Fantasy Fluff

Posted on September 7, 2005 by Katy K.

Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff This is a fun little fantasy book loaned to me by my dear mother. I think it’s set in Ottawa, though I’d have to look that up to be sure – definitely a major Canadian city, anyway. Claire is a Keeper, whose job it is to patch up holes in the fabric of the universe so it doesn’t rip to pieces. When she turns up at Elysian Fields, a bed and breakfast, she’s decidedly upset to find that her current assignment seems to be taking over the B&B. Never mind that there’s an open hell hole in the basement and that Room 6 is occupied by a sleeping Keeper gone bad. She’s meant for bigger stuff, right? Vying for her attention are two hunky men: Dean, who cooks and cleans for the B&B, and Jacques, the ghost of a French sailor. (This plot line leads to such constant innuendo that my mother doesn’t want to see the book again. Also, as the busy mother of a baby, if you have a choice between a handsome, sweet and useful man, and one who can’t do anything but spout romantic lines – I really don’t get the conflict.) But it’s all fun, as are the supernatural guests who frequent the B&B. I don’t think I’ll need to reread it, but it was good fluff.

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Books and Pirates

Posted on August 31, 2005 by Katy K.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman This book, published all the way back in 1998, was loaned to me by my good friend Alison. It is a collection of essays about books and reading, every one of them just delightful. The first essay, “Marrying libraries” talks about how long it took for her and her husband to combine their libraries, and the difficulties of doing so. “Never do that to a book” talks about the difference between courtly lovers of books, who would never write in or otherwise mutilate their books, and carnal lovers of books, who do so as a matter of course. (My mother refuses to write even in pencil on photocopied music, definitely falls into the courtly camp. I have seen her write only penciled corrections in poorly edited books.) “The His’er Problem” talks about the difficulties of gender in language, where using non-gendered language is awkward and ungainly, but gendered language really does exclude people of the non-mentioned gender. And while “essay” sounds dull, every one of these had me laughing and reading bits aloud to whomever was unfortunate enough to be around. If you are reading this blog in the first place, it’s a fairly safe assumption that you like books. And if you like books, you’re missing out if you haven’t read this one.

And for my once-in-a-while series, Things That Look So Cool in the Review Magazine That You Need to Know, Even Though I Haven’t Laid Eyes on Them Yet,
Pegleg Tango by Captain Bogg and Salty from Scabbydisc Music (http://www.eatalime.com) This is a children’s CD full of, you guessed it, pirate music. Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review, so hopefully we’ll get it here and I can listen to it myself. Order it now and have it in time for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19!

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Tintenherz

Posted on August 29, 2005 by Katy K.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke Yay, children’s fantasy! I think this is the third book by Funke that I’ve read, and so far it’s my favorite. It has lots of nice thinky ideas in addition to a compelling plot and characters. But let’s start with the plot. Twelve-year-old Meggie lives with her father Mo, a bookbinder. One dark, rainy night a man calling her father Silvertongue turns up at the door, saying that they – and a book Meggie had never seen before – are in danger. As they flee, Meggie learns that her father has the power to read things out of books – and that the villainous Capricorn will do anything to keep from being sent back into the book that Mo read him out of. Meanwhile, in the same unfortunate incident, Meggie’s mother was read into the book, and hasn’t been seen since. Can Meggie and Mo rewrite the story and rescue Meggie’s mother before Capricorn burns all his books – and takes them prisoner himself? I had great difficulty turning off the car on this one, because I was always stuck at a particularly exciting point.

As for thinky thoughts (to borrow garrity’s phrase): what if you could bring characters out of a book? How would they adapt to our world? Would they still exist in the book? And would you change a book if you suddenly actually got into it? I also found Meggie and her relationship with her father interesting. At 12 she is still clearly a child who wants to be with her father and expects him to be able to fix things for her. He, in turn, does try to take care of her and rescue her. In most adventure books for children, the children act independently of adults, who play a peripheral role at best. And in books for adults, children tend to be more props than characters (watch fierce father rescue his child!). I am still unable to think of another book where both parent and child are full and active characters as they are here.

