What we are reading in 2015-2016

Last year we swung the schedule around a little bit.  We still meet the second Tuesday, nine months of the ear (no July, no August & no December), but we choose the next books the month before the last month before the two months we don't meet.  Easy, right?

Anyway, this is what's up:

October 2015: Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

November 2015: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

January 2016: The Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry selected etc. by Louis Untermeyer

February 2016: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

March 2016: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

April 2016: Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

May 2016: Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith

June 2016: Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

September 2016: Consider the Fork: How Technology Transforms the Way We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson

We aim for a mix of classics/contemporary, fiction/non-fiction, long/short/in-between & I hope for a wildcard: a play, poetry, a graphic novel.  Not every year hits every note, but every year has variety which is the goal. 

We still have June & September of the current year to wrap up.  & I have updated the Goodreads Kitchen Table Book Club shelf to reflect everything we have read in the past -wow! that many!- years. 

Marybeth's bookshelf: kitchen-table-book-club

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

A Dirty Job

by Christopher Moore

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

Pink Slip

by Rita Ciresi

Maybe it was growing up in CT, the same time as the narrator, knowing Choo-choo & Railroad Salvage, remembering when AIDS wasn't even called AIDS yet, but I just fell into this book.

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

The Eyre Affair

by Jasper Fforde

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

A quest for serving spoons

For about a million years now, the morning after bookclub is a breakfast cereal scramble as I try to find one-just-one clean soup spoon so A can have his breakfast.  This is all because every soup spoon that lives here & a few that commute get pressed into service as serving spoons. 

This means that in the week following bookclub I haunt every TJMaxx, every Tuesday Morning, every discount store of every stripe looking for new (more) serving spoons.  There are plenty.  Plenty, plenty.  & given that nothing in my kitchen matches anyhow, you would think it would be easy to pick some up & be done.  But it isn't; the whole problem is drawer space.  Serving spoons are a pain in the...drawers!  Unlike EVERYTHING else which stacks nicely serving spoons, even the matching set spoons, will not permit the drawer to close.  Their bowls are just big enough to catch the edge,.  this means finding a new home for serving spoons, which means I spend fruitless hours searching for serving spoons I will never bring home.

Which brought me to these.   My thinking is that if we use these & not the flatware in the drawer we will have enough sop spoons + one for serving & A's breakfast.  I will let you know how that goes.  Also they have their own built in storage thing & can get pushed to the back of the cabinet for all but the nine evenings a year I actually need them.

My thinking is if we don't need to eat & serve with the soup spoons, there will be one left in the drawer for morning.  I will let you now how it goes. 

Once more, for the new year

The good news is I am back.  Well & truly back on-line.  Our (minor) internet problems seem to be all resolve (not the reason I disappeared anyhow).  Our holidays are OVER, THANK GOD.  Despite every effort to make them no-effort-what-so-ever somehow they were a bit overwhelming.  Seriously, how can two adults, with no children & no plans be so damn busy for so many days?

Anyhow, as I dig out, pretty much the last thing I am dealing with is blogging & the first blogging thing I am dealing with is the upcoming quilt block swaps.  So starting tomorrow, as promised I will begin to roll out the next six months worth of swaps.  There is a not very surprising surprise for January, a holiday themed February, a Sara's choice for March (Sara's choice blocks are invariably the most popular-she is a better block picker than I am) & a real surprise for June-a real surprise because as of this moment I am not sure what it will be myself.

That's what's pending.  What has already happened:

I have broken my 15 minute mile cap.  It is now more like 14 minutes 45 seconds but whatever.  Also, I can maintain this average speed over two sets of 3+ miles each & a one minute walk in between.  Surprisingly I have gone done one clothing size.  Not even, almost as I am still wearing the petite size of the size I wore before, but we did do some clothing shopping over the break & I actually purchased pants that ARE a size smaller & with no spandex & no elastic waistbands.

