books and crackers

Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:52:00 +0000

This book is so good, I can't even explain. It's about a young woman named Cather who write fanfiction using characters from a book series that is like Harry Potter, but isn't. She goes off to college and takes a fiction writing class, but she doesn't want to create her own characters--she loves writing fanfiction so much she can't make the transition to writing "real" fiction.

If you like Harry Potter, you'll like this book. If you like fanfiction. If you like slash fiction. If you like love stories. If you think the real love story in the Harry Potter series was between Harry and Snape. If you like good writing. If you like Nebraska. If you like realistic, contemporary young adult fiction. If you want to know what life is like as a first-year college student.

I loved one of Rainbow Rowell's other young adult novels, Eleanor & Park. But I loved Fangirl even more, I think.
If you've read them both, which did you like better? Eleanor & Park had more pathos (nothing wrong with that). Fangirl is funnier, but it still had plenty of dark moments.

SkyFlakes Crackers

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 15:43:00 +0000

These crackers were highly recommended by my wise friend Leila, so I had to try them. They are similar to saltines, but slightly denser and less salty. I can definitely understand the appeal! They are the perfect food for when you don't really feel like eating, but you know you need to eat something. They are soothing and comforting.

You won't find them in your average U.S. grocery store but you can buy them on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/M-Y-San-Skyflakes-Crackers-14oz/dp/B0009FHDB0

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 18:10:00 +0000

I didn't plan to read Gone Girl. I didn't plan to like it, either. But I asked my friends for suggestions of books to review, and TC suggested Gone Girl.

When Gone Girl came out in 2012, I read about it everywhere. The plot was intriguing, but it didn't sound like the kind of book I would enjoy reading. I don't enjoy scary books, or murder mysteries, or books where bad things happen to good people (or even to bad people). But I confess that I want to know what happens in these books, even if I don't want to read them myself. So I scour reviews (especially the ones that have spoiler alerts) for hints about the ending. Sometimes I read the last few pages on Amazon if I can. By the time I was done binge-reading reviews of Gone Girl, I had a pretty good idea of what happened in the book, including the twists and the incredibly depressing ending. [Spoiler Alert: This is as good a place as any to mention that if you haven't read the book or seen the movie--and you want to remain unspoiled--don't read the rest of this review!]

Then the movie came out a few months ago, and Gone Girl was all over the news again. I read all the think pieces about the differences in perspective between the book and the movie, about the changes necessary to make the plot work as a film, about whether Ben Affleck was the right choice to play Nick, about what the author Gillian Flynn thought of the movie (she adapted the screenplay herself). Again, I didn't actually want to see the movie--I just wanted to know all about it.

So this week I checked Gone Girl out of the library with some trepidation. Did I want to spend many hours reading a 415-page mystery when I already knew the ending? I started reading, however, and I am glad that I did. Most of the book is narrated by Nick Dunne (played by Ben Affleck in the movie), and as I started to read I was picturing Ben Affleck telling me the story. The characters Ben Affleck plays usually seem dumb and smarmy to me (whether they are supposed to be or not), so I was having trouble reconciling the Ben Affleck persona with the Nick Dunne persona. Nick Dunne was too intelligent and too good a writer to be played by Ben Affleck--and, in fact, Nick Dunne had been a writer before he lost his job at a NY magazine and moved back to the heartland to open a bar. But as I read further, Ben Affleck receded to the back of my mind and I was thoroughly gripped by Gillian Flynn's writing.

I knew that the sections that appear to be Amy Dunne's genuine diary (written over the course of five years) were actually written by Amy over the course of a few months, as she carefully sets in motion a plan to frame her husband Nick for her murder. I found Amy's voice in these diary entries fake and cloying--which was fine, because the diary was fake. But who knows what I would have thought of those diary entries if I hadn't know, going in, that they were fake?

I was surprised by how gripped I was by the book--I thought knowing the plot twists in advance would make the reading tedious, but, in fact, knowing the plot ahead of time gave me more time to consider how the author had worked to build up suspense, how she was setting up the reader (and Nick) for a fall, and how psychotic Amy actually was. Amy is truly a criminal mastermind--as is Gillian Flynn, by extension.

And the ending--so good, so right, so chilling. At the end of the day, isn't all marriage a bit of a prison sentence? [P.S. I am not talking about my own marriage, of course, as it is perfect.]

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 18:29:00 +0000

I love this book. I love everything about it, including the spare white cover with a heart-shaped cookie in the center, one bite taken out of it.