Finally, this book was originally written in German. And as a German major, listening to this book made me lust to hear it in the original. Sadly, it’s not available for download, and importing books from Germany is a little pricey. Sigh.

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Everywhere Babies

Posted on August 22, 2005 by Katy K.

Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers. Illustrated by Marla Frazee.
I first read this book a while back, but now that I’m writing a review of it for the library web page, I find that I’ve never reviewed it here. And since I actually bought the book for myself (a mark of high esteem, when the library owns two copies), and have been giving it to every baby for a first birthday present – well, you just need to know about this book. This picture book follows babies from birth to first birthday. Your baby will see multicultural babies living with families of all kinds – subtle enough not to freak the grandparents, but there if you look. “Every day, everywhere, babies” begins each double-paged spread… babies are born, carried, dressed, crawling. Gentle rhymes elaborate on the opening phrase, while the watercolor illustrations show babies both happy and frustrated, parents both playful and exhausted. The rhyming text makes it perfect for even small babies, while the pictures are detailed and funny enough for an older child to enjoy time after time. The ending “Every day, everywhere, babies are loved – for trying so hard, for coming so far, for being so wonderful just as they are,” makes me tear up every time.

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Green

Posted on August 10, 2005 by Katy K.

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Decorations by Charles Vess. I was both excited and surprised to find this book in the children’s fairy tale section at the library; I am most familiar with these editors for bringing fairy tales back to adults. And while this book seems geared towards a younger audience than some of their other anthologies, featuring mostly teen protagonists, it does have some language and situations that are more appropriate for teens than younger children. Still, assuming that mostly adults are reading here, it is a really wonderful collection. Just including the names of authors I’m familiar with, stories are by Charles DeLint, Neil Gaiman, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Gregory Maguire, Patricia McKillip and Jane Yolen. Stories range from modern settings to more traditional fairy tales,(or traditional fairy tale settings twisted), from gritty to humorous to lyrical. In Delia Sherman’s Grand Central Park, a girl meets the Fairy Queen in Central Park, and discovers that her childhood fantasies weren’t so fantastic. In Tanith Lee’s Among the Leaves so Green, a poor younger sister gets her wish to be rescued from her cruel mother and older sister – and the older sister finds that her punishment is the better deal. Midori Snyder’s Charlie’s Away explores the grieving of a boy about to leave for college for his deceased younger sister. In Emma Bull’s Joshua Tree, an encounter with a Joshua tree forces a high school girl to let go of the girl she thinks she’s supposed to be and find who she really is. Without describing all the stories, I’ll just say that if you’re jonesing for some good solid magic, this will fix you up.

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Knitting Porn

Posted on August 8, 2005 by Katy K.

Mr. Froggie Pants was three months old before I finished the little baby mittens that I’d started before he was born, and which the book said would take just a few hours for an experience knitter. So looking at patterns for sweaters, even baby sweaters, must be regarded as being strictly in the realm of daydreams. Still, I had fun with these books.

Style Your Own Kids’ Knits by Kate Bueller The common format for knitting books is to give you the picture of a fabulous whatever it is, then tell you how to make it in several different sizes. In this fascinating book, Bueller does things exactly backwards: she provides four basic patterns for each size range from 0-3 months up to 8-10 years: crew neck and v-neck of each pullover and cardigan. In separate sections, she provides style variations – edgings, neck styles, stitch patterns, pockets and hoods and charts for a wide variety of motifs. (I was especially intrigued by the fried egg.) There are also basic patterns for two styles of hat and a backpack. Adorable children of the appropriate age are shown modeling the styles, and the captions describe what style variations were used. If you did want to knit for children, this book would be well worth your money.

