A Post About Rabbits

May 8, 2013 at 5:11 pm (Books, Dearest Mum, Family, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Surprises, Weather, Women Writers)
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It is chilly inside the house.  But if the past few days are any indication, the clouds will eventually disperse and by late afternoon, the garden will be baking in heat.  It’s a miracle anything endures through late spring/ summer/ early fall in this place.

Self has Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression balanced on her lap  (Seriously, she’s getting sick of typing that title over and over and over, every time she posts about this book.  But since she isn’t even halfway — she started reading it last week in Trieste, and has so far made it to p. 136 — she must persevere).

P. 137 is about killing rabbits.

Sole Fruit of Her Loins’ first ambulatory pet was a rabbit named –  something or other.  Her cousin, a little ruffian named Niko, came over one day, got the rabbit out of its cage and, when no one was home (Dearest Mum was supposed to be baby-sitting but anyone who thinks Dearest Mum can baby-sit is probably living on the moon), strangled the poor little creature to death.

Since Son was absolutely distraught, we got him another rabbit.  This one was an enormous and aggressive creature whose pee spray arced for yards.

We finally gave it away and adopted Bella the Beagle, who is still alive today, still sniffing after morsels of food and still coloring our lives with joy.

Eons ago, when self had an artists residency in Mojacar, her favorite thing to do on weekends was to visit the markets in outlying towns.  There, she saw rabbits.  Many, many rabbits.  All in cages.  Self did not actually think about the strange importance of rabbits to the villages of southern Spain.  Not until the fateful day when dinner was served and it was –  eeeek! –  rabbit.

Self has seen Winter’s Bone.  Although she believes that was a squirrel Jennifer Lawrence was cooking for her siblings, not rabbit, the sight of skinned squirrel must be very similar to skinned rabbit.  In fact, you could probably skin them the same way.

And then:  Did you know that it takes “at least two rabbits to make a meal” for a family of seven “because there are only three good pieces to each one:  the saddle of the back and the two hind legs,” and “rabbits have almost no fat”?

In addition, self realizes that she has the same coping mechanism to stress as a rabbit.  Ms Kalish:  “We all knew that when a rabbit senses approaching danger, it will frequently freeze rather than run.  We also knew that a rabbit will leap forward when it does try to escape.”  So, the best strategy is to wait for a rabbit to lunge “forward from its hiding place,” grasp it firmly by the head, then swing it by its hind legs and deliver a sharp whack to the back of its head.  Ms. Kalish again:  “Rabbits have weak necks.  Everyone knew that . . . “

A heartwarming description of how to skin a rabbit follows.

And then a heartwarming description of how to boil a hog’s head.

What is really interesting is that this redoubtable farm woman has her current residence listed as Atherton, California.  And has apparently lived to a great old age (92) in spite of apparently daily ingestions of bacon, hog, and other high-cholesterol food.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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First Post-Venice Costco Run

May 8, 2013 at 5:16 am (Books, Food and Drink, Lists, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers)
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Ah, Costco.  It is such a crucial part of self’s life.  Even though she has a wee family, which at the moment consists only of The Man and self, she insists on her right to make Coscto runs and purchase those huge packages of paper towels and bath tissue.  Today, she ended up buying a lot of foodstuff, in addition, of course, to her trusty Benadryl (Incidentally, why did Costco stop carrying the 148-pill bottles of Benadryl?  It is so inconvenient for self to have to cut up all those pills from the foil backing.  It takes her so much time, time which would have been better spent reading her book!).  She bought chicken thighs and a 25-lb. bag of Blue Ribbon long grain rice, and headless Tiger Prawns.

Speaking of Costco chicken, the chicken tenderloins she cooked today had absolutely no taste, and self had to drench in Ponzu sauce.  What kind of chicken has NO TASTE?  Even after being marinated?

Self is still reading Little Heathens:  High Spirits and Hard Times on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.  Even though this is a very short book (just under 300 pages), and self began reading it almost a week ago, she is still only a third of the way through.

