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It's still technically Wednesday!
Mar. 28th, 2018 09:21 pmWhat I've Finished Reading
In the end I loved Blue Highways and couldn't tell you why, just as when I was fifteen I hated it and couldn't tell you why (except through the oblique language of parody). It took the very last sentence of the afterword for me to come around on liking William Least Heat-Moon, the author and narrator, but in the end I liked him, too. (I don't know if I can explain it without spoiling it, but this is a book with a punchline, and it's great).
I'm a little too young (and inattentive) to know if this is a cultural commonplace or just WLHM's personal bugbear, but his metonymy for all TV is a show called The Price is Right. Whenever someone has to watch TV, either as a rhetorical device or in real time, it's always The Price is Right. I don't know if he caught an episode once and it seared itself indelibly into his soul, or if it's an inheritance from other authenticity hounds, or if it's just a reference he thinks everyone will get.
Also read: The I Hate to Cook Book, a chatty comedy cookbook by Peg Bracken. It's from 1960, so most of the easy recipes call for massive quantities of beef or canned tuna, but they are all easy, or easy-ish, and some are adaptable. I made a delicious curry with raisins by just replacing the canned shrimp with stuff I had around the house, and there are some fancy (and very 1960) drinks I might try later. It made me a little sad that I have such a dearth of local friends to invite over for canapes, though I don't particularly want to make any canapes otherwise.
A short time ago, I learned about the existence of canned Welsh rarebit and felt my mind had been blown. This book is notable for having several recipes specifically designed around a can of Welsh rarebit. It's just cheese sauce in a can that you pour onto toast, not toast and cheese somehow stuffed together in a can as I'd imagined (so my mind is a little less blown than it used to be).
What I'm Reading Now
I spent six months bemoaning the advent of The Woman in the Water, a Most Comfortable Man in London prequel with a serial killer plot. I didn't want a prequel after Finch-Lenox had just thrown forty pounds of character development at me in The Inheritance, and I didn't want a serial killer plot under any circumstances. Now I have to butter my words and eat them with some hot tea and a jam tart: it's a perfectly good MCMiL mystery and the serial killer element is barely even a nuisance, while the coziness is cranked up to maximum levels.
It's 1850 and our Lenox is just a baby detective, fresh out of Balliol with his devoted manservant and a couple of erudite hobbies in a rucksack. It's fun to watch him learn his own ropes, even though (and because) we know exactly how everything ends up, in outline at least. Fans of the Finch-Lenox Genteel Infodump (i.e., me) will be happy to see that even at the skittish age of 23, Lenox is already able to pause in the middle of a plot development to muse on the etymology of Scotland Yard for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. There's a guaranteed-non-endgame love interest for Lenox to pine over, and a guaranteed new best friend tucked into a list of surgeons who might be able to help him out with the case. There's tea and biscuits for everyone, and soothingly clunky references to Bleak House and that clever man, Currer Bell, and slightly labored banter with the housekeeper, and just a dash of mortality to salt the caramel. Things could still go south from here, but at a little less than halfway through, I'm calling this a win. Sorry I doubted you, Finch-Lenox! You really can make a nice bowl of porridge out of anything.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's too soon to make plans!
In the end I loved Blue Highways and couldn't tell you why, just as when I was fifteen I hated it and couldn't tell you why (except through the oblique language of parody). It took the very last sentence of the afterword for me to come around on liking William Least Heat-Moon, the author and narrator, but in the end I liked him, too. (I don't know if I can explain it without spoiling it, but this is a book with a punchline, and it's great).
I'm a little too young (and inattentive) to know if this is a cultural commonplace or just WLHM's personal bugbear, but his metonymy for all TV is a show called The Price is Right. Whenever someone has to watch TV, either as a rhetorical device or in real time, it's always The Price is Right. I don't know if he caught an episode once and it seared itself indelibly into his soul, or if it's an inheritance from other authenticity hounds, or if it's just a reference he thinks everyone will get.
Also read: The I Hate to Cook Book, a chatty comedy cookbook by Peg Bracken. It's from 1960, so most of the easy recipes call for massive quantities of beef or canned tuna, but they are all easy, or easy-ish, and some are adaptable. I made a delicious curry with raisins by just replacing the canned shrimp with stuff I had around the house, and there are some fancy (and very 1960) drinks I might try later. It made me a little sad that I have such a dearth of local friends to invite over for canapes, though I don't particularly want to make any canapes otherwise.
A short time ago, I learned about the existence of canned Welsh rarebit and felt my mind had been blown. This book is notable for having several recipes specifically designed around a can of Welsh rarebit. It's just cheese sauce in a can that you pour onto toast, not toast and cheese somehow stuffed together in a can as I'd imagined (so my mind is a little less blown than it used to be).
What I'm Reading Now
I spent six months bemoaning the advent of The Woman in the Water, a Most Comfortable Man in London prequel with a serial killer plot. I didn't want a prequel after Finch-Lenox had just thrown forty pounds of character development at me in The Inheritance, and I didn't want a serial killer plot under any circumstances. Now I have to butter my words and eat them with some hot tea and a jam tart: it's a perfectly good MCMiL mystery and the serial killer element is barely even a nuisance, while the coziness is cranked up to maximum levels.
It's 1850 and our Lenox is just a baby detective, fresh out of Balliol with his devoted manservant and a couple of erudite hobbies in a rucksack. It's fun to watch him learn his own ropes, even though (and because) we know exactly how everything ends up, in outline at least. Fans of the Finch-Lenox Genteel Infodump (i.e., me) will be happy to see that even at the skittish age of 23, Lenox is already able to pause in the middle of a plot development to muse on the etymology of Scotland Yard for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. There's a guaranteed-non-endgame love interest for Lenox to pine over, and a guaranteed new best friend tucked into a list of surgeons who might be able to help him out with the case. There's tea and biscuits for everyone, and soothingly clunky references to Bleak House and that clever man, Currer Bell, and slightly labored banter with the housekeeper, and just a dash of mortality to salt the caramel. Things could still go south from here, but at a little less than halfway through, I'm calling this a win. Sorry I doubted you, Finch-Lenox! You really can make a nice bowl of porridge out of anything.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's too soon to make plans!