Miss Bea’s Playtime
Miss Bea’s Colours
Miss Bea’s Rainy Day
Miss Bea’s Dressing Up by Louisa Harding Four slim books featuring Miss Bea, a sweet little girl who looks to be about four. Each one starts with a picture story, describing Miss Bea and her friends playing, with photographs and watercolors of beautiful sweaters. The little stories (which Mr. FP greatly enjoyed) are followed by the patterns (all for Rowan brand yarn, and sized for 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 years). The sweaters have uniformly boxy styling and each book is intended as an introduction to a different knitting technique – basic knitting in Playtime, texture knitting in Colours, cables in Rainy Day and intarsia in Dressing Up. They were very good knitting porn. I might even try to knit Mr. FP the Magician’s Sweater, with stars around the bottom edge.

I am still looking for a pattern for “longies”, the knit wool baby pants that some of my friends have… if anyone knows where to find one, let me know. They should use bulky yarn, so I stand a chance of finishing them.

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The Half-Blood Prince

Posted on August 3, 2005 by Katy K.

Well, I finally finished the book I was rereading, and finished the new Harry Potter. Yay! And big thanks to Sean (who won’t read this) for loaning us the Canadian edition, so we can have our crisps and jumpers instead of chips and sweaters. It’s the little things, I tell ya’. I’m feeling a bit too lazy to do a cut, so we have here a spoiler-free review for anybody who hasn’t finished it yet.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling In which Harry finishes his sixth year at Hogwarts, a Beloved Character dies, and our friends are now old enough for Snogging, of which there is quite a bit. I’m with garrity on not really being surprised by any of the developments here, although she’s farther on the track of solving the remaining mystery than I am. It’s full of the endearing (and not-so-endearing) characters we’ve come to love, plus new magical tidbits and exciting plot bits. Oh-so-happily, Dolores Umbridge makes only a token appearance towards the end. Perhaps even more happily, Rowling’s editor seems to have gotten some gumption back and trimmed the book down to a reasonable size. Where the last book felt like it had pages of redundant material, this one moved along at a nice clip. Based on this book, I am quite looking forward to the next one, where I had been less excited about this one. If you, too, were putting off reading it, do so no longer.

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Veggie Power

Posted on July 30, 2005 by Katy K.

This summer we’re getting a large bag of produce from a local farm every week – an assortment of whatever they have in season. I’m sure we’re eating better than usual, and we’re getting better at using up our share every week, except for the herbs. It’s a cooking adventure – how can one use up a two-gallon bag of basil without overdosing on pesto? I checked out two cookbooks just on vegetables. One of them I regret to say that I’ve forgotten the title already, but you don’t need to read it anyway. It was by some celebrity chef and had big, pretty photos of difficult-to-make recipes using obscure ingredients. No, we can’t really afford truffle oil on a regular basis. It was nice food porn, but food porn is pretty easy to find, so I’m not going to feel guilty about forgetting the title already. Here’s the one I didn’t forget:

Fresh From the Garden: Cooking and Gardening throughout the Year with 250 Recipes by Perla Meyers I quite enjoyed this book. It’s broken up first by season, then by vegetable. Each veggie starts with a little introduction on what it’s good for, gardening and storage tips. Then, a few recipes featuring the vegetable, and probably using some other things in season at the same time. The recipes are pretty straightforward, and seem geared towards the traditional cook. That is, they didn’t seem to take huge amounts of time, but they also assume that you have more than fifteen minutes to put dinner together. Also (and my biggest problem with the book), most of the dishes are either side dishes or include large amounts of meat, or both. Many of the dishes said how marvelous they would taste with veal. I’m a big fan of one-dish meals without meat. I probably won’t buy the cookbook, but the structure was brilliant, and the recipes worked well with some tweaking.

And finally, just a note on
New Best Recipe by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated I really only glanced at this myself, but spent six weeks reading through it. As it says, it’s recipes from the magazine, where they try to make the ideal whatever it is – tomato soup or blueberry pie or whatever – and talk you through all the variations they tried and what they did before giving you the final recipe. It’s also not particularly vegetarian friendly, but if you cook like amnachaidh or spacemice, you will want this book to promote deep cookery thoughts.

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Marriage

Posted on July 25, 2005 by Katy K.