Self is on a chapter called “Medicine.”  In this chapter, we learn that living on an Iowa farm exposes one to injuries of all types, injuries such as:

cuts from axes and knives

stone bruises caused by bare feet on rocks

oozing scrapes

splinters

blood poisoning

pinkeye/ chicken pox/ measles/ mumps

warts

And, here, the author, Mildred Armstrong Kalish, describes a remedy for cuts:

We just went to the barn or the corncrib, found a spiderweb, and wrapped the stretchy filament around the wound.  It stopped the bleeding and the pain, and was thought to have antiseptic qualities.  Generally, healing occurred without further attention.

The only thing that self doesn’t like about this book is that she has no idea how much time is passing –  how old is the narrator when she applies her first spiderweb remedy?  How often did she or her family have to resort to the Vaseline, lard, baking soda, boric acid, salt, camphor, and other homespun remedies for mishaps such as stepping on a nail or on some broken glass?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Heavy Philosophical Question of the Day

May 4, 2013 at 1:00 pm (Books, Links, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers)
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Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs from thistles?

That question (which may well be a quote from the Bible) can be found on p. 68 of Mildred Armstrong Kalish’s beguiling memoir Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm, which self began reading a few days ago.

Self has arrived home safe and sound, dear blog readers, minus one piece of luggage, which had all her dirty laundry and a few purchases.  Perhaps some enterprising Venetian is, at this very moment, sharing her clothing with his family.  By an extreme stroke of luck, the thief took the bag which did not have self’s passport or laptop or the glass dolphin she was going to give to son.  Self is glad none of the clothing was particularly fine or new.  She did lose one library book, which she learns will be $14 to replace.  And she lost her moisturizer.  As well as three pairs of jeans.

Re-entry into America was grueling:  the line for U.S. citizens was at least 500 people long at the time self joined it.  Then she got treated to extra screening, in a small room where an immigration officer went carefully through every single page of her passport (Her passport has visa stamps from, among other places, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Bangkok, Cambodia, Hong Kong, the Philippines of course, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.  Her next 10 years will not be anywhere nearly as exciting, self knows)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Happy Easter/ Call for Submissions

March 31, 2013 at 1:23 pm (Links, Memoirs, Movies, Recommended, Sundays)
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Watched “North by Northwest” yesterday afternoon, thought Cary Grant was absolutely fabulous.  As was Eva-Marie Saint.  Of note:  Ms. Saint reminded self a little of Scarlett Johansson.  She is, so far, self’s favorite Hitchcock actress.  So much more alive and vibrant than the rather static Grace Kelly.

A friend invited self to the San Mateo Gem Show (No idea what that is, really) and self kept saying she would go, she would go, and in the end she did not go, she watched the Hitchcock movie.  Self wonders if she did the right thing — it’s the morning after, self feeling the usual insecurities, blah blah blah

She’s waiting for a decent hour to call son and wish him a Happy Easter.

In the meantime, there’s a Call for Submissions from Memoir Journal for a special issue on the theme of GUNS.  (Guns and Easter seem to go perfectly together, don’t ask self why).  Essays must be previously unpublished and may not exceed 6,000 words.  To be considered for a contest prize of $1,000, there is a $20 entry fee.  However, submitters who desire publication in the issue but do not want to be considered for the money prize do not have to pay a submission fee.  Deadline for submissions:  June 5, 2013.

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Katie Roiphe on Joan Didion (Fascinating)

February 2, 2013 at 7:17 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers)
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Self has been reading In Praise of Messy Lives:  Essays, by Katie Roiphe, for the past three days.  She must say, she finds the book fascinating.

Here’s Roiphe on the Didion style:

Didion seems at first glance to be revealing so much about herself because of her mental fragility.  Certain temperamental qualities of hers — her paranoia, her morbid sense of impending disaster, and her distrust of all stated realities –  were particularly suited to the 1960s and ’70s.  Take the moment in The White Album when she writes about the “attack of nausea and vertigo” that led her to a psychiatric clinic.  On the surface, this might seem like an intimate revelation about her inner life.  And yet she ends the passage with “such an attack does not now seem to me an inappropriate response to the summer of 1998.”  This is typical Didion.  It’s as if her body were a finely tuned instrument for channeling the jittery mood of the country in flux.  Her sense of doom, of highly calibrated alarm, is always in the service of some larger point; her stunned disbelief is always a commentary, on the times, on a murder, on the water supply, on Hawaii, on the bewildering state of California.  It is never simply emotion for the sake of emotion.  There is no pleasure in frankly exhibitionistic exposure; there is none of the blinkered narcissism of some of our more recent personal writing.

