The Unofficial Guide to Bed & Breakfasts in California by Mary Anne Moore and Maurice Read
In an attempt to follow some sort of calling I thought I might have had, I went back to school for a 14-month audio engineering program in 1999. While the intensive course load involved eight to ten hours of class a day, most of the learning took place inside the school’s recording studios, and homework was minimal. On weekends I found myself with not only a lot of free time, but a yearning to escape my hive-like apartment and my (entirely wonderful) roommates.
I don’t know what possessed me, but for a few months that winter, I was consumed with the idea of exploring the Pacific Coast north of San Francisco. On my first trip, I threw a duffle bag in the trunk of my Miata and headed for Bodega Bay with no overnight reservation. Luckily for me it was off-season: at the bed and breakfast I stumbled upon, I was the only guest. And they had a cat.
Before my next trip, however, I bought The Unofficial Guide to Bed & Breakfasts in California by Mary Anne Moore and Maurice Read. I found the guide extremely helpful. The listings are grouped by geographic zones, the descriptions are clear and full, and the reviewers give every B&B a “value” rating in addition to all the other traditional ratings. With my student’s budget, this was a great help.
I went as far north as Fort Bragg twice that season, visiting every town along Highway 1 on the way. It’s only been seven years since that crazy winter, but now I feel like a different person entirely. I look at my comfortable, mortgage-holding-married-with-no-Miata life and I wonder if it’s still in me to just throw a duffle bag in the trunk of my car (a Prius now), grab my husband, and head north with no overnight reservation. At least I still have the book.
The Unofficial Guide to Bed & Breakfasts in California by Mary Anne Moore and Maurice Read tags: travel guides book reviews bed and breakfast Highway 1 Pacific Coast Highway California
The Master of Adams House during my years at Harvard was Professor Robert Kiely. He and his wife lived in Apthorp House, a charming colonial mini-mansion in the middle of the Adams House courtyard, next to the squash courts. Every second Friday, the Kiely’s, a most warm and welcoming couple, hosted an afternoon tea. We house members loved the teas not just for the free food, but for a fleeting chance to feel more grown up, more British, and more aristocratic. In our jeans, flannel shirts and duck boots, we undergraduates balanced teacups and saucers in one hand with cucumber sandwiches in another. We sat in parlor chairs and discussed Plato and Scorsese. We relished these afternoons because we knew that unless we pursued a career in academia, these teas would be but a memory of our finer days.
Professor Kiely taught literature. In the final semester of our senior year, my roommate and I had some electives to spare, so we slid into his course on post-1950’s English and American literature. This class changed my literary life. Discovering postwar literature was like tasting chocolate for the first time. I breathed it, delighted in its quirky eccentricities. Freed from the constraints of the past, it felt like reading itself had been liberated. That semester, my friends and I reveled in this new landscape. The word “postmodern” was batted airily around our dining hall conversations nightly.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje was the last novel we studied that semester. Its multithreaded weaving of characters, times, and places changed the way I read, and what I read. Each character was so beautifully rendered and the setting so provocative, but most of all, it was the multiple story threads that entranced me. Ten years later, I still can’t keep myself away from novels or movies with non-traditional narratives.
One of my favorite images from of all the books I have read in my short life comes at the close of this novel, a taking us from Hana to the Kirpal of the future:
"And so Hana moves and her face turns and in regret she lowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cupboard and a glass dislodges. Kirpal’s left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles."
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje tags: books book reviews postmodern literature Harvard Adams House Michael Ondaatje
Last month at BEA, I got in line for Debbie Stoller’s autograph. She was signing her new book called Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker.
I knew that Stoller was the famous face behind Stitch ‘n’ Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook, but I hadn’t paid much attention before because I don’t know how to knit, and don’t have too much of an interest in learning. I do, however, crochet.
About a third of The Happy Hooker is actually devoted to teaching beginners how to crochet, so I skipped through that. The rest of the book offers some interesting patterns. While I’ll probably never crochet a “bikini-in-a-bag,” I may someday try a shawl or a beanie hat. Many of the designs are not exactly my style, but if I was really ambitious, I might try a sweater or two. One nice feature of this book is that there are some more unusual patterns, like crocheting wire into a beaded bracelet, or simple yarn for an iPod holder.
So I made it to the front of the line, and as Stoller was signing my book, I searched madly in the recesses of my brain for something eloquent (or at least not stupid) to say. I ended up mangling something like, “I’m so glad you wrote this book, because I don’t knit.”
