A few friends came over last night to watch finally Sanjaya-free American Idol, an oh-so-guilty pleasure. My favorite comment of the night:
"I just got goosebumps. I am so ashamed."
LATEST RECIPES
Oatmeal Pancakes: hearty and healthy breakfast.
Pumpkin Waffles: a delicious fall breakfast.
Naan: a tender Indian bread.
Sweet and Spicy Pretzel Mix: irresistibly sweet and spicy pretzels and nuts.
Bread-and-Butter Pickles: deliciously sweet and crunchy refrigerator pickles - no canning necessary.
Apricot Jam: an easy refrigerator jam with apricots and lemon.
Clafouti: a custard-like crepe with fruit baked in.
Sun-dried Tomato Pasta Salad: a summer pasta salad with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes.
Curry Mee: a deliciously creamy and spicy curry soup.
Chana Masala: chickpeas in an Indian-spiced tomato sauce.
LATEST BOOKS
Eventide by Kent HarufEventide is the sequel to Plainsong, which I also really liked. These are slow books, portraits of people in a small western town and how their lives intersect. It's subtle and character-driven and enjoyable.
This book traces the fictional history of a Vermeer painting, from its modern day ownership to its inspiration when Johannes van der Meer painted it. A lovely and engaging story and quite a quick read.
A nonfiction account of the life and voyages of the famous explorer, Captain Cook. The story of Cook's life at sea and interactions with South Pacific Islanders, like the Tahitians and Hawaiians, is so interesting, I couldn't put this one down.
Munro is a much celebrated author, and this collection of short stories illustrated that for me. Each short story had the depth of a novel, with Munro clearly grasping the internal demons and aspirations of each of her characters. The stories are unhappy, mostly, focusing on women and the effects of small changes and choices. A clearly talented storywriter.
This is fluff, maybe good enough for the beach.
I found this book in the Martha's Vineyard thrift shop, and it's a much older book that has three short stories about complicated relationships between men and women. The stories are about the internal struggles of Ford's complex characters - interesting for the depiction of human nature and emotions.
This is the first book I've ever read by DFW, and it's a collection of his non-fiction essays and arguments. DFW has been heavily lauded these days, following his suicide, as the most talented writer of his generation, and I've completely bought in. His essays are brillant - he is funny, insightful, strange, and clearly an incredible serious writer and philosopher. The title essay is especially wonderful - it is his account of a Caribbean cruise he went on to write a story for Harper's, and DFW is clearly NOT the Caribbean cruise type. There was only one essay I didn't read because this was the first sentence:
In the 1960s the poststructuralist metacritics came along and turned literary aesthetics on its head by rejecting assumptions their teachers had held as self-evident and making the whole business of interpreting texts way more complicated by fusing theories of creative discourse with hardcore positions in metaphysics.
Don't let that turn you off though! This man was brilliant.
P.D. James is apparently a quite famous British mystery or thrill author, which I didn't realize when I got this one at the MV thrift shop. This was a page-turner of a story, though, and well-written - it would be a much better beach read than the Knitting Club!
This book continued my love affair with Phillips, who also wrote Lark and Termite, for her incredible characters and heart-rending and poetic portrait of life and relationships. There were so many beautiful and simple moments in this book. That said, I found this so hard to read, as it's the story of a woman who has a baby and then spends the next year of her life caring for both her new child and her mother, who has terminal cancer.
This was a strange one... a somewhat interesting, though thoroughly odd story, so I think I'd stick to his Wicked series, which are truly great.
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Farther than Any Man: Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook by Martin Dugard
Runaway by Alice Munro
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Women with Men by Richard Ford
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
Devices and Desires by P.D. James
MotherKind by Jayne Anne Phillips
Lost by Gregory Maguire
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