Exhibit A and Exhibit B:

Her crying in Chinese laundries becomes “what it’s like to be young in New York.”  New York becomes “an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.  In the end, for all the spare, vivid details about her walking down the street peering into the windows of brownstones, about drinking gazpacho when she is hungover, the essay is about moving to New York and about being young –  not about Joan Didion moving to New York and being young.”

*          *          *

Completely unrelated:  A Selective List of Authors Whose Acquaintance Self Made for the First Time in 2012:

  • John Burnham Schwarz, novelist
  • Owen Sheers, novelist
  • Adrian Goldsworthy, historian of classical antiquity
  • Jerome Groopman, M.D., medical writer
  • Colin Harrison, mystery writer
  • Jesse Kellerman, mystery writer
  • Barack Obama
  • Rhoda Janzen, memoirist
  • Jeanette Walls, memoirist

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Personal Library 8

December 23, 2012 at 10:41 am (anthologies, Books, Insomnia, Lists, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers)
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Dear blog readers, when you can’t sleep, because you have dreams that are confusing, it is a very good idea to get up and count books.

Shelf # 3, in the first bookcase in the dining room, has 72 books.

263 + 72 = 335 Total # of Books Counted So Far

Titles include:  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey; Intelligent Quotes from Erap;  Julie Yap Daza:  The Best of MEDIUM RARE;  The Wit and Wisdom of Cardinal S. Sin; Rizal in Spain:  An Essay in Biographical Context, by Miguel A. Bernad, S.J.;  Traps, by Sondra Spatt Olsen; The February Revolution:  And Other Reflections, by Miguel A. Bernad, S.J.;  Ermita, by F. Sionil Jose;  The Heinemann Book of South African Short Stories, edited by Dennis Hirson, with Martin Trump;  The Philippines:  A Past Revisited, by Renato Constantino; Nine Parts of Desire:  The Hidden World of Islamic Women, by Geraldine Brooks; Frida: A Novel Based on the Life of Frida Kahlo, by Barbara Mujica;  Matadora:  poems by Sarah Gambito;  Monogamy:  Stories by Marly Swick;  Goodnight, Cambodia:  a memoir written by Vibol Ouk, with Charles Martin Simon.

Here’s all self has time for this evening.  She’s supposed to be trying to put herself to sleep :-)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Eat and Be Merry

December 22, 2012 at 9:19 am (Books, Food and Drink, Holidays, Memoirs, Women Writers)
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It is well nigh Christmas!

And we should all eat and be merry.

In fact, self has been merry since days and days ago, when she had to shop for presents and decided to give everyone chocolates.  But of course, she couldn’t get someone a box of truffles without getting a box for herself, right?  After all, this is Christmas!

Anyhoo, self is reading this part in The Glass Castle where the narrator, Jeannette Walls, is really really hungry, and is invited to visit the home of the town whore (Walls’s words, not self’s), and there is a huge roaster on the table, and the woman (whose name is Ginny Sue), mother of nine, says that if little Jeannette will help her clean the bird, she’ll make her some “special chicken rolls.”

So the narrator picks everything apart, even the chicken tendons, even, from the tail, “that nice part that everybody misses” (which, BTW, self’s Dear Departed Dad loved to eat).

And here’s the rest of that section (Warning:  Mayonnaise plays a major part in the proceedings.  If you, like son, feel that “mayonnaise is the most disgusting food on the planet,” then stop reading.  Right now):

“Girl,” Ginnie Sue said, “in all my days, I have never seen no one pick a chicken clean like you.”

I held up the spear-shaped cartilage in the breast bone, which most people don’t eat, and bit down with a satisfying crunch.

Ginnie Sue scraped the meat into a bowl, mixed it with mayonnaise and Cheez Whiz, then crushed a handful of potato chips and added them.  She spread the mixture onto two slices of Wonder bread, then rolled each slice into a cylinder and passed them to us.  “Birds in a blanket,” she said.  They tasted great.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Recalling the Dave Sedaris Mouse

December 21, 2012 at 3:48 pm (Books, Lists, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers)
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There have been a few times in self’s reading life when she encounters a book that she never wants to end.  In 2012, those times have been powerfully scarce.

