Shadow of Night

I wasn't planning on reading the sequel to A Discovery of Witches.  Even though I picked the original for my book club, I was non-plussed with the love story (non-ironically dysfunctional), but my crew picked this sequel. Well, I actually liked it better than the first book.  Mostly because the romance is established.  There are a lot more sex scenes (*sigh*-- that's a suffering sigh, not a pleasurable sigh), luckily, supernatural creatures do not believe in foreplay.  So while there are many, the sex scenes are mercifully brief.  And I do mean brief.  Hey, one guy is a vampire, who has lived about 2,000 years, I mean what's an extra ten minutes?  But I digress.  The best part of this book is that it's plot-based.  Yea!!  And this one's set in the olden times. 

Deborah Harkness is a historian and, well, it shows.  Guess what I'm not?  A historian.  Oddly, I always loved History class; in fact I would win prizes for Social Studies and History in High School. I think I got an A in Western Civ in college too. It turns out my talent was for understanding history, not in remembering  it.  I think it's because I mastered the history essay.  It always included: decreasing natural resources caused neighboring countries' conflict, and what at first appearance was a religious dispute, the war was merely a subterfuge for increasing land holdings and therefore regional power.  Right?  Put that in your essay. You are starting with a B and can only go up.  Anyway, there are lots of Elizabethan references and I have no idea what she is talking about. I think there was a reference to Giordano Bruno, but I tracked that because he was featured on Cosmos recently. I think I took classes in Ancient History, so in my mind, 400 years ago is pretty recent. Also, I just like saying Visigoths.

Like the first book, these characters drink a lot of wine.  I looked up what they drank in Elizabethan times and only rich people drank wine and that's when they could get it.  Now, these guys are rich, but a more common drink was ale.  Not "beer" but ale.  Dogfish Head Brewery has an Ancient Ale Series and one is called Midas Touch.  They describe it as somewhere between wine and mead.  They claim it is "made with ingredients found in 2,700-year-old drinking vessels from the tomb of King Midas."  I don't think they mean 2,700 year old ingredients, I think they mean the same type of ingredients.  Otherwise, that's one hell of a sourdough starter.  I think it sounds kind of good, and Dogfish, they haven't let me down yet, so drink it.       

Perks of Being a Wallflower

This isn't a self-help book.  I needed to know some of these so-called perks when I try unsuccessfully to attend professional networking events.  I think the real lesson is that there are no "perks" to being a wallflower.  This is a coming of age book that many people have read and I finally got around to reading.  It really is a love it or hate it book.  If you like a coming of age novel with a narrator that has some serious mental issues, well you are in luck!  It reminds me of Silver Linings Playbook (the book--not the movie) but with a 15 year old narrator.  People love characters that are so weird or messed up that they still see life through the eyes of a seven-year-old.  Even if they are fifteen.  Or even thirty-five. 

In a series of letters our protagonist tells the story of his freshman year in high school.  He has a lot of problems.  He is not right.  It is not realistic, not like Freaks and Geeks, or anything.  If you are not on board with our weird narrator, Charlie, a reader could see Stephen Chbosky's writing as "forced whimsy" as one reviewer called it.  You know, I can see that. I think if this came out right when I was 15 and all my classmates were quoting it, I would have probably hated it too.  Normally I am the cynical one.  Wow, this book must have caught me on a good day.  Also, I am sucker for a shout-out to The Smiths.  I loved The Smiths, my Mom...did not.  My Mom: "Oh no! Not the moaning man again!" She used to try to use reverse psychology on me too: "All black again? (pause a beat) You look cute in that!"

While Charlie and his friends drink brandy and listen to records, (that sounds fun too) the book is also set in the very early 90's so you should drink this with a popular late 80's-90's drink.  Kamikaze: 1 oz. Triple Sec or Cointreau (I think Grand Marnier would be fine too), 1 oz., vodka and 1 oz. lime juice.  I drank these and this recipe sounds better than I remember these tasting.  I suspect people were giving me drinks with inferior alcohol.  And not real lime juice. Damn 90's. 

Maisie Dobbs

Can two Anglophile-Bibliophiles have differing opinions on a British book?  Sure, you bet your arse they can.  I have a number of Anglophile-Bibliophile friends.  This is actually is pretty nice until they start talking about Sherlock Holmes.  That is like fantasy football to them.  So, when I told another Anglophile-Bibliophile I was reading this book she said, "meh." That's not ultra-negative but it's not a ringing endorsement either. So if you are keeping track that's one AB+ and one AB-.

