The Big Book Post

It's the most wonderful time of the year: time to reflect on the books I've read in 2015! I always end the year with a Big Book Post (see previous Big Book Posts).

I finished my reading challenge, completing my sixteenth of sixteen books yesterday, and just in the nick of time.

Books read, in order
Dec-Jan: The Mathematician's Shiva, by Stuart Rojstaczer
Jan: Yes, Please, by Amy Poehler
Feb: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Feb: The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood
Mar: Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
2013-Apr: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR), by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Apr: Gulp, by Mary Roach
Apr: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
May: Rats, by Robert Sullivan
Jun: The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Jul-Aug: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
Sep: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
Oct: The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nov: Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Dec: Paper Towns, by John Green
Dec: The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

The best and the worst
I read a bunch of books I really loved this year, but it's not hard to choose a favorite. Poisonwood stands out above the rest. It was a fascinating story and well-told. A close second was HPMOR, which I've been reading since 2013 but the final 21 chapters were only published this year, so I'm counting it as a 2015 book. It's brilliant what Yudkowsky's done with the Harry Potter story, and if you can bear the length (over 2,000 pages) and the stigma of fan fiction, I highly recommend it.

It pains me to say it, but Rats was the book I liked the least this year. The topic was interesting, but the writing wasn't really flowing smoothly into my brain. Interestingly, Poisonwood and Rats were loaned to me by the same friend.

By the authors
I read ten books by men and six by women.
I read three Brits (Lahiri, Gaiman, and Pratchett) and one Canadian (Atwood). Everyone else was born in the USA.
The oldest (and deadest) author I read was Vonnegut (b. 1922), followed by Atwood (b. 1939, and very much alive), and then Pratchett (b. 1948) who died WHILE I was reading Good Omens. Sorry guys. All other authors are younger, and living. I couldn't find ages for the authors of Welcome to Night Vale, which I suppose is appropriate, since time is weird there. I am assuming they are the youngest of the authors I read this year.
This was my fourth time reading Atwood, my third and fourth times reading Gaiman, and my fifth time reading Roach. The rest were new to me.

By genre
1 memoir
2 non-fiction (biology and nature)
13 fiction
 - 3 YA
 - 4 Sci-fi
 - 4 Fantasy

Ender's Game is the first in a series I will probably not continue.
The Year of the Flood is the second in a trilogy I probably will finish.

By publication date
The oldest book I read was Sirens of Titan, published in 1959. Everything else was published in the 90s or later, including two books published this year: Welcome to Night Vale and HPMOR (sort of).

By setting
Settings include New York, Newport (RI), Boston, Columbus, Chicago, Orlando, Oklahoma, Missouri, Wisconsin, Georgia, Night Vale (California?), Atwood's vague concept of the future North America, London and the English countryside, Yudowsky's alternate Hogwarts, the Belgian Congo, USSR, Calcutta, Mars, Mercury, Titan (moon of Saturn), elsewhere in space, and the human digestive tract. Specific time settings range from WWII to 2044, but Ender's Game certainly goes beyond that (if it takes place in our reality), and as was previously mentioned, time is meaningless in Night Vale (and out of it).

Films
I watched the movie of Gone Girl. I started watching the movie of Ender's Game but didn't finish it, and I have yet to see The Namesake movie. I'm very much looking forward to the movie of Ready Player One and the HBO miniseries being made of Atwood's MaddAddam series (of which Flood is a part).

Book clubs
I didn't read any of these as part of a book club, but I was inspired to read The Namesake because my college fraternity chapter selected it for their book club. I tried to read along with them and participate, but I ended up zipping through it. Plus, I'm sure I read Welcome to Night Vale at the same time as many (tens of? hundreds of?) thousands of fellow fans worldwide.

Reading in interesting places
I read Ender's Game on a cruise ship.
I saw many subway rats while reading Rats (although the book focuses on rats in alleys).
I read The Sirens of Titan on Titan.

