Tag: august

The Fundamental Pizza Cookbook for Beginners

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Adventurer, Bram Cuisine. The Fundamental Pizza Cookbook for Beginners: Over 1,800 Dietary Recipe Combinations: Guide for Conventional and Woodfire Ovens: Step By Step Instructions – Dough to Tasty Sides, Pizza or Calzone. 2024.

Bram Cuisine Adventurer used ChatGPT to write The Fundamental Pizza Cookbook for Beginners: Over 1,800 Dietary Recipe Combinations: Guide for Conventional and Woodfire Ovens: Step By Step Instructions – Dough to Tasty Sides, Pizza or Calzone and it shows from the title to the conclusion. While there is some great information in The Fundamental Pizza Cookbook for Beginners, it is only 142 pages long and much of the space is taken up with huge font, illustrations, and redundancies. Here are some examples:

  • The header for each section is in a large font and repeated on every page. Same for the footer (page numbers).
  • The introduction reiterates the table of contents; hardly any new information there.
  • The list of tools could include the disposable tools to utilize space and cut down on the repetition of a separate list.
  • Most of the directions are listed twice (example: “Add feta: sprinkle with crumbled feta”).
  • Troubleshooting is listed twice (on pages 22 and 137) with more information being on page 137.
  • Nutrition information could have been listed at the end of each recipe in a smaller font. Easier to find for each dish and would take up less space.

If you take out the sides, calzones, and drinks there are even less pages dedicated to the art and creativity of pizza making. This could be a great book for beginnings, but there were too many missed opportunities. Noted is a lack of information that could have been helpful to novices (since the introduction ensures that even a novice can make a pizza by using this book):

  • There is no explanation of instant versus active yeast or even why that matters. Going a step further, it would have been helpful to explain what happens when yeast, warm water, and sugar are combined; and what to look for after ten minutes or so (foamy and bubbly). Knowing the signs of good yeast can save wasted time and ingredients later.
  • There are inconsistent translations. Quattro Formaggi is translated, but what about Capricciosa or Funghi?
  • What Adventurer does not tell you is that you cannot troubleshoot the dough problems with the dough you just made. For problems like dough not rising or being too tough, for example, for the next time make sure your yeast is fresh, your water is not too hot or cold, or that you knead the dough for too long.
  • This isn’t talked about at all, but using copper mats or grilling your pizza are also good cooking options.

Boy Meets Boy

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Levithan, David. Boy Meets Boy. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Reason read: August is the new back to school month. Since most of Boy Meet Boy takes place in a school, read in honor of lockers everywhere.

The world inside Boy Meets Boy is the fantasyland where we all want to live, or at least visit whenever the mood strikes us. A place where kindness reigns supreme and hate just does not seem to exist. At. All. Main character, Paul, is unlike any teenage boy you will ever meet. He is sensitive, smart, funny, romantic, thoughtful, and a serious empath. His environment is a high school where students, dissatisfied with clubs of the cultural norms, create groups like the Joy Scouts, the French cuisine club, and the Quiz bowling team. The janitors are closet (pun totally intended) wealthy day traders. The parents form groups like P-FLAG (Parents and friends of lesbians and gays). The town itself is ultra-accepting – there is a bar called the Queer Beer bar where straight guys sneak in to hit on lesbians. It’s like a paradise for the LGBTQ community: the perfect world where everyone is welcomed and joyfully accepted. Even insults are always playful and harmless. The quarterback can also be the homecoming queen – shoulder pads and manicured nails come together in one character, Infinite Darlene. Cheerleaders can afford Harleys. Mothers make pancakes that resemble the topography or states or continents. Imagine that.
But. In order to have an interesting story, you need conflict. Right? The conflict is love and all of its broken hearts. Paul was once dumped by Kyle. Now Kyle wants Paul back, but only after Paul has started something with a new boy, Noah. Noah has been burned himself. So when Noah finds out Paul kissed another boy, he’s a goner. Now Paul wants Noah back while Kyle chases Paul. Then there is Ted who was dumped by Joanie for Chuck. Somehow, Paul tries to mend all these hearts, including the ones he has no business mending. The big question is, will he win Noah back or will Kyle win his heart?

