The French Ingredient

I feel somewhat ambivalent about this memoir. I very much enjoyed the cooking lessons and market tour I took through La Cuisine Paris, the business run by the author. The memoir is ostensibly about her move to Paris for a different job and eventually opening La Cuisine. And yet it felt a little…elementary, maybe? Very much about her mid-western “can do” ethos vs French culture, and less about the specifics of building the business. The French culture was mostly things I already knew from reading and school and basic research in advance of being a tourist there, so maybe I wasn’t the right audience for the memoir or had misplaced expectations. I will say that the tour of the king’s kitchen garden at Versailles was absolutely a highlight of my trip to Paris a decade ago, although I’m not sure it is offered any longer. The macaron lesson was fun, too, though, would recommend.

Finished watching Black Sails. I found the change in costuming for Flint to be fascinating. And the morphing of Silver, both the legend of Long John Silver and who he became and how he manipulated basically everyone. Same for Billy Bones. The pacing was a little slow for my taste but the cinematography was lovely. I am fascinated by how fandom (including academia) has interpreted the various sexual relationships – poly, queer, hetero. I’m kind of curious about whether there is word of god on them, but I haven’t gone looking.

2023 in review

On the reading front, I finished 28 books in 2023 which was equivalent to recent years but nothing close to the early 2000s when I read 150+ books per year. The best books of the year for me were Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making It So, and the English language translation of Juan Gomez Jurado’s Red Queen.

In terms of other media, I don’t keep track of movies or television as well as I do books (thanks, LibraryThing!). But here’s what I remember off hand:

• Foundation – hit or miss.
• Ted Lasso – not impressed with S3.
• Only Murders in the Building – liked the two episodes we watched at Thx, on my list to subscribe to Hulu for it when I pause other streaming subs.
• GBBO – I always enjoy it, I’m predictable that way.
• Deadloch – I finished the first series but am not sure I would watch the second series.
• The Fall of the House of Usher – really enjoyed it.
• Queen Charlotte – ambivalent about it.
• The Diplomat – some of it was cringey but I liked the PM and his sister.
• Glass Onion – yes, please, more Benoit Blanc.
• Hijack – I have professional opinions about parts of this that I will keep to myself. But Idris Elba.
• Klaus – friend recommended this holiday movie and I really liked it.
• Last Christmas – only good things about this movie were the music and Michelle Yeoh (who I assume did it for the paycheck), otherwise it was painfully written/plotted and acted.
• Dungeons & Dragons – enjoyed, would watch a sequel set in the same universe.
• Last season of Escape to the Chateau – it was time for a variety of reasons.
• Mafia Mamma – it was terrible, I can only hope that Toni Collette got a huge paycheck because otherwise there is no excuse for it.

Rewatches: Persuasion, While You Were Sleeping, The Grinch (Original), The Expanse

Theater/BCS: Tiny Beautiful Things, Life is a Stage, Flamenco by the Royal Opera of Madrid

Hockey: a lot? Games in PGH vs the Bruins, the Flyers, opening night against the Next Next Next One, VGK, the Rangers, the Blues, and the Islands. And Chicago vs. the Leafs in Chicago.

Live music: Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, The Eagles, Stevie Nicks, Billy Joel.

Travel:

• Pittsburgh (does it could as travel at this point?)
• Chicago
• Portland (Maine)
• Cape Cod
• Portugal – Lisbon, Porto, and Sintra, with road/day trips to Evora, Aveiro, Braga, Guimaraes, Azeitao, Setubal, Arrabida, Tomar, Obidos, Fatima, Nazare, Batalha, Queluz, and Cascais.

As an aside, I cannot express how much I do not care for the upgrades/updates to WordPress. As someone who does a lot of writing in Word, I find its formatting to be clunky and the hovering box to be irritating. I don’t blog much, although I would like to do it more and get back into the habit, but I’m not sure it will be with WP/JP.

More from the library

I’m on a little bit of a reading roll. (knock on wood!)