I love that it sucked me in and made me cry, and I love that I couldn't put it down and read all 217 pages in one sitting.

The narrator, Jennifer, is an outcast in elementary school. The other kids call her Fattifer and tell her that she smells. Her only friend is Cameron, a similarly unpopular boy with an abusive father. After a frightening encounter Jennifer and Cameron have with Cameron's father, Cameron disappears. Jennifer's teacher tells her that Cameron's family moved. A few months later, kids at school tell her that Cameron is dead.

Eight years later, Jennifer's mother has remarried and they've moved across town. Jennifer reinvented herself as Jenna when she started her new high school, and now she has friends and a boyfriend. She learned how to smile and make jokes, to act happy all the time so that people will enjoy being around her. But then Cameron reappears in town--his family had moved, but he wasn't dead--and Jenna struggles to maintain her facade. "I didn't know why I was doing this, anyway, when what I really needed was to spend more time trying to pass trig. Well, I did know. I was doing it for Ethan because I thought that was part of what a good girlfriend did, and I'd spent all of junior high and high school observing those around me to see what 'normal' looked like. I'd tried to learn it from the outside in." The theme of identity, of fitting in, hits home for me partly because it is the theme of the novel I am working on.

But, and forgive me the tangent, it also made me think about a paper I wrote in college about cultural differences in the concept of identity. In Western cultures, the self stops where our body stops. In Eastern cultures, the concept of self can extend to the family, the community, even the whole country. So your actions, your reputation, are not yours alone. In the US, I wonder if we take the value of self-expression too far. There is value in being yourself, in finding your own path, but there is also value in harmony, in going along to get along, in working together.

If you are always marching to the beat of your own drummer, you never get to play with the band.

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 17:06:00 +0000

I had the good fortune to encounter Trader Joe's Roasted Gorgonzola crackers at a Christmas party recently. I tried them eagerly, because I love crackers and I love Gorgonzola. The crackers were tasty, but they had only the faintest hint of Gorgonzola flavor when they first hit the tongue. After that it's all salt and cracker.

I am a bit conflicted about cheese crackers anyway. (Breaking news, area woman conflicted about cheese crackers.) Even the cheesiest of cheese crackers still taste mostly like cracker. And I am never clear about the function of a cheese-flavored cracker. Are you supposed to eat it by itself, or with cheese? The crackers above are pictured with cheese, but is that a hint about what the crackers are supposed to taste like or a serving suggestion?

I did a bit of research and discovered that, in fact,these crackers are not exactly what they seem:
http://garlicgulch.com/blog/false-advertising-trader-joes-gorgonzola-crackers-contain-no-gorgonzola/

The dark underbelly of the cheese cracker reveals itself. I may never be the same.

Conversion by Katherine Howe

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:30:00 +0000

I've always been fascinated but by what used to be called hysteria and now is called conversion disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder). It's a kind of collective delusion. Some people think that's what was happening during the Salem witch trials. But there are many other examples of schoolchildren, often girls, falling ill with a sickness that later turns out to be all in their heads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria).

I remember hearing about the real-life case this book is based on and reading every article I could get my hands on just trying to get to the bottom of it. When I heard there was a novel written on the subject I couldn't wait to read it. And I finally got my chance today. Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, the book didn't live up to my expectations.

This is one of those cases where the real story is so interesting that any fictionalized version would just be a shadow. The narrative is juxtaposed with a parallel narrative taking place during the Salem witch trials. This element seems a little bit too on the nose.

But the subject itself is still fascinating and I admire the author’s effort to make sense of it.

An Abundance of Katherines

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:12:00 +0000

I loved John Green's latest novel The Fault in Our Stars as so many other people did. So I was interested in reading some of his other novels.

I picked up his 2006 novel An Abundance of Katherines at the library. I had a bit of trouble getting into it. I had trouble warming up to the protagonist whose main features seem to be that he was a very smart and that he’d been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. That wasn't enough for me to really empathize with or understand him and I struggled several times just to keep reading. Things improved a bit when the protagonist, Colin, and his best friend, Hassan, embark on a road trip. They meet some interesting characters along the way and the plot picks up. The less time we spend with Collin and his heartbreak the better, for me at least. In fact, my favorite part of the novel wasn't even written by John Green. It’s the appendix, where a mathematician friend of the author’s explains Colin's search for a mathematical formula that will predict the length of a relationship.

