I have always disliked Dickens and I am really hating this reader (Frederick Davidson), but I made a deal with a friend that if she read Michael Ondaatje, I would read a Dickens book. I thought it would be less painful in audiobook form, but the narrator’s delivery is so over-the-top. He makes all the characters even flatter and less human than Dickens did. Hate, hate, hate. And something like ten more hours to go!

I work in publishing and receive a fair amount of swag, most of which is crap—chick lit, thrillers, stuff I won’t ever read. But today I got an unusually heavy envelope from HarperCollins, and in it was this cookbook. Wow! For once, something free that I might actually have been interested in paying money for!

On the subway ride home, I put stickies on all the recipes I wanted to try, and there were many. Then I started reading the nonrecipe portions of the book, and I’m attracted by Rubell’s approach. The premise is that breaking bread with friends is more important than blowing them away with your entertaining prowess, so the recipes are all for simple dishes that taste good but don’t keep you chained to the stove. She encourages you to be casual—ask guests to help set up and clean up, serve foods in the dishes they were prepared in, use paper towels for napkins, and don’t worry about matching dishes.

My only complaint is that the menus are rather meat-centric, which doesn’t really work for my set of friends. Most are omnivores, but the few vegetarians and vegans are not to be iignored. A lot of the side dishes sound good, though—and look it. The photography is copious and handsome. I also like the typography, though the overall design is a bit cluttered. (It’s designed by Vertigo, a firm in NYC that doesn’t seem to have a Web site.)

Anyway, I’m thinking maybe I will try to make something from the book for tomorrow’s family dinner.

It’s an entertaining book, and I learned a lot about my native city. Note that it was written in the late sixties, however, and the author’s tone when mentioning race is not always what we would consider respectful now. A few passages made me cringe and hope that nobody was reading over my shoulder on the subway. But it’s definitely worth a few winces, if you’re curious about how New York City came to be the way it is.

I’ve watched one of three episodes so far. I was disappointed and meant to take the other disks off my Netflix queue, but I didn’t get around to it, and so the second disk arrived. Since it’s here, I guess I’ll give it another chance.

I like Richard E. Grant, and the sets and costumes and casting are all good. But it’s just not as amusing and interesting as the Anthony Andrews version I saw as a kid (and watched again recently). Grant’s Sir Percy is a good swashbuckler, but he isn’t a convincing fop, so it’s like half the story is missing. He couldn’t fool the bad guys for even twenty minutes; where’s the fun in that?

I’m about halfway through this. I’m enjoying the physical object of the book-the illustrations, the use of color, the superdeep French flaps-but the typography, of all things . . . well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t have put my name on it, if I’d made up these pages. Bad breaks all over the place, and yes, they are distracting.

That said, for such a geeky book, it’s pretty readable. A better editor would have made the thesis more clear from the beginning, but reading it as a mystery (e.g., What Is the Author’s Point?) works, as well.

Watched it through, watched the deleted scenes and other DVD extras, started the movie over and watched it again. I cringed a bit at the violence at first, but overall it’s beautiful to look at. Great costumes, interesting characters, not the standard Kung Fu movie plot.

I’m making Sonya Laska’s Sparkle Hat from this book. I’ve also got the Annie Modesitt’s Pinup Sweater on the needles still from last winter. It’s a surprisingly good general reference, and the patterns are hella cute, so I imagine I’ll keep consuming this for a long time.

I’m not a huge George Eliot fan, but I[‘ve been plodding through them. So far, I’m liking this.

Nadia May is a good reader—you can usually tell which character is speaking without a “so-and-so said” cue, and she’s sensitive to pacing and tone.

Oh, and it’s an excellent book, of course.

I fell in sweet with the song “Tu Es” from Boogaerts’s 2000 album while I was in France a few weeks ago. “What is this-the Shins in French?” I said the first time I heard it, but on subsequent listens I found it much more irresistible than the Shins. So when I got home I bought three of his albums-this one, 2000, and Michel. They’re just as lovely as I had hoped. Right now it seems to me the perfect summer music, but I can imagine also thinking it’s the perfect winter music, a few months from now.