Let’s see which books — of the ones self read in 2012 — can fit into this category?  Here are a few:

  • Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (the first 3/4 of it), by Rhoda Janzen.
  • Dreams From My Father:  A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama.
  • Three Cups of Tea (even though this book has been discredited, and poor Dave Relin, the guy who co-wrote it with Greg Mortenson, seemed to feel humiliated by the project)
  • A Voyage Long and Strange:  Rediscovering the New World, by Tony Horwitz, one of self’s favorite writers.
  • The Last Empress, a novel by Anchee Min.

And –

Self!  Will you never get over your infernal lists ???

Back to the ostensible reason for this post, which is this:

Self has now stumbled on a story about killing an animal that is almost as hysterically funny as the previous Champion of All Funny Animal Killing Stories, Dave Sedaris’s piece about killing a mouse (A herculean task.  As, the mouse Dave encountered really wanted to live.  But –  don’t we all?  Want to live, that is?  Which reminds self of that Morag Joss mystery, the one about the old lady who’s hired to house-sit a castle  –  aaargh!  No, self no!  Back to the topic!).

The one self is reading is in Jeannette Walls’ (very wrenching) memoir, The Glass Castle, whose pages self has been doling out in miserly fashion, so that she can ensure she will still be reading it when the New Year rolls around.

The animal in question is a huge, icky rat, a rat that dived headlong into a punch bowl filled with sugar left on the kitchen counter (Let’s just put it this way:  Walls’ mother is not going to receive any awards for Good Housekeeping).  Walls describes the terribly fraught encounter in this way:

This rat was not just eating the sugar.  He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table.  When I saw him, I froze, then backed out of the kitchen.

Next thing you know, this intrepid creature leaps onto the stove, then onto a pile of potatoes, then hisses ferociously at the narrator’s brother when he attempts to kill it with a cast-iron skillet, then establishes sole mastery of the kitchen when the children run out the door.

That night, the youngest in the family, a poor lass named Maureen, is whimpering because she is afraid the rat will come to her bed and bite her.

She tells the narrator she can hear the rat “creeping nearer and nearer.”  The narrator calls her sister a wuss and, just to prove it, switches on the light.

There, right next to the sister’s face, is a HUGE NASTY RAT.

After all was said and done, the children did triumph over the rat.  But if they expected any praise from their mother, think again:

“Mom said she felt sorry for the rat.  Rats need to eat, too,” she pointed out.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, Dec. 15 & 16, 2012)

December 16, 2012 at 11:58 pm (Books, Links, Lists, Memoirs, Movies, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Wall Street Journal, Women Writers)
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Today self is peaceful and content.  Which means she is happy.

She managed to get a mani/pedi from Belle Nail Spa on Broadway.  She left before fingernails and toenails were quite dry, but she wanted to collect The Man and make it to the first screening of “Silver Linings Playbook” (Only $7 per ticket).  Despite all the hectic running around, she somehow managed to avoid getting the slightest nick on any of her fingers or toes.  Quelle magnifique!

Second, she really liked that movie.  Even though it only got a wan endorsement from Eric B. Snider.  And even though, OK, she’ll concede this point:  the odds are pretty slim that two people that good-looking, both emotionally damaged, live in that close proximity to each other . . .  OK!  So what!  Self knows this movie is totally in the land of make-believe!  She’d rather see Jennifer Lawrence end up with someone who looks like Bradley Cooper than with someone who looks like, like –  John C. Reilly?  Even though chances are the right man for her would look just like John C. Reilly? (Not to knock John C. Reilly –  self thinks he is a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL actor.  But given the choice between John C. Reilly and Bradley Cooper –  oh, NEVAH MIND!)

Jennifer Lawrence is a wonder.  This is the first movie where self actually believed in a Bradley Cooper character.  But, back to Jennifer Lawrence:  Self cried at the end!  She actually cried!  Something she hasn’t done in a movie theater since watching Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in treacly The Time Traveler’s Wife!

And then, when she and The Man got home from the movie, she got to peruse the Wall Street Journal weekend edition and –  Holy Cow!  –  it’s the one where they list Books of the Year!