I finished Rosalind Franklin The Dark Lady of DNA, a biography of the scientist whose unpublished data and photograph of DNA was used/seen by Crick and Watson in their discovery of the structure of DNA. She died young and did a lot of other research and science, and DNA wasn’t even her focus. But their misogyny and lack of attribution is pretty galling to read even today.

Liked the new Murderbot installment, System Collapse.

Enjoyed Patrick Stewart’s autobiography or memoir, Making It So. He’s my favorite Star Trek captain based almost entirely on age of introduction to the series, and I was fortunate enough to see him and Ian McKellen on Broadway a decade ago. There’s always a danger that an autobiography will reveal feet of clay, and there are some less than admirable episodes, which is to be expected in an 80+ year life. But it was a relief to read of his pro-union, anti-Thatcher, anti-Reagan stances, even as they were just casual asides among anecdotes. (As ever, I remain perplexed by affection expressed for royals, although I would not presume to speculate on his opinion about the monarchy generally.)

Started watching Only Murders in the Building while visiting my sister and brother-in-law over Turkey Day, so I’m going to have to investigate a subscription for that. Others have recommended The Bear as well, so…

There was no turkey on Turkey Day – brother-in-law made cassoulet, and it was delightful. We went to a hockey game (another NHL city/arena checked off the list) and watched football and hockey and were couch potatoes. Or I was; they both went running, while I loafed.

2022 reading summary

Okay, not a great reading year in terms of reading for entertainment or at my own discretion. Twenty four books in total, mostly popular/genre fiction. But interestingly (to me), although there were a few fiction books that I rated 4.5 or 5 at LibraryThing, the ratio of good reads to average was much better in nonfiction for me.

Caste and Try This At Home were 5 and 4.5 stars, respectively, among the three non-work-related nonfiction books I read. Among the 21 fiction books, the only ones I rated as 4.5 or 5 were The Hate U Give and Amongst Our Weapons.

I picked up the first of a young adult series by Jennifer Lynne Barnes at The Strand and liked it enough to borrow the other two from the library. The concept reminded me of Clue, a game I loved as a kid. But reading them in close proximity may have been a disservice. Or maybe not – should books be able to withstand the potential glom? Either way, I liked the first book, thought the second could have been half the length, and didn’t finish the third.

Much of my other reading was by old autobuy authors based on nostalgia that I need to break away from. My perspective has changed and some of the content doesn’t make for relaxing reading any longer; I can’t root for h/h whose behavior actively angers me. [There’s nothing wrong with that in lit fic. But it’s not what I look for in genre fiction, where I want the HEA/HFN or the mystery neatly wrapped up without violating civil rights or criminal procedure.]

I’ve started another book purge. The last time I moved, I donate a lot of books but the shelves have started to be double stacked again. Right now 150ish are boxed and bagged for donation, and there are about 200 more books to pick through. Included in the donation boxes are most of the In Death series, Jo Nesbo’s backlist, many of Carla Kelly’s trads, and most of Bujold’s backlist. The sheer number of travel-related books, not just guides but essays on travel in different countries, is a little embarrassing.

Bridgerton S2

I liked it? I liked the inclusion of Southeast Asian characters via Sheffield to Sharma, but I will defer to other whether it was done with sufficient nuance – it didn’t seem offensive to me but how would I know if they’d done something awful? I thought the nod to pre wedding activities and the inclusion of patterns (paisleys) were lovely.

I did not love some of the writing for Edwina Sharma, who was inconsistent about practical marriage vs love match. I also do not love the Penelope developments.

Loved the reflections of P&P adaptations, and to Bollywood’s non-kisses.

Loved the clothes, even if they were not necessarily historically accurate. Admired the ladies’ dresses, lusted for the waistcoats.

Also: worth watching for Adjoa Andoh’s Lady Danbury. Her clothes. Her cane. Her curled lip. This line kills me: “After passion cools and fate intervenes, who else is a woman left with but herself?”

Year in review – 2021

Well…2021 was another year.