I have started knitting again.  A lot.  In late October I did a two hours for two days program at the library on learning continental style knitting which was a bit too well attended.  I was fried after the first 15 minutes & last week a person I would swear I had never seen before in my life asked me when I was doing it again as she enjoyed it so much the first time.  Oy.  Maybe late April.  Since then though, I have the knitting bug again & have been making hats like a crazy person (more on that in a future post)

I am up-to-date with my bookclub reading.  People have gotten used to seeing me leaning against the car, speed reading through the current book while I wait for whatever I am waiting for but not this month! This month I am done & ready to discuss Mistress of the Art of Death.

Baby-quilt-a-palooza continues with nothing but baby girls as far as the eye can see.  I have gotten so bored with pink in all its many splendored shades that I am now making GRAY baby quilts with hot pink accents.  Also I have an idea that gray might hide the barf stains better.  Hopefully people have already started switching to boxers or whatever.  Seriously, the last baby boy I made a quilt for is in ?second? grade. 

& what hasn't happened:

My bathroom.  It is largely unchanged since these pictures.  Turns out my husband is VERY ALLERGIC to whatever it is that fills the air when we try to take down the old wallpaper.  In March he leaves for a week to go to a conference so I am waiting until then. 

Which brings us to now.  Mostly.  & starting tomorrow I am heading into the future.  The future of quilt block swapping, but whatever.  I am trying to break down the future into very small, bite-sized blog entries.

What we are reading for the next year or so

Last night was our annual book club book selection.  We meet monthly most of the year but take two months off over the summer & the month of December so we are usually looking for nine titles with a good mix of fiction/non-fiction, classics/fluff (or that brass ring:  classic fluff).

This year we had no real wildcards (poems or collections or plays) but B****** & I had both heard an NPR program about a novel about RLStevenson & I have suggested Treasure Island before as a quick-read.  Merging them together seemed natural. 
Our other choices came from all over the place.  Old favorites of non-members (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), recently deceased authors in the news (The Snow Leopard), recently banned books in the news (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).  It is not unusual for books to be proposed by different people in different years (The Light Between Oceans).  One in particular made me laugh because it was proposed by another member but until I was reading the blurb I had completely forgotten I had read it..& loved it (I will let you guess which one). 

Without further ado here are the next books.  Yes we choose through September 2015; that whole taking the summer off thing means we have been facing our big book almost immediately & we all thought maybe we would like to work up to that one instead.

Sept 2014:  Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
October 2014:  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
November 2014:  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
January 2015:  Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
February 2015:  The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
March 2015:  The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman 
April 2015:  Under the Wide & Starry Sky by Nancy Horan AND Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
May 2015:  Art Thief by Noah Charney
June 2015:  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Sept 2015:  The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

If you are interested you can take a wander through current & previous selections on
my kitchen-table-book-club shelf:

52 Photos Project: My Reflection

I almost sat out this week on 52 Photos Project, the prompt being My Reflection.  I have limited patience with what I think of as naval gazing (I know I am in the vast minority thinking that Eat, Pray, Love & that ilk are overrated.  I feel mean saying it, but on the other hand if a person is going to put this monologue out there, some dissension is to be expected. 

We are reading Traveling With Pomegranates for bookclub this month & I am having the same kind of problems (I am sorry you are depressed when you know you have so much to live for & feel guilty & ashamed about being depressed but I am just not all that interested).  My attitude towards introspection probably is not helping here.  I have been accused of being MASCULINE in my views about those things (that's right I said it); I sort of wonder if depression & fear & boredom are all different approaches to the same paralyzing state of mind & a certain amount of "snap out of it" is required on the part of the beholder.

Yea, yea depression is chemical & needs to be dealt with like a disease, because t is a disease.  But there is almost no cure of any disease that is aided by watching the world go by & not getting involved (OKay, maybe addiction, but I honestly cannot think of any other right now & I think we can agree getting involved with the world & avoiding what you are addicted to is what addiction cures are all about). 

