The Firefighter’s Secret Baby
April 26, 2010 Romance
You know how sometimes you just need some truly escapist reading? Yeah. That was me last week. So I was pretty thrilled that The Firefighter’s Secret Baby showed up just when I needed it. Last week was eventful (details coming soon, I hope, oh how I hope) so this book could not have come at a better time.
Where did it come from? Some of us in the BlogHer Book Club are passing it around. It turns out that we couldn’t resist the title of it and as none of our libraries carried it Denise bought it and started the chain.
And the book itself? Exactly what I needed at the end of last week. It was fun, though it did require me to suspend belief of a couple of things. I can accept that in a romance.
I was tempted to fine it for overuse of the word “baby” as referring to a woman rather than an infant. The use didn’t quite ring true to the character to me but again, I just accepted it for what it is.
Now I gotta pack it up and ship it off to the next person on the list. Yay!
Posted by sassymonkey @
10:10 am |
Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon
Hey y’all. This is where I’ll be updating my read-a-thon process during the day. Process at the beginning will nonexistent as we have a breakfast date and I won’t be back for several hours (but hey, I don’t have to cook breakfast so score!). When I get back I’ll be updating this post every hour or so. (I know, some of you prefer to post individual posts. To each their own.)
8am-10am Read-a-thon Hours 1-2
Sassymonkey is AWOL, but probably mainlining coffee and looking for the fruit on the breakfast menu.
10am – 12pm Read-a-thon Hours 3-5
Sassymonkey still AWOL. It was a long breakfast. And then maybe she went bathing suit shopping. (Hey, I found one! Yay!)
1pm Read-a-thon hour 6, Sassymonkey start time
Starting A Tale of Two Cities. Got snacks and I’m ready to read. Let’s go Dickens, let’s go!
2pm Read-a-thon hour 7, SST (Sassymonkey Standard Time) hour 2
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 51, I finished the whole first book. Woohoo! Dickens does take awhile to get warmed up, but things are starting to look up. I hope to get at least 200 pages read before I have to take a break to read something else.
3pm Read-a-thon hour 8, SST hour 3
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 36 I got a little sleepy. I’m making some jasmine tea and moving to the armchair which is maybe a little less sleepy making…
4pm Read-a-thon hour 9, SST hour 4
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 4o I’m trucking along ok. Less sleepy than I was an hour ago and Dickens is picking up. He does like to get off to a slow start doesn’t he? I’m more than 1/4 of the way through now. Yay!
Observation: Our doorbell will not ring for ages, but on a read-a-thon day? It will ring several times in an afternoon. Boo!
5pm Read-a-thon hour 10, SST hour 5
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 40 I’m just another 30 or so pages away from being halfway done. Yay! I don’t know that I’m really loving it, but I’m not hating it. Dickens does love his foreshadowing doesn’t he? I’ll probably get less read in the next couple of hours since it’ll soon be time to think about, order and eat dinner. Mmmm Chinese take-out.
6pm Read-a-thon hour 11, SST hour 6
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 28. I’ve had some distractions in the past hour in the form a furry cat and having to decide what to order for dinner so didn’t get as much read.
Observation: It really does not feel like I’ve been reading that long, and I realize that I have not been reading as long as many of you. But still, feeling very energetic and such.
8pm Read-a-thon hour 13, SST hour 8
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 55, between eating and being distracted by the fake cat. Yes, I’m still plugging away at A Tale of Two Cities. It’s not do bad, really.
Mid-event meme
1. What are you reading right now? Still plugging away at A Tale of Two Cities
2. How many books have you read so far? I haven’t finished any.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I’m still going to plug away at A Tale of Two Cities. (I know, how boring.)
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? I didn’t because I really didn’t free up my day and got started quite late.
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Meh. It’s life. You just deal.
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? That I’m actually enjoying A Tale of Two Cities.
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Nope.
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? I can’t think of anything. There’s no point saying that I’d start on time. I never start on time.
9. Are you getting tired yet? A little bit.
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? Order take-out for dinner. Really, it’s the only sane thing to do.
9pm Read-a-thon hour 14, SST hour 9
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 41 The reading feels as though it is getting faster but I’m really just keeping pace. Just over 100 pages left. I thought that I’d need to switch to another book but it’s really going quite well.
11pm Read-a-thon hour 16, SST hour 11
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Pages read: 112
DONE! I finished A Tale of Two Cities. Woohoo!
Posted by sassymonkey @
7:30 am |
Signed up for the Read-A-Thon
I love Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon but I was hesitant to sign up this time around. We have plans early Saturday morning that will have me starting late (again). But what the heck, it’s a fun time.
