• Books

    a book I’m enjoying

    100_best_books

    A book I’m really enjoying: 100 Best Books for Children, by Anita Silvey. I was afraid it would be another list of ways to make your child a genius, but instead it was written by a book-lover all about those books you remember reading as a child. For each entry she has researched the stories behind the author and the author’s life when they wrote that book. For example,

    Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel: Virginia Lee Burton first wrote a book called The Trials and Trails of Jonnifer Lint…yikes. Publishers turned it down and suggested that she see what her boys thought of it. They fell asleep while she was reading it to them, ha! So she wrote something about what she knew they would love: steam engines.

    Arnold Lobel, the author of Frog and Toad are Friends, was from New York City and afraid of the countryside. Else Holmelund Minarik, who wrote Little Bear, taught at a rural school and originally wrote the books for her students. Lucy Maud Montgomery, of Anne of Green Gables, had to fight to get her book published. She was first offered a flat fee of $500, but fortunately, she took the other offer of .09 cents per book!

    I picked it up at our library (our children’s librarian has exquisite taste). If you see it, grab it!

     

  • Books,  Cooking

    Alice Waters’ Book for Children

    I refer to Alice Waters The Art of Simple Cooking with an obsessive devotion. Her recipes are so simple, elegant, and delicious that I quickly became addicted and wanted to cook only as she said to do it.

    So when I saw her book for children at the Boston Athenaeum, I scooped it up to take home with me.

    It’s written from the perspective of Alice Waters’ daughter Fanny who grew up at Chez Panisse. Sort of Eloise-style, without the spoiled brat and the pug.  (I love Eloise, but I think we can agreed she’s a bit of a brat.)  I read it like an-easy-to-read memoir, thinking “what would it be like to be the daughter of a restaurant owner like Alice?”

    This is what it would be like:

    The illustrations are by Ann Arnold and they are so lovely you want them to fill your kitchen. The text is cheerful and all about food. Below, an illustration of composting:

    She includes 46 recipes at the back, mostly really classic things like pizza dough, candied orange peel, and plain white rice. I was in the mood for a new bread recipe so I tried it. It’s a good one! A nice mix of whole wheat and white flour, hearty with salt and just a touch of milk. I recommend checking it out.

  • Books

    Freshman Year English

    if you want to find a great novel I don’t think you can go to a bookstore anymore. I think you need serious recommendations. My younger brother Wilson is in his freshman year of college, the territory of professors either directing you back towards the books you heard about in high school or directing your forward into the books culture is actually talking about. Fortunately his English professor is the former latter (will those ever make sense??).

    When I saw the list, and recognized five books I’d read and loved, I knew I’d have to read them all. Meet my list for 2013, fresh from a text message from Wilson:

  • Books,  Boston

    on my gcal

    The Wendesday Chef, one of the cooking blog greats, will be at the Harvard Bookstore on October 2nd (Tuesday). I’ll be there, anyone else? Should we bring baked goods to share? (photo by xobreakfast)

    The Smithsonian is sponsoring a free museum day this Sunday. All sorts of museums on there, and they email the ticket to you. We picked the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Can’t resist that old fashioned place. But the Great House at the Crane estate is also on there…and the Gropius House…

    Also on Sunday, this fun yard-sale in Cambridge hosted by my friend who is an amazing stylist. I’ve always wondered how she’s managed to have the perfect thing for every shoot.

    Looking forward to anything this weekend?

     

  • Books,  Entertainment

    GIRLS & the Summer Solstice

    The season finale of GIRLS happened this past week, and one highlight for me was book-spotting grumpy Ray reading I Capture the Castle. Have you read it? It might be one of my Top 10. It was written in 1948 by Dodie Smith about a poor family living in a washed-up castle, making do and having fun. Coming of age of a seventeen year old girl, journal style, eccentric father, unexpected visitors…I know that sounds predictable but truly, it is a charmer!  I recommend, as Ray did by saying, “This book is so fucking incredible. Anything by a British woman is just…fuck.” (or you could read my longer review here.)

    Very apropos too, because the Summer Solstice plays a lovely role in that book and I always wish that I had some sort of tradition or rite to do on the longest day of the year. Is there anything you like to do to mark these kinds of holidays?

  • Baby,  Books

    what your children will think of your blog

    Frequently I wonder what my children in the future will think of my internet presence now. If my mom had a blog, I wonder, would I find it and go back through the archives, reading all of it? Would I ignore it? Would I be embarrassed by what she shared there?

    So I was delighted to read this bit from Sam Lamott, whose mom Anne Lamott famously wrote an entire book about Sam’s first year of life. In the preface to their new book (about his son, Anne’s grandson), he writes how he feels when reading the last book:

    To this day, that book is the greatest gift anyone has given me; I have a very special relationship with it. When I read any of my mom’s books, I hear her voice talking as if she were in the room right next to me. But when I read Operating Instructions, I hear and feel my mother’s love for me, her frustration and dedication, her innermost feelings and favorite moments of my first year with her. I will always cherish these memories of our funny family and our friends, and I will always be able to come back to them even when my mom is too old to remember them herself.

    a great tribute to the possibility of blogs, right?

  • Books

    Annie writes again

    I literally do the same thing every day. I believe that discipline and self-love are the total secrets to freedom. I sit down at the same time every day because I don’t want it to be an issue. I’m like a teenager. If you give me a chance to negotiate around sitting down at 9 a.m. and beginning the piece, I’m going to be like a 15-year-old. I may have a reason why that doesn’t really make sense and why you’re trying to bum my trip.

    My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It’s not anything lofty, and it doesn’t have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor. I’ve written 13 books now. It’s not really important that I write a lot more books, but I do it as a debt of honor. I got one of the five golden tickets to be a writer, and I take that seriously. I don’t love my own work at all, but I love my own self. I love that I’ve been given the chance to capture the stories that come through me.

    -Anne Lamott, interview on goodreads.com

    Comes out March 20th.

  • Books,  Cooking

    when eating alone

    Aleksandra also makes grilled cheese sandwiches with Gruyere and a sprinkling of white wine (before broiling), sliced comice pears sauteed in butter and sugar, coconut sticky rice, pasta with ‘just a little butter, Parmesan and black peper,’ and before bed a mug of hot milk sprinkled with freshly grated nutmeg….

    In the winter, I have made hearty salads of smoked mackerel and red-skinned potatoes and accompanied them with braised leeks. I like to saute sausages and eat them with a mound of broccoli rabe, a lemon wedge and olive oil; and assemble platters of prosciutto, mortadella and duck liver pate with a tuft of parsley and caper salad. I might roast carrots and beets, and dip them into ricotta seasoned with olive oil and sea salt.

    -Amanda Hesser, Cooking for Mr. Latte (currently reading)

    This book is in the guise of a dizzy girl memoir, but it’s actually a beautiful pitch for savoring all the food you eat, and relishing the treats you allow yourself.

  • Books

    Reading old Sci-Fi

    It’s true that babies sleep occasionally, and give you a chance to do something for (with?) yourself.

    For me right now it’s reading this delicious and oddly modern sci-fi from 1956. (that’s pre-Sputnik, of course. Just imagine what they thought of space then.)

  • Books,  Life Story

    pastel shelf

    a section from our burgeoning bookshelves—this one is closest to the couch—that I like to admire and think of all the good times we had together.