Where I got them
Borrowed: Yes Please and Paper Towns (Sara), Neverwhere (Scott), Ender's Game (dyAnne), Gone Girl (Talia), Rats and Poisonwood Bible (Charlene), Ready Player One (Matthew)
Gifts: Mathematician's Shiva (Bethany), Sirens of Titan (Sara)
Bought: Flood (The Word in Greenpoint), Good Omens (The Word in Jersey City), Gulp (Strand), Night Vale (Amazon)
Read online for free: HPMOR
Just had it: Namesake

Looking ahead

• My first priority for 2016 is to tackle the pile of books I got for the holidays, which will achieve several goals: reading books within a year of being given them, feeding my Sarah Vowell obsession (Lafayette in the Somewhat United States), and reading more non-fiction (the stack is almost entirely non-fiction).
• Reading the books Lindsay got me for my birthday will intersect with the gift goal, the non-fiction goal (David Byrne's How Music Works) and the Neil Gaiman obsession (Trigger Warning).
• I would like to complete the MaddAddam trilogy by reading Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam.
• I've recently discovered Vonnegut and I've taken a year off from Murakami which is too long.
• I have a shopping bag full of books from the shelves of a friend who was purging before a move, and I plan to delve into it starting with Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series.
• The first two bullets in this list contain plenty of non-fiction to choose from, but in case I need more, I'd like to prioritize Guns, Germs, and Steel and A People's History of the United States.

Happy new reading year!

Vocabulary

When I was a kid in summer camp, I had a friend who would do his summer reading on the bus. Since we were kids and didn't yet know all the words (spoiler: we still don't), he kept a dictionary with him, and would look things up as needed.

Flash forward to now, and like my camp friend, I occasionally find an unfamiliar word while reading on the subway. Carrying a dictionary with me is preposterous, and Google can't always hear my requests from deep underground, so I've started keeping a list of words to look up later. Here are the new words I learned from reading Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan.

rakehell: A person of questionable morals (to put it blandly), used in the book to describe the protagonist.
parvenu: Essentially "new money," derogatory, again describing the main character but in the eyes of an aristocratic woman.
treed: This one was easy to figure out from context but I loved it so much I wrote it down. In this context it means trapped in a high place, such as up a tree. In the book, someone speculates being "treed on the fountain," and I thought this was a very colorful way of describing that.
quondam: Former, although in the book it seems to mean "absent" or "intermittent," as it describes a man who blinks in and out of existence, in contrast with his very solid and permanent house.
glancing: Brief and indirect, referring to a question asked by a character who wasn't entirely interested in hearing the answer.
desiderata: Things desired. "Healthy, charming wise children were the desiderata."
phlegmatic: Not prone to action or emotion. This word has been knocking around in my brain for many years and I'm glad to finally have the excuse to look it up. It is used to describe mountains in contrast with people.
peyotl: This appears to just be an alternate or foreign spelling of peyote. He seemed to be using it as an adjectival form of peyote (peyotal?), but I guess not.
concupiscence: Sexual desire, referring to the Sirens of Titan themselves.
incipient: in the beginning stages, describing a character's baldness.
scalplock: I can only find this as a two-word phrase: "scalp lock" referring to a tuft of hair on an otherwise shaven head.
brummagem: Showy but inferior and worthless, describing souvenirs.
noblesse oblige: From Google: "the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged." In the book, the human is privileged and the machine/robotic life form is less.
skylarking: Playing a game or doing something just for the fun of it. In the book, an action is described as not skylarking, but rather a strategic move.
sepulchrally: In a manner relating to a tomb or burial (knowing the definition of sepulcher would have helped). This referred to an apparently gravely ill character's speech.
salubrious: Promoting health, referring in the book to the climate.

That's not an apple; that's a cloud.

About a month ago, I downloaded an OS update to my very old iMac. I knew it was risky business, but the specs said my computer could support it. Although the user reviews were all pretty bad, none of their complaints were things that mattered to me, and I figured if they're offering an update, I may as well get it, rather than letting my computer plunge deeper into the stone age (2008).

Speaking of outdated things, I'd been using the Address Book app (represented by a beige book icon with an "@" emblazoned on it) to keep my holiday card list. Address Book is a disconnected, local app that you can't access from anywhere but your computer, but that suited me fine.

Old: bad.

New: good!