Next I am bogged down with the whole not getting as much out of it as you might if you were not depressed being a first world problem.  Maybe this book will dissolve my prejudices....but not so far.  My other lack of enthusiasm re: My Reflection is I have been trying not to stage anything, photographically & let each 52 Photos Project photo happen in the now (yep, I said that too).  There is no natural occurring moment now when I might take a picture of myself (my passport is unused but up-to-date).  I barely look at myself (no this is not self loathing, I'm just busy). 

When in doubt, go semantic.  In addition to being an image or counterpart, a reflection is also a meditation.  Meditation I understand (if that seems in conflict to my lack of introspection let me remind you that meditation begins with nothing.  I am a big fan of things about nothing).

I give you my reflection, in that other sense of the word: 

Last summer when my little dog died, M****** gave me this rose "white pet" & we planted it near the door to the greenhouse (she is buried under stepping stones at the front).  It has been doing well, pretty, unremarkable.  There have been only a couple of blossoms

Enter winter.  It has been below freezing most nights this week (hey, I live in Florida, this is not usual).  I cover all the roses overnight & uncover them in the morning.  Most afternoons I snip a little shaggy rose. 

I have a suspicion it being banked by the greenhouse that is creating this little winter-free oasis.  I have been reflecting on it all week. 

What we read

I have made passing references to our bookclub, but last Tuesday was our once a year day when we choose the nine books for the next twelve months (we take July, August & December off).  We try to have a mix of fiction & non-fiction, contemporary & classic (& I confess I like to see one low brow choice  à la Nancy Drew). & of course one wild card like a play or an epic poem or someday maybe a graphic novel.  But that is just the ideal; what we read is what gets bought to the table & voted on. 

As a result of this mi, it is rare for any given book not to be modified by a previous book.  For example, earlier this year we read Mark Kurlansky's Salt, which made for an unusual & unexpected tie in to A Tale of Two Cities. 

Without further ado, here are the 2013-2014 books:

June  2013:  End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

September: New Ways to Kill Your Mother by Colm Toibin

October: The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer

November: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

January 2014: The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett

February: Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor

March: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

April: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

May: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Alison Hoover Bartlett

Most of the books, so far can be seen here:

Kitchen Table Bookclub

Marybeth's favorite books »

Not even a whimper

So my laptop is still dead, the computer in the tvroom is still sketchy & you would think with all of this not-on-line time I would get so much more done but I think I am actually accomplishing less.  This year did not start with a bang.

I did manage to baste & quilt a quilt top from last year but then it sat & still sits unbound & unfinished.  The binding is stitched but not pressed.  I seem to be stalled an arm's length from the finish line.

I started a scarf for the Red Scarf Project, finished it too even though I had missed the collection deadline by about a week & a half & would of had to keep it safe & clean for another ten months except it turns out it was too wide & too hairy (they frown on mohair-y-ness because people say it ?itches?).  Not having a computer to check & treble check the guidelines was a problem.  In happier news, C****** liked it & took it home last week & the pattern I sort of doodled out is easier enough that I have already made another (not in red, not for the Red Scarf Project, but whatever).

I finished the February book club book Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin.  It went fast, didn't make much of an impression or so I thought until I found myself really wanting cake. Enough to bake one.

I missed another month of Block Lotto, tried again to drop out of the Quilt Block Swap & generally just kept my head above water chore&household-wise.

It seems in the absence of dumping my brain out onto a page I get rather clogged.  This week-end I think it might be laptop buying time.

Color: the beginning & the end

Last Tuesday, we had our second to last bookclub of the year; yes we have an off-sort-of schedule.  This means that in addition to our regularly scheduled book discussion, we also picked the books for the upcoming year (which starts in May).  Last March-ish we choose the book we read last night & we really had no idea how things would line up.  So it happened that on Fat Tuesday, we had our discussion for Color: A Natural History of the Palette.