Stoller gave me a shrinking look. The look said that I was the epitome of tactlessness, that I was undeserving of even the privilege or reading one of her books. “Knitting is… worth learning,” she said stiffly, and her hand jerked, causing her to spell a word wrong. She hastily scribbled it out, fixed it, and signed her name. I slunk off with my book.
I should just stop talking to authors. It’s too traumatic.
Stitch 'n' Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker by Debbie Stollertags: craft books book reviews crochet knitting Debbie Stoller
It occurs to me today, having just finished reading my advance reader’s copy of Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton, that my obsession with books about music may be rivaled by some people’s obsession with books about books.
I can only guess about this, having no obsession of my own with books about books. It first crossed my mind when I noticed the huge popularity of Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart among both children and adults. Then I noticed that the majority of books offered in the Bas Bleu catalog were actually about books. Then Book Lust was in the news for a while, and a whole slew of other similar book-related books that I have no interest in reading became popular.
So, while I was not particularly crazy about Endymion Spring (nor was I about Harry Potter, as you might recall), I have a feeling that when it is released in August, it will find itself at the top of the lists for a long while.
Based on the author’s own research into the history behind Gutenberg’s first press and the strange coincidences and ties between the characters involved with it, Endymion Spring tells the story of a boy who finds a strange and magical book while waiting for his mother in an Oxford library. The pages of the volume are oddly blank, but within moments, they seem to quiver as if alive, words begin to appear, and only he can see them. The tale of how this mysterious book came to be and the many who have sought it and its great power over the centuries propels the story, while the boy must figure out his own role in the mystery.
It all sounds pretty exciting, especially for bibliophiles. However, I found both the plot and the language a bit forced, and ultimately, I was unsatisfied with the resolution. While the main adventure wrapped up, I still have unanswered questions about the meaning of the special book, why those that seek it will simply give up now, and what the ending means for the future of the book.
Oh wait, it all makes sense now—I suppose we can expect a sequel next year. I don’t think I’ll be reading it.
Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton
tags: children's books book reviews Gutenburg press oxford libraries Matthew Skelton
I have a weakness for novels about musicians. I am not interested in biographies of real musicians, just fiction featuring imaginary ones. I find myself drawn to these novels about musicians with the expectation of finding larger insights about life, spirituality, and truth. Even the flattest characters in the dullest plots are trying to touch the untouchable, dabbling in the black art that is music. However, when the characters are perfectly rendered, their voices clear and their actions guided by music itself, halleluja!. There is nothing grander or more majestic than that devotion to something bigger than we humans could ever be.
Bel Canto is a beautifully written book by Ann Patchett about an opera singer who is taken hostage along with other members of a dinner party in an unnamed South American country. While opinions of the book run the usual gamut, I believe that my love for this book is off the charts. If I were an Amazon reviewer, I would give it six out of five stars. I loved every second of the Bel Canto because the main character was music.
Through the opera singer, Patchett lets music do what music does best: it transcends all the details of our backgrounds and beliefs and shines a mirror on our shared humanity. It makes a multinational group of terrified hostages remember that there is something more than just the here and now. Patchett is able to harness this power and unleash it in a most profound way.
For some people this force is God, for some it is art or literature, and maybe for some it is a force that I cannot even begin to imagine. But for me, for as long as I can remember, that transforming power has been music.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchetttags: books book reviews opera singers hostages musicians Ann Patchett
I don’t remember how I came to own A Toad for Tuesday by Russell E. Erickson, but I must have been six or seven years old when I first read it. It was my first novel. At 64 pages long, I remember it seeming like a gargantuan undertaking, but the novel opened up for me an entirely new experience. For the first time, I found myself immersed for hours, if not days, in a fully-realized world populated by wonderful, lively, mutable characters. We have our hero Warton the toad on his tiny homemade skis, setting off in the dead of winter for his Aunt Toolia’s on a Thursday. He is captured by George the owl, who plans to eat Warton on Tuesday. In the meantime, Warton is a prisoner in George’s nest, but over the course of the five days, his kindness and friendship transforms George. Set in the frozen snows of winter, deep in the forest away from our human lives, oh what a rich world this was! All packed into a sliver of a book.