I'd love to hear your opinion on these two books or your suggestions for new types of crackers! Please let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions of other books to read or crackers to eat. Thanks!

The Lucy Variations

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 21:00:00 +0000

I was at the library recently, browsing the "New in Young Adult" shelf, when I came across The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr. The title and author sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember why.

I checked out the book, took it home, and read it with zeal. It's about a teenage girl, Lucy, who had a promising career as a concert pianist. She was a prodigy, but the pressure got to her, and she quit performing. In fact, she quit playing altogether. In the course of the book, she's mentored by her younger brother's piano teacher, and she discovers her love of playing again.

When I finished the book and read the acknowledgements at the end, I learned why the title and author had sounded familiar. Julie Scheina, my colleague for a brief time, was the editor! She'd told me about the book, I realized. Luckily enough, I had lunch with her scheduled for the next week, so I could ask her something that had been worrying me about the book. Was Lucy's relationship with her brother's piano teacher inappropriate? He was 30, she was 16. Her feelings for him were not just platonic--but what about his for her? In one of their last conversations in the book, he says to her, "You're beautiful, Lucy. Inside and out. And that hurts, too. It hurts more specifically. More personally." I asked Julie if he was supposed to be a creep--if that was what the author intended. She said no, he wasn't supposed to be a creep. He was okay, just sad and a bit misguided (I'm paraphrasing--I don't remember exactly what Julie said). But there is a limit to an author's power. Not everyone has a chance to consult with the editor to find out what the author intended, so the reader's interpretation stands. And I think he was a creep.

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 18:39:00 +0000

I am not sure what to make of this book (The Lost Daughter) I just read by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante. I checked the novel out from the library because I'd read an article about Ferrante in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/elena-ferrante-liking-like). What I discovered after reading The Lost Daughter was that it wasn't part of the series of novels about female friendship discussed in the New Yorker article. Instead, it was about a middle-aged woman reflecting on her relationship with her ex-husband and her distant, adult daughters. The story of her relationship with her daughters is told in back story, while the present action places the narrator at the beach for a solitary vacation. The narrator (and main character) is a bit unusual in that her actions are fairly unlikable and incomprehensible--she steals a young girl's doll, for example, for reasons that are not clear to us or to herself.
The New Yorker article touches on this issue of likability--how important is it that we like the main character of a novel? I was both repelled and entranced by the narrator. Her feelings and actions are both hard to understand and deeply familiar. Describing a moment when her daughter, Bianca, was lost at the beach: "She was crying when they found her, when they brought her back to me. I was crying too, with happiness, with relief, but meanwhile I was also screaming with rage, like my mother, because of the crushing weight of responsibility, the bond that strangles, and with my free arm I dragged my firstborn, yelling, you'll pay for this, Bianca, you'll see when we get home, you must never go off again--never." The narrator's ambivalent feelings about her daughters--how much she loves them, but how suffocated she feels by them--made me uncomfortable because of how much I could identify with them.

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:05:00 +0000

I've been trying to cut down on the quantity of crackers that I eat, but what to replace them with? Lately I have been eating these seaweed snacks that I found at the international market near my office. They are deliciously crunchy.The brand is paldo and they look like this:

Deenie and Meet the Austins

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:12:00 +0000

I was inspired by the Fine Lines feature on Jezebel to revisit as some of my favorite books from my youth.

I went to the library and checked out Deenie, by Judy Blume. I remember reading this book for the first time when I was in third grade. I’m not sure if I’ve read it since then. I think I was too young to read it when I was in third grade, but I read it because Amanda Swann told me about it. For some reason, although I can’t remember why, I looked up to Amanda Swann, and I thought if she was reading it I should be reading it too. I remember very distinctly that she told me about the main character, Deenie, and how pretty she was and how was gonna be a model, and after her braces were off, she was gonna go out with Matt Kinsey. Matt Kinsey was this kid in our class who everyone liked, so I wasn’t surprised that Deenie would want to go out with him, but occurs to me now that it’s weird to think a fictional character would want to go out with a real kid in our class. When I actually read the book, I discovered that Deenie didn’t have braces on her teeth like I thought, she had a brace on her back or on her whole body, I actually didn’t really understand what the brace was all about. I did that a lot, as a kid, I read books that I wasn’t really old enough to understand and then wandered around with a lot of misconceptions.