Apple disagreed. I downloaded the upgrade and installed it, and then days later it was time to start my holiday cards. I went to the dock and discovered that the beige book was gone and in its place was a slightly browner one with an encircled portrait silhouette called "Contacts." I opened it and it was empty. The upgrade had apparently wiped out my address book.

My concern deepened when I couldn't find the physical notebook in which I'd kept the list of people I'd sent cards to last year. It didn't have addresses, but at least it would have been a starting point. I'll leave that aside, since Apple isn't to blame for it.

Some googling revealed that iCloud might be the solution, although no one reported my exact problem. I attempted to log into iCloud but it did not accept my password. After resetting my password I tried again, but now there was "a problem logging into your iCloud account."

After some screaming and swearing I gave up, and began the process of rebuilding my address book, entering information into Google Contacts as it came to me (so THERE).

Fast forward to today, when my iMac gently suggested I download some software upgrades, because that had worked so well LAST time. I complied, and after a restart, my computer asked me to enter my iCloud password. It took several minutes, but the login seemed to be working. After I'd accepted some terms and conditions and agreed to a few other things, ultimately the login failed. I was too jaded by this point to scream or cry.

Then it occurred to me to try logging into iCloud via my laptop. Envision a video montage with silly background music as I dig through piles of things in my apartment looking for my laptop. The laptop is brand new. I got it a few months ago after my iMac did something that made me very nervous. Since then my iMac has been working fine, and I'm too lazy to move things over, so I'm still using it as my primary computer. Anyway, I logged into iCloud successfully from my laptop.

Now imagine the Legend of Zelda secret sound (or if you can't, click here) as I turn to see a dialog box pop up on my iMac telling me that I've logged into iCloud from another computer. "How do YOU know?" I wondered, since my iMac was ostensibly not connected to iCloud, however all signs now pointed to connected. I opened Contacts optimistically, and at first there was nothing in there, but seconds later it populated with all of my entries from my old address book. HAPPY ENDING! iCloud had indeed sucked up my info, and was just holding on to it until I pushed the right boulder out of the way causing the secret passageway to appear.

Next stop, Ganondorf

The notebook remains at large.

Prize winners

This was a fun little exercise. I just scoured the lists of National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and Pulitzer Prize winners to see how many I've read. I wasn't expecting many, since I read for pleasure and therefore very few "modern classics." The result is I haven't read many compared to how many award winners there are, but more than I expected.

National Book Award:

• Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette (1992, non-fiction)
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001, fiction)
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005, non-fiction)

Man Booker Prize for Fiction:

• Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000)
• The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002)

I also read half of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009), so I will give myself half-credit for that. I've also read five books shortlisted for the prize:

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986)
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali (2003)
• Oryx and Crake  by Margaret Atwood (2003)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
• A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (2013)

Wow, this award really loves Atwood and Ishiguro (there are several more of their books which have won or been shortlisted).

Pulitzer Prize:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961, fiction)
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011, fiction)

Half-credit for Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003, fiction). I've also read four finalists, two of which are also National Book Award winners (The Corrections and The Year of Magical Thinking). The other two are What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (2013, fiction) and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1999), which I was wondering why I hadn't seen on any of these lists yet.

For my exposure to award-winning books, I have the following sources to thank: the CHA and ARMANi book clubs, working at Borders (from which was born both aforementioned book clubs), a dude in a gay chat room, and various book-reading friends.

Oh, and this exercise was inspired by the Book Riot 2015 Read Harder Challenge, which I only just now discovered so any goals achieved are purely chance.

Suddenly there is music in the sound of your name

Rosemary.

It's a race to the finish as my root vegetables soften before I go ahead and eat them. This is a tale of three relatively successful dinners in a row.

Monday: Spaghetti Squash with Thai Peanut Sauce
At the suggestion of a friend I tried this recipe, and if you do too I suggest printing the recipe out right now, or saving the text in a Word file. The website is wonky (I cooked this a few days after I intended to because I couldn't get the site to load at the critical moment) and it's one of those pages with a lot going on. Even the process of calling it up to post the link here slowed my computer way down.

