Reading Arthur Phillips

I've had The Egyptologist on my shelf for years - I greatly enjoyed Arthur Phillips' first novel Prague and picked this up shortly after finishing it. I've started reading it several times but have never been able to get more than twenty or thirty pages in, even though I adore the premise of multiple unreliable, deluded narrators. That being said, I finally got the urge to really dig into this one last week and watched a number of documentaries on Egypt through Netflix to really spark my interest. Then, when I finally went to the shelf to grab the book I realized it was missing. A week later, a thorough overhaul of my bookshelves, car and every bag and surface in my condo and the book still hasn't turned up. Who knows where it has run off to, but I've got a new copy on order from a small bookshop up the hill and will be reading this next week when it comes in. For the time being, I picked up a copy of Phillips' newest book The Song is You and will try to polish that up in the meantime.

Review: The Tassajara Bread Book

I watched a documentary last week called How To Cook Your Life, and picked up a copy of The Tassajara Bread Book mentioned in the film. Over the weekend I stocked up on baking basics and did something that I haven't done in many years - I baked bread. I started off with the simplest wheat bread recipe, and even though it took me all afternoon to make it was definitely worth the effort. Not only did the bread turn out well, it made my condo smell fantastic! I'm going to remake the same recipe tomorrow with honey rather than molasses as the sweetener to see which I prefer. I've also picked out a couple of non-rising breads to try from scratch later this week.

I was surprised to see how many different types of recipes were included in the book - there are many different breads, cookies, cakes and even some condiments to accompany the baked goods. Most impressive is the organization of the book - the concepts of bread baking and shaping are explained up front and with fantastic, simple detail. Each recipe is explained individually as well, and alternative sweeteners, flours and fillings are often offered. This book manages to teach basic bread making skills very clearly and also provides a great deal of information about bread making. This makes it ideal as a reference material, but also as an introductory text - it teaches how and why.

The wheat bread I made was labor intensive and took many, many hours to fully rise. I was nervous that after all that effort I wouldn't like the bread, but it was mild and earthy. I usually dislike wheat bread because the flavor is so strong, but this recipe had both great flavor and consistency. It was simply delicious, and a very simple recipe. It feels good to eat a piece of bread that I made myself and without preservatives and artificial flavoring. I'm going to try the bran muffin and rosemary focaccia recipes next.

Digital Cookbook Project

After years of collecting recipes in a messy binder I have started using a program called MacGourmet to organize my recipes on my laptop. Like most Apple software, the harder it tries to make things easy on the user, the more complicated and frustrating it becomes. But I do enjoy the visual options and it runs easily on my Mac, which is the computer I use around the house.

I am terribly picky about the arrangement of my books, and it's always bothered me that my cookbooks are a mess. Hopefully this project will help me bring some order to the kitchen shelves!

Review: Koko Be Good

Koko Be Good by Jen Wang is an absolutely charming, beautiful book. The story it tells is simple and a bit cliche, but the characters are well crafted and have real depth and a healthy internal life. I think the negative reviews about the storytelling are a bit unjustified and sound mostly to be coming from people who do not read a lot of manga or graphic novels. Yes, the characters are stock - feral, loose cannon girl; introverted teenage boy; directionless twenty-something. But the dialogue and philosophical core of this book have a real honesty about them. Yes, some of the dialogue sounds trite - just enough that I can imagine the words coming out of the mouth of a recent college grad without a clue as to what they want to do with their life now that actual action is required.

Koko is a riot, struggling to "be good" because she ought to be, but dealing with a philosophical question that has always plagued me - if you have to try to be something, if it's against your true nature, then isn't it wrong for you? The character of Jon is uncertain about his choice to follow his girlfriend to Peru, so his moments are overflowing with doubt and trepidation. He struggles with questions of happiness and value, and whether or not pursuing his musical ambitions is a worthwhile contribution to the world. And then there is Faron, the youngest and as introverted as Koko is outgoing. He seems to be powerless in his own life, until he takes unexpected action and is punished for it. All three are trying to figure out who they are and what to do with themselves and are struggling with these questions in different ways. The emotional core of this story is very dear to me, and I believe Wang does a fantastic job at capturing the essence of these types of questions and the young adults who ask them. It was the character of Faron that I enjoyed the most - the quiet, overlooked boy who teaches himself martial arts and loves musical theater. I think the real message in the book is that as hard as Koko tries to "be good" by society's standards, she has already found her way of being good in her own way - by being a friend to Farun and offering him freedom and companionship.

