I picked this book up because I thought it was science fiction. While it does depict a utopian society, I would consider it more fantasy than sci fi, since its premise depends so much on supernatural elements that are never adequately explained. It is also fantasy in its expressed wish for a simpler, happier society doing its best to bring the rest of the human race back to that ideal. But it is an endearing fantasy nonetheless.

I reread this beloved book from my childhood to see if it held up over the years. It did, and Meg is still an inspiring, empowering character for me.

Authentic Mexican is my favorite of the three cookbooks. The recipes are very detailed and include many notes on techniques and ingredients. The section on timing and advance preparation is extremely helpful for planning my cooking strategy; I wish every cookbook included such thoughtful notes. I also appreciate the many traditional and contemporary variations on each recipe provided, which enable the cook to try the dish multiple ways or easily substitute ingredients.

Favorite recipes: Chile-marinated Vegetable Tostadas; Fresh Green Tomatillo Sauce; Quick-cooked Tomatillo-Chile Sauce; Potatoes with Mexican Sausage; Scrambled Eggs with Mexican Flavors

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Salsa That Cook is a fun little cookbook from which I have made several very successful recipes. The cookbook opens with a selection of salsas made from a variety of chiles. The recipes that follow use the salsas as key ingredients to enliven such dishes as macaroni and cheese and baked goat cheese. I usually make the salsa ahead of time and hope that I have enough left over for some good old-fashioned chips and dips.

Favorite Recipes: all of the salsas; Tangy Green Guacamole; Seared Red Chile Enchiladas with Chicken and Aged Cheese; Chiaquiles with Spinach, Zucchini and Aged Cheese; Today’s Macaroni and Cheese; Spicy Vegetable “Stew”; Chipotle Mashed Potatoes; Mexican Fruit Pops

http://simplycooking.wordpress.com

I have cooked the least out of Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen, probably because the recipes are the most advanced of the three cookbooks of his that I own. Each recipe is long and detailed, with notes on advance preparation, shortcuts and variations. I cannot stress enough how helpful these notes are, and I am surprised more cookbook writers don’t take the same approach. This cookbook also includes mouth-watering photographs.

Favorite Recipes: Guacamole; Essential Chopped Tomato-Serrano Salsa; Essential Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa; Chilied Tortilla Soup with Shredded Chard

http://simplycooking.wordpress.com

A good book so far, but I was told that this was science fiction, and I don’t really think it is. Too me it seems more like fantasy. In other words, I haven’t found any science in it.

I really love this book. I am going to buy a copy for my son, but really it is for me.

P.D. James is well known as a mystery writer, but she took a departure from her usual genre with this apocalyptic story. The Children of Men takes place in a near future 25 years after people have stopped giving birth and are, as a result, facing the end of the species. No explanation is given for the sudden loss of fertility — it is presented as having baffled scientists and doctors — but James seems more interested in its effects on the characters living out the last days.

Read the rest of my review at http://scifemme.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/review-the-children-of-men-by-p-d-james-1992/

The Year of the Flood is not a sequel to Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, but rather a companion to it. It takes place at the same time and depicts the same events, with many of the same characters, but from a very different perspective. Atwood’s vision of our future is of a bleak, corporatized monoculture, where everything has been made into a commodity, and human emotions all but done away with. Guarded, gated corporate-states churn out useless genetically engineered animals and unnecessary drugs while the poor eke out an existence in the vast malls and slums of the “pleeblands.” Then, a bioengineered virus pretty much wipes out humanity overnight, leaving only a few survivors to relate the two tales. Eventually, the two storylines merge, shedding light on the abrupt end of Oryx and Crake. Although it is not strictly necessary, I believe it would help the reader understand The Year of the Flood after already having read Oryx and Crake.

Read the rest of my review at http://scifemme.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/review-the-year-of-the-flood-by-margaret-atwood-2009/

A time travel suspense thriller. I didn’t like the jump-cut way in which it was written, broken up by character point of view, sometimes from one paragraph to the next. It negatively interfered with the rhythms of the story, I thought.