Author fact: Even though David Levithan wrote a long list of books, I am only reading Boy Meets Boy for the Challenge.

Book trivia: I could easily see this being made into a movie.

Music: Dave Matthews Band’s “All Along the Watchtower” (but not really DMB) and “Typical Situation”, “One More Day”, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”, “We Are the Champions”, Cole Porter, Pink Floyd, “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “I Will Survive”, “She’s All Mouth”, Elvis’s “Love Me Tender”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “All Shook Up”, Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Erasure’s “Always”, Indigo Girls, Chet Baker’s “Someone to Watch Over Me”, Beatles, “If I Had a Hammer”, “Time after Time”. “It’s Always You”, and “Let’s Get Lost”, and “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23). Interestingly enough, Pearl thought Boy Meets Boy was more appropriate for boys than girls.

Well of Loneliness

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Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. Anchor Books, 1928.

Reason read: Hall’s birth month is in August. Read in her honor.

When her parents were disappointed that their newborn had not been the boy they expected, they went ahead with the name they had picked out pre-birth: Stephen. For 1928 that was pretty progressive, especially since no one in their society circles really questioned it, not even Stephen herself. Her full name was Stephen Mary Olivia Gertrude Gordon. It was a name that seemed to overshadow her true identity and caused her some confusion as she navigated her way through childhood. Living in an environment where societal norms and expectations were rigid, Stephen often found herself clashing with the traditional gender roles.
Hall uses all the clichés to make obvious Stephen’s sexual orientation even as a young child: Stephen developed a strong romantic attachment to her nanny, she wanted to hunt, climb trees, and ride horses like a boy. She instinctively needed to change her appearance by cutting her hair and building her muscles and wearing pants and ties. She thought dresses were ridiculous, girlish emotions even more so. These feelings and desires were contrary to what was expected of a girl in her society, leading to a sense of internal conflict and confusion as she tried to understand and accept herself. She knew she was different but could not articulate why. As a teenager, Stephen was thrilled to make the acquaintance of a boy with whom she seemed to have so much in common. Here was a person with whom she could be her true self…until he admitted he was falling in love with her. Of course she could not love him back in the same way, as her own feelings did not align with his blossoming romantic affection. All through her formative years, Stephen’s father could not tell her the truth about her “strangeness” and yet he knew. As a result, he was overprotective and sheltering. There is a naivete to Stephen throughout The Well of Loneliness. Even when she found reciprocated love with Mary, a young woman she met during the war, she was never secure in her feelings, often plagued by a persistent fear of rejection and misunderstanding.

Quotes to quote, “My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later – life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you” (p 113) and “This will happen sometimes, we instinctively feel in sympathy with certain dwellings” (p 249).

Book trivia: Well of Loneliness includes a note from the author which assures the reader that even though a motor ambulance unit of British women existed in World War II, the particular unit Hall wrote about only existed in her head.

Author fact: Hall led the life described in Well of Loneliness. It is thought that many of Stephen’s experiences were actually Hall’s memories.

Music: “Ole Sole Mio”.

Nancy said: Pearl pointed out that Well of Loneliness could be the first novel to address homophobia.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 94).

Pride

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Cary, Lorene. Pride: a Novel. Nan A. Talese Publisher, 1998.