The story aside, it's the art that truly steals the show. It's just plain gorgeous. The sketched style and gorgeous muted colors make for a really striking volume. Wang also succeeds in capturing scenes as well as the characters, focusing on small details at times which really enhance the overall effect of the artwork. Additionally, I think it complements the subject matter quite well. The images are not firm and defined, and neither are the characters. They are soft around the edges and not fully formed. And my favorite chapter, the one focusing solely on Farun, is done in a different style - more simplistic and childlike. I feel as though this really represents him well as the least emotionally advanced of the characters. It's as though he's suffering through the same type of existential crisis, but with fewer tools and life experiences to help him navigate through it. The art reflects this more simplistic view of himself and the world.

Review: The Imperfectionists

I snapped up a copy of this book shortly after it came out and it's been sitting in my massive queue (otherwise known as the tower of books on my nightstand) ever since. I finally picked it up this morning, and read it straight through. I'm not really sure what to say about the novel - it was pleasant enough to read, and managed to surprise me several times but I did not find the story or its telling to be very compelling.

I bought the book for two reasons, the first being that the majority of the story's action takes place in Rome, and from the reviews it sounded as though the city was an integral and important part of the story. I was disappointed in this regard. Though I was familiar with many of the streets and locations mentioned, the names were simply tossed out as irrelevant details meant to dress the novel with the appearance of authority. The author may as well have been lifting streets from a map indiscriminately and the story could have just as easily been set in any other European city. The only details that felt authentic to me at all were the descriptions of Trastevere and the Tiber river, as well as a particular moment in which one of the characters follows the dome of St. Peter's church as far as she can while riding a city bus. One of the female characters spends a lot of time walking down a street called Lungotevere, which literally translates to "along the Tiber". It's a street that winds its way through Rome along the river. It is a residential street and a lovely, quiet place to walk at any time of day. Yet it is characterized in the book as being a rather busy portion of the city, which is not at all true to my experience when I was walking along that street daily to get from an apartment in Trastevere to class in Campo dei'Fiori. Incidentally, Campo dei'Fiori was also briefly mentioned and not described in the slightest. This book sets itself in one of the oldest and most fascinating modern cities on the planet, and the proceeds to tell a story nearly devoid of any description whatsoever.

The second reason I bought the book was that I enjoy stories that are told from multiple perspectives. However, the fragmented storytelling did not really work in this case. Each chapter deals with a different individual affiliated with the same international newspaper based out of Rome. Though some characters make multiple appearances, there is no real sense of cohesion. Each person's individual story is a part of the larger narrative - the story of the newspaper. But by the final chapter, the story still feels like a patchwork of individuals tied loosely together through circumstance. Though I did enjoy the different voices of each storyteller and how they characterized one another, the story itself was bland and boring.

What I usually enjoy so much about stories told in this manner is that it leaves the reader to accumulate data, to file away the different ways each narrator perceives the other players and to build your own model of the story based off of contradictory evidence. You come to know the narrators, to see their biases and motives and how they color the perceptions they pass along in their observations. Eventually, the reader is able to chart all these perspectives as though they were data points, and extrapolate out the "true truth" of the story from all the disparate points of view. But this story simply does not work that way. Each chapter is relatively brief, and doesn't allow much insight into the individual characters. The accumulation of narrators doesn't build one upon the last to create a rich mosaic of perspectives, gaining complexity with each new layer. It's just a jumble of slightly related stories held together by a thin historical thread and brief snippets of the history of the newspaper at the head of many chapters.

All in all, I found the book to be quite disappointing. It was not poorly written. The characters were not poorly imagined. The plot was not uninteresting. If you read the novel as a collection of short stories and character pieces, it hold up reasonably well - especially since most chapters end with clever surprises and upsets. There was simply not enough of anything - the mysteries were not mysterious, the characters were not fleshed out enough to be compelling and the historical pieces of the story did not fit together well. The entire book reads as well as a brick wall would stand without any mortar to bind each individual brick to its neighbor.

Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire

I've had a copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo sitting on my bookshelf and gathering dust for some time now - so long, in fact that I can't accurately recall when I bought it. I haven't had any interest in mysteries or crime fiction since I was a teenager and read mystery and historical fiction novels but after hearing so many positive reviews of the book I picked up a copy, knowing that I would eventually get around to reading it.

I'm not sure what made me finally pick it up, but I began to read while waiting for the election results to process on Tuesday night. I was hooked in the first 30 pages or so, and read the entire book in one 8 hour sitting. I was completely drawn into the story and desperate to unravel the crime and knew I could not sleep without knowing how the novel ended. When I finally finished, it was nearly 9am and I made an impulsive decision - I drove up to Capitol Hill and visited the new Elliot Bay Book Company store to buy a copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire.

