso. But then we realized that we could understand all the conversations at the tables surrounding us—everyone was speaking English. Our waiter spoke impeccable English as well.
Back at the hotel, on our way to our honeymoon-splurge larger room with a balcony overlooking the lake, we passed by the guest lounge, where a man was dozing in front of ESPN. On the table next to him was a copy of the same Rick Steves book we had brought. Uh-oh, I thought.
Later that day, after exploring all of Varenna, we hurried to dinner. Dinners were included with our lodging and began at 7:00. In the dining room, each table was marked with numbers that corresponded to the room numbers. We found our assigned table to discover that it was a four-top; we were to expect another couple. This method of dinner seating was both charming to me and not. While it’s nice to meet some other guests in a convivial atmosphere, and changing your dinner companions from night to night may be a good way to meet new people, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the evening making small talk with strangers. During our honeymoon.
Of course, the couple who ultimately sat with us was interesting and friendly, just talkative enough and not too intrusive. And American. Every single guest in the dining room was American. Some were very obvious, talking in loud, boisterous tones. Two blonde young women who looked under twenty and sounded like they were from Southern California were telling another couple about their trip through Europe, and for the entirety of our meal, we listened to the girls talk from across the room. It was about as difficult to refrain from eavesdropping as it was to have our own conversation. We could have been home.
Has Europe simply been overrun by Americans, or is the problem Rick Steves? While “back door” traveling may have been a novel concept at one time, it has become a fairly mainstream and commonsensical idea at this point. These days, everyone is looking to get the most out of their hard-earned vacations, and experiencing the authentic cultures of our destinations has become one of the most important aspects of visiting a foreign country. Rick Steves has made a fine living from directing people to high value experiences at a cost we can afford, but his success is beginning to come at a price.
How many of the guests in our hotel were there because of Rick Steves? Fifty percent? Eighty percent? Was the entire town of Varenna filled with Rick Stevers? In a tiny place like Varenna, a handful of tourists with his book would make a big difference in the population demographics. While I fully respect and concur with Rick Steves’ intentions and vision, I am afraid that his popularity might be negating the usefulness of his own recommendations for out-of-the-way, road-less-traveled sites. It’s too bad, because Varenna really was the perfect spot on Lake Como. But the secret is out, and we’re on our own again… until the next travel guru comes along.
“James Howe is signing Bunnicula!” I cry when I read the BEA signing schedule.
“Who?” says E.
“James Howe!”
“Right. Who?” says E again.
“He wrote Bunnicula.” E looks blank. “Bunnicula? The vampire bunny? The celery stalks at midnight?” Still blank. I can’t believe he’s never heard of Bunnicula, but I get in line with all the other fans, say something embarrassing to James Howe like, “I’m so honored to meet you,” and make off with my loot.
The next day, we have a two-hour layover in Denver. It is a particularly lucky layover because one of my best friends, S, is on her work shift. She is a bartender in an airport restaurant, so we go visit and get a free meal.
Naturally, because she is a friend of mine, conversation turns to books. “Hey,” I say as I look pointedly at E. “You’ll appreciate this: I met James Howe. He signed Bunnicula for me.”
“Wow!” S says, impressed.
I look at E. See? “E’s never heard of it,” I tell her.
“What? You haven’t read Bunnicula?” S is incredulous. “The vampire bunny? The celery stalks at midnight?”
There’s something about Van Morrison’s voice that makes every molecule in my body cease to vibrate. The moment I hear his unmistakable sound on the radio, everything inside me stops to listen and be, simply be, while the rest of the world whizzes by at light speed. Sometimes his songs bring me joy, sometimes melancholy, and sometimes nothing. But at the end of every song, I feel a sense of peace and completion. I imagine this is what meditation must feel like.
Many of Van Morrison’s songs are not sung at all, but are spoken recitations—poetry with music, I suppose. These are sometimes even more beautiful than the other songs because the rhythms of the words weave themselves so smoothly with Van Morrison’s lyric Irish brogue, in and out of the music.
