2010 January

Keeping Up With the Joneses…if the Joneses have an inordinate amount of time to spend on reading for pleasure

January 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

In addition to The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook, the latest Virtually Well Read selection, which I’m reading (and by “reading” I mean “regarding with every intention of reading as it lies, provocatively, on my bedside table”), my list of Desirable and Yummy Books grows and grows.

Today I heard an interview with Tad Friend on “Radio Times,” a locally produced NPR talk show, which is wonderful except for the call-in feature because 9 times out 10 the buffoon who calls in is awkward or ill-informed to the point that I contemplate driving off the road and smashing my car purposefully into a telephone pole so I no longer have to listen to it. What am I talking about? Tad Friend wrote Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor. I grew up in the same town as Tad Friend, although our experiences – familial, social and educational - were miles apart. I’ve been hearing about this book for awhile, and I’ve even read a few reviews. I’d decided that it was kind of smug and self-serving and a little too self-aggrandizing, but after hearing the interview, I’ve changed my mind. Now I want to read it. It’s uncomfortable for me to even think about the topic of this book because it seems weird to be referring to oneself as a LABEL: WASP. White Anglo Saxon Protestant. However, if the shoe fits. And a great deal of what I heard him describe about his own family could just have well been about my own, I’m looking at you, too, in-laws.

Here on Earth, by Alice Hoffman. I’m not sure where I just heard about this, although I’m damn sure it wasn’t Oprah. I’ve read Alice Hoffman before. She’s a sort of modern, chick-lit Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Of course, in going to get the link for the book, I just now discover that it’s an Oprah book club selection. Of course. About Here on Earth, Library Journal writes, “As this novel opens, March Murray Cooper returns to her hometown, ostensibly to bury the woman who raised her but needing to resolve the unfinished business of her youthful love for Hollis, from whom she has been separated for years…Hoffman…takes great care here to examine the many facets of love and relationships, turning them like a prism to reflect on March and Hollis. Hoffman’s evocative language and her lyrical descriptions of place contrast sharply with the emotional scars that her characters must uncover and bear. Her novel is a haunting tale of a woman lost in and to love; it will enthrall the reader from beginning to end.” I’m curious about what “lost in and to love” looks like.

I just bought Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan. It took about half an hour to read, and I’m now a proud Vegan who will only eat organic plant matter that has fallen naturally to earth rather than being viciously torn from its motherplant or motherearth by tainted human hands. Except for cheese. I really like cheese. And really good steaks. I like them, too. Also, I’m a huge fan of fresh baguettes with European butter. Sometimes, too, a fried egg sandwich really hits the spot. And what’s a fried egg sandwich without bacon? I’m not a very good Vegan. Pollan writes 60 rules for healthy and sustainable eating. They are stated in plain terms, no science speak or jargon, they are straightforward, and they are thought provoking. The 60 rules can be categorized under one of three governing rules: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. I’m trying. Although I’m putting a lot of emphasis on “mostly.”

My English Teacher Nerd Page a Day Calendar yesterday alerted me to a book by Russell Banks that I’ve never seen before called The Reserve and describes it thusly: “Set in a playground of the rich in the Adirondacks during the 1930′s, The Reserve is a big, ripping, cinematic melodrama. A sultry (people, places, things defined as sultry = inherently wonderful) divorcee and a left-leaning, Hemingwayesque artist (my kind of dude) light up the big screen in the reader’s mind with a torrid (!!) saga of romance, scandal, and homicide.” Yes, please!

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee was reviewed in last Sunday’s New York Times. You can read the review for yourself. But it sounds like a deeply satisfying mid-winter weekend read. A little schadenfreude to keep you warm, perhaps?

Nude Reading At Studio Fir
e by Bernard Hall*

*Notice, it doesn’t say, Kristin Reading at Studio Fire. Although I like that rug.
Notice also copyright thing there. Oops.

Filed Under: Mama Like, On the Nightstand, Virtually Well Read

Unbutton Your Pants and Say Ahhhhh

January 19, 2010 By 18 Comments

Some guy I know said something the other day about how good looking Giada DeLaurentiis is. Actually, I think what he said was, “I’d totally do that.” Which is classy and really, really hot and sure to attract any sophisticated and intelligent mature woman, but that’s another story.

But. Giada De DeLaurentiis? She doesn’t have arms, she has flippers. And seriously, if she has some kind of disability or handicap and I’m being completely politically incorrect and insensitive, I’m really really sorry. I’m sure I deserve any hate mail and all disparaging thoughts you have about me for being so shallow and bitchy. But, MY GOD. Have you looked at her? I am riveted! Fascinated! I need to know what’s going on here.

Everything is all out of proportion. She’s scary thin but she has this Alice in Wonderland giraffe neck and a HUGE lollipop head, which only emphasizes the weird seal arms. And I thought I was the only person who noticed this, but if you google “Giada De Laurentiis tiny arms” (and what’s with that extra “i”? Is it compensate for arm length deficiency?) there are a ton of sites which address this very subject. Glad I’m not alone.