Reason read: Pride is what some would call “chick lit” which I also call “beach reads” and since August is the last good month to visit the shore…

The friendship of four women. Each one of them has issues, both public and private. Roz (Rozzie) is the wife of a successful politician who has now set his sights on a higher office. At the same time as battling cancer, Roz is trying to be a mother to a difficult teenager and supportive of her husband’s ambitions. What she can’t get behind is the fact he has been having an affair with one of her best friends. Arneatha is an Episcopal priest locked in grief after losing her husband. She struggles to find herself in a world without him. Tam is the equivalent of Steve Martin’s wild and crazy guy. She does not take her sex life or career seriously. Audrey is a recovering alcoholic is struggles everyday with lure of addiction. And speaking of Audrey, Lorene Cary painted a fuller picture of Audrey with more colorful detail than any of the other women. It was if Cary knew Audrey best.
Pride is a testament to friendship. Like a pride of African lions, the women of Cary’s novel need to stick together in order to survive.

Quote to quote, “And the drums kept pounding like I love them” (p 318). Amen.

Author fact: Cary also wrote The Price of a Child which is on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: this should be a movie.

Playlist: “You Are So Beautiful to Me”, “My Funny Valentine”, “America the Beautiful”, “Maple Leaf Rag”, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Boyz II Men, James Brown, LL Cool J, “Zip-A-Dee Doo Dah”, Piaf, Mahalia Jackson, Lena Horne, Michael Jackson, “Four O Clock Blues”, James Brown, Bong Crosby, “Only the Lonely”, Duke Ellington, “His Eye is on the Sparrow”, Peggy Lee’s “Is That All That There Is?”, Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, “Getting to Know You”, Rachmaninoff, the theme from Family Matters, the theme from Magic Flute, and “Claire de Lune”.

Nancy said: Pearl includes Pride in a list of books to consider.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “African American Fiction: She Say” (p 13).

Feral Creatures in Suburbia

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Liebhart, D. Feral Creatures in Suburbia. 9:25 books, 2024.

Reason read: an Early Review book from LibraryThing.

A single mother trying to wrangle a violent teenage son, a girl trying to cope with intense school bullying threatens suicide enough times to land herself in a psych ward, employers abusing drugs, a doctor battling two aggressive cancers; we have all been there before. We have all had bullies at one time or another. We know people with incurable diseases or inconsiderate neighbors. We have all known a deep and abiding love. Secrets, miscommunications, assumptions, jealousies, they are common to us all.
Even though each chapter was in the voice of a different character I kept getting them confused. The chapters were short which didn’t give me a lot of time to get to know and fully absorb each person.
A small disappointment was the ability to only get inside Myra’s head. She was the only teenager with her own voice. We also got to see life from her mother’s point of view. Why not add Logan’s voice in contrast to his mother, Julie’s? Not knowing Logan’s motives kept assumptions at an all time high. Maybe Liebhart wanted it that way, considering the end.

The episode with the not broken-no wait-broken arm was curious.

Music: Chopin, Vivaldi, Black Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne.

Comanche Moon

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McMurtry, Larry. Comanche Moon. Simon and Schuster Audio, 1997.

Reason read: to continue the saga of Gus and Call. confessional: the book was written after Lonesome Dove but I wanted to read the series in chronological order so that there would be no surprises (people dying, relationships initiated, that sort of thing). For example, in Dead Man’s Walk Gus was smitten with Clara, but in Comanche Moon she marries someone else.

When we join the Texas Rangers in Austin, this time they do not have a particular mission. Their main objective appears to be keeping the Comanche tribe from interrupting the travel of whites headed west across their land. They spend more time burying the dead than they do protecting them when alive. Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are growing up and developing deeper relationships with women. Like Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon is full of torture and death, but it is the characters that make it the epic tale that it is.
This might be a spoiler alert, but I found myself liking McMurtry for not having the happy endings we all think we need. Maggie and Clara find different men to love. Blue Duck exacts his revenge on his father. Good men die. Despicable men somehow thrive.

As an aside, I think I would have liked to be friends with Clara. She is outspoken, straightforward and intimidating. Cool.
According to various places on the web, a Comanche moon in Texas history is a full moon in autumn. Okay.

Interesting fact: if you want to catch a horse or kill a man, wait until they are relieving themselves. Neither horse nor man can react quickly when they are taking a piss.

