Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

What books came into your house last week? I got one, from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I can't wait to read it!




The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison.  What a fun choice for the 2013 Foodies Read Challenge!

As appealing as the cover on my copy is, I think it may be the ARC cover. The official cover looks like this:



Which cover do you like better?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Eight: Stairway to Kitchen Heaven

Progress inside the new kitchen was slow this week.  There was some more cabinet work, not much.  But enough to see what the upper cupboards will look like.

The heavy hauling was on the outside, where they tore out the old, crumbling staircase and set the stage for the new, as seen in the rebar jungle above.  The plan is for a new series of stairs, retaining walls, and garden beds that will connect the street-level garage doors (to the bottom left of the photo) to the terrace on the garage roof (top left in the photo, with the black railing) and a large stoop outside the kitchen door (top center in the photo). 

Now that I see it in progress, the whole outside part of this kitchen remodel seems like a far bigger undertaking than when I saw it on paper.

Since it is still chilly and drizzly here in Portland, I spent some time yesterday finally finishing Independent People, the novel about WWI-era Iceland sheep farmers by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness.  There was nothing food-related in that book. The people were often half-starved through the Iceland winters. They ate grass.

I also finished Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee.  That book was all about food -- cooking, eating, and changing the way America thinks about food.  I hope to get a review written and up soon. 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: On the Level by David Edgar Cournoyer

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Joe Simpson's last minutes were filled with ocean breezes, the call of herring gulls, and the smell of newly mowed grass. A younger man might have survived the two-story fall but Joe hit the ground like a crab dropped on the rocks.

-- On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer. Great beginning! The twist from a peaceful passage -- Oh, what a pleasant way to go -- to the shocking abruptness of a crab smashing on rocks pulled me straight into the story. I must know more.


The author sent me this at the suggestion of Carolyn J. Rose because I am in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house. This mystery (as the clever title suggests) involves restoring an old house -- a Queen Anne on Long Island Sound.

Review: The Gun Seller

 

Hugh Laurie is best known as an actor – the volatile but brilliant Dr. House or Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves – but he occasionally branches into other creative arts, like jazz music and writing. In 1996 he published a just-this-side-of-spoof espionage thriller called The Gun Seller.

Part Wodehouse, part Robert Ludlum, Laurie's only novel finds ex-soldier Thomas Lang bamboozled into infiltrating a terrorist group in order to short circuit an embassy attack orchestrated by an evil munitions manufacturer as a marketing stunt. The plot is complicated enough to stay interesting and internally consistent enough, just, to stay acceptable.

Best of all, it is funny. It is really funny, which is really hard to do. Laurie definitely channels his inner P. G. Wodehouse, but through a spy thriller filter, so it comes out like a James Bond story written by Mark Steyn.  Pure fun.  Too bad Laurie hasn't come out with a sequel.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I bought this on a whim and finally read it for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Teaser Tuesday: Sea of Regret

Police Chief Sam Lowell scratched the gray whiskers on the blade of his jaw. The whisk of sound, like insects in dry grass, made Kate glance at her bare toes to make sure nothing was crawling toward them.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  I love how this short passage evokes so many sensory images and reactions. Great stuff.

Sea of Regret is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, also set on the Oregon coast and featuring Kate Dalton.

Rose also sent me Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series starring Dan Stone.

Rose has written several mysteries set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where she grew up. She and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and have written a couple of books together.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

If anyone is in Washington State this weekend, Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference. 


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

Three books came to me out of the blue last week:



On the Level: A Mystery of Suspense, Romance, and Home Improvement by David Edgar Cournoyer.  The mystery involves restoring an old Queen Anne on Long Island Sound. It looks great!

The author sent me this at the suggestion of Carolyn J. Rose because we are in the middle of remodeling the kitchen in our 100-year-old house.



Direct Hit! How Facebook Destroyed My Marriage and How I Healed by Caroline Sutherland.  Sutherland is the popular author of The Body "Knows" books.  This book is the story of how her husband betrayed her, stole her identity, and tried to ruin her life.  Timely and riveting!


 

On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak by Jon Bell.  This is the new paperback edition, just in time for graduation of Father's Day gifts. It's the nicest feeling paperback I've ever come across because it has a wonderful, suede-like, thick cover. 

Jon Bell will be reading and signing books at Powell's on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 7:30.

What books came into your house last week?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Seven: Cupboards and Kitchen Revitalization

The cupboards are here. They are not installed yet, just crammed into the kitchen space all higgledy-piggledy. But they are here so we can see them for the first time.

We went with natural-stained fir, a less-expensive option than oak, which had been my first choice.  Fir is also an appropriate choice for a 100-year-old Oregon house because they most likely used fir in the original kitchen. 

My favorite bit is how our builder matched the inside moulding of the doors and drawers with the moulding in our dining room paneling. Kind of hard to see here, but cool in real life.