• The best part: scooping out the roasted spaghetti squash. I was prepared for that to be an annoying process, but it was super fun.
• The worst part: buying entire jars of things only to use a few spoonfuls. This mainly refers to the red curry paste (which I already have a plan for), the sesame oil (which I know I could have subbed out, but I kinda wanted sesame oil), and the soy sauce (which I suppose will inspire me to do more Asian cooking). The coconut sugar I just laughed out loud at. There's always something that makes me laugh out loud, and this time, that was it.
• The improvised part: Since the recipe was a little vague on which herb I should use, I used all of them. My mom clipped me some herbs from her herb garden and I figured it was now or never. I chopped up basil, sage, chives, and parsley. I stopped short of adding rosemary (foreshadowing) and mint.

Also: arugula and tomato salad.

Tuesday: Leftover Thai Peanut Sauce With Noodles and Steamed Vegetables

At first I was annoyed when Monday's recipe only called for a 1/4 cup of the pint of peanut sauce it had me make, but the leftover sauce made a delicious meal over egg noodles and steamed broccoli and carrots. I have a picture for you:

Wednesday: A Parade of Roasted Root Vegetables

My beets and radishes were getting pillowy soft, so it was time to eat them lest I discover what stage comes after pillowy soft. I decided to roast the beets since the last time I boiled a beet I got yelled at. I searched for "roasting beets" and Google cheerfully responded in the voice of Bobby Flay. As long as I was roasting beets I decided to do the same with the radishes and the rest of my carrots, for which this recipe conveniently presented itself. I used fresh rosemary instead of dried thyme, and it has made all the difference. Everything was yummy, but:

• The recipe called for baby carrots and I used regular (peeled, don't worry) carrots, so they were a little al dente despite being left in longer.
• The beet recipe said 45-60 minutes, but it took a full 90 to cook these beets, which were slightly smaller than cantaloupes. 
• The beets were a bitch to peel, unlike boiled beets where the peel slides right off.
• The roasted beets tasted EXACTLY THE SAME as boiled beets.

Also, slightly wilty and blackened arugula and limp tomato salad

Improv in the kitchen: "yes, sometimes"

I am generally not comfortable going off-recipe in the kitchen. Given my limited kitchen knowledge, I will usually go out and buy the exact ingredients rather than substitute with similar things I have handy, or I'll say no thanks to that recipe and look for another one.

As you may have read, my CSA membership has been encouraging me to be more adventurous with my meals and I've been broadening my horizons. A friend recommended I try this recipe to address the abundance of beets and carrots in my fridge. Some minor adjustments I made were to use cedron (aka beebrush or lemon verbena) instead of parsley because, as I said with chamomile, what the hell else was I supposed to do with it? I also used olive oil instead of "walnut oil" because no.

as if

But the substitution I made that had the largest effect on the outcome was to use a regular knife instead of a mandoline. When I read "Using a mandoline," there was a laugh-out-loud moment, and instead I sliced as thinly as I could, which was not very thin. The resulting salad is a real fork-breaker:

I think a mandoline is a neat thing to own, so I might buy one. I certainly will not be making this dish again until I do.

Neither an egg nor a plant, discuss

Eggplant is something new that's come into my house thanks to the CSA. There were five of them, purple as can be. Here are the two that remain:

A nightshade is neither a night nor a shade.

I brought one to a neighborly courtyard cookout over the weekend, sliced it, brushed it with a mixture of oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and placed it on the grill on a sheet of foil. This turned out well.

Tonight I assigned myself the "simple" task of making eggplant parmigiana. Nota bene: not all recipes at simplyrecipes.com are simple. This one started with slicing the eggplants and laying them out on a rack for two hours so they can "release moisture." I literally laughed out loud in my apartment by myself, eyed a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese on a nearby shelf, checked with a friend that this was bullshit, and then continued with the recipe.

My eggplants were small, and I didn't have any mozzarella (::gasp::), so I didn't do the layering-in-a-casserole-dish step. I just dumped them and the sauce on some fettuccine and called it dinner. The eggplant slices were burnt beyond all recognition, but I knew they were eggplant (once) and that's all that matters.

Very excited to make pesto out of all the leftover basil. That's a thing I do now. Thank you, CSA!