Book Audio trivia: Frank Muller was the narrator.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction” (p 240).

Colony

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Tayman, John. The Colony: the Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai. Scribner, 2006

Reason read: Hawaii became a state in August. Read to celebrate the history.

It does not seem possible that our government could rule that having leprosy would be a criminal offence. In 1866, that same government also believed these assumptions: that exile was the best means of controlling leprosy, that anyone in exile was an extreme contagion and finally, that everyone suffering from a leprosy diagnosis was never, ever, going to get better: to have leprosy was to have a death sentence. [As an aside, I guess if you can have a high ranking official tell you that drinking bleach can cure Covid-19 in 2020, we could have a government with such backward beliefs about Hansen’s disease in 1866.] The language of government criminality goes even further by calling a person with an unconfirmed case of leprosy a suspect and using bounty hunters to round up these “suspects.” Even a temporary release from the confines of the colony was called “parole.” This what fear can do. People were so frightened of the disease that they made hasty decisions to exile people too quickly without setting up proper accommodations. Seven years after the colony was first started, it still lacked running water, proper housing, and basic medical supplies.
The leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai started on January 8th, 1866 with a dozen individuals all thought to be suffering from what was then known as leprosy. With each chapter, the colony grows in numbers until the cures and treatment of science start to win and numbers dwindle.
Tayman was careful to stress that in addition to the illnesses, Molokai was an inhospitable place in and of itself. Landing on the island’s rocky shore was a extreme danger, crops constantly failed due to water shortages and poor soil conditions. Living quarters were made out of any material people could find and were unsanitary. Mankind’s presence didn’t make life any easier. White man’s diseases: smallpox, syphilis, gonorrhea, and influenza all plagued the islands of Hawaii throughout history. Morale within the leper community was fraught with turmoil and confusion. Besides being in pain from debilitating diseases and missing their families, patients brought their grudges and prejudices to Molokai. If all that was not bad enough, political ambitions led certain officials to wildly exaggerate the success of the experiments in the fight to cure leprosy.
My only disappointment in The Colony is actually a complaint about Tayman. Makia Malo and Olivia Breitha changed their minds about being included in The Colony. They asked to be left out of the book and Tayman not only left in their stories, he also included photographs of them. If he wasn’t going to respect their wishes, at the very least, he could have changed their names and removed the photographs from the finished publication. Having said all that, I could not help but be inspired by Olivia and Makia’s spirits. Their courage and grace astounded me.

The Colony left me thinking about the psychology of cordoning off the undesirables, the dangerous. Our country has a history of sending people somewhere else, out of the public eye. The Japanese during the war; Jews in Europe, American Indians, Molokai. What we do not understand or trust, we banish.

As an aside, there is a 1999 documentary about Father Damien and his work on Molokai and Mark Twain based his Connecticut Yankee on William Ragsdale. There is also a documentary called “Olivia & Tim: Very Much Alive” which I want to see.

Playlist: “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Home Sweet Home” (probably not the Motley Crue version), and “My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekna”.

Author fact: while Tayman wrote more books, I am only reading The Colony for the Challenge.

Book trivia: This might be a first for me, but the notes in The Colony included photographs that Tayman mentions in the text. No photographs are in the actual text. For the purists – Tayman didn’t change a single name in The Colony.
As an aside, the cover photograph by Todd Gipstein is stunning.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Hawaii” (p 93). However, the book is misplaced. Pearl included it in fiction because of Father Damien mentioned in another book.

What Just Happened

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Gleick, James. What Just Happened?: a Chronicle from the Information Frontier. Pantheon Books, 2002.

Reason read: Gleick celebrates a birthday in August. Read in his honor.

Gleick needs a time machine. He wants his reader to put him or herself back in the 1990s as much as possible when reading What Just Happened. We need to remember the internet as it was just starting out. Portable phones. Pagers. ATMs. The essays cover bugs in Microsoft (essays written in August 1992 and again in June of 1997), the transformation of cellphone communication, the question of caller ID and ethics, the Y2K Crisis (for which Gleick apologizes for reporting impending doom four years prior), the idea of anonymous spending is only possible with cash (Think about it. No other form of money is without identifiers of some sort.), humorous password creations – all with a snarky tone that is just delightful.
Gleick’s opinion of internet pornography and its future is laughable. My favorite section was when Gleick unpacked an alert sent by MSN, pointing out vague language, half truths, cloudy communication, deliberate mis-directions, down playing failures, all with skillful ambiguity and clever concealment of the truth. Humor aside, Gleick makes you think about how far we have come.

Quotes to quote, “We have to learn the odd skill of speaking freely to someone who won’t hear us until later” (p 38). I wish I could teach my mother that skill. She will talk and talk on someone’s answering machine until she is cut off.

Author fact: At the time of publication, Gleick lived in the Hudson Valley. I wonder if Natalie Merchant was a neighbor?

Book trivia: What Just Happened isn’t Gleick’s only book. I am reading Chaos and Faster for the Challenge.

Playlist: “Stop in the Name of Love”, Supremes, Dolly Parton, Nat King Cole, “Naughty Angeline”, Crash Test Dummies, T-Bone Walker, Jim Fyhrie, 10,000 Maniacs (!), “Hail to the Chief”, Beastie Boys, Adiemus, Frank Sinatra, Harvey Danger, Dave Matthews Band, the Beatles, Scott Joplin, Mozart, and Madonna.

Nancy said: Pearl said What Just Happened is one of Gleick’s more accessible books. I agree 100%.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Books (for the Interested But Apprehensive Layperson)” (p 211).

Fruit of the Lemon

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Levy, Andrea. Fruit of the Lemon. Picador Press, 1999.

Reason: Jamaica won its independence in August. This year it was celebrated on August 6th. Read to celebrate the history.

Faith Jackson is a Londoner just trying to make her way. She has a decent job, an apartment full of roommates, and a loving family living close by. Born to Jamaican parents, Faith does not look like a pale-skinned Englishwoman, but this has never been a problem until Faith wants to improve her life. At the corners of this seemingly content life, she starts to notice subtle roadblocks; a prejudice towards her gender and skin color. Why does she have to jump through hoops to get the job for which she is perfect?
Fruit of the Lemon will make you think about unconscious bias. There is a scene when Faith’s nationality is assumed. Even though she was born and raised in England, when people saw her dark skin, they immediately assumed she was from “away.” When she answered she was from London everyone wanted a different answer. In the end a trip to Jamaica made her realize she was more than her skin color. She was a great-granddaughter, a granddaughter, a daughter, a cousin, a niece, and an aunt.

Author fact: Levy passed away on Valentine’s Day in 2019 after a long battle with cancer.

Book trivia: Fruit of the Lemon is Levy’s third book. I am also reading Small Island and Long Song for the Challenge.

Setlist: “Lemon Tree” (as an aside, the Merrymen do a great version of “Lemon Tree”), “Danny Boy”, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, “Hey Mister Tallyman”, The Sound of Music, Oliver, Shostakovich, Cilla Black, “Abide with Me”, “Away in a Manger”, Miles Davis, “Ave Maria”, “Jingle Bells”, and “God Save the Queen”.

Nancy said: Pearl said not to forget Andrea Levy.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean: Jamaica” (p 56).

“The Adventure at Wisteria Lodge”

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. “The Adventure at Wisteria Lodge.” Doubleday and Company, 1930.

Doyle loves words. Case in point: John Scott Eccles, the man who comes to Sherlock for help describes his experience as incredible, grotesque, singular, unpleasant, improper, outrageous, queer and bizarre. All that really happened was that he spent the night at some place called Wisteria Lodge as the guest of Aloysius Garcia, but upon waking found that everyone had disappeared, including the host. As he was sharing this incredible, grotesque, singular, unpleasant, improper, outrageous, queer, bizarre news with Sherlock and Watson, the inspector from Scotland Yard arrives to say Aloysius was found murdered. Through a series of tips and clues, Sherlock is led to the home of Mr. Henderson. He is actually Don Juan Murillo. How he is connected to the disappearance of Aloysius Garcia, I am not sure. Of course, there is a mysterious woman who isn’t as she seems.

Story trivia: Holmes looks back at mysteries solved in other stories.

Burning Marguerite

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Inness-Brown, Elizabeth. Burning Marguerite: a Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: part of Burning Marguerite takes place in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in the month of August.

Marguerite Ann Bernadette-Marie Deo, otherwise known as Tante, has passed away. Burning Marguerite starts with James Jack’s third person perspective, and at first, you think it’s going to be his story. However, Marguerite, in her own voice, tells the genesis of her nearly one hundred years and how the orphan James Jack came into her life. The reader gets to know Tante more James, which, in my opinion, is a missed opportunity. James Jack is a character ripe for exploration. As it stands, he is a thirty-plus-year-old man who has never strayed too far from his sheltered island home somewhere in Vermont. He rarely has romantic relationships. The reader does not hear of friendships. His only mission is to take care of Tante. She is all he has ever known since his parents died in a tragic accident when he was just a baby. Meanwhile, Marguerite has lived a colorful life, experiencing great loves and losses from turn-of-the-century Vermont to 1920s New Orleans and back to the island of her childhood to live out the rest of her days as a hermit. A word of caution: Marguerite’s history is harsh. The more I read, the more I wept for her. A third character is the island as it lives and breathes, influencing the townspeople as if it had a personality of its own. Its harsh winters and small-town gossip do well to feed a sense of unease.

Confessional: I had a little trouble with chronology. I’ve tried to make sense of it a few times. Because Inness-Brown moves the timeline around I am not sure of the order of events after Marguerite’s death. She and James Jack argue about a married woman, Faith, on a Sunday night. Faith is leaving the island Monday morning and Tante wants James to go to her. Because of Faith’s marriage James refuses and out of anger sleeps in a secondary cabin, away from Tante. In the morning he finds Tante dead. At first James Jack feels the need to report the death and goes to the sheriff’s office. He changes his mind after he’s sitting across from the sheriff. Tante would not want the law involved with her remains. Meanwhile, Faith had a flight to catch sometime on Monday but she would have to go the mainland first. So when does James Jack catch up to her and ask her for help with Tante?

Line I loved, “I wanted to interpret your look, to read that gaze, but I had not yet learned the language in which your eyes wrote their message” (p 41). Stunning.

Author fact: According to the back flap of Burning Marguerite Inness-Brown lives on an island in Lake Champlain, Vermont. I have to wonder if Grain Island is modeled after South Hero.

Book trivia: Burning Marguerite is Inness-Brown’s first novel.

Setlist: “It Was Just One of Those Things”, and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Novels” (p 88) and again in the chapter called “New Orleans” (p 168).

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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Roberts, Gillian. How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Ballantine Books, 1994.

Reason read: to continue the series started in July in honor of Philadelphia’s Global Fusion Festival.

What is a mild mannered prep school teacher doing in seedy Atlantic City trying to solve a mystery? In a nutshell, photographer and fun girl, Sasha, is trouble and in trouble. Even though she is one of Amanda’s best friends, on her own she is a handful. Twice divorced, 6′ tall with wild raven-dark hair and bad choices in men. What could possibly go wrong? Add Atlantic City, gambling, crazy people, and a dead body to the mix and you have a whole new Amanda Pepper mystery. Sasha convinces Amanda to take a vacation with her to Atlantic City while she is on a photography assignment. Once there somehow she and Amanda are tangled up in the death of a well-liked financier who finds money for the elderly and underserved. Tangled because Jesse Reese was found in Sasha’s and there is a witness who saw the two of them together entering the room…
The breadcrumbs of clues: Frankie gave Sasha the upgraded hotel room, hoping for a date. Does he have something to do with it? Homeless lady babbles about losing her fortune. Who is she and why does she latch on to Amanda? In truth, I wanted Jesse to have faked his own death. That would have been a fun twist.
While Amanda is trying to clear Sasha of homicide charges, she is also trying to detangle her relationship with her cop. Mackenzie follows Amanda in hopes of talking about their relationship. She spends more time playing detective than figuring out where her heart is hiding.

Confessional: I spend a long weekend at Atlantic City not that long ago. the boardwalk of old is barely recognizable. The wicker furniture on wheels used to ferry tourists from place to place has long been replaced by extra long and extra speedy golf carts.

Lines I liked, “I tried to become Sasha, to add four inches to my height and geometric increments to my self-confidence” (p 27), “Cats are pragmatists, not romantics” (p 92),

Author fact: Gillian Roberts real name is Judith Greber.

Book trivia: How I Spent Last Summer is a very quick read and can be read independent of other Amanda Pepper mysteries.

Playlist: Harry Belafonte, “Sunrise, Sunset”, and Cher.

Nancy said: Pearl said it was always a pleasure to read the Amanda Pepper series.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 25).

Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded August 27th, 1883

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Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded August 27th, 1883. HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Reason read: one hundred and forty years ago this month a volcano blew its top, killing 40,000 people.

Reading anything by Simon Winchester is like going into a restaurant that has a twenty-plus page menu. So much information and everything looks good. I personally find Winchester fun to read because he is not didactic, dry or stale. His personal anecdotes add flavor and spice to just about any topic he cares to write. In this case, “the day the world exploded,” the day the volcano, Krakatoa, erupted. Winchester delves into the science behind the disaster; what caused the eruption and the deadly tsunami that followed. For example, on the “explosivity index” Krakatoa was a seven; measured by the amount of material that is ejected and the height to which it is spewed through the atmosphere. Rest assured, he will tell you everything beyond the science as well. Death counts, survivor recollections, political implications, even information you didn’t know you needed like the origin story of time zones and anecdotal information about historical characters. He’ll joke about the different ways to spell Krakatoa and emphasize the fact that the original island was blown to smithereens.
My only letdown was that I was disappointed with the inclusion of a black and white photograph of Frederic Edwin Church’s painting of a sunset over ice on Chaumont Bay of Lake Ontario. The whole point of mentioning the painting was the colors most likely caused be Krakatoa. Not helpful as a black and white picture.

Quote I liked, “Krakatoa, after the final majestic concatenation of seismic and tectonic climaxes that occured just after ten that Monday morning, had simply and finally exploded itself out of existence” (p 257). Can you just imagine it? I picture a toddler having a ginormous, ear-piercing, destructive meltdown and then falling asleep without fanfare.

Author fact: I am reading seven books by Winchester. I couldn’t tell you which one has been my favorite thus far. Everyone knows The Professor and the Madman but I think I am looking forward to The River at the Center of the World.
Another small fact: at the time of publication Winchester was living in the Berkshires.

Book trivia: Krakatoa includes a bunch of black and white photographs and maps. I mentioned that already.

Playlist: Ebiet G. Ade’s “Jakarta 1”.

Nancy said: Pearl only mentioned two books in the chapter on Krakatoa.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Krakatau” (p 133).

Farewell Symphony

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White, Edmund. The Farewell Symphony. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Reason read: I started White’s trilogy in June to celebrate pride month. Farewell Symphony is the last of the three.