But it’s not Books of the Year that self wants to post about –  Ixnay!  (BTW, it took self almost an hour to speed-read the entire books section.  But more about that later)

They interviewed all kinds of celebrities to get their lists of favorite books of 2012.  Self found a few choices enlightening.  Also, she was surprised at WHOSE choices she liked the most.  And here’s the list of people whose book choices self found the most intriguing:

  • Judd Apatow, Director and creator of the phenomenon that is Seth Rogen:  He said he wanted to read Henry Wiencek’s book about Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Master of the Mountains.  He also recommended Dave Eggers’s latest novel, Hologram for the King.
  • Craig Brown, British, writer of satirical columns:  He recommended Robert Caro’s latest installment of his life of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power (like almost every other person interviewed by the Wall Street Journal), and Mimi Alford’s tale of having sex with JFK when she was a White House intern, Once Upon a Secret.
  • Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking:  She recommended a first novel, The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, and Jack Kennedy:  Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews.
  • Joseph Epstein, essayist and cultural commentator:  He recommended a novel, Only Yesterday, by S. Y. Agnon, and Once Upon a Secret (also recommended by Craig Brown, see above)
  • Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: He recommended Robert Caro’s book on LBJ, The Passage of Power; John Keats, a biography of the Romantic poet by Nicholas Roe; several classic westerns:  Saint Johnson and Goodbye to the Past, both by W. R. Burnett; a novel about telephone linemen, Slim, by William Wister Haines; That Winter, by Merle Miller, a “pre-Kerouacian group portrait of the disaffected generation of the postwar 1940s”; Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth and The Innocent; and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.
  • Robert Harris, bestselling novelist:  He recommended Soldaten, a book by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, “based on secretly recorded tapes of German prisoners of war held in Allied camps during World War II.”
  • Thomas Keller, chef:  He recommended Killing Kennedy, by Bill O’Reilley and Martin Dugard, which “is not about a conspiracy.  It’s about how a presidential assassination can be at once a tragedy and a human-interest story.”
  • Ted Leonsis, Founder and Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment:  He recommended The End of Illness, by David Agus, “a smart look at how to extend a life of vigor by playing offense with life.”
  • Joe Maddon, Manager of the Tampa Bay Rays:  He recommended Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth (Self has been meaning to get to these books, for quite a while), and the first two books of Follett’s Century trilogy, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.
  • Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning novelist:  She recommended The Yellow Birds, a first novel by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran; and The Lifeboat, a first novel by Charlotte Rogan, “set in the summer of 1914″ and centering “on a shipwreck in the Atlantic.”
  • Karl Marlantes, author of What It Is Like to Go to War:  He recommended The Snake Eaters, by Owen West; Blackhorse Riders, by Philip Keith; Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails, by Anthony Swofford; and Westmoreland, by Lewis Sorley.
  • Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit:  The Story of Economic Genius:  She recommended Gulag, by Anne Applebaum, a book which “takes readers back to the events that triggered the half-century long standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”
  • Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur:  He recommended The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, by Mark Leyner, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and A Partial History of Lost Causes, by Jennifer DuBois.
  • Marcus Samuelsson, chef:  He recommended This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz, and The Click Moment, by Frans Johansson.
  • Colm Toibin, novelist:  He recommended Edmund Spenser:  A Life, by Andrew Hadfield and Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power.
  • Jim Webb, senator from Virginia:  He recommended The Last Lion, by Paul Reid (the last installment of a trilogy begun by William Manchester, on the life of Winston Churchill), and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, by Barbara W. Tuchman.

Self is pretty sure she can get to these books in about five years.

Self was going to make a count of the men who recommended women writers, but, alas, today self is very — and she does mean VERY — short of time!  She thinks Jim Webb did.  Yup, he most definitely did.  And Arthur Phillips.  Yes, most definitely Arthur Phillips.  In fact, the good man recommended three books by women writers.  Good for you, Arthur! And Gary Giddins recommended Louise Erdrich.

(She won’t single out women who recommended women writers because — hey, just because!  Let’s get on with it, or self will never get free of this post!)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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NYTBR, 21 October 2012

December 4, 2012 at 9:35 pm (Books, Memoirs, Recommended, Surprises)
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Oh what to do, what to do?  Today self is running around completely like a chicken without a head!

First, she had to call Petco 3x to connect with a groomer (to bring The Ancient One to have her nails clipped–  The Man of course did not have the time while self was in Bacolod.  He did enough:  at least The Ancient One was still alive when self arrived home.  Still alive, and still kicking!  Still able to recognize self and wag her tail!)