I am still reading Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee and am just at the part where Chez Panisse burned almost to the ground in 1983.  Alice Waters used the tragedy as an opportunity to rebuild with a better and more beautiful design more suitable to her evolved vision for the restaurant. 



Although our kitchen remodel was, thankfully, not necessitated by tragedy, I am trying to channel Water's optimism about a better, more harmonious, future kitchen.

Sadly, Chez Panisse suffered another fire last month and is closed for renovation until mid-June.  Hopefully this recent misfortune will also result in improvements for this California icon.

 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Sea of Regret

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

When it was over, Kate Dalton vowed to abolish the phrase "if only" from her vocabulary and make peace with what they did to survive.

-- Sea of Regret by Carolyn J. Rose.  That opening sentence gives me chills!

This is the second of the Carolyn J. Rose books I got a couple of weeks back.  This one is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, set on the Oregon coast and starring Kate Dalton.

The other book I got was Through a Yellow Wood, set in the Catskill Mountains and the sequel to Hemlock Lake, a series featuring Dan Stone.

Rose and her husband, Mike Nettleton, are both authors and even have written a couple of books together.  Rose has written several mysteries, set on the Oregon coast or in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  She and Nettleson also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference. 

Teaser Tuesday: Through a Yellow Wood

 

I noticed she made no mention of where Luke, the handyman she hired in early March, slept.… If Priscilla found comfort with the bowlegged, balding, taciturn man stranded in Hemlock Lake when his rusted pickup gave up the ghost in a cloud of radiator steam and scorching oil, then more power to her.

-- Through a Yellow Wood by Carolyn J. Rose. What a description!

This mystery is the sequel to Hemlock Lake, both set in the Catskill Mountains and both featuring Dan Stone. I want to read the first one too, although this one does just fine as a stand-alone.

Rose is half of a prolific Pacific Northwest writing duo, along with her husband, Mike Nettleton.  She has written several mysteries, many set on the Oregon coast, some in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  She and Nettleson also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Rose is leading a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference.



Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

I only got one book last week, a hand-me-down from my mother. But she liked it and it looks .like it could be pretty good.



Too Easy by Phillip DePoy.  It is the second book in a series of five mysteries set in Georgia and featuring a "Zen private eye" named Flap Tucker.

DePoy moved on to another series that also sounds promising.  Also set in Georgia, but in the Appalachian Mountains instead of the gulf coast, the Fever Devilin series is up to seven volumes.  The named hero is a folklorist and former professor.

I am definitely going to look for more of DePoy's books.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Six: Green is the Color of Spring

In anticipation of the arrival of cupboards later this week, we got some color in the kitchen.  The walls were painted the same green as our old kitchen because I love that murky, yellowy green shade. The ceiling is the same pale khaki color as the ceilings in the rest of the house.

We also have a door to the new powder room. Tiny! Here's James Builder demonstrating its diminutive proportions. 

I've been reading food and cooking books during the kitchen remodel to buoy my spirits while cooking in a toaster oven.  But my current book is grim when it comes to food.  It sure makes me count my blessings!

Independent People secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize, but his characters do not eat well.  Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family are early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house in Iceland, with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level.

With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.  The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.


Other than a few batches of doughnuts or pancakes for celebrations, the only cooking described in the book was when the first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut while her husband was lost in a blizzard -- killed and butchered a ewe, salted down the meat, and then gorged herself on a pot of offal stew.  The cognate, while false, is apt.




Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 490 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Through a Yellow Wood

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Another April.

A year since I returned to Hemlock Lake in a vain attempt to disrupt the agenda of destruction and death set by a man once my friend.

-- Through a Yellow Wood by Carolyn J. Rose.  This mystery is the sequel to Hemlock Lake, both set in the Catskill Mountains and both featuring Dan Stone. The opening sentence makes me want to read the first one too, although this one does just fine as a stand-alone.

Rose is half of a prolific writing duo based in the Pacific Northwest.  Rose and Mike Nettleton have written a number of mysteries together, many set on the Oregon coast, some in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.

Among her other writing adventures, Rose will be presenting a workshop on the elements of mystery at the Wordcatcher conference in Kalama, Washington on Saturday, April 20. Click the link for details or to sign up for the conference.

Teaser Tuesday: Independent People

It was an incredible blizzard. It was one of those peculiar gales when the mountain sang above the croft as if the trolls that inhabited it had gone demented and taken out their drums; the dog hung whining about the trapdoor, shivering in every limb.

-- Independent People by Halldór Laxness, first published in 1946, is the story of subsistence sheep farmer Bjartur of Summerhouses.  It is like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 470 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

MariReads is hosting in April. Please stop by her blog for some great reviews and other fun bookish posts.

I got two books last week from a prolific writing duo based in the Pacific Northwest.  Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton have written a number of mysteries together, many set on the Oregon coast, some in the Catskill Mountains where Carolyn grew up.  They also blog together at Deadly Duo Duh.



Through a Yellow Wood. This one is the sequel to Hemlock Lake, both set in the Catskill Mountains and both featuring Dan Stone.