I read the entire book in one sitting as well, without breaking for so much as a nap in between books. Now I am torn between buying a hardback copy of the third book to resolve the cliff hanger, or wait for the trade paperback to release in early 2011. I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book - beyond the fact that it's a crime novel it's overwhelming in its graphic depiction of violence against women. The main female character is brilliant and unique, a pint-sized gothic punk computer hacker with an extremely secretive past. In a fashion typical to the genre, she is constantly underestimated by everyone around her. Owing to her small stature, her apparent youth, her atypical appearance and her perceived mental handicaps people assume she is harmless until she strikes - either through clever application of her computer and investigative skills or through aggressive physical contact.

The main male character is a decent, nice fellow who has just been dealt a very harsh blow to his personal integrity and career as a journalist crusading against various injustices. Either one of these characters, Mikael or Lisbeth, would make for an exceptional focus to the series. However, what really puts this over the top as an excellent and enjoyable read is the combination of the two. A large portion of the first novel is devoted to the work up to their first face-to-face encounter. When they finally meet, it's very gratifying as a reader. Their parallel investigations converge and the plot explodes. What had until that point been a slowly building juggernaut of complicated corporate and familial intrigue escalates immediately into an intense battle for survival. The final revelations caught me by surprise as they unfolded - at several points in the story I identified possible motives and killers, only to have all my theories repeatedly dashed. The ridiculously large cast is difficult to follow but does allow for so many choices for a villain that it leaves the reader constantly guessing. Being accustomed to the restraints of crime dramas on television I was overjoyed to explore a crime that wasn't simple to unravel.

Though I did enjoy the second book, I didn't find it nearly as good as the first. Though I will need to reread both books when not completely exhausted from a marathon of reading, I suspect that my general impression will hold. Part of what made the original story so engrossing for me was watching each of the main characters develop separately, knowing that they would eventually meet and wanting desperately to see that interaction. The pacing of the story and the character development were extraordinary. I was pleased that the second book revisits this model and tells parallel stories again, but I was displeased with the very small amount of contact Lisbeth and Mikael had. The beginning of the second book was intended to show her growth as a person, the ways she was changing and the travels she undertook during a rather lengthy period of absence, but to me it read as a confusing muddle of stories that never circled back to have any significance to the case that drove the book's plot apart from her newfound interest in complex theoretical mathematics.

Once the plot got rolling, though, I found myself pulled into the story once again. I was pleased to see the return of a smaller character from the first book, and his interactions with Lisbeth. The Girl Who Played With Fire kept me guessing for quite a while, but the plot was not nearly as focused and driven as the first book, with three different camps (the police, the journalists, and the hackers) each attempting to solve their own mystery and the reader along for the ride just wanting to know who the mysterious Zala is and how he might tie together all three crusades. It's not until the very last moment that the investigations truly overlap and the truth becomes clear, but even so the book manages to end right on the edge of the cliff, leaving readers desperate for the next installment.

Indiespensable 22 Arrived!

I'm really loving my membership in the Powell's book club, even though I have to admit that my backlog of books to be read is so overwhelmingly large that I have yet to actually read any of the volumes I've collected from it. I joined over the summer, just missing out on their editions of David Eggers' The Wild Things adaptation of my favorite childhood book, Where the Wild Things Are and Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Having read and enjoyed both, I decided to join Indiespensable, trusting that the clever folks at Powell's would come up with some fantastic books that I might otherwise not add to my ever-growing queue.

For many, many years of her life my grandmother belonged to similar types of book clubs. My shelves are filled with her collection of lovely, worn editions of classic works in tattered cases. It's with great enthusiasm I watch my own lovely little collection starting as well - I've always purchased trade paperback editions of modern books, and my own bookcase is filled with volumes that reflect this preference. I love them for their variety and color, and the way they feel in the hand while they're being read - for me reading a book is as much a tactile experience as a narrative one. I've never been drawn to mass market hardcover editions with their glossy slipcovers and dull bindings, but these editions are well thought out and lovely, and remind me so much of my grandmother's collection that I absolutely adore them. Here's to many more months of literary presents arriving via mail!

On a slightly related note, I've been systematically working my way through the writings of Kurt Vonnegut over the last few weeks and arrived home this afternoon having finished reading Mother Night only to discover my other package from Powell's had finally arrived, containing Galapagos and Cat's Cradle. Excellent timing!