Years later, when I was working at The Linden Tree children’s bookstore, I came across A Toad for Tuesday in receiving. I couldn’t believe it was still in print. I had long since lost track of my original copy, so I immediately bought this one. It was not loved and worn like my first, but the cover art was still the same (it is no longer) and, of course, all my friends were still inside. It felt like coming home.
A Toad for Tuesday by Russell E. Ericksontags: children's books book reviews animal stories Russell Erickson
DH is learning Chinese. He recently completed the Mandarin II course at UC Berkeley Extension, and during those twelve weeks, I felt like I was in elementary school again: Chinese Homework. Only his experience was much worse than mine because he was sitting at the kitchen table every single night working on his assignments. When I was little, Chinese school was on Saturday mornings, so it was only Friday nights that were tortuous. Now I was on the helping side of the homework, and it was constant.
The New Practical Chinese Reader was their textbook. Language textbooks are always a bit funny when you look through them. They consist of silly dialogues that would never occur in real life (“How was yesterday’s Beijing opera?” “It was very interesting. Today the weather is very good, why don’t we go swimming?”[p. 62]).
One of the first lessons taught a grammatical structure involving a subject and a predicate adjective, i.e. “I am well.” Naturally, the students needed some vocabulary to complete the sentence. They were taught, “I am busy.”
This was hilarious to me. Here they were, beginning Mandarin students who didn’t even know the words for big, small, up, down, or “to be” yet, and all they could do was helplessly express the truly American concept of responding to every inquiry, “I am very busy.” They were, in fact, very busy. Busy doing Chinese homework.
This reminds me of an article I read by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker several years ago, where he recounts his amazement (and concern) at his daughter’s imaginary friend, Mr. Ravioli. Using her toy cell phone, she would call Mr. Ravioli frequently, but he was always too busy to play with her. Gopnik wondered exactly what she had picked up from watching the adults in her life.
Now that the class has ended and Mandarin III has not begun yet, DH worries that he will start to forget everything he’s learned. I suggested creating a blog entirely in Chinese. He’s no expert, but a sentence or two a day might be just right to keep the brain moving. Now we sit at the kitchen table every night working on Chinese again, but it’s a fairly painless two sentences. And, as it turns out, the minimalist blogs are zen-like in their simplicity. In fact, they’re almost poetry.
New Practical Chinese Reader by Liu Xun
tags: books book reviews learning chinese mandarin Adam Gopnik chinese textbook
My first encounter with the music of Charles Ives was in sixth grade. The Westchester All-County Orchestra was performing his "Variations on America." I had never heard anything like it before-- it sounded like noise! Different parts of the orchestra played in different keys simultaneously, while sometimes, I couldn't even tell what tune was the basis of the variation. There were so many accidentals that the page was a mass of black ink. I didn't necessarily appreciate the music that first time, but I could definitely tell there was something special about this Ives guy.
In What Charlie Heard, Mordicai Gerstein does an amazing job of describing Ive's life and music using pictures and words. I've never seen a better representation of what goes on inside someone's head aurally than in this children's book. The pages are filled with exhuberant noises that fairly pop out of the paper into the air. Then, when Charlie is notified that his father has died, Gerstein's use of silence is so beautiful I want to cry.
What Charlie Heard by Mordicai Gersteintags: children's books book reviews classical music Charles Ives Mordicai Gerstein
Last Wednesday, negotiations for Father’s Day began. I caught my mother by the back door of our office. “Hey,” I gestured to her surreptitiously. “What should we do for Father’s Day?”
“I had an idea,” she whispered back. “Why don’t we go fishing?”
As we readers know, “fishing” is a secret code word for sitting by a lovely body of water and reading. This was a perfect plan: Dad gets to spend a day with his family, Mom and I get to relax outdoors, and DH gets to fish. (Hey, if you have to spend a day with your in-laws, fishing is the best way to do it.) I was in the middle of Carolyn Parkhurst’s new book, Lost and Found, and was looking for a good opportunity to finish it up. Everyone wins.
We decided to meet at the Municipal Pier in Pacifica, arguably the best pier for fishing in the entire state of California. They say striped bass can be caught there year round, as well as Dungeness crab. So after a picnic lunch on the pier, DH went off to buy bait and came back with a fancy new toy: a Dungeness crab trap.