The first (and only) book by Jack Kerouac I ever read was The Dharma Bums. The opening sentence reads, “Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.” I could very well have been listening to a Van Morrison song. And in that instant, I understood the appeal of the Beat genre.
For me, the appeal of Kerouac was not its ideological content. It was not the expression of freedom from being on the road, from living an alternative lifestyle, or from the mind-bending substances. What I loved about The Dharma Bums were the rhythm and beauty of the prose.
Kerouac’s language is so unrelentingly beautiful that I could open the book to any page and find something lovely to quote. On page 17:
“The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under and meditate on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.”
On page 91:
“And that roaring creek was a beauty by moonlight, those flashes of flying moon water, that snow white foam, those black-as-pitch trees, regular elfin paradises of shadow and moon.”
This rhythmic beauty can literally be found on every page. The last few sentences of the book are my favorite, and the image they conjure has stuck with me through the years. It so perfectly sums up my relationship with the world.
“…as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said “Thank you, shack.” Then I added “Blah,” with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.”
I think the greeting card business is getting out of hand. While it used to cost about a buck to offer someone a canned sentiment, these days a moderately attractive card from Papyrus can cost upwards of five dollars apiece. I refuse to pay five dollars for one item of stationery.
There are two methods I have adopted to protest this highway robbery. The first is that I’ve spent hundreds of dollars at my favorite store, Paper Source, so that I can make my own cards. Even if my creations don’t look as aesthetically pleasing as the high-priced cards, at least they carry the added value of having my own gluey fingerprints on them.
A better option, if you are unwilling to make the blank-card and paraphernalia investment, and if you love books, is to use paperback picture books for your greetings. Picture books usually cost, at retail, between five and eight dollars. With my bookstore discount, they are now cheaper than greeting cards. There are also more choices available with almost any sentiment you would like to convey. Just write your message on the title page, slide the book into a manila envelope, and voila! Much better than a boring old greeting card.
On Valentine’s Day, however, a hardcover might be worth the splurge. Last year, my “card” for E was a book called Jellybeans by Sylvia van Ommen. Harkening back to the old days of simple, naïve line drawings on cream-colored uncoated paper, this delightful story of two friends is deliciously modern and profound. And every page is so cute I could cry.
On the opening page, George the rabbit is looking at his cellphone. “Hey, a message.” His friend Oscar the cat has text messaged an invitation to eat jellybeans with him in the park. George will bring the jellybeans and Oscar will bring something to drink. Off they go.
As George and Oscar enjoy their jellybeans and hot chocolate, they begin to muse about the existence of heaven.
-Will we go there too—both of us? -I’m going if you’re going, that’s for sure. -We might bump into each other there. -That would be nice.
They decide to meet at the entrance, or maybe “at one of those special meeting places.” And if they don’t remember each other, they can become friends all over again, and eat jellybeans together.
-Will there be jellybeans there? -Maybe not. -Then I’ll just bring some with me. -Great, and I’ll bring the hot chocolate.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham has the distinction of being the only Long Distance Book Club book to have a written review posted by every single member of the club—seven in all. Because of the stringent mailing rule of sending the book in your possession at the beginning of each month regardless of whether you finished it or not, many books were sent off either unread or only partially read. About half of the members finished each book, so most titles ended up with three or four reviews each.
The Hours was probably the most read because it has the highest profile; we all knew the movie was opening at the end of the year. One of my friends, in her review, wrote, “Nicole Kidman as Woolf? OK. Meryl Streep as Mrs. Dalloway? Not what I had pictured.” Funny how, after the fact, you couldn’t picture anyone else.
While I never really got into the book, most of the other members enjoyed it very much. One review read:
“An excellent book if you like reading because you like great writing. I couldn't help but think I'd enjoy it a bit more if I was familiar with Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway. Not that I couldn't "get" the stories and characters w/o having done the prereading - just the opposite... I was impressed with a vivid character portrayal, and I wanted to see how accurate the picture was.”
