Lynness: Books, books, books...

I've read a bunch of forgettable books lately, but the one I just finished yesterday, Nina Planck's Real Food, has me wanting to move to the country, or at least take notes and find the nearest farmer's market (which, happily, is not too far away- they just started one last week a few minutes away, but on Wednesdays only- I'm going to check it out tomorrow).  If you liked Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, or Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, then you'll like this.  A fair amount of science reporting, but very readable, enjoyable, and with possibly life-changing (or at least diet-changing, which changes your life a lot) information for the majority of people.  Eating like your grandparents cooked is healthy, lard and all- much better than all the things we've been told are helpful to eat for weight loss and heart protection.  Turns out (surprise!) health science isn't so much 'science' as politics and money.  (You weren't really surprised by that, were you?!)  Anyway, I'm sold.

Lynness: same books, again

Okay, Rae and I seem to do this a lot- I recently read Clara and Mr. Tiffany too!  I was interested because I like Antiques Roadshow and Tiffany- our art museum has a decent collection.

Raehink

Has it really been five years?!? Wow. I so enjoy hearing what y'all are reading out there.

I've been looking a lot at what they call "reading challenges" and think that would be fun to do with this blog. Some people have chosen to read "12 in 2012" -- 12 of their own books, 12 of the same genre, 12 nonfiction, whatever they come up with. I am using the Goodreads widget to keep track on the number of books I read this year. I purposely set it low (52) so that I wouldn't feel any inordinate pressure! Anyway, if you Google "reading challenges" you'll see that there are gobs of them out there. I am challenging you to challenge yourself in your reading this year...

I have tried several times to stop acquiring books. I am doing much better, but it's too much like dieting (or worse) for me. Reading is something I love and is so much a part of my life. So, as a compromise, I am really focusing on reading the books that I currently own or that I can get from a library. I keep a wish list for future titles, but cannot acquire them until I get my piles down to a more reasonable number. But still. Sometimes, I just have to get a certain book...

My life is filled with quite bookish things at the moment. I'm back to reading mysteries, which have always been a love--one which I have sorely neglected in the past decade, I'm afraid. I'm helping our library switch from the Dewey Decimal System to a more user friendly bookstore/retail model. That's a hoot! We hope it will increase the non-fiction circulation in our small town library. I've been attending lectures once a month at the new Springville library. This week I will be hearing from Zina Petersen (Hugh Nibley's daughter) who is a prof at BYU. She'll be trying to talk me into reading some Chaucer. I have enjoyed these events immensely and had forgotten how much benefit I get from hearing from authors and other experts in the field of reading.

And of course, I have been reading! I agree wholeheartedly with Lynness about non-fiction. Narrative NF rules right now with SO many choice titles. Look for lots on Dickens and his era this year, as it's the 200th anniversary of his birth. I've been loving several books on the Berlin Wall (50 years in 2011) and have lots of NF on tap to read. I'm rereading me some Hugh Nibley. Temple and Cosmos, published by FARMS. I dip into it every few years to see if I can glean any new insights from my temple attendance.

Reading highlights from the past year (if I posted more often, then the posts would be shorter!):

The Maisie Dobbs mystery series, which are set in post-WWI Britain. By Jacqueline Winspear.

All Quiet on the Western Front. A classic I somehow missed. By Erich Maria Remarque.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany. About the ladies who designed for Tiffany glass--made me think of Gma. By Susan Vreeland.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel. Set in WW2. Dark and insightful. By Louise Murphy.

Larklight. A steampunk childrens' series. Great fun. By Philip Reeve.

Outcasts United. Soccer and refugees. Inspiring read. By John St. Warren

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley. About severe food allergies. Made me so grateful not to have any!

The Second Mrs. Gioconda by E.L. Konigsburg. The "real" story of the Mona Lisa painting?

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs. Required for all readers. Makes you think! You could also check out The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin. Similar themes.

I could go on and on. And I have. Happy reading!

Lynness: This blog

I just wanted to say that I spent waaaay too long today reviewing old
posts to this blog and adding books to my to-read list on Goodreads and
remembering books I had forgotten I have read, but mostly enjoying the
discussion of ideas that our reading has brought up over the past 5
years (!). I'm glad we have this, and I hope that we will use it more
(the total number of posts was 17 for the year last year, which was what
we often did in a month the first year), 'cause I miss hearing what you
guys are reading and what you think about it. Mim- thanks for the
postcard out of the blue! Love you too!

Lynness: Reading reference cookbooks

So, I got CookWise by Shirley Corriher, who is one someone restaurants and chefs go to when they are having problems with their recipes.  It's a cooking reference book with almost 500 8.5x11 pages all about the properties of ingredients and how they interact chemically, and how time, temperatures, etc, affect them.  It does have recipes, which are given to illustrate the principles in the chapter- I remember one set of recipes in particular, which are the same except for the order and technique used to mix them.

I don't know that it's really meant to be read straight through, but I did, and now I need to go back and take notes.  I learned some interesting things, like why my zucchini bread has a rich green color around the sunflower seeds that has nothing to do with the zucchini (the flavenols in the sunflower seeds react with the alkali baking soda- a similar reaction makes the blue ring around cherries in baking).  There's also troubleshooting helps- my first counselor was early for a presidency meeting and was browsing through it and learned that the reason her meringues bead up on top is that they get too hot.  The solution, counter-intuitively, is too cook it at a higher temp to get it done faster, because lower but longer cooking actually gets the inside of the meringue hotter.

I've got 3 more food science books coming.  I am a pretty decent cook, but I love learning why things work or don't, and I have some recipes that need a bit more....something.  Maybe now I'll know what.

Lynness: Lots of excellent Non-fiction

I've been browsing around Goodreads and have reserved a lot of books at the library (and have come to find out that the maximum number of holds is 15).  Most of them have been non-fiction.  Have you noticed that it's really easy to find engaging non-fiction lately?  I just finished (and thoroughly enjoyed) Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us) by Tom Vanderbilt.  Check it out- it may change the way you drive.  I am also reading The Rescue Artist, about the theft and recovery of Edvard Munch's The Scream.  Aside from the language, I like it.  And I've got more real-life and science awaiting!  Really, I think I like non-fiction better than fiction.  Don't get me wrong- I love novels, but you don't learn much from them, and if you've read a few, you've read them all (a la Joseph Campbell, my 10th grade English teacher's idol).

Lynness: Just My Type

Well, I read about Just My Type somewhere and wanted to read it, but my library didn't have it.  Then all of the sudden they did, so I got it and just finished reading it.  I was rather disappointed.  It was interesting, but not well organized, lack-luster, and worst of all, didn't illustrate (literally) the points it tried to make or define the basics of the type industry.  It did show snippets of many fonts, but the author would repeatedly talk about the relative merits this font or details of that letter WITHOUT SHOWING THE FONT (but showing a picture of the creator of the font...), leaving me to wonder if I had those fonts on the computer to compare...but who has time for that?  Or there would be talk of the Roman influence, or Gothic or Italic, or Egyptian, with no graphic or description of what details makes a font more this type rather than another type.  Bottom line: could have been so much better.