Sea of Regret. This one is the sequel to An Uncertain Refuge, set on the Oregon coast and starring Kate Dalton.

Both books look great, as do the rest of the titles these two have written. Please visit their Deadly Duo Mystery website for more information about their fun collaboration and mystery novels.

Happy Easter!

Kitchen Remodel, Week Five: The Joy of Floors for Easter

The new kitchen has a floor now. Windows, walls, floors -- it's starting to look like a room. We opted for hardwood as being more forgiving for tender feet and less likely to smash dropped dishes to smithereens.

We are  still a long way from a working kitchen, which got us out of Easter duty. Mom is hosting Easter dinner this year. Hubby is still responsible for making the scalloped potatoes -- something we never ate until he joined the family.


He follows the tried-and-true Joy of Cooking recipe:

Ingredients:

3 cups pared, thinly sliced potatoes
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
3 to 6 tablespoons butter
3 pieces of cooked bacon crumbled
1 1/4 cups milk or cream
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional as in not in the actual recipe but still very tasty to add!)

Preparation:

Parboil the sliced potatoes with the salt for 8 minutes. Drain well.Grease or line a 10 inch baking dishLayer in the potatoes by sprinkling the flour and butter over them evenly. (Use the 2 tablespoons of flour and between 3-6 tablespoons of butter)Sprinkle the crumbled cooked bacon over the potatoes. In a saucepan, heat the milk, 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt, and the paprika.Pour this mixture over the potatoes.Topping with cheese is optional. The potatoes are good without too. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes or until potatoes seem tender.

NOTES

For more, see my ode to The Joy of Cooking.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Independent People

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+ or other social media sites, please spread the word. You can use the hash tag #BookBeginnings.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bills, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery.

-- Independent People by Halldór Laxness, first published in 1946. Laxness was Iceland's most famous author and only Nobel Laureate.

This story of subsistence sheep farmer Bjartur of Summerhouses is set in the 20th century, but feels like an ancient epic.  So far, it reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  It also brings me one step closer to my goal of reading at least one book by every Nobel Laureate.

Teaser Tuesday: Alice Waters and Chez Panisse

The menus for the week were posted every Monday. Lots of people, the clientele still being largely local, just strolled by, took a look at the hand-printed bill of fare in the picture frame on the front of the building, perhaps came in and discussed it with Alice or a cook, and made their plans accordingly..

-- Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee.
Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

One of my favorite bloggers, Caitlin from Chaotic Compendiums, is hosting in March. Stop by her terrific blog! You'll be glad you did and, as promised, you may just find your next book.

I got one book last week:






Staying On by Paul Scott. This novel, described as a coda to his better-known Raj Quartet, is the story of two British colonials who stay on in India after the country's independence.  Scott won the 1977 Booker Prize for this tangentially related but stand-alone book.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Four: Canopy & Cocktails

Drywall is boring. Glad as I am to see walls in the new kitchen, there is nothing exciting about drywall. And drywall was the only thing that happened in our new kitchen this week.

Outside, we saw the beginning of a long-awaited canopy over the back door. It still needs its trim and the little copper roof like on the roof of the adjacent bump out. 

But already I can imagine finally having a stoop to set down the groceries with the canopy to keep off the rain -- instead of the meager concrete steps exposed to Portland's unfriendly weather that we've lived with for five years.

The stoop will connect with a concrete terrace on top of the garage, so I've also been daydreaming about warm summer evenings with the grill going and neighbors over.  The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto has me ready to start those evenings observing the sacred cocktail hour, the "pause in the day's occupation" that "marks the lifeward turn."




DeVoto wrote history books, novels, a magazine column for Harper's and this delightful homage to the cocktail hour.  First published in 1948, my edition is a reprint from Tin House with an introduction by Daniel Handler.

Written in a style Handler describes as "deadpan fascism," The Hour extols the virtues of the only two drinks DeVoto accepts as cocktails -- a "slug of whiskey" and a dry gin martini.  DeVoto advocates two of either at 6:00 o'clock with a few friends in a quiet setting as a necessary segue between the labors of the day and dinner.

He makes a good case.  And his pillorying of anything that falls outside his defined cocktail rituals is still very funny, even with his Dorris Day-era views on women.  His diatribe against rum, grenadine, mixers, anything sweet, olives, and novelty bar ware is a masterpiece of curmudgeonly eloquence.

NOTES

I read The Hour as one of my choices for the Foodies Read Challenge and as one of my non-fiction books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: The Hour

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I also recently signed up for Google+ and have a button over there in the right-hand column to join my circles or whatever it is. I don't really understand yet how that one works.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Oops! My beginning went missing there. Here it is:

We are a pious people but a proud one too, aware of a noble lineage and a great inheritance.

-- The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto.

DeVoto wrote history books, novels, a magazine column for Harper's and this delightful homage to the cocktail hour.  First published in 1948, my edition is a reprint from Tin House with an introduction by Daniel Handler.