Reading Wednesday
Sep. 23rd, 2015 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Drown by Junot Diaz. A series of short stories set in the Dominican Republic and the New York City area, about a young man (or young men? It's unclear if it's always supposed to be the same character, or just a series of remarkable similar ones) and his experiences with family troubles, immigration, romance, and drugs. This has gotten a lot of praise for its style and language, and while those are good, everything else about these stories are the things I least like about the contemporary "literary fiction" genre: stories that are very clearly autobiographical with the thinnest veneer of fiction! stories in which nothing happens other than navel-gazing! characters who are so thinly sketched that they often don't even have names! stories in which "what happened" is so opaque that, after finishing, I have to sit around and struggle to figure it out, finally piecing it together only by remembering an oblique detail from the narrator's mother's one-paragraph overheard phone conversation! There's also a real focus on the grimness of life in these stories, which I don't always mind, but unless you're super into reading about child abuse, poverty, drug dealing, dudes who treat the women they're involved with terribly, and vomiting, I cannot recommend it.
Besh Big Easy: 101 Home Cooked New Orleans Recipes by John Besh. A cookbook with some very nice photographs of New Orleans scenery, but not much actual writing outside of the recipes, which makes it a bit hard to review. I do take issue with the "home cooked" part of the title, unless ingredients like "fresh blue crabs", "1 pound chanterelle mushrooms", or "whole mallard ducks" are normal items in your pantry. They are not in mine, so I will not be making a lot of the recipes herein.
I did try both the "Creole Stuffed Bell Peppers" and "Dirty Rice" (well, without the chicken liver, because ew) and they were both delicious, so I can't criticize too much. There's also a whole chapter of different variations on jambalaya, and that's always a thing I like in cookbooks: a range of styles on a single, common dish. Overall I've definitely seen better New Orleans cookbooks, but this one does has some worthwhile qualities.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson. I absolutely loved her book Consider the Fork (a history of cooking styles and techniques), so I jumped on this when I saw it. Unfortunately it's turning out to be a "why are people so fat these days?" type of book, which is not at all what I expected or wanted. At least there's still some interesting science in it.
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. The main problem with my Discworld read is turning out to be the temptation to just read all forty books straight through. No! I want to actually have non-Pratchett books on my reading list as well! But I'd forgotten just how good they are, how incredibly readable. Which is a long way of saying I gave into the temptation and totally starting reading this one early. Granny Weatherwax! :D
Drown by Junot Diaz. A series of short stories set in the Dominican Republic and the New York City area, about a young man (or young men? It's unclear if it's always supposed to be the same character, or just a series of remarkable similar ones) and his experiences with family troubles, immigration, romance, and drugs. This has gotten a lot of praise for its style and language, and while those are good, everything else about these stories are the things I least like about the contemporary "literary fiction" genre: stories that are very clearly autobiographical with the thinnest veneer of fiction! stories in which nothing happens other than navel-gazing! characters who are so thinly sketched that they often don't even have names! stories in which "what happened" is so opaque that, after finishing, I have to sit around and struggle to figure it out, finally piecing it together only by remembering an oblique detail from the narrator's mother's one-paragraph overheard phone conversation! There's also a real focus on the grimness of life in these stories, which I don't always mind, but unless you're super into reading about child abuse, poverty, drug dealing, dudes who treat the women they're involved with terribly, and vomiting, I cannot recommend it.
Besh Big Easy: 101 Home Cooked New Orleans Recipes by John Besh. A cookbook with some very nice photographs of New Orleans scenery, but not much actual writing outside of the recipes, which makes it a bit hard to review. I do take issue with the "home cooked" part of the title, unless ingredients like "fresh blue crabs", "1 pound chanterelle mushrooms", or "whole mallard ducks" are normal items in your pantry. They are not in mine, so I will not be making a lot of the recipes herein.
I did try both the "Creole Stuffed Bell Peppers" and "Dirty Rice" (well, without the chicken liver, because ew) and they were both delicious, so I can't criticize too much. There's also a whole chapter of different variations on jambalaya, and that's always a thing I like in cookbooks: a range of styles on a single, common dish. Overall I've definitely seen better New Orleans cookbooks, but this one does has some worthwhile qualities.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson. I absolutely loved her book Consider the Fork (a history of cooking styles and techniques), so I jumped on this when I saw it. Unfortunately it's turning out to be a "why are people so fat these days?" type of book, which is not at all what I expected or wanted. At least there's still some interesting science in it.
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. The main problem with my Discworld read is turning out to be the temptation to just read all forty books straight through. No! I want to actually have non-Pratchett books on my reading list as well! But I'd forgotten just how good they are, how incredibly readable. Which is a long way of saying I gave into the temptation and totally starting reading this one early. Granny Weatherwax! :D
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Date: 2015-09-23 10:06 pm (UTC)Cookbooks - I have a huge collection, and end up bookmarking only a few recipes in each. You do that. These days, I mostly get my recipes online, though of course, you have to know what you're after, none of the joy of browsing a book... I agree with you about the "home cooking" aspect. Professional chefs just don't get it sometimes. Among my own cookbooks is Madeleine Pelner Cosman's Medieval Holidays And Festivals, which has a wonderful recipe for spiced shortbread, which I've made, but also one for rose petal bread - something along the lines of "take a bunch of roses..." As the friend who gave it to me said, "If I had a bunch of roses, I wouldn't be wasting it on this!" Ack.
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Date: 2015-09-25 03:15 pm (UTC)Ha, that's the same way I am with cookbooks. I generally only get one or two useable recipes out of each. Which is why it's very nice to get them from NetGalley rather than buying them! Especially since cookbooks tend to be much more expensive than other sorts of books. I do love rose-flavored things, but I agree: I'm not sure I'd want to waste a bunch of my own roses on bread!