Maisie Dobbs is not a book I would normally read, but is a period mystery set just after WWI in England.  Maisie is a female private dick.  She is a jumped up country girl who spent her adolescence as a house maid in a manor but the lady of the manor discovers she is a brilliant genius.  Don't we all wish someone would discover us as geniuses!  Her life is then forever changed by the gentlewoman and her weird scholarly friend.

Maisie's manor days are just part of the book and a good portion of this book involves her days as a nurse in WWI.  Also, she solves a mystery, but that almost seems incidental.  AB+ let me borrow the sequel and I will read it.  It has short chapters which are good for reading right before bed or for reading a few chapters with a cup of tea and a homemade power bar.  I know scones are traditional but that's my new obsession.  I've been reading a lot of British themed books but I'm not really an Anglophile.  Trust me, I know so many, that I'm missing that "thing" they have, like an obsession with Dr. Who, Benedict Cumbercatch and all things Neil Gaiman.  So, I would say I'm B+ on this, its not amazing, but I wasn't expecting much. I think a certain AB- might have had her hopes up too much.  I've seen this happen to Anglophiles with a hyped British based series. It's not all Harry Potter, sadly.

At this time, gentlewomen drank claret or sherry--but that's a little boring.  Why not drink a cocktail named after the most popular actress of the time?  The cocktails of this time are very sweet because the alcohol during prohibition was a bit nasty.  The Mary Pickford: 2 ounces light rum, 2 ounces pineapple juice, 1 teaspoon grenadine, 1 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice. Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice, shake, strain and pour into a cocktail glass. 

Beautiful Ruins

I saw a commercial for an upcoming Jimmy Buffett concert where people were wearing shorts and for like a half a second I was thinking, where did they film this?  Was it on the moon?  This winter was so bad I cannot conceive of ever wearing shorts.  I felt like an anthropologist "what are these 'short pants' these humans are wearing?"  Even if you are not in your short pants but want a beach read this book will work.  I am doing an online 2014 genre challenge and February was "chick-lit" and that scared me.  But the purpose of the challenge was to get you out of your comfort zone.  I picked this book, but I screwed up because "Jess" is a man!  Can a man write chick-lit?  To which chick does chick-lit refer?  Why do we even call the genre something this stupid?

Whether written by men or women these popular fiction books, to me, read like a movie screenplays.  One thing that I should warn you, if you have a hard time with frame stories, flashbacks, other book chapters within books, a few lines from a play, and a proposed movie treatment, well you will have a hard time with this.  But, remember this is popular fiction so it's not like this is hard to follow.  Game of Thrones it is not.  It all kind of works together in a fairly light and breezy Italian island way.  Oh, and it's a little funny, not like David Sedaris funny, but ok and not old-man fart jokes.  Not that I'm totally opposed to a well-placed artfully crafted fart joke.

Set in Italy in the 60's and present day Hollywood, if you like books about the movies, give it a shot.  Beautiful Ruins is not really romance as it is drama with hijinks and a little humor. Here is your summer read, it's just a little early. Think of it as a reward for taking a big course load and getting to graduate early.  I think that's called premature matriculation. 

At one point a couple of the characters have Mai Tais at Trader Vic's and I was like I want one too! (It was exactly five o-clock at the time) It's a little complicated but those tiki drinks sometimes are, also you should know there are lots of variations.  This one seems to be most like the Trader Vic's version:  2 ounces aged rum, 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice, 1/2 ounce curacao, 1/4 ounce "rich" simple syrup (use double the sugar to water ratio--I think Agave Nectar would work too), 1/4 ounce orgeat, 1 cup crushed ice. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, pour into a double old fashioned glass and garnish with a sprig of mint. 

The Book of Daniel

What's the opposite of a beach read?  Mountaintop read? Glacier in Greenland read? Sometimes "important" authors make things hard.  The Book of Daniel is a historical novel based on the Rosenburgs' life, trial and execution, told from their son's point of view (mostly).  It's ok that I struggled (almost not worth it), this is a topic I wanted to know more about anyway.  While fictionalized, the book provides a narrative set during the Red Scare, which for the modern reader, is becoming a distant memory.  Doctorow blends real people and real events with his fictionalized "Isaacsons."  Oddly, Isaacson is my mother-in-law's maiden name, she isn't Jewish, it's just that her Grandfather's Finnish name was too insane for Ellis Island.  Trust me, some Finnish names are insane.  The real name sounds like a pharmaceutical pain reliever. 