This was my favorite comment:
“First off, I want to say that I did enjoy this book. I enjoyed it the way I enjoy a lot of recent fiction: the author is very clever, knows s/he is very clever, and spends a lot of time showing you the cleverness and their knowledge of it. I enjoy cleverness, so I am a prime audience for this sort of thing.”
For my part, I had to admit my own failings:
“…and then I got to the end and I realized that I never really had an epiphany, and it never really got better, and I wasn't all that sad to see it end, but worse, I felt like I missed something, because everyone said it was so clever…so it was one of those situations where I felt slightly dumb for not really getting it, but wondering if what I did get was really all there was to get, or if there was something more, but then I'm not a very careful reader anyway, and I guess that's just the way it is.”
I do not belong to a book club for two reasons. One is that I don’t want to be told what to read at any given time, and the other is that I’ve never been invited to join one. It’s a sad fact, but I could count on one hand the number of bibliophiles among my friends in the Bay Area. I did once try to start my own book club with my friends outside the Bay Area, an ambitious undertaking that lasted, surprisingly, over a year. Who would have thought that an enterprise named The Long Distance Book Club would survive that long?
My plan was simple yet ridiculously difficult to accomplish: each member of the club would choose a book, and on the first of the month, mail it to the next person in the mailing chain. Every month, you mailed the book in your possession on, whether or not you had finished it. Then, you would journal your thoughts about each book on a website I had set up, Amazon-style. Thus, after a full mailing rotation, every book had a number of “reviews” and the book returned to its original owner. What a stupid idea.
The first book I chose was an ARC I had recently gotten for Michael Chabon’s YA novel, Summerland. Back in 2002, successful authors writing children’s books were still a bit of a novelty, and the release of Summerland was big news in the literary world. It even got some critical acclaim, but I attribute that entirely to Chabon’s prowess at adult literature, not the mess that was Summerland.
The Long Distance Book Club website is still there, after all this time, so I can quote myself from my review of the book:
“Chabon seems to think that there is a hole in the American mythological and legendary tradition that he could fill. It ended up, however, being a rambling epic full of lukewarm characters and obvious ploys to inject his own version of Americana into the short-term memory of our culture.”
Other members were more charitable. My friend who is now a professor of history at Princeton wrote:
“I appreciate that attempt to unify a whole bunch of different mythologies (Native American, Judeo-Christian, Scandinavian, Greek) into one semi-coherent universe, which sort of starts from the premise that if you relax some of your beliefs about nature and reality, a lot of things come together. And that is the part of this book that earned the three stars -- I actually liked the way he put together this world.”
On the whole, however, Summerland was not well-received in this club, despite the high marks it enjoys from critics and online reviewers. Our collective dissent reminds me of why my friends are my friends: we share a common framework for our ideas and opinions. Plus, they must really love me to have participated in my crazy scheme as wholeheartedly as they did for as long as they did.
At BEA back in March, I noticed that Moleskine was showing their new line of City Notebooks, a do-it-yourself city guide. I want one of these So Bad.
I have a friend whose husband was born and raised in Paris. It's terrible, but for some reason I find Chinese people who live outside of China or California a fascinating and exotic breed, worthy of great study. Compounding this mental disconnect is that he does not speak a word of Chinese, but is fluent in French. On top of that, I had already fostered a romantic vision of anything Parisian, giving him an irresistable appeal. I love him to death and think he's the perfect match for my good friend.
A few weeks ago, I had a brilliant idea. I asked him innocently, "Do you visit your parents often?" He said, no, but was in fact thinking about making a trip in the Fall. I pounced. "Great! Can we come with you?" Happily for me, he thought that would be a lot of fun, and we are trying to plan a convenient time this fall for our "double-date" to Paris. Seeing the city from a native's point of view will be a far cry from my first trip there as a tourist with my nose stuck in a guidebook (and turning around at one point to find a waif with his hand stuck in my shoulder bag-- he scurried off without any treasures). But because my friend is not much of a foodie, I will be in charge of hunting down the best patisseries, boulangeries, chocolateries, and bistros.