I also checked out Meet the Austins by Madeline L'Engle. I don’t remember how long ago it was when I first read it, but it’s certainly been a long time, because I barely remembered it. At first I wasn't even sure if I'd ever ready it. Its the first book in a series about the Austin family. I know that at one timeI owned some of the books in the series--The Young Unicorns and a A Ring Endless Light—and read them several times. But I don’t think I ever owned Meet the Austins, so it’s probably been two decades since I read it. I don’t remember what I thought of the book when I first read it, but I was surprised upon this recent reading by how much I’d disliked the narrator. Or maybe it’s more appropriate to say that I disliked the narration, not the narrator. I’m sure the narrator herself would’ve been a fine person if I met her, but the way she narrated the story seemed really pretentious to me and I don’t think it was supposed to be. I feel like we’re supposed to like Vickiy Austen, but then she says things like Uncle Douglas is “an artist and lives in New York, and we all love him tremendously.” It’s in the first paragraph of the book and I’m already annoyed---by the word tremendously. It just sounds affected. I feel like the whole book seems to be straining to prove how special and wonderful the Austins are—particularly Vicky. Instead of letting us draw our own conclusions about Vicky, the other characters are used as mouthpieces to tell us what to think. For example, Vicky asks her Uncle Douglas why she’s having such trouble showing her Aunt Elena how sorry she is about her about the death of her Aunt Elena's husband. (Sorry this is confusing--Aunt Elena was married to Uncle Hal and Uncle Douglas actually not an Uncle, he's just a family friend.) But anyway:

“Uncle Douglas,” I said, “why is it that John can show Aunt Elena how sorry he is about Uncle Hal and I can’t, and I’m so terribly, terribly sorry?”
Uncle Douglas put his arm around me and his beard rubbed gently against my cheek. “Aunt Elena knows you’re sorry, dear.”
“But why does John know what to say, and how to say it, and all I can do is act stupid, as though it doesn’t matter?”
“Just because it matters too much. Have you ever heard of empathy?”
I shook my head.
“John can show Aunt Elena how sorry he is because he has a scientific mind and he can see what has happened from the outside. All good scientists have to know how to be observers. He can be deeply upset about Uncle Hal and deeply sorry for Aunt Elena, but he can be objective about it. You can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you have an artistic temperament, Vicki, and I’ve never seen you be objective about anything yet. When you think about Aunt Elena and how she must be feeling right now, it is for the moment as though you were Aunt Elena; you go right inside her suffering, and it becomes your suffering too. That’s empathy, it’s something all artists are afflicted with.”
“Are you?”
“Sure. But I’m older than you are and I can cope with it better.”

In this passage I am somehow simultaneously annoyed with Vicky, John, Uncle Douglas and the author at the same time. Is it just me?

The Giant's House

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:54:00 +0000

I know it annoys some people to talk about voice in fiction. It’s a workshop term, an MFA term—what does it mean? But sometimes I finish a book—in this case, The Giant’s House, by Elizabeth McCracken—and I feel as though a gentle voice has been telling me a story. This voice was quiet and a bit sad, resigned but not hopeless. This voice would go well with graham crackers and a mug of tea with milk. The voice told the story deliberately, unhurriedly, without flash or trickery. It is a love story, of sorts, but it is never mushy, never sappy. I recommend it without reservations to anyone who reads.

Away

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:11:00 +0000

My one reader was kind enough to wonder where I was. I thank you, kind reader. I’ll start with the crackers. I went into the cheese shop down the street. It’s one of those fancy cheese shops where cheeses cost $20.00 a pound and the people who work there are called cheesemongers. I love the word cheesemonger. It sounds like it should translate to cheese monster (like cookie monster)--so I picture the employees, after hours, throwing hunks of cheese into their mouths. Anyway I bought some of the less expensive cheese, an aged Vermont cheddar (betraying my Wisconsin roots). I bought some crackers from “The Fine Cheese Company”--they are mustard and black pepper for “mature cheddar.” I’m not sure how the cheese I bought it would feel about being called “mature”—are you calling me old? But cheddar did taste delicious with those mustard and black pepper oat crackers.

Later, at the grocery store, I bought some Cambozola. I think that’s what it’s called. It tastes like a combination of Camembert and Gorgonzola. I had it first at my friend Pauline’s house, and every time I went into a grocery store after that I would look for it, but I kept forgetting what was called. Was it Gorgonbert? Bluezola? Cambebrie? I knew it was the combination of two delicious cheeses. Anyway, I think I found it. I ate it on whole meal crackers also by The Fine Cheese Company. According to the box these are “a wheaty and crunchy cracker for strongly flavored cheeses.” I don’t know if Cambezola is strongly flavored—but it did taste very good with the wholemeal crackers. If you can find some Cambezola, I think you should buy it. And eat it. It’s also good with sourdough bread or a baguette.