So I think I’ve decided to use the Read-A-Thon to get going on A Tale of Two Cities. I’ll allow myself some “treats” by mixing in a bit of lighter books and maybe a chapter of Encyclopedia Brown or two. It’s not going to be quite as fun as the last one for me but at the end I do believe I’ll feel very, very productive and there’s a lot to be said for that. Right? Right? (Please say right.)
I am absolutely continuing one tradition I started with the last read-a-thon – we’re totally having Chinese takeout for dinner.
Posted by sassymonkey @
11:35 am |
Bite Me
“You have a book set aside for me.”
“What book is it?”
“Bite Me.”
There are not many times where you’ll get to have that conversation and not offend someone but thanks to Christopher Moore I’ve had it at least once. Bite Me is his latest release and follows the same characters as Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck. I was quite excited about this one. Abby Normal! I love Abby Normal! (Abby really needs a graphic novel. Really.)
I really wish I could say that I loved it. I didn’t hate it but I’m afraid it’s not one of my favourite Christopher Moore novels.
I found it very choppy. Part of it was just Abby’s storytelling. Abby is well, picture a highly caffeinated puppy. That’s Abby. Was she always this perky? I don’t remember her being so perky. The other part of the choppiness is I found it jumped from character to character a lot. Were the other books told from so many different points of view? I really don’t remember. Or was it just better done? There wasn’t enough Flood and Jody and I wasn’t thrilled about what happened with Flood and Jody. I can’t tell any of the Animals apart but then I never could. I still like me some Rivera though. And the Emperor.
But what really pained me is that not once, not one single time did I laugh out loud while reading Bite Me. I always laugh out loud while reading a Christopher Moore book, which is why I had to stop reading them in public. (I made the mistake of reading A Dirty Job on the patio of a cafe once and got very weird looks when I laughed.) Very, very sad.
All that being said, I still flew through the book and I’ll take a less than wonderful Christopher Moore book over most other books any day.
Bonus: When I picked up the book I also picked up tickets to his Ottawa book tour stop. I’ll finally get to see him in person. Yay!
Posted by sassymonkey @
8:37 am |
Miriam’s Kitchen…and mine
I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up Miriam’s Kitchen from the library. I found the memoir, written by Elizabeth Ehrlich, browsing through the library catalogue. I was searching for stories about food. There’s something about the spring that makes me search out food-lit. After the long, cold winter both the sun and I want to play. It warms up the earth, I warm up my kitchen.
I knew nothing of the book. I knew that it was a story of a family’s history. I knew it was a National Jewish Book Award winner. That’s all, and as far as books go that’s not a lot.
What I found was a beautiful book. Like many Jewish-American stories it is one of Holocaust survival and immigration. It’s about moving ahead with the promise of a new life while your heart never stops mourning the old life. And it was about how the next generation keeps that old life in their hearts and passes it on to the generations that will come after them. But mostly, it’s a book about love.
I wasn’t even 20 pages in when I found myself declaring on Twitter that if you hadn’t read it you needed to and all but ordered you to add it to your library request immediately.
As Ehrlich explores Miriam’s kitchen I am pushed into mine. She shares Miriam’s memories of being in her mother’s kitchen. Miriam’s mother was the real baker, as is mine. I remember the kitchen of the very first house I ever lived in. It was dark and not that much bigger than the one I currently own. I remember standing on a chair beside my mother as she added things to the bowl of her stand mixer. She teaches me of the order of baking. First we cream the butter and sugar. Then we add the eggs, each carefully cracked into a separate dish before being added one at a time to the mixture. The vanilla, in a glass jar, which she always measured with the plastic cap rather than a measuring spoon– something I used to do. When Lee threw out the glass bottle of vanilla to replace it with a new plastic one I was angry because the plastic felt wrong in my hand. The cap was the wrong size. I haven’t found the right glass bottle of vanilla yet, even more than a year later.
After all the liquids are mixed together we add the dry ingredients, but they must be sifted. My mother’s sifter is old and even then was a scratched and dented from many years of use. We measured the dry ingredients into it and then churned them into the bowl below, the flour falling in tufts like soft snow. We mix carefully, until just combined or until silky smooth, depending on what kind of batter we are making. The batter gets turned into the cake pan and popped into the oven. I got to lick the batters, a special treat, and then we cleaned up and waited. And waited. And waited. First we waited for it it cook. Then we waited for it cool. Then we waited for everyone to come home, for back then we were an eight person household. The waiting is practically a lifetime for a four-year old.
As I read Miriam’s Kitchen it is Easter weekend. We’re marking the long weekend by eating as much as possible it seems. An anniversary dinner. A dinner with friends that we have not seen in far too long. Easter Sunday dinner with my in-laws. These are the people in my life I cook for.
