Dallas trip

I rarely post pictures on this blog, but here's one of my family for those of you who know my siblings. We were all together in Dallas for my brother's wedding a month or so ago. Here I am, just beginning to show my pregnancy.

And here is one of me and Eric.

After a long hiatus, it's not even about books

TADA! I'm finally posting again. I've been out on maternity leave: not a baby now, but one coming early next spring (or late winter---is March spring or winter? It's certainly spring where we live. But in North Dakota, it's probably still winter). At any rate, it's been quite a first trimester, and I haven't been blogging. I have been reading, and I'll update you on that soon, but I wanted to do another random post of the things that our family has been reviewing: all the ready made frozen foods from Trader Joes. Here's what we thought:

1. Their pizza. Not bad. I'm not a pizza person anyway, but this is passable. I give it a 7.

2. Frozen burritos (with salsa verde). Eric was so unimpressed, I didn't even try them. 4.

3. The chow mein. Too syrupy. 5.

4. The chicken empanadas. Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. These were great. The boys didn't want them---too bad, more for us. 9.

We've also been eating a lot of ready-made frozen pot pie from Save Mart. 6.

And Eric's meal of choice to feed the boys is Costco corn dogs. I give them a 2 (blech), but the boys (all my boys) adore them and would give them closer to an 8.

There you go. I'm signing off now. Even writing this blog post is making me queasy.

I hope my body gets the message that my second trimester is upon us. It's about time.

The Last Lecture

I found a gem.

Go read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon when asked to give his last lecture---not because he's retiring from work, but because he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. This book is his lecture, and his thoughts, about his life and living.

Perhaps it's because my father-in-law just passed away that reading this book came at the perfect time for me.

It's good. Funny. Upbeat. Sincere. I laughed during the book, I bawled at the end. Not that emotional response necessarily an indicator of good writing, but in this case, this book got to me.

Not as heavy as Tuesdays with Morrie, but along the same lines. I think you'll like it.

Mystery Book Revealed

The Mystery Book that's been taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R for me to finish is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan. Pollan tracks the origins of four meals: one from McDonalds, one of "organic" food, one of non-organic food, and one that he hunted and gathered.

The book is long.

Pollan is thorough. With the exection of the fact that he talks about corn for half of the book, I thought the thoroughness was warranted.

But book is very good. Pollan is a good writer, witty, charming, conversational, intelligent.

The reason that it too me so long is because there are definite agendas about this book and it's hard not to internalize them. I had to pause when I found myself seriously considering applying all of Pollan's agendas. For example: corn syrup . . . bad. So I was checking all labels. Industrialized meat: bad. So I was balking at buying frozen chicken breasts at Costco. Lentils from my favorite Indian supermarket: bad, they've been shipped overseas. See? I had to read a little while, pause, let my food habits stabilize, and then go back and read some more. I have changed my buying and eating habits some---I think that's the point---but I didn't want to push myself into culinary neurosis.

Here are some of the changes that I have tried to make:

1. I do, actually, avoid corn syrup. Why does it need to be in processed tomato sauce anyway?

2. I do cook more vegetarian meals. Lentils, beans, that sort of thing.

3. I do try to buy local. I make exeptions for important things like pineapple and chocolate.

4. I do eat free range beef. It's the beef that wanders my dad's back pasture, actually, so I know exactly where the cow was raised.

Here's a sample of food that I think Pollan would approve of:

1. Strawberry jam, made by my mother, from the berries she bought down the road from her house.

2. Beef from my dad's cows. He raises them. Names them---I once had a roommate who wouldn't eat my beef because it had a name. Better than having a number in a feedlot, I say.

3. A nectarine from the farmer's market by my house.

4. Yogurt with no corn syrup.

So now Mystery Book has been completed. It was a lovely feast. Enjoy.

Blackbird Pond

A while ago, I did a top ten post on young adult literature that I thought was worth reading as an adult. I could only come up with nine, and some readers suggested The Witch of Blackbird Pond as a possibility for number ten.

So I finally read it again (while reading another book: you'll still have to wait for that one---Why is it taking Deborah so long? Why doesn't she just finish Mystery Book and get on with it? What's the deal? You'll have to wait and then I'll explain. I'm almost done with Mystery Book. Stay tuned.)

Blackbird Pond was great, of course, and I think it should be read again and again. This is one good example of historical fiction that makes me wonder why more middle school/high school history teachers don't teach historical fiction when they teach history. There's some really good stuff in Blackbird Pond about pre-revolution America, Quakers, Puritans, etc. Had this been an extra credit option when I did American history as a junior in high school, I would have done it. And liked it. And learned from it.

Jenny, I think Emma might be old enough for Blackbird Pond. Certainly as a read-aloud. Would be a good basis for early American history discussion.

I think we miss some of that now

The biography bug hasn't hit me yet; I'm still a fiction gal. But I like to peruse biographies every now and then to see if I've developed a taste for the genre. I recently pored over Linda Lear's Beatrix Potter biography. Titled Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. I didn't read all of it, but enough to know that Lear is an interesting writer and a solid researcher. I was most fascinated by how much of Potter's life was spend studying and observing and drawing animals---Potter paid the price for her ability to draw creatures and make them life-like and fantastic at the same time. I think we miss some of that now---it's not in our culture for people to take time to "just" draw and watch. Pity. I think we're missing something.

So then the biography led me, of course, to Potter's fictional children's stories. I knew she wrote Peter Rabbit, but I had not met Timmy Tippytoes or Jemima Puddleduck or Duchess the Dog. These books are adorable! I'm going to put them on my Amazon.com wishlist and collect a bunch. They are not flashy (think: not David Shannon, whose work I adore). They are clever and charming. If you don't want to read the biography, at least venture into some of Beatrix Potter's lesser known fiction. It will delight both the child and the adult in you.

(But Liz, check out the biography. I think you'll like it.)

The problem with blogging about books

The problem about blogging about books is that it takes me a long time to have something to write about in a new post. It's not like a recipe blog where, poof, I can whip something up and TADA! Blog entry!

I'm currently reading three books simultaneously and I'll report on them soon. Some people think this is akin to book adultery, to read three books at the same time. I don't think it's disloyal, just interesting. It's like having three good friends all on speaker phone.

But I can tell you about Schwartz's bestseller, The Commoner. It amazes me what gets on the bestseller lists sometimes. I'd call The Commoner "good", but it's not enough to trip over an electric fence for, which is what "Bestseller List" conjures in my mind: stampeding readers willing to throw themselves in the path of danger just for a glimpse of chapter four. Schwartz writes in a 1st person female voice about the fictional life of a commoner in Japanese society marrying the crown prince.

The story was good, the writing was lovely (artistic even), but it was the voice that threw me off. I haven't yet encountered a male writer who can do a first person female voice that sings for me. Potok tried to do it in Davita's Harp, but it wasn't quite there. I could never put my finger on it in either book: but the narrator in both cases was missing . . . . something. But what it was, I could not say.

But still. Good work, readable. Interesting.