So please, Moleskine, I beg you! Please have your Paris City Notebook released before our trip! I will love you forever! Oh wait. I already do.
For a few months every year, I volunteer as an undergraduate applicant interviewer for Harvard admissions. I invite each prospective Harvard student to my house for what is hopefully a pleasant hour of conversation. Then I write a report, which might take me a few days to formulate, and submit it to the admissions committee. It’s not a terribly difficult process, but during the busiest times I can have four or more applicants on my plate at once, and with admissions’ deadlines, it can get a bit stressful. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t give it up. It’s the only real connection I still have to my alma mater, and I always look forward to meeting all these young hopefuls, most of whom are immensely talented and consistently intelligent.
I always try to make the interview as unintimidating as possible. I tell the candidates that my job is to get to know them on a personal level, not to grill them. Most people relax fairly soon, but one applicant stands out in my mind.
A thin, nervous young man arrived at my door a few years ago. I invited him to have a seat, and gave him a glass of water, which trembled in his hands until he abandoned it on the coffee table. Despite all my efforts to be open and friendly, he was almost paralyzed with fear and could hardly form complete sentences. I asked him all my usual questions: what classes did he enjoy? What were his extracurricular interests? I tried to separate his personality and thoughts from his unease. Of course, I as I always did, I asked him what his favorite book was.
“The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe,” he said emphatically with no pause. I was surprised. “I got it for Christmas last year, and I’ve been reading it over and over.” I wondered if I should be impressed or call in for psychological help.
I had read The Sorrows of Young Werther during college for a course entitled, “Lives Ruined by Literature.” The eponymous young Werther was certainly the poster child for ruining one’s own life. The book is mercilessly depressing, told as a series of letters from a tormented young man whose unrequited love destroys him in the end. I was astounded by the possibility that a person could make every minute detail of daily life cause for despair, and respond in ways that consistently made things much worse for himself. This was not a book for me, an optimist with a cheery disposition. But I could see how it could have been deeply affecting to many generations of young men struggling to form their own identities, figuring out how their lives related with the rest of society and the world.
I decided that I would be impressed with my young applicant, and held off on the 911 call. Despite his nervousness, he was intelligent and thoughtful, and would have made a fine addition to Harvard’s student body. Unfortunately, I can say the same about almost everyone I interview, and the statistics are not great for entrance. These days, it’s down to a less than 10% acceptance rate. My Geothe fan was not one of the lucky few.
For a long time, I have been obsessed with the idea of Haruki Murakami without actually having read any of his works. I like how he’s the bestselling translated writer in America. I like his books’ titles. I like the covers. I like their descriptions. I LOVE his website. I so badly wanted to be the kind of person who reads Murakami. But it wasn't until this April that I finally read anything of his. I brought Kafka on the Shore with me on our trip to Asia, and I was able to finish most of it on our many plane flights, including ones coming in and out of Nagoya, Japan. Its Amazon description is incredibly apt in my case:
“The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen--it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore--the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply.”
When I had finished, I still loved the idea, but I wasn’t so sure about the actual book. The writing is certainly beautiful, the characters are wonderful, and the mysterious plot is intriguing. Everything was great, but… I constantly felt like I didn’t get it, I didn’t know what the point was, and I found it hard to care. I had the same problem with the Murakami short stories I subsequently read. What’s the problem? Why do I love Nabakov and DeLillo but not Murakami?
Last week, I looked up “magical realism” and some things became clear. Now I know that just because I like Nabakov doesn’t mean I have to like Murakami. According to Wikipedia, “magical realism often overlaps or is confused with other genres and movements,” such as postmodernism. “Magical realism is often considered a subcategory of postmodern fiction due to its challenge to hegemony and its use of techniques similar to those of other postmodernist texts, such as the distortion of time.”
Now it also makes sense that I didn’t like Love in the Time of Cholera or Like Water for Chocolate either. Fantastical things that happened in these stories didn’t make any sense to me, but more importantly, didn’t please me the way other postmodern disconnects do. Some things that scramble my brain make me feel good despite, or because of, the way they don’t follow traditional rules. Magical realism, on the other hand, usually leaves me baffled.
