No book blog this week. I've had company, big church obligations. So we're doing food this week. I've been accused of hating vegetables. And maybe I do. Maybe, when they're all cut up fresh and posed around a vat of dip, and placed next to a plate of brownies on a buffet table, maybe, just maybe I can't "see" them. But when vegetables [...]
I failed to see the signs of what I was getting into. The story started out with two Smith College girls, headed up to Dartmouth for a weekend. The narrator was bookish and quiet, her lifelong friend the kind of girl who’s working her way through the world’s gin and men. Up at Dartmouth, the girls watch a football game, particularly two players so impossibly [...]
Tom Wolfe is my writer hero. And he’s been busy lately, writing The Kingdom of Speech. Our top evolutionists and linguists recently admitted that, despite what they’ve been teaching for years about how man, the only “animal” that can speak, developed the power of language, they really can’t find any evidence for their theories. Wolfe, stumbling upon this admission, couldn’t help himself. He sat down [...]
Not that I have any scientific data on this but, honestly, will we ever get tired of love stories?I doubt it. So this week, we take a look at The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. First off, let me just say that Eugenides peppered his story with frequent cow patties. If that kind of thing is a deal-breaker for you, stop reading right now so [...]
If they ever make a movie from Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile, it’s going to be an expensive one. It won’t be the fancy sets, because Lehane’s characters troll through the seedier side of Boston and the Berkshire Mountains. Then again, if they use real houses, the movie carpenters will have their hands full, cleaning up all the bullet holes and sprayed blood after each scene. [...]
I guess I’ve turned into an Ann Patchett fan. We recently discussed her Bel Canto here and now we have moved on to her State of Wonder, a drama that combines medical intrigue with jungle adventure. The action starts when Marina, a doctor in the employ of a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, receives word that her colleague has died. His body is still down in the [...]
Tell me if this is how last day of your vacation goes: You gather up your toiletries and dirty laundry and stuff them into your suitcase. You buckle into your car/plane seat and watch sadly out the window as the skyscrapers/seacoast/mountain range recedes from view You regret all the shops you didn’t shop/restaurants you didn’t try/views you didn’t gaze on. You wish you could stay [...]
Today, we ate the Lazy Woman’s Sunday Dinner. Our dessert, Coconut Blueberry Cake was so easy, I made it late last night after a long bout of staring at a job list I didn’t want to finish. This Smoky Bean Stew was a rapid-assembly wonder that cooked itself during my Sunday nap. This was one of those dishes where I swabbed my finger around [...]
Louis Sachar loves the game of bridge. When he decided to write a novel about bridge-players, “My publisher, my editor, my wife and my agent all said I was crazy. ‘No one’s going to want to read a book about bridge!’ they told me on more than one occasion.” Add me to that list. I gave Sachar’s The Card Turner a good try. You would [...]
What would your family do if you keeled over dead? How would they fill in the hole? What would they have to learn to do, and in a hurry? If I went poof, I expect my family would say things like: “Why do we keep running out of toilet paper?” “So, so tired of mac ‘n cheese/scrambled eggs/hamburgers.” “My goodness, is that an inch of [...]