Still working from home. It’s not mandatory, but there’s not much point going in to the office – no one is going in willingly, mostly because they have to either drive and pay to park or brave public transportation, which is a petri dish of colds and flu at the best of times. Right now, we are tentatively going back in March 2022, making two full years of working from home. [HR and senior management have pushed back that date four times now, most recently pre-Omicron variant, so I guess we’ll see.]

Resumed some normal things, pre-Omicron. Numbers are down, compared to 2019 and earlier but are an improvement over most of 2020.

Travel:

• Road trips (2) to Western PA.
• Week in WV, spent mostly offline. Utterly delightful.
• Visit to Houston to cling to The BioChemist – 2020 was only the 3rd Thanksgiving I’ve ever NOT spent with her, so it was nice to resume.
• Then on to Seattle. In part to go someplace new, and in part to check another team/venue off my hockey bucket list. Two thumbs up both to Climate Pledge Arena and Seattle generally.

Relatively few concerts or sporting events:

• Game 5 of the PGH-NYI series in May (ugh, 2OT, what WAS that, Jarry?!?).
• Opening night for the Penguins (sorry, not sorry, Flower)
• The Hot Mess that was the PGH-MN game (lost in a shoot out after leading for the entire game).
• Coyotes vs. Capitals with The BioChemist and The Chemist.
• Penguins vs. Kraken in Seattle.
• Frank Turner acoustic – two live shows.
• John Oliver at the Kennedy Center.

Reading: LibraryThing says I read 37 books this year, including a few DNFs.

Once again, I was reminded that affectionate memories of books read in my younger years should probably be left as memories. Marion Chesney’s Six Sisters series has not aged well. Nora Roberts’ Waiting for Nick likewise has not aged well for me. Despite knowing better, I keep borrowing JD Robb books from the library, then having to refrain from ripping them in half in rage (since they aren’t my books) due to the horrendous criminal procedure and blatant civil rights violations.

On a happier note, I finally read the MurderBot series and loved it, it was the best fiction of the year for me, with Black Water Sister as a runner up. Best nonfiction was a toss up between Game Misconduct and The Cult of We.

Watched:

• New season/series of The Expanse (loved)
• Ted Lasso (I have Opinions about some of the story lines)
• GBBO – new series and a re-watch of the older series on Netflix before the disappeared on 1/1/22. [Dear Paul Hollywood, no one from the country that reveres sticky toffee pudding and treacle tart has any room to criticize USian pies as being sickly sweet.]

Really enjoyed Seattle and would absolutely go back. Despite spending a lot of time there, I feel like there were stores and nooks at Pike Place Market that I missed. And I could have spent much more time at the Chihuly museum. Had great meals at Betty and The Pink Door. Enjoyed the underground tour of Pioneer Square. Am still trying to figure out how to afford and where to put a chandelier seen at a glassblowing collective. Did a glassblowing experience at Kobo Art Garden that has prompted me to sign up for lessons locally.

A few photos below. Sorry, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the “hide and read more if you want to” using WP’s newish UI.

Not my favorite overall as glass art but I love the reflection of the Space Needle.

Iconic. Totally worth visiting.

Results of the glassblowing experience I signed up for.

The Space Needle, taken as I climbed up Queen Anne.

Wrapping up 2020

I’ve done a summary post of the books I read, places I visited, etc., for the last couple of years. 2020 has very little to recommend for itself looking back. The early months were pretty good, but later not so much.

Travel:

• Terceira in February (highly recommend)
• Pittsburgh for hockey (first week of March, just pre-lockdown)
• Antietam/western MD for a weekend in July
• Cape Cod for an isolated and quiet trip in September

Music:

• Online only – several Frank Turner shows, not much else.

Movies/TV:

• Can’t remember if I saw anything in the theater early on.
• Signed up briefly for Disney+ in order to see Hamilton and the first season of The Mandalorian.
• A lot of Netflix, including Schitt’s Creek (meh), Derry Girls (like it), and Bridgerton (not sure I’d bother with future seasons/series).
• Currently watching the new season of The Expanse on Amazon. I love Chrisjen Avasarala as a character.