I had an epiphany: I don’t like magical realism!
I’m so relieved it wasn’t something more serious. Now I can give up my Murakami obsession.
A confession: the only reason I read Love in the Time of Cholera almost ten years ago was that a nice young man who, for a short while, seemed very interested in my company recommended it.
Our parents had been friends forever, and a few months after a family get-together where we had gotten acquainted, he called me because he was traveling to San Francisco on a business trip. Thinking nothing of it, I was more than happy to meet him in the city and show him around for an entire day. Naturally, as happens when anyone spends time with me, we talked about books and he emphatically recommended Love in the Time of Cholera as one of the best books he ever read. This was not the first time I had heard someone say this to me, so I decided to go for it.
I feel terribly guilty for saying this, but here it is: I didn’t particularly care for the book one way or another. Yes, I know it’s one of the most important works of literature in the twentieth century. Yes, I know it represents the pinnacle of art and culture of an entire continent. According to Publisher’s Weekly:
“The ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America that have distinguished Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning fiction since his landmark work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, persist in this turn-of-the-century chronicle of a unique love triangle. It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity.”
Now, not only am I going to Hell for my apathy toward Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’m also going to be demoted an additional circle because I didn’t realize at the time that the guy liked me. I was never really very good at figuring stuff like that out (thankfully, I don’t have to anymore), but I’m sure my completely friend-ly attitude toward him must have been confusing. He did seem much happier at the beginning of the day than at the end, and now that I think about it, he never talked to me again. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
My recent obsession with pie was really the result of a single book, American Pie by Pascale Le Draoulec. I own a hardcover copy authographed by Le Draoulec—I must have gotten it at a trade show. I was drawn to the idea of the quintessentially American cross-country trek with an added twist: the obsessive quest for a particular food. That the food in question was pie, one of the only truly American culinary inventions, gave it a certain symmetry and beauty.
La Draoulec writes:
“I was moving from San Francisco to New York for a newspaper job and decided to drive, rather than fly, into my new life. My grail would be pie. Just saying it out loud surrendered a smile. I would drive to small towns looking for pie bakers, pie recipes, and pie lore. I’d seek out pies with character and characters who love pie.
Perhaps examining the state of pie in America would also take me back to the essence, the roots of this country, and just maybe help me get to the bottom of mine.”
Maybe the world doesn’t need a 350 page book about people who bake or eat pie (although some readers are into that sort of minutae I suppose), but was made a lasting impression upon me was the bigger concept of the All-American Pie. Most of Le Draoulec’s encounters revealed the sad truth of the matter: that the art of pie making is becoming obsolete. As fewer and fewer people are being taught the techniques and as more and more people decide they don’t have the time to make a crust from scratch, pie-making is becoming a specialized skill prevalent only among pastry professionals, and pie-eating is becoming less prevalent overall.
It pains me that most Americans think the overly sweet, gummy-crusted Marie Callender pie is representative of the species. It’s sad that many have never eaten a pie made from the loving hands of their grandmother, or even someone else’s grandmother. The history of pie, as La Draoulec tells it, is both rich and sweet; I fear it is coming to an end.
I intend to do my part. I am making sure that all my family and friends experience this real American treasure, made from scratch. If you are not privileged enough to know me or to have a pie-making friend yourself, follow La Draoulec’s footsteps to the small diners and restaurants that dot the American landscape for the best pies on earth.
I just pulled a blueberry pie out of the oven. Glossy, bubbling blueberry juice is peeking through the vents in the golden brown crust. I can’t wait to taste it, but as I always am when trying a recipe for the first time, I’m terrified. I shouldn’t be. This recipe is from Jeffrey Steingarten’s book, The Man Who Ate Everything.
Like It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, this book is a compilation of Steingarten’s articles as the food writer for Vogue Magazine. In the introduction, he explains how he switched careers from being a lawyer to being a food writer, and his six-step plan to eliminate all his food phobias in preparation for his new job is both hilarious and inspiring. Down with food phobias!