On to the books. I checked out a whole bunch of books from the library. I read them eagerly, but then I had to return them before I had a chance to blog about them. I checked out a bunch more books and read them but then had to return them to the library. For some reason, I feel the need to blog with the book in front of me. I don’t know why. Finally, I just broke down and went to the bookstore to buy some books, so I still have them.

First I read the novel Away by Amy Bloom. It’s about a woman, Lillian Leyb, who emigrates to New York after her family has been killed in eastern Europe. She is told later that her daughter is alive, so she travels from New York to Alaska to try to make it to Russia to look for her daughter. This book is so tragic--it is tragedy upon tragedy, sorrow upon sorrow--that before long I became numb to it, as Lillian became numb to her own tragedies. She had to be numb to keep going. Usually I cry over tragedy like that but I didn’t shed as single tear until near the end of the book, when Lillian prays with three young children whose cabin she stumbled upon in her trek through the Alaskan wilderness.

“It’s not that prayer seems like a bad idea out here. It seems like a good and optimistic idea, but Lillian does not believe in anything like God. She’s petitioned particular gods lately (the god of edible red berries, the god of slow-moving streams), but she doesn’t address or hope to be heard by the Creator of the Universe. Lillian believes in luck and hunger (and greed, which is really just a rich man’s hunger--she doesn’t even mind anymore; that people are ruled by their wants seems a reliable truth). She believes in fear as a motivator and she believes in curiosity (hers should have shrunk to nothing by now but feeds on something Lillian cannot make sense of) and she believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she cannot even imagine the next morning, but is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day.

And the mighty kingdoms she has passed through, the ceaseless white, and the endless dark, swallowed up everything for weeks but spit back Ned and Billy and Sally, and as a kindness or afterthought Lillian as well. Tossed her up the path to the cold cabin, to children who would have died, first Sally, gone in a minute one sunny day, then Ned, neck broken trying to save Billy, fallen into the ravine looking for Sally. And Billy under a pine tree for two days and two nights, back broken, as the snow covered him. All three of them dead, plucked out of the world 12 days after the mother ate a very bad piece of meat. But here is Lillian and the four of them are safe in bed, and not cold, and not hungry. We live and we love the world, Lillian thinks, and we kid ourselves of the world loves us back.

'Boys,' she says. They will pray, no matter what any of them believes.

She says the Sh’ma Koleinu in Hebrew, stammering a little over her father’s phrasing. And she says in English, ‘Hear our voice, O Lord our God, pity us, save us, accept our prayer with compassion and kindness.’ She goes on to the next piece that she can manage to translate. ‘Do not abandon us, our God, do not be far from us.’ Oh do not be far from me, she thinks, and do not concern yourself with my lack of belief. ‘For You we wait, our God; You, O lord, will answer.’ ”

Beware of Oogies

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:52:00 +0000

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you try to eat a healthy diet. You eat lots of fruits and vegetables, you avoid fat whenever possible, and you try to eat reasonable portions. Let's say, in addition, that you love cheese and have poor self-control. One of the worst things you could do, in this situation, is to buy a bag of Oogies Gourmet Popcorn in the Smoked Gouda flavor. Now, the odd thing about this situation is that I don't even like Smoked Gouda. It is one of my least-favorite cheeses. And the name "Oogies" is weird and doesn't sound like something that should be eaten. But once I tasted a kernel, I was lost forever to the thrall of Smoked Gouda popcorn. The first taste isn't even that impressive--the first note of the flavor on your tongue is unassuming--pleasantly seasoned but nothing special. But the true flavor hits the back of your tongue as you swallow and the next thing you know your whole head is inside the bag.

Overheard on Overheard: I think I know this book

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:31:00 +0000

1PM Dude, Seriously, Switch to Historical Novels
Project manager, discussing book: It was so tragic! It's not just that they were clones and had their organs harvested, but they never got to really love each other!

Main Bountiful, Utah
via Overheard in the Office, Jun 13, 2008

I think I've read this book. I think it's Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's an excellent book. But I guess there may be other tragic love stories of clones who have their organs harvested.