Tonight it is our dinner with friends and our contribution is dessert. I made goodies last night and I’ll bring some of those but having just finished the chapter on Miriam’s cakes a cake demands to be made. I pull out my weathered and much beloved Pyrex bowls. The blinds are up, the windows are open. It’s unseasonably warm and I squint into the sunshine as gentle jazz floats into the kitchen from the living room stereo. The yellow bowl matches both the sunshine and my mood. I turn my back on the stand mixer and cream together butter and sugar by hand with a wooden spoon, tilting the bowl just like my mother showed me. Then the egg, cracked in a separate dish before being added to the bowl. The vanilla, measured by spoon because the cover and bottle is wrong for how my mother taught me to do it.
I pull out the flour and baking powder and think of both my mother and Miriam. I do something I never do anymore. I reach under the cupboard and pull out my mesh strainer. In goes the flour, baking powder and salt. I bump the strainer against my hand. Tap. Tap. Tap. The flour falls into the bowl in soft puffs.
I stir the batter just until all the flour is incorporated into the mix. Then goes in the sour cream, mixing again until just combined. I fold in the cup of frozen raspberries, mixing quickly so that they don’t clump together. The mixture is scooped into the waiting springform pan that’s been coated in butter. I scrape the bowl with my spatula extra carefully, getting every last bit of batter. Miriam would approve, as would my grandmother. Neither approves of waste. Miriam due to the starvation she and her family experienced in Europe. My grandmother due to living through the depression and the many hard times that followed.
It’s time for the topping. I don’t like it, I find it too sweet. But Lee likes it and our friends probably will as well. I use a small bowl, blue this time, and compromise by making only half the topping the recipe suggests. I combine the brown sugar and butter with my fingers until I can crumble it over the top of the cake. I feel both my mother and Miriam behind me approving the use of my hands for this task.
I slide the cake into the oven and pile the dishes into the sink for Lee to wash. The kitchen slowly fills with the scent of sweet cake. We wait.
We will wait for the cake to cook. When it comes out of the oven, warm and the berries a bit bubbly I’ll call out to Lee. “Come see,” I’ll say. “Come smell.” We will wait for the cake to cool. I’ll run a knife around the edge so it will come out easily later. We will wait to take it to our friend’s place. We will wait through the snacks that our friend can’t help but put out for us to ruin our appetites on. We’ll chat about what’s been happening in our lives, as it’s been too long since we’ve gotten together like this, just us four.
We’ll get the details on their Passover. They’ll get the details on our anniversary dinner. The two men may make plans to go to Easter mass together. We’ll talk about summer vacation plans, and the breakfast we have next week with a former co-worker and friend whom we’ve not seen since she was diagnosed with cancer (lungs and brain). We will wait until after the burgers are cooked on the grill, the first burgers of the summer. When our dinner has settled and we’ve moved on to coffee or cocktails the waiting will be over. We’ll cut into the cake and feast, not only only on the sweet cake, but of the heritage passed down to me from my mother and grandmother. And yes, from Miriam too.
Miriam stood with me as a baked this cake. No doubt she disapproved of my use of butter instead of margarine. She nodded with approval when I sifted the flour. When I looked at my hands as I stirred and mixed I saw my mother’s hands performing those tasks as she learned them from her mother. When Miriam cooks and bakes her hands perform the tasks of her mothers before her.
I am not Jewish. My kitchen is not kosher. But Miriam and I, we understand each other. We understand that this is how we pass on our traditions. We understand that it is how we show our love those closest to us. As I make my way through the book Miriam passes on her traditions and way of showing love to her daughter-in-law. Lee and I have decided, we think, to not have children. We’re not certain, we’re not quite ready to declare absolutely not, but we don’t think parenthood is in our future. And I wonder to whom I will pass down these lessons, traditions and ways of loving.
Posted by sassymonkey @
1:10 pm |
Rapunzel’s Revenge
When I found out a few years ago that Shannon Hale was publishing a graphic novel I got very excited. Better yet, it was a retelling of Rapunzel! Yes, I waited with anticipation for Rapunzel’s Revenge and then proceeded to not read it. Because sometimes I suck like that.
I finally rectified that wrong last month when I picked up Rapunzel’s Revenge from the library. First I must give kudos to Nathan Hale (no relation) for his artwork. I loved it. It was perfect.
The story was pretty rocking too. Rapunzel, quite simply, kicked butt and took names. Of course she forms a partnership with a bad boy who isn’t really bad, just a little bit bad. Jack was a great character. He just happens to have a few magic items himself. Excellent graphic novel and well deserving of its Cybils award.
I’m not going to make the same mistake with their next collaboration Calamity Jack. It came out in January and I’ve already added it to my library list.
Posted by sassymonkey @
10:37 am |