Of course, all the articles in this volume are infused with Steingarten’s wit and self-deprecating humor, and packed with information about every type of food. The last chapter is entitled, “Pies From Paradise.” Naturally, Steingarten’s objective was to perfect the pie crust, the holy grail of baking. He enlisted the aid of pie expert Marion Cunningham (who happens to live in the same city as I do).
Amazingly, Marion Cunningham breaks just about every rule for making pie crust that you’ve ever seen. The shortening is not chilled, she doesn’t use a pastry cutter or machine—she gets her hands right into the dough. She uses plenty of water, and doesn’t chill the dough before rolling it out. And she can complete the whole process in ten minutes.
After years of my own pie-dough travails, Last ThanksgivingI decided to try her unorthodox method, which Steingarten elucidates in great detail. From step #5:
“First scoop the fingers of both hands down along the sides and bottom of the bowl under the flour, and lift them several inches above the rim of the bowl, with a pile of flour and one large chunk of fat in each. Holding your fingers slightly open, lightly rub your thumbs back and forth across your fingertips, about three times, in order to break up the large chunks of fat into pieces the size of small olives while coating them with flour.”
There are twenty equally detailed steps.
That day, I made an apple pie that was the most delicious I have ever tasted. Even after everyone was stuffed with turkey, there was not a crumb of apple pie left over. (Usually I eat leftover pie for breakfast for the next few days.) Not only is the crust truly perfect, but the apple filling that Steingarten recommends is fantastic. The key? No cinnamon! Using just a drop of vanilla extract, the true flavor of the apples comes through, not an overpowering taste of cinnamon. Truly delicious.
This afternoon, we are heading to my parent’s house for a barbeque. I am in charge of bringing salad and dessert. Since it is the peak of blueberry season right now, and I do love blueberries, I decided to make a blueberry pie. It certainly looks perfect. I hope it tastes as good as it looks.
Not long after I moved to Northern California, I discovered Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park. Besides just being a darned good bookstore, my favorite thing about Kepler’s was that along the shelves, staff members had inserted small slips of paper, “shelf-talkers,” that highlighted favorites and special items. I liked to walk along the fiction shelves and read the tags.
It was here that I discovered Alain de Botton. De Botton is rightly celebrated for his philosophical musings on subjects ranging from travel to Proust to love, but the book I found was not among his more well-known titles. Not that it made any difference to me—I had never heard of him. I noticed this book because it was marked with a “sale” tag, a hardcover for only $3.98. How could one resist a markdown of this scale for a book entitled, The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping and the Novel?
After reading only a few pages, I knew that de Botton was a writer that I would come to love. Through an average heroine in an average love affair, de Botton deftly and wittily captured the essence of the biggest subject in literature using charts, graphs, and pseudo-scientific pontification. It was simultaneously hilarious and spot-on. It was the first time I felt like an author was truly able to describe and explain our stupid human foibles in love affairs. Or maybe he was just able to explain mine.
The Romantic Movement was written shortly after de Botton’s more well-known book, On Love. While the two are similar in scope, I have always had a slightly fonder spot in my heart for The Romantic Movement. I think it does a better job at explaining how we average people do this falling-in-love thing, and, more importantly, I bought it our beloved Kepler’s. For four dollars.
Five and a Half Thoughts About Jim Henson: 1. If I could do any job I wanted, I would want to be a Henson puppeteer.
2. Remember when Itzhak Perlman was on Sesame Street? He was hanging out by Oscar’s garbage can and Slimy the worm was perched on his violin bow. Yeah, that was my favorite.
3. When I was in college, I applied for a summer internship at the Jim Henson Company. I didn’t get it. 4. This book is a treasure. It covers all of Henson’s work, including experimental creations and non-Muppet projects. Worth the price for the pictures alone, and the behind-the-scenes peeks at the Henson workshop.