Reading:

I finished 33 books. The highlights were Megan Whalen Turner’s The Return of the King and Ben Aaronovitch’s False Value. There are two former autobuy authors who finally tipped over the edge for me to not even being library borrows, and a lot of ~meh~ mixed in. I tried a couple of self-published works from writers I’ve found via fandom(s); sometimes the original fic works for me and sometimes not, which is perhaps a function of the canon and backstory in fandom that requires more work to establish in original fiction. I’ve been letting myself read Obama’s memoir in bits and pieces, as a comfort, so I started in 2020 but it will finish as a 2021 read. (It’ll be a highlight, I’m pretty sure.)

Books I’m looking forward to in 2021:

• Anna K. by Jenny Lee, a YA retelling of Anna Karenina. I haven’t read Anna Karenina since high school and my memory of it is such that I’m curious to read a YA adaptation.
• We Own This City by Justin Fenton. Non-fiction account of the Baltimore City Police Gun Trace Task Force, whose members have been federally indicted for a variety of crimes, including racketeering, drug dealing, and illegal searches and seizures.
• The new installment in Kelley Armstrong’s Rockton Yukon series.
• What Abigail Did That Summer, a novella in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.

Finishing 2020 and starting 2021

So…I re-read The Viscount Who Loved Me. It did not age well for me as a reader. I didn’t care for Anthony as hero at all: Kate deserved better. The only thing that really held up for me was the Pall Mall game, which I remembered as funny and did enjoy upon re-read.

Other than that, my only observation is that Lady Whistledown seems slightly more benign and less malicious than she’s read/voiced in Bridgerton, perhaps in part because of the lack of Marina storyline.

To start 2021, I downloaded a library copy of Harrow the Ninth, since I liked Gideon the Ninth. Unfortunately I had to nope right out pretty quickly: it uses second person narration, which I cannot read. I checked out spoilers, and understand why that was the POV as a narrative choice, but I can’t read hundreds of pages in 2nd person. Sorry not sorry, returned for the next digital reader in the queue.

Radio silence

You’d think that working from home and limiting travel and movement and socializing would make me more likely to blog. I’m spending time online, mostly doom-scrolling, and haven’t had the attention span to read much or to write anything other than gibberish. Or even just gibberish.

On the reading front, I managed to finish two books and one novella. One of the books was a sort of hate read, which is weird but there you go.

The Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. This reads as the wrap up of the series, and does a pretty good job of showing Eugenides as Attolis and annux, but also still the embodiment of the god of thieves when needed.

Masquerade in Lodi by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another entry in the Penric series, but this one earlier in the timeline. Enjoyable, but now that I’ve noticed how very Miles-like Penric’s adventures and personality are, it seems derivative despite the very different setting.

Shadows in Death by JD Robb. This was the hate read. Robb’s style flows well and the world building is familiar. I’m just disgusted by the disregard for civil rights and criminal procedure. Frankly, the excusing of Roarke’s criminal past seems less and less acceptable the longer the series stretches on, though not necessarily out of place with the idea of him being a billionaire. Restrains self from a written rant about how billionaires become billionaires in generally unsavory ways. Why do I keep borrowing these from the library? Also, I have Thoughts about the fictional NYPSD as successor to current day NYPD, with its terrible warts and union, but this is not the place for them. [Wow, apparently this series makes me want to say a lot about social issues and economics, which is maybe not what the author would have expected. ]

I’m currently reading Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, which is very readable and speaks to me as a fan with qualms about the health effects and inequality I see in my favorite sports. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is waiting for me via library hold, and a copy of the first volume of Barack Obama’s memoirs is sitting on my coffee table, waiting its turn.

I haven’t managed to watch much new other than the new series of the Great British Bake Off and Trust (FX). Oh, wait, I finally watched Schitt’s Creek. I…did not love it as much as other people seem to. I never really got rid of the feeling that the Rose family felt better than the locals, who seemed to never grow past being cliches mostly. And the character of Moira Rose, with her affectations, grated on my nerves terribly. I did appreciate the growth of Alexis, and that Stevie got to try new things outside of the town. I don’t know. I could see the character arcs and themes, I just didn’t really care for the Roses getting their HEAs or their storylines wrapped up.