The allure of a free Dungeness crab dinner was too strong to resist and I put my book down to try my beginner’s luck. Of which I had frustratingly none. Next to us at the end of the pier were these two guys, each manning two fishing poles. One after another, they would each reel in a flailing crab and toss in onto their growing hoard. Couldn’t they spare just one? As we watched them collect crab from the ocean, while not a single crab was biting our bait, the wind picked up. I had to go to the bathroom. The new toy’s appeal was gone.
Two hours later, I turned the final page of Lost and Found, basking in the glow that comes from finishing a good book. I’ve already read a few reviews of Lost and Found, and I agree with them that it’s a fun, humorous read. I agree that the characters are the strength of Parkhurst’s storytelling, and I agree that this book is going to be a big hit this summer. What I liked best were the expertly drawn characters and the book’s fast pace, rushing toward its inevitable conclusion—after all, every reality show must have a winner.
My problem is with critics’ labeling of Parkhurst’s reality-show premise as satire, or even exposé. I don’t think it’s satirical, and I don’t think it’s particularly insightful about television reality shows. From a television watcher’s point of view, I think the way the show is portrayed seems entirely realistic. The Onion’s critic was delighted with the behind-the-scenes glimpses: “Lost And Found blows the lid off the inherent ridiculousness of game operas, from the edited-out downtime while participants wait for transportation to the product placements and cheesy challenge themes.” I find these manipulations unsurprising and even expected. Isn’t that just the way things are in game-show land? Is it just me? Was I just overly cynically about these television shows to begin with?
Don’t get me wrong. I liked Parkhurst’s use of the reality show as setting. It gave the plot a strong structure, and it gave her a perfect excuse to create some quirky characters. However, I think it also allowed her to take the easy route of storytelling without taking the book anywhere truly daring. In Lost and Found, a game show is just a game show- there is no postmodernism here, no satire, no irony. I was almost disappointed that everything ended up very neatly, exactly as the producers of a reality show (or movie?) would have wanted: the correct people have breakdowns, and the correct team (read: nicest) wins the day.
The bottom line? This is a great summer read. It was hard to put down and I loved traveling the world with this host of characters. It was good, honest fun—perhaps about as much fun as going fishing without catching any fish.
Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst
tags: books book reviews father's day fishing reality shows Carolyn Parkhurst
Right after the primary elections of 2004, DH decided to get involved with the volunteer effort for the Kerry campaign. For the most part, he was involved with local phone banking, but because California was considered a blue state already, volunteer focus was on the swing states. There were often opportunities to travel to Nevada or Arizona to help the campaign offices there. I often tagged along to help, and saw a whole new world I had only heard about on TV. That fall, I made phone calls, walked door to door, participated in rallies, and even had a brush with one of the presidential debates.
We decided to spend a week in Arizona in October as our yearly “big vacation.” Our plan was to start in Phoenix and volunteer for the Tempe office for a few days (as well as visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West), drive up to Sedona for a night, then end our trip in Flagstaff, where we could also see the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. It was a pretty good compromise of campaign work and vacation, though to tell the truth, I might have preferred a bit more vacation.
This trip through Arizona will be forever linked in my mind with Carolyn Parkhurst’s The Dogs of Babel, simply because the book accompanied me to each stop and kept me occupied through the more uninteresting moments of campaigning.
It was pure coincidence that we arrived in Phoenix two days before the presidential debate at Arizona State University. We were assigned duties around campus, which was a crazy scene of makeshift television studios and students trying to make their banners visible in the crowd as the cameras panned around. It must have been a hundred degrees out there. After a few hours of attaching signs to wooden sticks, I retreated to the shade of a tree to read my book.
To begin with, I was captivated by the premise of The Dogs of Babel. The main character, dealing with the grief of his wife’s death, becomes sure that her death was no accident. Moreover, he believes that their dog Loreliei must have seen everything that happened, and if only he could teach Lorelei to communicate with him, he could find some closure. What I ultimately loved about the book was the realistic way this crazy idea was played out, despite some unrealistic circumstances and characters.
Sedona was as beautiful as they say, but we were nonetheless glad to be staying only one night. Our bed and breakfast was painted in loud primary hues that were not the most relaxing to me, and there are only so many touristy southwestern-themed gift shops one can look in before needing a tall glass of water. It was the Slide Rock State Park north of Sedona that I wish we had more time in.