6. Jim Henson was a GENIUS. Who will take his place in the 21st century? Jim Henson: The Works by Christopher Finch
When my cousin got married in April, he and his bride held two ceremonies: one in Taiwan for our family, and one a week later in Hong Kong for the bride’s. E and I took this opportunity to spend two weeks in Asia. We went to both weddings, then visited Beijing.
The wedding in Hong Kong was the more elaborate one, with a church ceremony and banquet for 200. My cousin asked if I would sing at the church, and I was honored to do so. He knew we were going to Beijing afterward, so as a small token of his appreciation, he gave me a slim yellow travel guide: The LUXE City Guide Beijing.
The LUXE Guide is more like a long, laminated accordion pamphlet than a book (extremely convenient for printing semiannual updated editions). Despite its booklet status however, the guide is packed with listings, according to the cover text, for “Shopping, Dining, and Lifestyle.” The cover also indicates that it is the “First Fabulous Edition.”
Fabulous indeed. This is a guide with exactly that attitude. The opening paragraph:
“Only got a few days in Maomaoland? Want no faff, no crap, just the best of the best? Well, clap your hands. LUXE entries are all hand-picked from the Lovely Tree so you’re always on the freeway to style. How snazzy is that? In this Forbidden City, nothing is forbidden anymore…”
I’m so not-fabulous that I don’t even know what half those words mean. I’m also not in the correct socio-economic stratus, apparently. In the overview section, there is a list of helpful hints that includes, “Avoid the use of public toilets like you would an evening with Steven Seagal,” and, “Have your concierge’s direct line at ALL times.” Useful tips indeed. We could see that the listings (without any price indications) were in the order of Grand Hyatts and Pearl Markets.
E and I couldn’t decide whether to laugh at the guide or sneer at it. I mean, the section following “Accomodations” is called “Goss.” What’s Goss?! We obviously don’t travel in the same circles as my cousin.
Ultimately, we did refer to the guide for dining options. We ended up eating in two of the recommended restaurants, but only after other friends seconded the recommendations and assured us we would not be taking out a home equity loan to eat a meal. One was called Li Qun, famous for its Peking Duck. The LUXE: “Stashed deep in an atmospheric hutong, this fave, family-run duck diner is not so much designed, as collapsed.” The other was Source, an exquisite Sechuan restaurant: “Superbly restored old hutong house with set menu, courtyard and very soigné crowd.” They were both excellent—maybe there is something to this book after all.
Another book I see on L’s bookshelf makes me smile. In 2004, BEA was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Since I was staying with her that weekend, L came to the show with me for a day.
I spent the morning explaining the careful balance between acquiring interesting books and the excruciating pain of overburdened shoulders. I urged her to use extreme prudence in choosing which review books we accepted into our totebags.
Late in the afternoon, we came upon the Workman Publishing booth. On the floor was a towering stack of Steven Raichlen’s BBQ USA. The book had to have been three inches thick, weighing in at about four pounds. We stood there paralyzed while the inner wars raged. It’s a cookbook! We love cookbooks! But it’s the size of two bricks! But I just got a new grill! But I’m not supposed to take anything I don’t really need…
L made a move. She grabbed one and shoved it in her totebag. “I just have to make it back to the car,” she said.
“I have to ship my books home!” I cried. “I can’t just put a few extra bricks in the box!” But in the end, I couldn’t resist the temptation of the cookbook, and I took one also. I even shipped it home.
It turns out that I’m a lazy griller, and the cookbook sits on my shelf completely unused. I usually just turn the gas on high and torch everything. I couldn’t care less about the finer points of barbequing, heat differentials, or even marinating. I throw meat on the grate and eat it when it’s medium rare.
And as far as I can tell, L doesn’t even own a grill.
I read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell when I was in eighth grade, for a school assignment. I’m fairly certain I was too young to appreciate its literary merits and I didn’t enjoy it at all. What was to enjoy for a twelve-year-old? The book consisted of two main premises: 1. the story of a rich, spoiled brat who hurt everyone who cared for her through her own selfishness and 2. the destruction of half our country through war and the devastation that followed. Depressing. 1000 pages of depressing.
feed me
