Last week I finished:
I had a great three-day "readcation" last week, and I read the fourth Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, from start to finish. I like to read mysteries in as few sittings as possible, so this was a great time to do it. Plus, this one was super cozy, taking place at Christmastime (1950). The folks of Bishop's Lacey have come to the de Luce estate, Buckshaw, to see the famous movie star Phyllis Wyvern play Juliet as part of a village fundraiser. But when they become snowed in and Wyvern shows up murdered, eleven-year-old Flavia has a crime to solve. A subplot to this one is Flavia's attempt to trap Saint Nick using a sticky substance she cooked up in her chemistry lab. This is one of my favorite Flavia books so far (the first in the series was the other). Spunky Flavia is one of my very favorite characters in all of literature. I enjoyed everything about this, and I highly recommend it and the series as a whole. This would also be a great series for tweens, as it's very clean and Flavia is so likable (and her sisters so detestable). My rating: 4.5 stars.
I looked forward to Jen Hatmaker's Of Mess and Moxie for months, and I was so excited to finally sit down with it. It's hard to describe Hatmaker, but I think she's sort of a cross of several essayists who write about motherhood, faith, and being a woman. She has the humor and writing skills of Anne Lamott and the seriousness and emotional properties of Shauna Niequist. I've read two of her previous books (this is her twelfth): 7, about downsizing her family's consumption of things and habits, and For the Love, which is very much like Of Mess and Moxie. This is a series of essays that range from a love letter on Netflix bingeing to the importance of having friends who can serve as second mothers to her children to youth football in the south to deeper thoughts on faith, forgiveness, and marriage. This one felt a little lighter than For the Love, and there were several essays I was tempted to abandon halfway through because they just seemed too immature, but for the most part, it was a win. I might suggest For the Love as a place to start with Hatmaker, though, as it felt somehow more even and a bit deeper. My rating: 4 stars.
You all know by now that I'm a Billy Collins poetry fan. I love his humor and the easy grace with which he approaches topics. And he can put words in a dog's mouth like nobody else. I've read several poetry collections by Collins lately that were really good but that didn't blow me over as a whole. While I can't point to a single poem of his I really don't like, the last couple books (not read chronologically, mind you) haven't struck a deep chord. Ballistics did. Maybe it's a mood thing. Or maybe it's just a finer collection. I'm not sure. This one made me so happy, and I kept rationing out the pages at night so I wouldn't reach the end too soon. And that's the mark of a good poetry collection. My rating: 4 stars.
And lastly, I finished 101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook before You Die by Jet Tila. You may know Tila from the Food Network, where he was a judge on Cutthroat Kitchen. I don't know him as I pretty much only watch The Pioneer Woman and Guy Fieri anymore. The cooking competition shows kind of leave me cold. But I've always wanted to learn to cook real Asian food, so who better than a Thai-Chinese American to teach me. First off, the cookbook loses one star in my rating for not having a photo of each dish. When will they learn? In a day when folks regularly post photos of their supper on Instagram, why are they still publishing cookbooks without photos of the food? Especially "foreign" food. Bad, bad, bad. Otherwise, I'd say that the book covers all the bases. I loved that there were dishes from a number of Asian cultures (Thai, Chinese, Japanese), and that he explained the different flavor profiles of each culture. While there weren't a lot of stir-fries, there are a number of staple dishes and a heaping helping of unique ones, too. There aren't a lot of strange things involving seafood you've never heard of or fruits or sauces you couldn't find in a large grocery store. The instructions are plain, and he doesn't even insist you own a wok. I will say, though, that this is the first cookbook I've ever read that included swearwords! It made me think of this article. I haven't cooked from the book yet, but I'd say it's a good solid Asian cookbook that isn't overwhelming in its scope. My rating: 3 stars.
Last week I began:
And because why have five books going when you can have six, I began the hefty After Camelot-- about life for the whole Kennedy clan after JFK and RFK were assassinated--which has been on my TBR for months and months and is my "chunkster" for September. It's a little gossipy and a little choppy, but it moves quickly.
This week I'll finish:
I am so ready for Man's Search for Meaning to be DONE. It's not at all what I thought it would be, but I'm too far in to abandon it without guilt.
I also began Clementine Friend of the Week last week on readcation. This is the fourth in the Clementine series, and it's as good as all the others. I reward myself with it when I've hit the wall in Man's Search for Meaning.
My audiobook:
My audiobook right now is Louise Penny's A Fatal Grace, the second in her Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series. I feel that Penny overwrites her characters, and that diminishes believability (plus, hello gratuitous swearing). Still, it's meant to be a palette-cleanser, and it's doing its job.
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