In Flagstaff, we were housed with a local volunteer, and we spent a day canvassing an apartment complex with a get-out-the-vote message. That night, as we settled into bed, I experienced one of those snapshot moments that my life consists of. Our trip to Arizona? Mostly a blur, but this moment clearly: our host, passing by our makeshift air mattress bed on her way to the bathroom, seeing me with The Dogs of Babel and asking, “oh, what are you reading?” The sweetest words.
The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
tags: books book reviews arizona 2004 election carolyn parkhurst
Today I plucked this season’s first bright red cherry tomato from my garden and popped it into my mouth. It burst forth with such amazing tomato flavor—the true, honest to goodness flavor of tomatoes, not the mealy barely-something flavor of the pinkish supermarket tomatoes that I’ve been getting up to now. There are ripening tomatoes covering my five tomato plants this year, and I cannot wait to experience my first season of tomato gluttony.
It all started two summers ago, when, in the middle of June, I decided that I wanted to grow vegetables in the backyard. Please understand, I knew absolutely nothing about gardening. Nothing. So, naturally, I bought a book. After reading hundreds of Amazonian comments, I decided on Square Foot Gardening.
The first thing I did was read the entire book from cover to cover. That took two days. Then, following Bartholomew’s instructions, I began to dig a big hole in the backyard. I live in the California Bay Area, on the inland side where the weather is not as temperate as the bay side. During summers, the temperature regularly reaches the high nineties by midday, though to be fair, the air is pretty dry. It took an entire weekend to dig a hole to Bartholomew’s specifications, with some help from my sympathetic husband.
The next weekend I went to the local nursery and bought my supplies: a trowel, two cubic feet of organic matter, a huge bag of vermiculite, seeds. By the end of the day I had my square foot garden planted and ready to produce some vegetables! Now came the hard part: keeping my plants alive. All my seeds sprouted, but keeping the sprouts from getting eaten or dying of thirst was maddening. There were holes in most of the leaves, and something was snipping the top of every basil sprout clean off. Something else was digging small holes by each plant. Other plants never grew higher than an inch or two off the ground.
After two months of hand watering daily, baiting slugs, hovering over the small plants during the day, and peering at them through the back door every evening, I finally harvested: three beets, one 2-inch-long carrot, two heads of broccoli, three snow peas, and one tomato. Everything else died or was eaten.
I tried again the next year, with approximately the same amount of success, but I learned some new things: I can’t keep sprouts alive, so I should just buy the little plants from the nursery and transplant them. Lettuce is great because you just snip off what you need for dinner each day and let the new leaves keep growing in. Covering the entire garden with some sort of mesh prevents the larger animals from eating the plants. I also decided that the most valuable garden vegetable is the tomato, because you can buy other vegetables if you need to, but you just can’t get a tomato that tastes like tomato at the supermarket.
This year, I put all my knowledge into action. I bought a bird net, skipped sowing seeds entirely and simply transplanted lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers, and beets into my garden bed. We had an automatic sprinkler system installed with our landscaping, so I am no longer hand-watering.
Finally, I made one really exciting new purchase that will change the face of my gardening as I know it: the Tomato Success Kit. The kit came with a self-watering planter, special soil, organic fertilizer, and a cage that attaches to the planter lip. I have positioned it on the patio to receive a full day of sunlight, and the two plants in it have been growing like mad since mid-April. Although I was skeptical of its boastful name at first, I do believe this is truly going to be the year of my tomato success. The first bite was off to a good start.
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
tags: books book reviews gardening tomatoes mel bartholomew
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
-e.e. cummings
I asked my best friend from high school to read this poem during our wedding ceremony.
The inside my husband’s wedding band is inscribed, “nobody, not even the rain,” while mine reads, “has such small hands.”
e.e. cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962 by e.e. cummingstags: books book reviews poetry e.e. cummings
I have a confession to make: I have read only one Harry Potter book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Really, I read one and didn't feel like reading more. But that's not the point of this story.
When Harry Potter first made his appearance in the world, I was working in a children’s bookstore called The Linden Tree, one of the premier children’s bookshops in the nation. Besides the employee discount, the best thing about The Linden Tree was that employees were encouraged to borrow the books from the store so that we could actually be familiar with the books we were selling (novel concept, no?).
One of the other employees borrowed Harry as soon as it arrived, and her 10-year-old son devoured it. She reported back to us with a thumbs up: not only did he like it, but he had read it in one day and hadn’t stopped talking about it since. I decided to give it a try.