As I may have said before (I cannot recall & I cannot be bothered to look), we have food with our book on the second Tuesday of nine of the twelve months (we rest in July, August, & December).  Sometimes we try to match the food to the book, sometimes we don't, sometimes some of us do & some if us don't.  For whatever reason, last night -with the least accessible book food-wise that I think we have ever had- we all decided to eat-in-theme.  & that theme was color.  I made white bread, white rice & a yogurt spread that was....white.  Others brought pickled beets & carrot soup, chocolate, black beans & so forth.  We also had a dessert of white cake, white creme & a painters palette of fruit.

As for the selection, it is always a surprise to me what people will choose bookwise.  I sat down thinking there was really only one of my candidates I really wanted; less than half-way thru the process I was completely prepared to cut it loose & forget about it but others were now very interested (in what is a I admit a bit of dated dime fiction-that is what I like about it).  We ended up with:

May 10th - Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
June 14th -Waking up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
September 13th - Palace Walk by Nagib Mahfouz
October  11th - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
November 8th - The Dining Room by A. R. Gurney
January 10th - The Thousand  Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
February 14th - Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
March 13th - Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
April 10th - Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
  with the extra for the overachiever of  Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout .

We also had a lively discussion about how obsessed a woman has to be with the origins of color to go wandering around Afghanistan looking for a guide who can she her where the lapis lazuli comes from.  These are the kinds of people we love to read about & are mostly glad not to be. 

The meeting ran late & by the time we wrapped up I was ready for bed.  B****** looked ready too; I almost offered her the futon in A's office, but I know she has dogs to get home to.  S**** & L**** were driving M****** home; she was planning to stay up for several more hours packing for a trip to Vancouver.  C****** left us to go on to a Mardi Gras party that was more or less just getting started.

Next month our book is The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle.  This most recent time was the first time anyone came in costume, but I am kinda hoping she does it again...

Asleep in the weeds

While I have been for a bit finally home again after most of my travels (& settled in again after the general disruption of my begin gone has finally settled), the ripple effect is only just starting to fade.  Even bookclub was a week late this month, yes, because of me.  This month we read, appropriately, a story about not being home ever again; we read Evangeline.

It seems apropos that our local library has not one copy of this once required reading anywhere in the collection:  Hiawatha like you would not believe, but no Evangeline. There was one really big book about the relocation of the Acadian people (a move you would think I would know about having vacationed as a child in the Acadia islands & sampled as an adult Acadian cuisine in two very distant parts of this country, but somehow those you internalize early are the anomalies you never question), but that was all I found on the subject.  I confess the story did not inspire enough curiosity in me to read same big book, but B******* was interested & took it home with her.

As for having read Evangeline before, I do not believe I ever had, but I certainly knew the story.  More than knowing it, I have long internalized it (again while failing to grasp the whole exile thing as part of my country's history).  When I was in college, my brother brought home a cat he found & because the cat had been asleep in the weeds we named him (yes him) Evangeline.  In my family any cat with the same markings-white with big black blotches, sometimes called a cow cat is known as a Vangy Cat.  More than that, we seem to have a preference for them.  Right this minute, both my sister & I have Vangy cats.  One of my brothers has two cats, but alas they are Siamese & my other brother has a dog.  & his dog has a dog, so you could argue he has two dogs, although he would dispute this.  Neither the dog nor her dog are cat friendly.

Lost city of readers

I need another bookclub like I need another....quilt block swap.  Speaking of which, is any one else pressed up against the glass over at Block Lotto?  Maybe it is the stars aligning -yes, I am sure that is what it is- but their September lotto block is very similar to our October swap block.  It kinda makes me want to make a funky stonehenge just to commemorate the moment.

What was I saying?  Oh yea, bookclub.  Tonight is the first meeting I attended of the museum volunteers bookclub.  I will not be attending the October meeting, because I already have plans that night, & I am well & truly up in the air about any after that.  It would depend on the book list, which was a well kept secret.  I went in knowing only the first two books, The Lost City of Z & The Philosopher Fish.