Baked Naturals What Crisps

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:29:00 +0000

I am eating these crazy good new crackers, they are called saltines. Ha, I’m just kidding. Pepperidge Farm has these new “Baked Naturals Wheat Crisps” that are very tasty. They are kind of like wheat thins but a bit lighter. They have kind of a wheatables texture, but with a much better flavor. They have a light sprinkling of salt and spices on top. They are addictive.

Speaking of Pepperidge Farm, I always thought it was Petridge Farm, for some reason, even though it clearly says Pepperidge on the box. I mean, I thought this up until several years ago. It’s like how I used to think a piece of luggage was called a “soupcase.” This isn’t when I was a cute little toddler either. I was, like, twelve, or something ridiculous when I finally got it. I mean, I never traveled with soup, but I never traveled with suits either, you know?

Deli-Style Rye

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:16:00 +0000

What I am eating: Triscuit Deli-Style Rye
What they taste like: Triscuits with caraway seeds
Why the name doesn’t make sense: Delis aren’t known for selling crackers

Also, I have a confession. My love of crackers didn’t start out as a pure love. It began as a backlash against bread. You see, I also love bread, but bread goes bad quickly, and I am paranoid about mold. I would buy a loaf of bread, eat half of it, and then throw the other half away because I was afraid it had some invisible mold that would kill me. I tried putting the bread in the freezer, but then I had to toast it before I ate it and what if I wanted untoasted bread? I would end up with ancient, half-eaten loaves of bread in my freezer and guilt in my heart. (In addition to being paranoid about mold, I also feel intensely guilty about waste. It’s a tough place to be.) So I started buying crackers instead of bread! And I lived happily ever after.

Really bad book of the week: Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:58:00 +0000

So, I tutor an adorable girl from Bangladesh. Every Thursday I walk over to her school to listen to her read whatever book she happens to have at her desk. Today, the book was Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares. Now, last week we spent half of our session wrestling with the library system at her school, trying to find a book that she would enjoy reading. I’d found that most of the books she’d been reading were too difficult for her and were about things she didn’t know about or care about. She reads enough of that kind of stuff in class every day, so I thought for our tutoring sessions it would be good for her to read something she was actually interested in and understood. We found a book about a girl whose father was from India. We started to read it last week. Anyway, when she came out of her classroom today she had the book we’d found last week, but she also had the book about Ben Franklin. She said her language arts teacher told her to read it. Anyway, the first half of the book is about Ben Franklin’s inventions, and that part was fine. Kind of boring, but fine. But the second half was about Franklin’s inventions of “magic squares.” You see, he found that if drew nine squares in a box (like a tic-tac-toe board), and put the numerals one through nine in a certain order (although they never explained how he discovered the order), then each row, column, and diagonal would equal 15. Amazing. But they never explained what was magical about this fact, what it meant about math, or why anybody should care.
I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t understand math.

Let me know in the comments: Can you explain what magic squares are? Do you have any suggestions for books that girls learning English as a second (or third) language might enjoy and relate to?

The Bread of Affliction

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:46:00 +0000

It's Passover, which means that I'm not supposed to be eating bread of any sort. Not even crackers! This is supposed to remind me of the exodus from Egpyt, when the Jews (who were slaves in Egypt) had to hurry to leave before the Pharaoh changed his mind. They didn't have time to let their bread rise, so they had to cook it in its unleavened state. The matzo we eat at Passover is supposed to remind us of this unleavened bread our ancestors ate. The problem for me is that matzo is basically a big ol' cracker, and you know how I feel about crackers. I love them.

The Best Moments in Reading

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:21:00 +0000

The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
—Hector, a general studies teacher, in The History Boys

I went to see The History Boys at the Studio Theatre last night. Central to the play is the question of why we study literature. This is a cerebral question, but reading itself can be visceral. Through most of the play I was thinking, rather than feeling, but when Hector talked about the feeling that a hand has come out and taken yours, I felt a thrill, a physical reaction as if the author of the play, Alan Bennet, had reached his hand out and touched me.