Even my preoccupation with Giada’s arms could not dampen my enthusiasm for the show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network. For one thing, Michael Symon could make a dirt sandwich look appealing. Even the omnipresent Bobby Flay makes me think that I could get friendly with some stone crab legs, and I hate seafood. Hate. Hate. Hate. But still! When Mr. Throwdown waxes rhapsodic about crustacean feet, I think, “Yep. Maybe.” Queer Eye Ted whose last name I can’t remember and hello? What a great show was that?!! talks about deep fried bacon in such a way that makes me think NOT eating deep fried bacon would be a crime against humanity. Even Sideshow Giada manages to get some gourmet donuts into her mouth using her tiny arms and looks as though she’s having some kind of sexual revelation. I defy you to watch that and NOT want to travel to Seattle to ~~have donut sex~~ eat donuts. A friend is going to Max Brenner’s restaurant on Valentine’s Day to have Chocolate Dinner because she saw something of his featured on the show. Be sure that I’ve already sent an email to my husband reminding him of this upcoming holiday…link to Max Brenner’s included. The only thing I’ve ever seen on the show that didn’t look appealing was the fried shrimp heads Duff Goldman shoved in his cake hole. Shrimp heads? Gross. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad but I was distracted by watching Duff’s beard grow an inch and a half during the five minute segment.

Duff Goldman

I don’t know what the best thing I ever ate was. But now that I’ve discovered this show, I’m thinking about it all the time. What’s the best thing YOU ever ate?

Filed Under: Mama Like

I’m Not Even Sure I Like Lentils

January 18, 2010 By 4 Comments

I sat down here at my dining room table with every intention of writing a review, sort of, lame-ass WRH style, of Joseph O’Neill’s 2008 novel, Netherland , given to me by my father, and billed as Such A Great Book.

Book in hand. Coffee near by. Kids ~~locked in the basement~~ otherwise occupied. Ready. To. Go.

Except not. Actually, at all ready to go.

It’s quite simple for me to say, Yup. Liked it. It was good. But for the novel that has been consistently compared to The Great Gatsby, won the Pen/Faulkner Award, and been selected as a New York Times Book Review “Best Book of the Year,” that seems a little skimpy.

So. I started to read some other reviews. And I flipped back through the book a bit to see the notes I’d made.

Then I made the dog go outside because she was chewing this rawhide thing that smelled like it had been sewn into the carcass of a rotting antelope and then soaked in vinegar in a windowless damp room for a month.

Then I googled Joseph O’Neill, whose picture on the back of the book is a little menacing. If he had a thought balloon above his head it would read, “What do YOU want?” But you’d have to imagine that query delivered in a kind of withering vaguely Dutch accented tone. Even though he was actually born in Ireland, which computes, really, because he is the spitting image of Black Irish. Less menacing photos do exist, I’m pleased to report. I also learned that much of the novel is based on his own life and situation. A fact that made me feel ever so slightly smug because I probably could have predicted as much. His first person narration was even more intimate and authentic than your standard “good writing” first person narration. Wow that sounded pretentious. But I’m sticking with it.

Still having written not word 1, I retreated to the kitchen, whereupon I reorganized the cabinets with food and cans in them. We have a lot of pasta. We also have a great many lentils. I have attempted to cook lentils once and once only in my adult life; it didn’t go well. If I were an actual grown-up, I would be preparing lentils for dinner tonight. Guess what we’re not having. If you guessed “lentils,” you win.

The novel is characterized as Post 9/11 fiction, and O’Neill himself has said that he found it inconceivable that anything he’d write about New York after 9/11/2001 would not be reflective of the tragic events of that day, and, more significantly I believe to the sweep of the plot, the American (and British) political response to 9/11.

The kids’ ~~managed to escape their shackles~~ playdates are over and it’s very hard to concentrate on a complicated and highly nuanced work of literature in any intelligent fashion when people are fighting over the rules of Uno and throwing ranch flavored rice cakes at one another. The dog’s chew toy smells even worse now that she’s been working on it for half an hour. Like maybe a monkey found it after it had been soaking in vinegar, ate it, then pooped it out intact. Yes. That bad.

The depth of the pain the protagonist, Hans, feels in the face of his failing marriage and increasingly tenuous relationship with his toddler son is conveyed masterfully in this book. I couldn’t point to any passage or phrase that explicitly proclaims that pain, but the collected pile of sadnesses scattered throughout the text is substantial and speaks volumes.

A friend sent me some Harry and David pears around Christmastime after my grandmother died. I put some of them in the fridge and only just discovered them today, hiding behind a jar of peanut butter that I didn’t know we had. They are still amazing. And so good cold. Take that William Carlos Williams. Plums, HA!

I am not a New York City person. My palms start to sweat thinking about what it must be like to live there. The minutiae trips me up. Where would I grocery shop? How do I know WHICH corner coffee shop is a good one? Subway? Bus? Would I ever get used to the constant noise of sirens and traffic and humanity outside my windows? Some writers are better at evoking what I perceive to be “real New York Life” than others. Netherland managed to show how all the people of New York, or any big city, really, I guess, who come from far-flung locales and different backgrounds and varying degrees of wealth and social stature mush together successfully. What might have otherwise seemed dingy and tawdry and creepy and low-brow seemed part of a vibrant and ever-changing city culture.

Where the hell are the Girl Scout cookies?

You should read this book.

Filed Under: Keeping it Real, Mama Like, On the Nightstand