Rating: 3/5 Ian Hamilton, The Disciple of Las Vegas (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2011). This is the second book in Hamilton’s Ava Lee series of novels. As you may recall, I wasn’t a big fan of the first book . I liked this book a little better. Ava Lee is a forensic accountant who works with “Uncle” in retrieving...
Rating: 3/5 Peter F. Hamilton, Pandora’s Star, Commonwealth Saga #1 (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004). This thousand-page tome is the first of two novels in the Commonwealth Saga. It’s apparently popular in Calgary because I had to keep returning it to the library because of holds. It took me three attempts, but I...
Original recipe: http://gracessweetlife.com/2013/04/neapolitan-mousse-cakes/ Tasty! I love strawberries, so the idea of a strawberry mousse was too much not to try. I don’t have 3-inch ring molds, so I decided to make a single large cake. I did some math and thought a 9-inch springform would be enough, but not quite....
Rating: 5/5 Last night Adele and I watched an animated movie called “The Secret of Kells.” What an awesome film! The animation style is very different and the overall design is fantastic. (I loved the wolves!) The story is an imagination of how the gorgeous Book of Kells was created. (If you’re not familiar with the...
Rating: 2/5 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan (New York: Random House, 2007). This book was a disappointment. It started off OK, but it became apparent quite quickly that Taleb is—how should I say this?—arrogant and a bit of a jerk. The main thrust of the book (in itself interesting) could have easily been conveyed...
Rating: 2/5 Ian Hamilton, The Water Rat of Wanchai (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2011). Yawn! This has to be one of the most boring “action stories” I’ve ever read. I hate to break it to you, but this story about a forensic accountant is exactly as exciting as it sounds. I get that Ava was conceived as a continuing...
Original Recipe: http://dinnerontheweb.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/biscotti-toscana/ I’ve tried twice previously to make biscotti, with less-than-ideal results. After my second failed attempt, a colleague sent me a link to her sister’s blog and her biscotti recipe. I finally had time to try it out. Success! I finally got...
Original Recipe: http://gracessweetlife.com/2012/11/white-chocolate-vanilla-bean-pudding-tarts-easy-halloween-treats/ Nothing beats the flavour of real vanilla beans! I’ll never go back. Adele is a big white chocolate fan, so I decided to try this pudding recipe. I didn’t bother with the whole tart thing. I just made...
Original Recipe: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ButterTarts.html Adele loves pecan butter tarts, so I finally set out to find a recipe. This one is easy to make, and using a muffin tin is a great way to do these if you don’t have tart tins. I’ve made this recipe twice now. The first time I did mini-tarts, and the second...
Rating: 4/5 David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World (Cambridge University Press, 2010). I really, really enjoyed this book. I learned so much. As far as textbooks go—I’ve read my share—this one is very well organized. I thought the progression of topics...