The topic is not what makes this book hard, actually, it is what made me keep reading.  What makes it hard is the that the whiplash narrative is told from first person narrative to third person, the timeline is mixed up, the first person narrative is told from multiple characters, it mixes memoir, standard narrative, political satire and analysis.  It makes the reader need a Finnish pain reliever.  This book is a bit of a slog-fest, espeically at the end.  Written in 1971, this style was either trendy or innovative at the time.  That's what "important" writers do. This was Doctorow's first real book after he quit his day job, which is a really bold move when you think about it.  Like, really bold.  Luckily, it was considered a masterpiece and was a finalist for the National Book Award.  Whew.  And like other important writers like Murakami, it has some of the creepiest least sexy sex scenes I have ever read.    

Accused of beign a Russian Spy in the 50's?  You should drink with a Moscow Mule: 2 ounces vodka, 1 ounce lime juice, ginger beer to taste.  Pour the vodka and lime over ice in either a copper mug (traditional) or highball glass.  Top with ginger beer and garnish with a lime wedge. 

The Foodist

Whatever you do, don't look at Darya Rose's website.  Its called Summer Tomato and it has her smiling, gorgeous, young face just beaming at you.  It also includes her name with the PhD behind it. (*sigh*) It takes a big woman not to hate her.  I am that bigger woman because this chic is tiny.

The nice thing is that her PhD is in neuroscience and this is one of the smarter books on diet and exercise that I've read.  Of course the bar is set pretty low. I've read my share and at least in the beginning she even tells you where there are food debates.  Thank you.  If you read enough diet books and websites they contradict themselves.  Low-fat is out and Paleo is in, what's up next week?  Who knows?  This is why old people just give up, they have seen it all.

This is not strictly a "diet" book.  If fact she doesn't use the word diet she calls it a "healthstyle." Um, that sounds really stupid. Also, we differ in one respect in that when I need to lose weight I have to count calories and she doesn't.  Trust me, when I don't, its like I'm a recovering gambler playing with house money.  I can eat healthy food and still gain weight.  I am just that kind of overachiever.  Anyway, she incorporates the Michael Pollan, don't eat processed food credo, with Baumeister's Willpower theory that you have to set a strategy or you will fail.  Reasonable, very reasonable.  Unfortunately, she lives in San Francisco, shops at the Farmer's Market every week and talks about dinners at Chez Pannise.  Sure, its easy to eat healthy and get your 10,000 steps that way.  Try living in Norwood, Ohio, where the liquid that comes out of my pipes is Mountain Dew and walking 10,000 steps is going to give you a live-action Diane Arbus retrospective.

Ms. Rose is ok with an occasional cocktail (she has some weird advice on this you should ignore).  I think an occasional cocktail can totally be diet friendly.  I don't drink as many as I used to, and I don't believe in things like diet tonic water, or god forbid, light beer.  So, a properly sized martini hits the spot.  I like a gin one.  Use some decent gin please. 2 ounces of gin to one ounce dry vermouth (more or less to taste), put in a shaker with ice.  Now, many insist it should be stirred and not shaken. You know what? You do what you want. This is your special treat.  Pour into a properly sized martini glass (meaning small).  Garnish with a twist of lemon peel or an olive. This martini is about 177 calories.  Yes. 

The Etched City

If this book had a theme song it would be Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads. Written by Austrailian author K.J. Bishop, while these characters are on the road a lot, what I really mean is the plot.  I think this is what happens when you just start "riffing" without an outline or a plan. I imagine George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series as a plot line that begins around the Arc de Triomphe and the "roads" radiate out like a wheel.  Now, his keep going and going and you beome quite worried.  You think, are we going to ever get to a resolution, and how did I end up in Brittany?  But he has a plan, its a huge, ambitious, insane plan but he has one.  This book, by contrast is full of dead ends, cul-de-sacs, a proposed bike path, but with no destination.  Don't get me wrong, she can write a beautiful sentence, but what's the point without a plot?  If the point is to anger me, mission accomplished. 

We start the story in the desert, with a lady doctor and mercenary bandito, Gwynn.  Its like a Western but on camels.  Then our characters go to a lush river town, think Thailand, and Gwynn becomes the main character.  Its like what happened to our lady?  Also, that whole desert scene doesn't have relvance to the plot anymore...poop...why did I suffer though that?  (I don't care for Westerns) In our lush city, Gwynn becomes a gun for hire, who stops to have long, pointless, major theological discussions with the local priest.  Ugh.  Was is just to show Bishop's philosophical chops?  Why?  Also, there is no magic or any fantastical elements until the second half of the book---I was like where are the damn dragons!  Give me a sentient book at least.

While its not the worst book I've read, you should skip it, but you should NOT skip this drink.  Part exotic, part Western, try this: Gold Rush:  1 1/2 ounces Domaine de Canton (ginger flavored liquor that is to die for), 1 ounce bourbon, 1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon.  Put with ice in shaker.  Drain and serve.  So so good.  This has a point.  Destination delicious.