Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold, Part II

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

Wait a minute...

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

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

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

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

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

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

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

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

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

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

My favorite passage:

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

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

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Now that the release of Breaking Dawn is imminent-- IMMINENT, I TELL YOU-- I've been thinking a lot about Stephenie Meyer again. Firstly, let me reiterate once more how big a fan I am. I read each book twice. I stood in line for an hour at BEA just to get a Twilight tote bag. I read every outtake from her website. I am going to go to the midnight release party on August 1 at my local bookstore despite the hordes of giggling teens that are bound to be there. My point is, I'm completely on board.

So truly mean no disrespect when I say that Stephenie Meyer just isn't the best writer out there. I love her, but let's face it: her prose is not stellar. Now, I absolutely don't say this as an insult. It's just an observation. And in fact, what Meyer is able to do despite (or more likely, because of) her lack of English-major literary prose is far more important to me than simply impressing my professors: she cuts right to the emotional core of her characters and their relationships. The most important aspect of any story is precisely where her strength lies: connecting emotionally with her reader. Her plain writing allows us too meld the images so plainly laid out with all the emotional baggage and psychological imagery residing in our own heads. The result is nothing short of miraculous, given the widely disparate backgrounds of her readers.

I don't read much sci-fi. I think vampires are inherently ridiculous. So how is it that a book about body-snatching aliens so completely held my interest, and moved me emotionally, no less? I don't have anything to add to the multitude of reviews and opinions on The Host, except that I continue to be amazed. If it's not Shakespearean prose, what is it? What is this amazing ability that Stephenie Meyer has, and how can I get some?

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

I just read The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (loved it), and it occurred to me that the YA genre today is so very different from what it used to be when I was in high school. In fact, one might argue that it hardly existed at all. I'm thinking, in this case, specifically about romances. In the 1980's and 1990's, there was pretty only Sweet Valley High, and even I could tell it was mindless drivel. My friends and I read Harlequin and Silhouette romances instead.

If we were teenagers now, we wouldn't have to. Today's YA romances are plentiful, varied, and well-written. Not only do they have great romantic characters, but they are thoughtful and address timely and meaningful issues. Which is more than I can say for most Harlequins.

(OK, this is a little unfair. Times have changed, and Harlequin now publishes Red Dress Ink, and chick-lit abounds across the publishing spectrum. We are all, whatever ages we happen to be, more sophisticated now than before. At least that's what we would like to think now; wait until the next generation looks at what may well be considered our era's quaint pulp fiction.)

I think I may enjoy YA romances more than adult romances these days. There's something about being on the edge of adulthood, the problems associated with a newfound consciousness and all its associated feelings, that is so much more compelling to me than reading about young women my own age dealing with careers and finding Mr. Right. High school is not about finding Mr. Right-- it's about finding yourself.

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito

Heh, look. Marc Acito has a new book out.

Attack of the Theater People by Marc Acito

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard

This book has completely changed my life! I am liberated from the constraints of my own flawed personality, my weak intellect, and time itself!

According to my records on Library Thing, I am currently in possession of 147 books that I haven't read yet. I read, on average, one book a week, so this comes to... almost three years of reading. This is, of course, assuming I don't acquire any more new books, but that is a ridiculous proposition in itself.

While this Sisyphean situation would have, at one time, depressed me beyond measure, now that I have read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, it bothers me not one whit. Nor does it bother me anymore that I can't remember anything about any book I read more than two weeks ago. It's just not a problem anymore.

Pierre Bayard is a brilliant, brilliant man. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is not only a life-altering literary self-help book, but it is at the same time witty and irreverent, and so dead-pan funny that I want to hug it.

You don't actually need to read the book to experience it (Bayard wouldn't want you to). Reading the back cover will give you a good idea of what's inside, and you can even go so far as to read the foreword and introduction. I recommend reading the intro, looking at the charts, and skimming the rest of the book. Read this blog post, too. With all that information, you'll be well-prepared to hold your own in any conversation about it, and even recommend it to your friends.

While Bayard addresses a number of non-reading issues such as why it is better in most cases to not read and what to say to an author whose book you haven't read, he introduces one main underlying idea that is so simple yet so profound, that made the biggest impression upon me:

"It is all the more difficult to reflect on unread books and the discussions they engender because the concept of non-reading itself is unclear, and so it is often hard to know whether we're lying or not when we say that we've read a book. The very question implies that we can draw a clear line between reading and not reading, while in fact many of the ways we encounter texts sit somewhere between the two."

For example, in my case, what if you've read a book but have completely forgotten it? What if you haven't read the whole book, but only some of it? What if you've skimmed the whole book? What if you're heard so much about it that you know it? Certainly, having heard something about a book is still more than having forgotten everything about it.

Who is to say that your non-reading or skimming of a book does not yield more insights than another's close reading of it? Because reading is not a black or white issue, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to speak intelligently about any book you have at least heard of.

This idea absolves me of the terrible inadequacy that I feel when I can't remember the details of a book. I can still act as if I do, because it's the same as talking about any other book, whether I've read it or not. I also don't have to read any of the 147 books on my shelf if I don't want to. What a liberating feeling!

I probably will keep reading all those books though, just because I like to. I'll simply tell everyone that I've read them all. They've been there so long, I practically have already.

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard