Sunday, June 28, 2009

Things I've Libraried

Working at the library (and winding down as a grad student, since whenever I'm in school I feel like I should be reading "serious" things) has gotten me back into a groove of reading for pleasure.

The first things I got were collections of comics, since I've also gotten back into reading newspaper comics (albeit on the internet) for reasons I may explain in a separate post. I got some Pearls Before Swine and some Get Fuzzy. I like Get Fuzzy a lot better and will probably get more of it in the future.


I next moved on to getting a whole bunch of P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster books. (Seriously, I went a little overboard.) I'd read a few before, but Neal hadn't, and he was interested since we've been watching the TV version. I'm still amazed by how closely the TV series sticks to the books. Sure, the TV show mixes and matches the plots quite a bit, and maybe changes a character or two, but I think it really embodies the spirit of what Wodehouse wrote. And even lifts some of the dialogue right out of the books. Anyway, the point is, those books are hilarious. Highly recommended! Eleven stars!

Remember when a real live author commented on my blog? That was crazy. I decided that the least I could do was check out one of her books (the choice of which one was random--it happened to come across my work station as I was checking in books one day). And it was pretty good! I know that doesn't sound like high praise, Ms. Chadwick, if you're reading, but considering that I have an aversion to historical fiction, I was very pleasantly surprised. In fact, I checked out two more and have them waiting on my shelf. (They did have to get in line, after all.) Let me share two things I liked about The Love Knot in particular: 1) There's a male lead and a female lead, so obviously, they will get together. But instead of the hoary old structure of "They fight, but then they make out!" it's more like "They don't really like each other, but then they build mutual respect, then acknowledge that they are mutually attracted to each other, and then they make out!" which is a lot more realistic. 2) There's a BIG TWIST! in the middle. I got to it and I was all, "OH MY GOSH THAT WAS A BIG TWIST!" (It was surprising.) And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I liked the history part, too. Most of the real-person characters weren't in there very much, but all of them were (as far as I know, and it's not like I'm a big medieval scholar or anything) faithfully portrayed. That was good.

Neal and I really like to watch Rick Bayless's show on PBS. So when I saw that he (and his daughter) had written a cookbook that my library carries, I decided to check it out. So far, we've only made one of the recipes, but we were very excited about it. We bought a whole bunch of vegetables, beef stew meat, corn tortillas, and even a food processor. (All of Rick Bayless's Mexican recipes require a food processor.) We cooked the meat for an hour, we chopped and then processed the vegetables, we made salsa--oh man, it was fun. But then the actual food was pretty lame. I found our shredded beef tacos to be far, far less delicious than regular ol' ground beef tacos in cheap crunchy shells. Also, we got the corn tortillas because Rick Bayless makes a big deal about how that's what people in Mexico eat; it's Americans that eat flour tortillas. But, upon eating the corn tortillas, I recalled that Rick never actually said the corn tortillas were better--just more authentic. (I thought they were terrible.) So anyway, it was an adventure, but we're not going to make that particular recipe again. I want to give something else from the cookbook a shot, though.

In other "it came across my work station, so I thought 'why not' " news, I checked out a DVD called The Reduced Shakespeare Company: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), claiming to be all of the plays of Shakespeare in 90 minutes. It looked like a rapid-fire, clever comedy! It was not. It was remarkably slow and dull, dull, dull. I skipped some scenes, trying to find something good, but gave up pretty quickly.

So those are my recommendations and dis-recommendations so far. I'm working on some things now about which I have already formed opinions, but I feel like I should wait to finish them to make sure I'm right.

3 comments:

MacKenzie said...

I do not like corn tortillas. And if I remember correctly, when I was in mexico for a mission trip, the family made us all dinner including flour tortillas which is authentic enough for me.

Craig said...

I like corn tortillas, and spinach tortillas at Freebirds.

Nancy said...

I am amazed. How can something that covers all of Shakespeare in 90 minutes be slow? That's quite an accomplishment. In other news, I need to read your blog more. I've been missing a lot.

 
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