I didn’t love the book, though I could see why a 10-year-old boy would. It didn’t strike me as anything particularly special. I intended to return it to the store when I was finished, so I removed the paper jacket and kept it in a safe place. That way, I felt more comfortable about handling the book and carrying it in my backpack.
One evening after work, I put Harry in my backpack and met some friends at Candlestick Park for a Giants game (ah, the days when it was still called Candlestick Park!). The backpack came into the ballpark with me and I set it on the cement floor by my feet. For the next hour, I ate hot dogs, drank beer, and cheered along with everyone else for reasons I did not necessarily follow. No matter—when you’ve got a bag of peanuts, you’re sitting under the stars, and surrounded by your friends, baseball is the best game on earth.
Suddenly, I realized that I was stepping in something sticky. And wet. I looked down, and saw a puddle of liquid under my seat, soaking into the bottom of my backpack. Someone had spilled a cup of soda on the floor. Oh no! Harry!
It did not surprise me to find Harry at the very bottom of the bag, shielding everything else from getting wet. I pulled it out and inspected the damage: not too bad, considering. Most of the wetness was on the spine, and I could see the gold lettering sort of melting off. All I thought was, well, I guess I’m buying this one. And it’s a hardcover, too. Damn.
Not long afterward, it was clear that Harry Potter was going to be the biggest thing in children’s books since the Gutenberg press. I still maintained that the book was nothing special, but I must admit, it does please me that sitting on my bookshelf is a hardcover first edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with a pristine dust jacket.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowlingtags: books book reviews harry potter rowling
Bookcrossing 101: Bookcrossing Basics.
It’s time to introduce you to my other great time-waster (I mean hobby), bookcrossing.com. The term Bookcrossing, added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004, is defined as “the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.”
People like to explain it as the “Where’s George” of books. You register a book at the site, put stickers and markings in the book with its unique ID number, and leave it in public. Hopefully, someone who loves books will come upon it and write a journal entry for that book online. Less likely is the possibility that they might continue the book’s journey by leaving it elsewhere.
“Releasing” a book is nerve-wracking. You feel like you’re doing something surreptitious and wrong, but really you’re just leaving a book somewhere. People do it all the time by accident, right? Getting a “catch,” however, is worth all the effort.
Sole Survivor was the first book I released that was “caught” and journaled by a kind book lover. It’s the true story of Poon Lim, a second steward and the only survivor of the British ship Benlomond, which was torpedoed on November 23, 1942 off the coast of South America. His 133 days of survival on a wooden raft is still the longest recorded survival story in modern history. I’ve worked with author Ruthanne Lum McCunn on other projects, and she is not only a gifted writer, but just a really nice lady to boot. You can read about the book’s short trip here.
Sole Survivor by Ruthanne Lum McCunn
tags: books book reviews bookcrossing shipwrecks Ruthanne Lum McCunn
When The Love Wife was coming out in 2004, I heard Gish Jen speak at an author event to promote the upcoming release. I had read her book of short stories, Who’s Irish?, and had felt an unusual connection with it because, for the first time, I encountered Chinese-Americans portrayed in a way that was true for me, that I could relate to. I was very interested to hear that The Love Wife turned the tables a little bit by featuring a family with a Chinese American husband, a Caucasian wife, and two adopted girls from China. The conflict of the story seemed to revolve around a nanny who is Chinese. Strangers assumed that the nanny was the girls’ mother. How interesting!
I feel like a terrible person, but I only read about 120 pages in before I just gave up. Then, in a terribly uncharacteristic moment, I flipped to the back of the book and read the ending. Guilty on two counts. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind ever since. I’ve been trying to figure out why I disliked the book so much, and more importantly, why I feel so guilty about it.
The Love Wife turned out not to be about the modern American experience of being a “hyphen,” and having hyphenated families. It was in fact a melodramatic soap opera featuring the usual cast of repressive mothers and missing fathers. Unfortunately, the only character that I found to have any depth at all was Mama Wong, who I hated intensely. I also tired immediately of the nanny LanLan, her “foreignness” to the family, and her run-of-the-mill Cultural Revolution sob story. (Judging by the Chinese-themed novels published in recent years, you’d think the entirety of Chinese history consisted of the Cultural Revolution.)
