Mailbox Monday

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

Tasha at Book Obsessed is hosting in July. Please stop by Tasha's busy blog, where she focuses on romance novels, with some mystery and suspense thrown in.

I was in Idaho last week, filing a new case, and stopped by a couple of local libraries to check out their sale shelves.  The Boise library has a particularly good Friends of the Library store inside the main branch where, along with the usual fiction, mysteries, romance books, and nonfiction selections they have a very nice collection of books by local authors and the local university press.

I ended up hauling home a stack of books:



Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet, edited by Ruth Reichl (this looks great and is perfect for the Foodies Reading Challenge)



Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, illustrated by Edward Gorey (these are the poems that inspired the musical Cats)



Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell (a stand alone mystery from an author I just started reading)



American Places by Wallace Stegner with photographs by Elliot Porter (a gorgeous coffee table book with text by one of my favorites)



The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty (Southern and perfect for summer)



The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot (something more serious than cats)



Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh (she is another new favorite of mine)



Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (I hated Waiting for Godot, so don't know why I think I can read his novels, but it is on the Observer's Top 100 list)



Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney (I already listened to this, which I highly recommend, but wanted the book because Heany's Introduction is worth re-reading)

Kitchen Remodel, Week Eighteen: Tile Bravo

Finally! The white tile got here. Now the final kitchen dominoes can fall.  This week is was install tile, grout tile, caulk bottom of tile, and wax the soapstone counter tops.  This coming week will be seal the tile, finish the wood floors, and build the toe kicks.

There are other patches of white tile above other counter tops, but this is the largest patch.

There are still plenty of little things to finish inside, and some big things outside like stucco, bricks, patio stones, and plantings.  But getting the white tile in was a big deal to me because we couldn't wax the soapstone and make it black until the tile was in, so we couldn't see what the counters were really going to look like until today.

To make up for the lack  of food literature in my recent book diet, I've been reading about cookbooks. I have my heart set on getting a copy of the Toro Bravo cookbook by Liz Crain.  It doesn't come out until October, but it is generating a lot of foodie buzz already. The more I read about it, the more I want it!

The Toro Bravo restaurant is already a Portland legend.  I can't wait to try some of Chef John Gorham's recipes at home -- while reading his terrific stories as told by Liz Crain, one of the best up and coming food writers around. All good.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

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.

UPDATE: SORRY FOR THE MISSING LINKY. OPERATOR ERROR. I WILL GET IT FIXED BY NEXT WEEK. THANKS FOR LEAVING YOUR LINK IN THE COMMENTS.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is "loss of soul."

-- Care of the Soul:: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore.

I've read a couple of his other  books, but never this first one in his "Soul" series.  This one is certainly making me think.

Review: The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Most books you can read, analyze, and review, but some you just have to accept. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass is a book I had to take on its own terms.

The hero of this postwar German classic is Oscar Matzerath, who thought like an adult from the moment he was born.  At his birth, he heard his mother exclaim that he would get a tin drum on his third birthday, while his father announced that the baby would someday take over the family grocery store.  Having no interest in running a grocery store, baby Oscar determined that he would stop growing on his third birthday and remain forever a toddler with a tin drum.  Which he did.

Oscar can also shatter glass with his voice, which he does in dozens of creative and destructive ways.  (The scream singing and a glass shattering are reason enough to skip the movie adaptation.)

Oscar narrates his life story from an insane asylum where he is confined awaiting the outcome of an appeal of a criminal trial.  The story begins with his grandmother rescuing and marrying an escaping arsonist, continues through childhood with his two "presumptive fathers" (his mother's husband and her lover), follows Oscar as he tours with a troupe of performing dwarfs during World War II, to his later role as the leader of a youth gang, and finally his career as a jazz drummer in an avant-garde club where the customers eat raw onions.

So, yes, The Tin Drum is a crazy book, with so much imagery and so much going on and so many ideas swirling around that it is impossible to make sense out of it.  It's a book only a Ph.D. candidate could love.  I had to just let it roll on, laughing at the funny bits – and there are many – mulling over the ideas that grabbed me, and letting go of the rest of it.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

NOTES

I've had a copy of The Tin Drum on my TBR shelf forever, but it daunted me.  The whole notion of German literature daunts me.

But I saw that my library had an unabridged audio version of the new translation of this Nobel Laureate's classic, and decided to go that route.  I never would have gotten through the paper version.  I highly recommend the new audiobook from Blackstone Audio.  The reader, Paul Michael Garcia, was over-the-top good. 

Teaser Tuesday: Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

Whenever, during the summer, he took a party of students abroad under his genial wing, catastrophic event attended him.  As he sat sipping his vermouth and introducing himself to tourists at the Flore or the Deux Magots, the boys and girls under his guidance were being robbed, eloping to Italy, losing their passports, slipping off to Monte Carlo, seeking out an abortionist, deciding to turn queer, cabling the decision to their parents, while he took out his watch and wondered why they were late in meeting him for the expedition to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

-- Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy, which is on the Anthony Burgess list of Top 99 novels. Every sentence in this book is a gem. It is a short book, but I keep rereading sentences over and over because they are so wonderful.

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