While they look like good choices from the variety of natural history perspective (it is a natural history museum bookclub, after all), both of these books are approximately 330 pages.  That is kind of a lot for one month's reading. I read more than almost anyone I know & I always did & I would have trouble shoehorning 330 more pages into my month.

Neither of them is all that easy to get a hold of either, unless I am prepared to buy a copy, which I am not.  Our local library owns just one copy of The Philosopher Fish.  I put it on hold the moment I knew what the second book would be.  I am number one out of five, which means the person who has the book now can keep it for 30 days, & then I can (but I won't) & so forth.  I  think it is probable another four people who would like to read this book for the October meeting won't be able to, at least not via the library.  That every single copy of The Lost City of Z the library owns (both hard copies & audio copies) are all currently checked out does not bode well.

As for the Lost City of Z....it was Okay.  I mean, I don't consider the time I spent listening to it (yes, I got it on disc from the local library) wasted & I put the author's other book on hold.  I also learned that Brad Pitt has optioned the book & I would see that movie.  I hope they make it with variable endings though, like The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  & I am curious how tonight's discussion might go.

The Master, Margarita & me

Last spring, when we sat down to choose the next year's reading, one bookclub member brought up Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita, not realizing it was my second least favorite book in all the world.  When she DID learn this, B****** offered to remove the book from her suggestion lists but I said (& I believe) that my perspective might be different with a few years & a new translation & even if I did hate it again, that was no reason no one else should read it.  Besides, reading it with a mind to discussing it might make it smoother, somehow.

Well, it didn't.  & now I am wondering if I do indeed hate this book more than the G*d-damned Fish Book.  I think I might.  As I was thinking this, I spent some time on GoodReads, reading the other reviews of M&M & where at least one of the people who gave The Master & Margarita a bad review got all kinds of hate-mail-style follow-up.  It seems if you hate someone else's favorite book you are an irredeemable idiot who should exit the planet ASAP.

Naturally this got me thinking about other great books I loathe(d):

The G*d-damned Fish book:  I am in good company here, actually.  Leonard Wolf, long suffering husband of Virginia, also hated this book.  Most people suspect Melville was drunk when he wrote it; I am quite sure he was drunk when he did the math.  My favorite chapter has to be when Captain Ahab, unable to stabilize himself on a plank, has to be hoisted to visit another ship.  He balances himself on his solitary thigh.  This is interesting because he lost his other leg below the knee (at least there are references to two knees), so apparently he experienced some kind of apocalyptic thigh-meld...or maybe he keeps one of the knees in a jar?  This is hardly the only instance of cat-math in this book.  I once walked my Discussion of the American Novel class through a rant that went something like this:  if X =  the length of an ancient whale skeleton & X+ (X x Y%) = Z, where Y = the known difference between contemporary whale skeletons & the whale's actual size & Z is less than the documented size of contemporary whales, that would mean that whales are getting LARGER which is the opposite of what Melville says.  I will spare you the details, but both the professor & the rest of the class thought maybe I should change majors & I am fairly certain they are the kind of people who say "I am so hungry I am literally starving to death" when they miss lunch.

The Great Gatsby:  what a stoopid book!  It did not help that my English teacher was also a stoopid woman.  All I really remember about in-class discussion was suggesting that maybe those giant eyes in West Egg or East Egg or wherever Egg was were not, in fact, the eyes of god, but maybe they were the eyes of people who read too much symbolism into things but she told me & the rest of class I was absolutely wrong & they were the eyes of god.  Okay then. 

& then there are the books I was more or less neutral on.  they were Okay, in their way but I could never see what the fuss was about.  This list includes:  Catcher in the Rye, The Prophet, The Alchemist (which much of book club loathed, except for one person who really liked it).  A random collection of fiction I would agree, but they all have something in common.  They were all (& some still are) banned.

