this book came to me with nicknames like “the brick” and warnings that i could skip over any overlong descriptions of boring things like buildings or breaking bread. I was mentally prepared for page long sentences and descriptions of city neighborhoods like i found in the hunchback of notre dame, but that’s not what I found in pillars of the earth at all.
the beginning was not what i expected, and was decidedly more nora-roberts-esque . i repeatedly wondered to myself where this was all going, but found myself coming back to it again and again as a comfortable thing to read. it felt like an adult version of david macaulay’s cathedral book, which i loved as the pbs television story of a town’s cathedral building. through all the setbacks and disasters the story was ultimately about the cathedral. the similarity to the macaulay work made it a comfortable and easy thing to read even if i wasn’t totally drawn in by the story.
eventually, however, i was totally absorbed by the novel as a story about privilege. who has it, and who uses it to what end? I’d never read something like this before that looked at a medieval society with this degree of realism, and the ways that privilege can frustrate justice as we know it now. naturally, our own time comes to mind and i have to wonder, for all our institutions that guarantee justice, to what degree do each of us use our privilege to get what we want and subjugate others?

possibly the best part of getting this through netflix:
he: “what do you want to watch tonight?”
she: “i got knocked up”
heeeehee

I guess I’ve consumed this on multiple levels. Barry Schwartz has come to speak to the faculty at the school where I teach. In both the book and his talks, Schwartz relies heavily on truths revealed in cartoons from The New Yorker. Consistent with the audience of The New Yorker, it’s all about how to be happier in your middle to upper middle class affluent American lifestyle. I would like three things more from this book:
a. a more comprehensive look at how choice, control, and anxiety contribute to depression and other issues of mental health. How do Schwartz’s recommendations compare to other treatments, like cognitive behaviorism?
b. At one point, Schwartz holds up the Amish as an example of a people who has less choice in their lives, but much more satisfaction with the lives they lead. What about the period in the Amish adolescent’s life when they choose to remain in the community or leave? And furthermore, what about religion as a source of guidance to refine the choices we do make? Embracing the faith your parents gave you, if you are so lucky, could give some measure of lifestyle guidance in the same sense that the Amish have in their community.
c. Finally, I would have appreciated a sense of questioning that middle class American lifestyle that is causing so much anxiety. Instead of making the same decisions in a smarter manner or not at all, why not advocate a much more radical position? If guidelines remove the need to make the same decisions over and over again, why not recommend rules like local eating and the 100 mile diet, or do not create paper waste? Sticking to rules like that can not only reduce anxiety about everyday decisions according to Schwartz’s recommendations, but also have positive impacts for the environments or the rest of the population who are not so fortunate to live the middle class American lifestyle.
As it is, I find the focus of this book too narrow to be worthwhile. As he explained in the chapter on investments in decision making, my life would have been simpler and filled with less anxiety if I had just closed the book after 200 pages. But, being invested by 200 pages worth, I pressed on in hopes of redeeming my investment only to be disappointed in the end.

i feel like the story of anne boleyn is an excellent topic for a 2 hour movie. however, adapting that story from this book by phillipa gregory does not make a great two hour movie. there’s just so much that gets glossed over and left out and the pacing in the end result made the characters into very different people. to me, it felt like taking an episode of sex and the city, originally aired on hbo, and adapting it for tbs. so much gets edited out for both time and content, that not only does the end result bear little resemblance to the original, but it doesnt make much sense either.

In my snotty, hacking sick-with-a-cold state, I managed to find the time to finish reading We Need to Talk about Kevin. It’s a novel where, in a series of letters to her husband, the mother of a school-shooter retraces her journey through motherhood and contemplates her responsibility for her son’s murderous actions. To some reviewers it seemed to be about human nature and whether a person can be born evil, but to me it seemed much more about self-loathing, and the self-loathing that can be reflected and even amplified between parents and children.

I think I liked it? It was definitely hard to swallow. Which is something the subject matter demands. Simply reading the descriptions of the crimes made me feel trashy and voyeuristic, and I alternately identified with and despised the narrator. If it successfully evoked these feelings in me even while I’m sick, it’s prolly well written.

I’m tired. So I think I’m going to write about how I’m so not going to admit that I read the Gossip Girl prequel novel. Just like I never admit I watch the Gossip Girl television show.

Somehow, I didn’t think it would take the characters all the way up to Serena’s departure for boarding school. I thought it would be more “this it what their lives were like,” instead of “this is the drama behind the drama”. The book really did a good job of laying out the major transformations in their lives that shaped the characters into the people we meet during the first Gossip Girl novel.

My major concern while reading it was the pacing. During the long summer between the characters’ sophomore and junior years of high school, I got so bored I actually started skipping paragraphs. It felt like the author was just writing to take up pages. Once it came to the climax however, I almost felt like my boredom appropriately matched the characters’ anxiety and anticipation during their own long, boring summer. Almost, but not really. It’s still just a young adult novel about 16 year olds and sex. I don’t read it for literary technique. I read it for, well, gossip.

Finally, I don’t recommend reading it before any of the other Gossip Girl novels. This prequel is best enjoyed after spending some time with the characters as neurotic upperclassmen, before revealing the transition out of innocence in the prequel. I see no coming of age theme in the rest of the Gossip Girl novels, only a mad rush of ambition. Which makes me wonder if there may be one here?

Last night we made quick seared poblano beef tips from the Mexican Everyday cookbook Zodda got me for Christmas. The reason he chose this cookbook for me is because we love to cook Mexican (or New Mexican) recipes, but often struggle searching for good side dishes and dishes that take a long time. This book aims for recipes that take a reasonable amount of time for a weeknight, and include veggies or something else to round it out so additional side dishes aren’t necessary.

This was incredibly simple, yummy, and sophisticated enough to serve to guests. At its heart, it’s simple meat and potatoes but the garlic, onions, worcestershire sauce, cilantro, and poblano peppers make it so much more. We usually stick with jalapeno peppers since they’re easily available at Trader Joe’s, but this time I had to make the trek to Whole Foods anyway to pick up worcestershire without high fructose corn syrup. So I picked up a couple nice poblano peppers to roast and they were soooo very yummmy. Nice heat, but a totally different flavor than the jalapenos.

As Zodda said, I wish I were still eating it now.

The premise: a world with six suns is about to experience nightfall for the first time. What will happen?

Overall I found Nightfall rather unsatisfactory. I had no good connection to the characters, who seemed rather two dimensional. The way they were introduced and re-introduced to each other seemed superficial, forced, and toward the end almost deus ex machina. The “twist” at the end was obvious to me from the beginning and did not make a convincing resolution. I actually groaned when it was finally revealed to the “main” character of the moment.

The one good thing about this book was the way the author built tension moving towards the climax with a series of flashbacks. I didn’t enjoy it at the time, and given the poor quality of the characters I think it could have been done better, but it did build tension effectively.

In conclusion, an ok airport read.

i just finished reading anansi boys by neil gaiman and honestly, im disappointed. the whole story was very level and transparent. there was very little building tension or mystery to any of the characters. if youve read american gods then you already know who anansi is, its not hard to figure out who spider is or how he is/was connected to charlie. the turns of phrase and descriptions are cute, but none of the side splitting similies or metaphors of neverwhere. good in its own right i guess, but pale in comparison to gaimans other works.