I’m keeping up with the Portuguese lessons on Duolingo and via the children’s language workbooks I found online. Someday I’ll be able to visit Portugal again, and I want to be slightly less useless when I do.

Summer into fall

Went to Cape Cod last month. It was a relief to be away for a little bit. Work has continued to be a challenge for a variety of reasons. Family is mostly fine.

The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg following John Lewis earlier this sumer has left me feeling disheartened and sad.

~~~

The Two-Date Rule by Tawna Fesky. This was an impulse purchase when I was in Target a month or so ago. I read it while at the beach. It was fine as a beach read, ultimately average, I guess, although I was not particularly sold on the HEA. An HFN ending probably would have been more believable, given how much therapy and/or growth both the h/h needed.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow. Picked this up in July when I visited Turn the Page bookstore on my western MD roadtrip. It’s YA fantasy in which Black girls and women are sirens and other mythological creatures. I thought it was well done and would recommend it, with the caveat that it kept making me do metaphorical double takes. It was published in 2020 but presumably was written earlier, possibly in 2019 or earlier, but it is very on point to what is going on in the US right now. It is set in Portland, and at one point the narrator and her friends go downtown for a protest, and during the scene with the White moms strategizing/planning for what to do if the protest gets out of control, all I could think of was the current Portland protests and violence. At one point the narrator muses about what it would take to get the country to care about the death/disappearance of a young Black woman, and all I could think of was Breonna Taylor’s death.

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall. This was a library borrow; it came up as a recommendation on my library’s site based on my borrowing history. I did not particularly care for it and am glad it was not a book I bought. The main character/narrator is…not particularly sympathetic or even likeable. It’s not really clear to me as a reader what his redeeming qualities were, other than that he loved his mother. The love interest was shallowly perfect, the conflict was predictable, and the background characters were caricatures of British Types that seemed to have been pulled directly from Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral. Was the author going for a farce? I don’t know, but I wish I had the time I spent reading this book back. I kept waiting for it to improve and it just didn’t. More fool me for not putting it down, I guess.

The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty. End of the Daevabad trilogy. Liked it well enough, glad to have finished the trilogy, but it felt like it could easily have been half the length it was. And the ending felt a little series-bait-ish.

Recently watched The Old Guard. Really enjoyed it, although I have a lot of questions about the world building established in the graphic novels it is based on. Don’t love the art of the graphic novels, but have liked other work by Rucka. There’s a lot of really good meta about both the movie and the graphic novels on AO3, which I would recommend. And there is a huge amount of fan fiction and fan art on AO3 and tumblr. Fair warning though, I’ve clicked back out of A LOT of it, because the history and other things are Just Plain Wrong. WARNING RANT AHEAD. Ex: character reading French, Spanish and Italian books in a private collection in 1100. Aside from the idea that a non-wealthy or non-aristocratic person would just casually have a library/collection of books in the early 12th century, which seems unlikely, the languages listed are wrong. Linguistic history is not my strong suit, but I don’t think there was a singular, uniform language in those territories at that time. Spanish, which most people use to mean Castilian, was a language spoken on the Iberian peninsula then but by no means was it dominant at that point – it coexisted with Galician, Catalan, and other languages including Andalusi Romance and Andalusi Arabic. It would not have been called Spanish then, and I don’t think it was written at all until the next century, nor did it supplant Andalusi Romance until at least the next century, with Andalusi Arabic diminishing post-1492 (thanks, Nebrija). I assume similar for the French and Italian languages and their historical spread. The casual reference just makes me cringe, because it unthinkingly wraps up 1,000 years of cultural and linguistic imperialism (including 20th century minority language oppression), without any examination, which is sloppy and inconsistent with the other historical detail that the author clearly researched.