See that? I am a bad person. How could I be so shallow as to dismiss the suffering of an entire country’s people, let alone a people of my own ancestry? How could I not find Chinese history and culture fascinating? Every time I read a book that takes place in China, I get depressed. Everybody’s poor, persecuted, sick, or a combination of the three. It’s far from enjoyable. But I’m just too Chinese: I have this ingrained belief that if it’s not enjoyable, it must be good for you. Just like Mama Wong always says.
I believe that the two greatest pleasures of reading about a foreign culture are to experience a place and people removed from one’s own familiarity while simultaneously identifying with the universal qualities of human ideas and our constant struggle. If the setting is not exotic, and the struggle is the same every time, do I still have to like it?
The Love Wife by Gish Jen
tags: books book reviews china chinese american Gish Jen
Book Expo America, the nation’s largest convention for books, bookselling, and publishing, took place last month in Washington D.C. I shipped home two boxes of galleys that will most likely make appearances here as they get read. One that my husband and I both read already is Shenzhen, by Guy Delisle.
Shenzhen is a brilliant graphic novel about Delisle’s experience working in the city of Shenzhen on an animation project. We grabbed it immediately when we saw it on the convention floor because we ourselves just got back from a trip to China in April. What we loved about the book was Delisle’s perfect representation of the culture shock Americans feel upon arrival in China. The artwork serves to both illustrate the details and make the vignettes resonate emotionally.
We didn’t visit Shenzhen, but the culture of his book is unmistakably the same as the places we visited: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Beijing. From the never-ending construction to the way toothpicks prevail on every dining table, every page brought a nostalgic chuckle and a, “Yeah! Exactly!”
Whenever our friends ask us what China was like, we show them our photos and hand them this book.
Shenzhen by Guy Delisle
tags: books book reviews china Guy Delisle
The idea that being a calligrapher was a possible career path was mind-bending. Imagine: to actually make a living writing texts in beautiful handwriting. To have people pay you to play with special paper and bottles of ink.
The Calligrapher is probably not destined to be a classic work of literature or anything, but I certainly enjoyed it while it lasted. It had a touching simplicity while the plot kept my attention throughout.
It was the vision of spreading a clean sheet of paper out, dipping pens in bottled ink and producing this traditional art that inspired me. So, after a few years of excuses, I finally signed up for a calligraphy class at Paper Source in San Francisco last spring.
After twelve hours of class and hour of practice every night for a month, I had mastered the italic hand and had produced my first masterpiece: a beautifully addressed envelope. Buoyed by my success, I decided to hand-address my wedding invitations. Turned out to be pretty impressive, but I’m still a beginner, using cartridge pens with my basic alphabet. I’m not giving up, though. I’m keeping my eyes open for a more advanced class. And someday someone might pay me to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne.
The Calligrapher by Edward Docxtags: books book reviews calligraphy Edward Docx
I might be a bit of a foodie, but cooking isn’t really my thing. It’s not that I’m bad at it; I’m just not that interested in doing it. I’ve watched enough Food Network to know my way around the kitchen and grill, and I’m really good at following recipes, but cooking is just a means to the end: eating.
Baking, however, is a totally different story. I love baking and making desserts. I love looking at dessert menus, looking at baked goods in cases—I love hanging around bakeries. I have cabinets and drawers full of baking paraphernalia: different sized cake pans, tart pans, cheesecake pans, ramekins, cookie cutters… I could go on. Most of it was given to me as gifts, because all my friends know about my obsession.
Room for Dessert was given to me by one of my best friends many years ago. It was my first official dessert cookbook and so far, it has been the most consistently successful cookbook as well. I have made at least ten of the recipes from the book, and they have all been perfect and delicious.
The most useful recipe in the book is the tart dough. Perfect. Use it to make the Blueberry and White Chocolate Tart, which is a bit complicated but worth every second of work. I have never tasted anything as heavenly at any restaurant or bakery. The Black and White Cookies were not only fun to make, but they look great and are a treat for the mouth. Candied Ginger was unlike anything you could buy from a store-- so much more flavorful without too much bite. And speaking of ginger, the Fresh Ginger Cake is a must.
I own many, many dessert cookbooks, but Room for Dessert is where I turn to for no-risk, impressive, and delicious recipes every time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the oven calling me.
Room for Dessert by David Lebowitztags: books book reviews cookbooks David Lebowitz
Damn you Jeffrey Steingarten!
