From down under to all over

Just finished “Foreign Correspondence,” a memoir by Geraldine Brooks, an Australian-born novelist and former newspaper reporter.

Brooks, who grew up in what she considered to be a very dull suburb of Sydney, does a lovely job of conveying her yearning to be part of a larger world. To her, Australia feels remote and restrictive, far away from the glamour of Europe and political excitement in the United States. To reach that larger world, she starts corresponding with several pen pals, in the United States, Israel and France. Later in life, after the letters whet her appetite, she goes to graduate school in New York and becomes a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post in the Middle East.

While sorting through some boxes of papers at her parents’ home, she discovers a pile of old letters from her pen pals and decides to track them down. The story of what has become of her pen pals, 20 years later, is compelling and gracefully told. The book comes full circle when Brooks realizes that what she most wants now, after nearly a decade spent in near constant travel, is a life of quiet isolation, which she finds in a small village in rural Virginia.

I’ve read several of her other books and liked all of them, especially “Year of Wonders.” I also recently learned that she has new novel coming out in January, “People of the Book.” It looks like it uses a similar narrative device as Susan Vreeland’s “Girl in Hyacinth Blue,” following a work of art as it passes hands over several centuries. I’m definitely looking forward to reading it.

"The Road"

I can sum up “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy, with two superlatives—it is one of the best books I have read, and one of the most depressing.

The story (such as it is) follows a man and his son as they travel through the southern United States 10 years after an unspecified apocalyptic event. The land is gray and charred, the air is filled with ash, and seemingly the only other folks around are roving bands of cannibals. The sparseness of McCarthy’s prose perfectly matches the setting of the book, so much so that it is hard to read too much of it in one sitting, lest one sink into depression, or at least start outfitting a bomb shelter with canned goods.

But in spite of the grim scenario, the story is ultimately uplifting, much more than I would have expected when I started reading it. This was the second selection of my new book group, and we spent much of the discussion talking about what we would do in a similar situation. Most of us agreed that we would want to end things ourselves rather than face the daily battle for survival, high risk of enslavement/being eaten, and no hope for the future. But one friend, the only member of our group with a child, said she would have done just as the father in the book did, and fight to keep herself and her daughter alive.

Another member of the group was so traumatized by the story that she stopped reading after 100 pages, but everyone else found the book impossible to put down. For me, it was especially enjoyable due to my lifelong obsession with disasters/post-apocalyptic events (probably not the healthiest obsession, but what can you do).


Up next for the book group, “The Myth of You and Me,” by Leah Stewart, which looks like it will be a more cheerful read :)

How depressing

Here is a distressing but unsurprising news flash for you: “US report says young people reading a lot less,” from page one of the Boston Globe. The story reports on a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts, which contains the following nuggets:

• Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

• Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.

• The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2.5 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

This has led to a sharp drop in reading profiency. Again, not surprising.

Interestingly, the study found a correlation between reading for pleasure and other activities, such as voting, political activism, participation in culture and fine arts, charity work and regular exercise. It seems like the bottom line is, reading is good for you! (And fun!)

I guess I should consider myself lucky that when I was little, my parents took me to bookstores at least once a week and bought whatever I wanted (in retrospect, the library would have been a lot more economical, but my parents are like me—they like to own their books :) ).

Also I’m lucky that cell phones, ipods, Blackberries, etc. did not exist when I started my reading habit (not to sound like an old geezer—I’m only 30!). One of the reasons offered for the decline in reading is that people, especially teenagers and college students, have so many electronic gadgets to play with. I abhor the idea of electronic book readers, but maybe they will prove the savior of reading: Books just might seem “cooler” when you can read them on a tiny little screen with flashy colors. How sad.


P.S. I know I haven't posted on my current reading in a while, I did just finish "The Road," which I will blog about later this week... stay tuned!

