Rating: 5/5 Patricia A. McKillip, Riddle-Master (New York, NY: Berkely Trade [imprint of Penguin], 1999). The Riddle-Master trilogy is an oldie (1976) but goodie. I read it as a kid and absolutely loved it. I’ve read it a few more times over the years, but it had been quite a while since my last reading. I wanted Adele...
Rating: 5/5 Hugh Howey, Wool (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). What a pleasant surprise! I just kept hearing about this book from all sorts of different people, so I finally checked it out from the library. I’m so glad I did! When it comes to speculative fiction, authors are faced with the very difficult challenge of...
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: 5/5 Wayne Gisslen, Professional Baking, 5th ed. (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2009). I love this book! This is a textbook used in cooking schools. It’s perfect if you really want to learn how baking works from the ground up. I love, love, love it! Not only does it have all the standard recipes, it goes...
Rating: 5/5 Shirley O. Corriher, BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes (New York: Scribner, 2008). Awesome, awesome, awesome! Corriher goes through all the main categories of baking: cakes, meringues, pies, cookies, and breads. She goes through all the ingredients, the...
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: 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...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman (ed.), Rereadings (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). Well I’ve decided that Anne Fadiman is pretty awesome :) I’ve also decided that the “essay” as a genre is pretty awesome too. I don’t know why I’ve had so little exposure to it so far in my life, but there it is. I’m glad I found it...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007). Another delightful read. While not as intentionally hilarious as Ex Libris , it certainly has it’s guffaw-inducing moments. She’s a tremendous writer and succeeds well at creating vivid...
Rating: 5/5 Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). I just finished reading the most wonderful book! It came up in one of the editing mailing lists I subscribe to. (I wish I could remember who recommended it!) It’s a series of essays by Anne Fadiman (someone...