Where are all the Christmas decorations self put up last year?  She swears she had boxes and boxes.  But when she hunts around in the garage, she only finds two, filled with tacky plastic poinsettias.

Never mind!  She is busily engaged with stringing the almost bare trees with fake holly and fake poinsettia.  She would have had real holly if the gardener she used, about seven years ago, hadn’t chopped down one of the gigantic holly trees in her backyard.  By accident, the woman said.  How does one cut down a full grown tree by accident?  Well, to tell you the truth, self hated that tree because it was so tall and blocked out the sun and she could never grow flowers.  When The Man came home, however, he was so beside himself he wouldn’t speak (to anyone) for months!

The remaining holly tree remained tall and proud, right in the middle of the backyard, but stopped producing red berries.  It just stayed green all year long.  Finally, self consulted an arborist who told her that hollies need to be fertilized in order to produce berries.  That is, one needs to have both a male and female, in close proximity.  Aaaach!  So the tree that got cut was the mate of the remaining holly tree, and now self is punished forevermore by never having any more holly berries.

Self is also going back and forth between a novel, the Ruth Rendell mystery she began yesterday (The Monster in the Box –  absolutely gripping so far, though self must admit she hasn’t gotten very far, maybe just 10 pages in), the reviews from the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times Book Review of 21 October 2012.  She was going to blog about the books reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, but she happened to leave the WSJ in the living room, and now she’s posting from her desk, and the New York Times Book Review is conveniently already next to her MacMini, so she might as well go ahead with that.  Luckily, there are many interesting reviews in this issue.

Now then!  Self will just go ahead and list ALL the books she’d like to read, never mind who or what review prompted the decision, OK?  Time is of the essence!  It takes self an hour just to get The Ancient One from the front door to her car!  Plus another hour for the way back!  And she still hasn’t decided what to cook for dinner!

Okay, okay, self will concede that a bunch of the following books are from the “By the Book” interview with David Mitchell (who self has never even read:  She’ll get to Cloud Atlas in maybe 10 years –  if she’s still alive)

  • Silence, by Shusako Endo (Self read this in college, but this is a book that is certainly worth re-visiting)
  • The Makioka Sisters, by Junichiro Tanizaki (There is a fabulous film adaptation)
  • One Man’s Justice, by Akira Yoshimura
  • Grass for My Pillow, by Saiichi Maruya
  • The Doctor’s Wife, by Sawako Ariyoshi
  • all the novels of Simon Lelic
  • Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (which self remembers reading, and feeling lukewarm about.  She will give the book another go)
  • The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (Another book she wants to re-visit)
  • The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (She saw the movie, with Viggo Mortensen.  Accch!  Super-dark.  But self is not afraid)
  • Purpose, a memoir by Wyclef Jean with Anthony Bozza (A memoir by Wyclef Jean???  Need one say more?  The reviewer believes in tackling this memoir as a first, he calls it “a gem.” Self, run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore!)
  • No Easy Day:  The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL, by Mark Owen (whose real name is Matt Bissonnette –  Self is not giving anything away here.  His real name is used in the review, as well as in reviews she’s read elsewhere, including in the Wall Street Journal)
  • Tibet Wild:  A Naturalist’s Journeys on the Roof of the World, by George Schaller (Just as self would read anything written by Wyclef Jean, she would read anything written by George Schaller.  But to dear blog readers who may not know who George Schaller is –  never mind the explanation, take self’s word for it, he is one of the last great scientist-adventurer-writers.  No dilettante he, he has spent “months almost every year” for the past 30 years in the Chang Tang Highlands of the Tibetan plateau, a place where, as reviewer Constance Casey reminds us, “Getting your boots muddy here can mean frozen toes.”)
  • Phantom, Jo Nesbo’s latest crime novel
  • Salvation of a Saint, by Keigo Higashino, in a translation by Alexander O. Smith with Elye Alexander
  • Goodbye for Now, Laurie Frankel’s second novel
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Frankel’s first
  • Some Kind of Fairy Tale, by Graham Joyce
  • Self-Made Man:  One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man, by Norah Vincent
  • Infrared, the latest novel by Nancy Huston

Gadzooks!  So many books, so little time!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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