Good God, she’s done it again…

I think it might be time for Oprah and I to come to an uneasy truce, similar to the Oprah-Letterman detente. The book club queen just announced that her next book is “Pillars of the Earth,” which is one of my favorite novels of all time. I had to read it for a class in high school and was completely absorbed in the medieval world it creates. And Ken Follett just wrote a sequel, “World Without End,” which I am dying to read. Now the real question is, how many of Oprah’s loyal followers are actually going to plow all the way through “Pillars,” which clocks in at nearly 1,000 pages?

Faire la cuisine

Earlier this year, I read a couple of books by and about Julia Child. I like to cook, so I was tempted to try some of her recipes, but my vegetarian self just couldn’t embrace the idea of wrestling with a roast chicken, or digging marrow out of a cow bone to whip up a Bifteck Saute Bercy. So, I was pleased to discover a more accessible, recently published French cookbook called “Chocolate & Zucchini,” which grew from a blog of the same name. The woman who wrote the book, 29-year-old Clotilde Dusoulier, basically has my dream job: living in Paris, cooking delicious food, eating it and writing about it. I tried her recipe for Quiche de Broccoli a la Pomme, and it was scrumptious. For some reason I had always thought making quiche would be really difficult, but this was pretty easy. (Although I cheated by using a store-bought crust.) Next up, Billes de Noisettes au Chocolat. Or maybe a nice Tarte Amandine a la Myrtille….

Dumbledore is what?

I’m not quite sure what to make of J.K. Rowling’s recent outing of Dumbledore. At first glance, it seems positive for the books to embrace diversity and feature a gay character. But upon further reflection, maybe Dumbledore is not the best gay role model that Rowling could have offered up. Let’s think about it: He’s 115 years old, has no significant relationships, and spends much of his time with 13-year-old boys. Sound like any recent scandals we’ve experienced in Boston?

In an essay in Time Magazine last week, John Cloud, a gay writer, argues that the outing is “no gay triumph” and wonders why Rowling never acknowledged Dumbledore’s nature in the books. “We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful,” he writes. “His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character.”

I also tend to agree with this boston.com blogger, who maintains that authors can’t just make major revelations about a character after the fact, without any mention of it in the text. Maybe Rowling didn’t want to give the Christian Right another reason to try to ban her books, but then why broach the topic at all?

Flippin' good

Every time I try to make pancakes, it turns into a disaster. I know everyone says the first one is always a dud and you have to throw it away, but last time I tried it, I had to throw away the ENTIRE batch. At that point, I resigned myself to going to IHOP to fulfill my pancake cravings.

Then last week, while reading on the train, I came across an article that gave me hope. The article, written by a New York Times columnist, is part of an anthology I’m currently reading, “The Best Food Writing 2003.” (Yes it’s random, but I LOVE to read about food, so I am devouring it—sorry, bad pun.)

Anyway, this article ("With Pancakes, Every Day Is Sunday") made it sound like it was no big deal to whip up a batch of light, fluffy pancakes at the drop of a hat, so I decided to give it another shot. I’ve never made pancakes from scratch before, but I tried the author’s recipe for “Mississippi Pancakes,” which he claims are the best he’s ever had.

True to form, the first one was quite inedible (I accidentally folded it onto itself while trying to flip it, so it turned into an omelette), but after that, I did manage to produce a decent number of good pancakes. They were especially yummy with blueberries and maple syrup…...mmmmmm……pancakes……..

Here is the recipe, if anyone wants to try. It doesn’t say to grease the pan, but I used some cooking spray anyway. It also claims to make 20 “medium-sized” pancakes, but I halved the recipe and only got 7 (including the one I had to pitch), and they weren’t very big, so I would recommend making the whole recipe.


2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

1) Place a nonstick griddle or a skillet over medium heat. In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and foamy. Add milk, oil and butter. In another bowl, sift together dry ingredients, then beat them into the liquid ingredients with a wire wisk.

2) When skillet is hot, pour in about 1/4 cup batter for each pancake, leaving space between. Flip when batter bubbles. Continue cooking for about a minute. Serve immediately.


For the topping (I made this up) heat 2 cups of frozen blueberries in a skillet with a few tablespoons of maple syrup. Pour over finished pancakes.