We continue the autobiography of an unknown protagonist (okay, okay! It’s White). By now he is a full fledged adult and it is the early 1960s. Whereas the other books in the trilogy spanned a short period of time, Farewell Symphony is much longer and covers nearly thirty years, ending in the early 1990s. By the end of The Farewell Symphony Mr. Nameless has outlived most of his friends. AIDS has infiltrated his love life. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us start at the beginning. Brice, a former lover, died six months before the story opens. From there, the author experiences a string of sexual encounters barely qualifying as relationships: the heartbreak over Sean, a man who was unobtainable. Lou and Kevin. Fox. I could go on. For the most part, Farewell Symphony seems to be a running commentary on sex within the homosexual community. The nameless protagonist prowls for hookups, threesomes, and orgies all fueled by an insatiable desperation to not go lonely. When he isn’t trying to get laid, he desires to be published. The most poignant and sorrowful portion of The Farewell Symphony is the bitter end. True to the title of the book, the symphony of gay men die off, one by one, leaving one voice to take a final bow.

I’ve having a mental block. I cannot think of the word when several coincidences occur at the same time. I just finished reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and White’s character is also reading the epic story.

A weird moment of deja vu: I came across a passage in The Farewell Symphony where a character defends sex with children. I feel like that exact same passage was either earlier in the book or in a previous volume of the trilogy.

Quotes worth quoting, “I’ve never liked to feel things in the appropriate way at the right moment” (p 3), “I invited him home and found him to be complicated in ways that bored me” (p 23),

Author fact: at the time of publication, White was a professor at Princeton University.

Book trivia: some reviews of The Farewell Symphony called it trashy.

Setlist: George Thill’s “O Soave Fanciulla” from La Boheme, Sgt. Pepper, Haydn #45, Billie Holiday, Helen Morgan, “Chopsticks”, Verdi, Wagner, Aretha Franklin, Gerard Souzay-Dupare, “Why Did You Leave Me?”, “Strangers in the Night”, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Paolo Conte, Bartok, “the Magic Flute”, Frank Sinatra, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, Phoebe Snow, Diana Ross, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, Puccini, Schubert’s “Erlkonig”, “Up on the Roof” by the Nylons, and Helen Morgan.

Nancy said: Pearl said nothing specific about The Farewell Symphony.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93).

Lessons in Chemistry

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Garmus, Bonnie. Lessons in Chemistry. Read by Amanda Raison. AudioBook, 2022.

Reason read: while on a boat ride a friend suggested this book.

Preface: I honestly feel Lessons in Chemistry would be more relatable if everyone read a little Betty Friedan or Marilyn French beforehand. Friedan was a feminist who published The Feminine Mystique in the early 1960s and French came later with The Women’s Room. Both books articulate the feminist movement around the same time as Lessons in Chemistry. Elizabeth Zott is an uncompromising, quirky, brilliant chemist. Because this is the late 1950s, she can’t taken seriously as a scientist. She is a woman after all, and all women belong in the kitchen. Which, ironically, is where Zott ends up making her initial mark on society. This is a story about how your past can shape your future. Elizabeth is born to religious charlatan parents. Fraudulent scam artists. From this embarrassing upbringing Elizabeth promises to always be truthful to her illegitimate child. And speaking of Mad, I loved Zott’s precocious child who was named after the cookies from Proust’s Remembrance of Thing Past. My favorite character, and probably the best character is 6:30, the remarkable dog who understands nearly 1,000 words in the English language. Lessons in Chemistry is fun. Don’t overanalyze it. Have a good time with it. And if you listen to the audio version, try to ignore Raison’s weird accent for one of the characters.

As an aside, I just finished reading Proust’s romans-flueve and had to laugh when Mad wondered about Krakatoa and if it would erupt again anytime soon. I, too, am reading about Krakatoa.

Author fact: Garmus took all her chemistry knowledge from a 1950s textbook in order to have complete accuracy for the time period.

Book trivia: I just learned Lessons in Chemistry will be a television series this fall. Interesting. Will I watch? Of course I will.

Playlist: Frank Sinatra and “Keep On the Sunny Side of Life”.