It’s because of Jeffrey Steingarten’s book, It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, that I found myself sitting in an antique train car on Sunday, eating the most expensive steak I’ve ever seen.
(It’s also his fault that I have to make apple pie from scratch, because no store- or bakery-bought apple pie holds a candle to his recipe from The Man Who Ate Everything. And then on top of that, it’s his fault that I don’t get any leftovers when I serve it to guests.)
It Must’ve Been Something I Ate is Steingarten’s second compilation of food articles written for Vogue magazine. I find his relationship with food at turns exhilarating, hilarious, and downright scary. My favorite pieces are those in which he sets something on fire (“Perfection Pizza”), but many of the articles are on topics that are intensely interesting to me, like testing home espresso machines, experimenting with MSG, or finding the perfect French hot chocolate.
Of particular interest was the article on steak entitled, “High Steaks.” Up to his usual hijinks, Steingarten turns his refrigerator into a makeshift dry-aging chamber for beef while explaining the whys and wherefores of the best steaks, and why dry-aged beef really is more tender and flavorful than wet-aged beef. I had never tasted a dry-aged steak, but Steingarten described one porterhouse steak: “very crusty on the outside, just between rare and medium-rare on the inside, juicy, rich, and full of the powerful and satisfying flavor of real dry-aged beef… For the first time since the start of my five-prong steakhouse project, I knew for certain that I was not operating under the sway of paranoid delusions or psychotic fantasies.”
So it is Jeffrey Steingarten’s fault that on Sunday, my birthday, my husband suggested we try the high-end steakhouse a few miles from our house, Vic Stewart’s. We first checked their website, and sure enough, they offered one dry-aged steak on the menu. We also discovered that the restaurant was housed in an old train depot, and in addition to the main dining rooms, you could dine in a real antique Pullman car attached to the building. Birthday luck held, and there was one private compartment available. What fun!
We ordered one dry-aged bone-in rib-eye and a regular porterhouse for taste comparison. And by golly, that dry-aged steak really was more tender, more flavorful, and, well, more expensive, than any other steak I’ve ever had. Now what am I going to do? How can I ever go back to chewy, flavorless steaks? How will my wallet be able to stand it? Damn you, Jeffrey Steingarten!
It Must've Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingartentags: books book reviews food writing Jeffrey Steingarten
When this book was released last year, the publisher, Chronicle Books, invited me to a dinner in honor of author and illustrator Ed Young. Turns out the dinner was a small affair, with only a few guests other than Ed Young himself and some representatives from Chronicle Books. We had such a great time in this intimate setting. Ed is a tall, Chinese man who simply has the air of an artist. With self-assured and deliberate gestures, he gave us some insight into how many of his books come about, including this one. He said that when he has an idea, he simply must get it out of his head and into reality, whether or not there is a publisher willing to take his work on. In this way, he has accumulated many manuscripts and art pieces that have never been seen by the public.
Beyond the Great Mountains was just such a book. Written and illustrated many years ago, Young could not find a publisher for it until recently. While it is a children's picture book, it is not really for children. From School Library Journal: "Described as a visual poem about China, the book is comprised of 14 lines, each of which is accompanied by its own double-page illustration, done in cut- and torn-paper collage. Young also provides the ancient characters for the images he presents. Readers are able to read the entire poem from the title page since the pages are of graduated lengths, from short to longer, with a line of poetry appearing on the bottom of each page, overlapping just enough to allow for the text to show. Designed to be read vertically, each page is flipped up to reveal the accompanying illustration. In this way, the entire book becomes a piece of art, a visual treat of sublime colors and textures that joins with text and characters to describe the vastness and beauty of China."
At the end of the evening, Ed Young signed our copies of Beyond the Great Mountains. I thought it would be fun to have him sign a book for my mother, who, like Ed Young, is from China. But since I didn't know how to write her Chinese name, I had to give her a call. Ed Young graciously spoke to my mother through my cell phone, in an Italian restaurant in the middle of Manhattan, to sign a book for her.
Beyond the Great Mountains by Ed Youngtags: books book reviews china children's books Ed Young
In an attempt to follow some sort of calling I thought I might have had, I went back to school for a 14-month audio engineering program in 1999. While the intensive course load involved eight to ten hours of class a day, most of the learning took place inside the school’s recording studios, and homework was minimal. On weekends I found myself with not only a lot of free time, but a yearning to escape my hive-like apartment and my (entirely wonderful) roommates.