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz Is marriage as an institution in crisis? The answer seems to be yes almost uniformly, although what the problem is and what to do about it varies from one end of the political spectrum to the other. Author Coontz agrees that marriage is going through a rough time right now – but her analysis of why is unique. Coontz examines marriage around the world and through history, examining who, how and why people married, and their attitudes towards issues like children, fidelity, choice of partners and inheritance. Filled with juicy details of the alliances of kings and queens, as well as excerpts from diaries and letters, she manages to focus both on the personal and overall trends. Her conclusion: while marriage has always been in flux, today’s emphasis on love and mutual satisfaction has made the modern marriage both the most satisfying and the most fragile in history. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in where we’ve come from and where we might be going.

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On Domesticity

Posted on July 5, 2005 by Katy K.

I was raised in a house where everybody had lists of chores to be done. It was kind of a drag to have to do your chores before going out to play, but the whole house got cleaned every week. I don’t think my share ever took more than a couple of hours – maybe three in the years I had to mow the yard with an old-fashioned push mower. Now I have a house roughly the same size as the one I shared with four other people, and there’s only one other person to help clean it. Plus one person who doesn’t much see a need for cleaning, or any other activity that keeps his mommy from playing with him. In lieu of actually cleaning, I’ve been reading a series of books on on cleaning.

Is There Life after Housework? by Don Aslett This book, a 10th anniversary edition with a 1992 copyright date, seemed a little old. But the tattered covers and layers of checkout stickers show that it’s still a popular work, and quite deservedly. Aslett, a professional cleaner and father of six, tells how to set up your house so it is easier to clean and then how to clean as efficiently as possible. For example, he recommends at least eight steps worth of professional quality doormatting inside and out to trap dirt before you have to sweep it off your floor. It’s short, to the point, and quite funny. There are some newer cleaning materials on the market since this book was finished – microfiber, for example – but all in all, if you’re feeling swamped with housework and want some help speeding it up, this is still a great book to go with.

Speed Cleaning 101: Cut Your Cleaning Time in Half by Laura Dellutri This book has a 2005 copyright date but, alas, not much new in the way of advice, and quite a few contradictions. Some good tips on how to organize cleaning, like starting at one door to a room and cleaning in a circle, top to bottom, for maximum efficiency, and some hints on splitting up work for team cleaning. But, for example, she’s talking about bathrooms and says that since toilets can spew invisible germs, you should train everyone in your family to shut the lid when flushing. Next, she talks about cleaning the bathroom counter and says that you should only clean the parts that look dirty. So we no longer care about the invisible germs that the toilet spewed everywhere? And “Keep your cleaning kit simple” followed by “Browse the cleaning aisle at your grocery store for spiffy new products.” Also I didn’t like her thoughts on the current overuse of antibacterial cleaners in the home, which basically amounted to, “Well, it’s important to keep things clean.” She has some nice thoughts about deciding how clean you personally want to keep things, but there are better books out there.

Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson At well over 800 pages, this book answers every question you might have about making your residence a home, but is not for the faint of heart. It’s kind of like the Joy of Cooking for housekeeping, and it is housekeeping, not just cleaning. Like Joy, it’s not meant to be read straight through, as I did. Gentle readers, for you I undertook this task, which took me seven weeks. Also, I kept meaning to skip things, and kept finding it too interesting. Everyone I told I was reading this book thought I was nuts. Everyone I got to read the introduction wanted to read the whole book, too. The introduction talks about how the author, an attorney, used not to keep her place up, as it was so very unfashionable to have time and energy for so lowly a task. Then she realized how much homier it made things and so cleaned in secret to avoid the social stigma. Well, publishing the book blew her cover. Here are just a few of the topics covered: setting up a cleaning routine; organizing a pantry; planning menus; how to fold laundry; the chemistry of household cleaners; a really nice discussion on when antibacterials are and aren’t appropriate; preserving your valuables; buying insurance; working with domestic help. Manuals like this were common a century ago. You (and I) would probably be better off owning one, too.

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