You've Got to Read This

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:26:00 +0000

Cress Delahanty, by Jessamyn West. I have a friend who works at a magazine, and sometimes she gives me review copies of books that publishers send her. She handed me this book and said "we never review fiction, but it seems like something you might like." Most of the books she gives me are new, but this book was first published in 1945 and had been out of print for a while, until The Feminist Press at the City University of New York republished it in 2006. Most of the books she passes along to me are barely readable, but this one was enchanting. It takes place in rural California in the 1940s. The protaganist is a teenage girl named Cress. The book is written in 16 sections--you could call them chapters, if you want to think of the book as a novel, or you could call them short stories, if you want to read the sections as seperate pieces. When I started reading I kept wondering how something so good could be so unknown. I had never heard of Jessamyn West until the day I picked up the book, and I started to doubt myself. Maybe it wasn't really that good? Maybe I was missing some serious flaw in the writing? That sounds silly, but I couldn't understand why this book wasn't being taught in literature classes across the country. It should be at least a minor classic. Read it and let me know what you think! If you know me, you can borrow my copy.

Wasa Crispbread

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:31:00 +0000

The first time I tasted Wasa crispbread I thought it tasted like cardboard--dry and flavorless. I still think it tastes a bit like cardboard, but I've grown to appreciate it. It only has 35 calories and 45 mg of sodium, and if you put a bit of cashew butter on it, you have a healthy snack that tastes pretty good. It's like the dictionary--not flashy, but sometimes just what you need.

Goldfish Crackers

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:44:00 +0000

I got a hot tip from a new acquaintance--whole wheat Goldfish crackers. He said that they were the worst crackers he'd ever tasted. I was intrigued, of course, so I bought a bag. Now, I won't lie to you, dear reader. They aren't the worst crackers I've ever tasted. They don't taste like cheddar (they are supposed to be cheddar flavor), but then, the regular cheddar-flavored Goldfish don't taste like cheddar either. They do have a bitter aftertaste. But, my sources indicate that I ate half the bag. So how bad could they be? I would compare these tiny crackers to the Oz books written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Counterfeit, but still worth consuming.

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:41:00 +0000

I've been so busy eating crackers and reading books that I forgot to post here about my two favorite activities.

One of the many books I read in the last month was Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. It's a reinterpretation of a little-known fairy tale, Maid Maleen. It's categorized as a young adult book, but I thought the rich detail and and elegant style of writing would appeal to many adults as well. The book starts when the narrator, Dashti, (a maid), and Lady Saren are locked up in a tower for seven years because Lady Saren refused to marry the suitor her father has chosen for her. From there, the story spins out into a fantasy that is still grounded in excellent characterization and interesting culture. I kept thinking about this book for weeks after I read it, which is always a good sign. The only aspect of this book that bothered me was a sort of disconnect between the fantasy aspects and the realistic setting. The story takes place in medieval Mongolia, but obviously much of the details are fantastical (the villian of the story is a shape-shifter who takes on the appearance of a wolf, Dashti heals wounds by singing, etc). On the other hand, some of the details are true to what I know about Mongolia--Dashti's most precious possession is a yak. For some reason it bothered me to see real animal like a yak in this fantasy world.

Does this kind of disconnect ever bother you?

What kind of cracker goes with this book? I recommend a digestive (a type of english tea biscuit) and a glass of yak's milk.

Snow Flowers

noreply@blogger.com (books and crackers) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:06:00 +0000

I went to Eden Center (a Vietnamese shopping center in Falls Church, VA) with my friends the famous dcfood bloggers .They wanted to pick up some staples at the Vietnamese grocery store, and I wanted to find exotic crackers. I picked up two kinds.

Katashima brand “Snow Flower” crackers: These are kind of like rice cakes, but they are made with tapioca starch. Actually, you know what they’re really like? Have you ever had shrimp crackers? They have the consistency of shrimp crackers, but they taste faintly of coconut instead of shrimp. They have a sprinkle of sugar frosting on the top--I think that’s why they’re called snow flowers. Now that I’ve totally confused you with that description, I’ll add that I like them. They are just a tiny bit sweet, so they’re good if you want a sweet snack without too many calories. Actually, I have no idea how many calories they have, but they seem to be made mostly of air, so how many calories can they have?

Green Onion Thin Cracker: These are made by Silang. They are, as the name implies, thin crackers. They taste mostly like oil with a chemical aftertaste. So, not very tasty.

I went to a baby shower yesterday, and I was telling the father-to-be about my blog. He had the brilliant idea that I should match crackers to books--what kind of cracker would I associate with a particular book? And vice versa. So, here goes. The snowflower crackers are like Bridget Jones Diary--light, fun, but not particularly nutritious. The green onion crackers are like The Perks of Being a Wallflower--should have been good, but left a bad taste in my mouth.