Cuckoo for "The Cuckoo's Egg"

The second Tuesday of the month. 75% of the year is bookclub dinner night.  The books really can be all over the map & for April 2010 our book was The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll.  This book was actually one of my offerings way back in the mists of time when our bookclub first started (for the record, it was edged out by Nancy Drew & The Secret of the Old Clock & then by Pink Slip & did not get offered up again until this year).

But we did finally read The Cuckoo's Egg & it was very much enjoyed.  Some enjoyed the way-back machine to a time with computers but before the interwebs, some enjoyed the lost hippie in a world of spooks, some enjoyed the cookie recipe & we all enjoyed the cookies.  We were ready to give this book a thumbs up review & then we happened to notice that the newer edition (some of us were reading older copies) was dedicated to a new WIFE!  Completely unacceptable.  A second bottle of wine was opened & the tide turned.

We worked our way through the default list of questions for non-fiction, but under it all there lurked a feeling that we were just not as happy as we had been before.  Previously we could have forgiven the hair, the casual work ethic (I also know a few physicists who have been known to snooze under the desk)-not that we all agreed on what needed to be forgiven, but we could forgive.  Now, though....

The upshot is we cyberstalked him & called him & asked him a very personal question (what happened to your first wife?).  He was very nice about the whole thing, answered the question, & even gave some updates about other people who appear in the book.  It probably helped that while it was 11-ish here, he was in a time zone that was not quite such an uncivilized hour. 

So, let us recommend this book highly & this author even more highly.  Your local library probably has a copy (or can get one) or it is pretty easy to find other places too (I happen to know there was one on paperbackswap not two weeks ago- no that is not my copy).  For everyone's sake though, do not open that second bottle of wine & do not call the author to find out what happened to Martha.  Just trust in happy  endings all around.  Except for the bad guys, they get what they deserve.

Hamantaschen, belatedly

I spent many, many years combing through the bible (for what I have been told are all the wrong reasons) while I was getting a degree in literature. It is difficult to get through a study of western literature without a passing acquaintance with the new testament; it is impossible to get through the same study without an intimate knowledge of at least parts of the old testament. I recommend you begin with Genesis.

For the most part, it was a struggle. People who read the bible because it warms them & cleanses them, well more power to you. Do not ever undertake a comparative study of any kind, though because you will never put the pieces back together. In the end, there were only two books I really enjoyed. Leviticus (all that inventory! I love to count things. & those lists of crazy rules; I still quote 19:27 in defense if hippies everywhere, Oliver Cromwell be damned) & Esther. With Esther, I think it is safe to say we are back to that fairy tale thing again: Once upon a time there was a girl who lived with her guardian in an ancient kingdom...

& Esther brings us to Purim or The Feast of Esther, if you want to be that way about it. & Purim brings us to hamantaschen. I am almost as fond of these cookies as I am of the nut & shortbread cookies my mother only seems to make in December. I think there is something about them being limited to just those times & places that makes me love them more. My recipe has been adapted over the years from Beni's Family Cookbook by Jane Breskin Zalben, & Joan Nathan's The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen & they are both great books & they make excellent baby shower gifts. Also they are usually on sale, such a bargain.

It was pure coincidence, but last year, our regular book club meeting was on Purim & the book that had been randomly chosen was Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels. It seemed apropos to make something Purim-esque.

So here we go: hamantaschen is actually a two-parter. There is the dough & there is the filling.  & I rolled up my sleeves & got ready to walk you thru it, but the drop dead truth is there is a better recipe here.


//a complete & total side bar: a friend of mine had decided after much soul searching, that she was converting to Judaism. This came as a small shock to her Unitarian parents & a big shock to her Baptist husband. But she was certain. She explained to me that she was herself going to adopt the laws & live as a Jew but in trying to make the transition (I love people who are sure they will change the people they love) easier for her husband, she was looking for ways to reconcile his current deep-South/deep fried diet with kosher law & did I have any suggestions. My answer was "Jewish without the food! What's next, black without the music?" We do not talk much anymore.