Rating: 2/5 Lee Child, Die Trying (New York: Berkeley Books, 1998). I give the first book of a series a lot of leeway, especially if it’s early in an author’s career. But I expect a lot more from the later books. Child disappointed me, I’m afraid. (I suspected as much after reading the cover and fly pages. The “advance...
Rating: 1/5 Simon Garfield, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (New York: Gotham Books, 2011). Well I don’t know what I was expecting, but apparently it was more than I got. I ended up skimming through the book in an hour or so. Nothing really jumped out at me. There’s some biographical information on the various font...
Rating: 5/5 David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House, 2011). I really, really enjoyed this book. This is not a manifesto. It’s an honest-to-goodness anthropological history of money, debt, and everything that goes with it. What I love about the book is how it builds. After going through all...
Rating: 4/5 Alastair Reynolds, Zima Blue (London: Gollancz, 2009). I had forgotten how much I enjoy Alastair Reynolds’s writing. He is an expert in the “space opera” genre. Short stories give authors a great opportunity to distill a story down to its very essence. Reynolds does not waste words. I really enjoyed this...
Original Recipe: http://gracessweetlife.com/2012/06/mississippi-mud-pie-best-chocolate-cake-pie/ Well this is my last baking experiment until we move into the new house. I’ve been packing the pounds back on. Once we’re in the new place, we’re going to move to a weekend-only baking schedule. (Yeah, right. We’ll see.)...
Original Recipe: http://www.joyofbaking.com/biscotti/ChocolateHazelnutBiscotti.html Well, you really should have a stand mixer to get the dough the right consistency. I also didn’t flatten my logs enough, so they didn’t cook all the way through. The final product was bitter, but I think that’s because of the nuts. I...
Original Recipe: http://foododelmundo.com/2009/11/15/quiche-with-a-perfect-crust/ I’ve made quiche before, but I didn’t want to buy pre-made shells this time, so I found this recipe and gave it a try. It worked out really well! Two cups of liquid is too much. One and a half is plenty. I used Swiss Gruyère cheese, which...
Rating: 4/5 Lee Child, Killing Floor (New York: Jove Books, 1997). Apparently I’m a little late coming to the Jack Reacher party. Both my father and one of my sisters has been talking up these book for a long time, and I’ve just never made the time to read them. Well I finally did, and wow, I’ve been missing out! I do...
Rating: 4/5 Ernest Cline, Ready Player One (New York: Crown Publishers, 2011). Well the book was a fun read, but saccharine. Like the best Disney and Pixar films, Ready Player One is targetted to younger readers but cannot be fully appreciated except by older ones. Unfortunately, unlike movies like Wall-E (my...
Rating: 5/5 Robert Atwan and Anne Fadiman (eds.), The Best American Essays 2003 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). What I am loving most about these essay collections is the diversity. To use a Gumpism, “it’s like a box of chocolates.” There were a handful that I ended up skimming (toffee or peanut butter), and...