Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Weekly Geeks, a Challenge

In our book club, we are all geeked out and proud of it. I'm discovering that the blog world is full of geek pride.

Last week I posted about book reading challenges. This week I found a book blogging challenge, called the Weekly Geeks. It is a blog reading challenge for book and reading bloggers.

The challenge is kind of complicated but it works like this.

1. The Weekly Geek theme is posted.
2. Sometime in the following week, you post about your progress in your blog.
3. Leave a link to your post in the Weekly Geek theme comments.
4. Other readers of the Weekly Geek theme are encouraged to come view your blog.

So I'm going to try doing this challenge on behalf of First the Food. I am interested to see if our blog appeals to other blog readers. I also wonder if other people blog their book clubs the way we do.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Friday Bookish Meme

From BTT . . .

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don’t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack?

Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?

Thursday, April 24, 2008

What to Read Next

The Millions blog posted about "the way we read," meaning, how readers choose their next books. One person described in the post read alternating male and female authors for an entire year. Another person (it may be the same reader actually) used a spreadsheet with a "short list" of books and then a random number generator selected the next book for him off the short list.

Reading challenges appear to be popular among bookish blog writers. Someone will suggest a challenge, for example, in the next 6 months read 6 books with an Arthurian theme. Or, read 3 books that have been recommended to you by other people.

Reading challenges appeal to me because I like the idea of making a list and crossing books off it once I've finished them. Who doesn't love a sense of accomplishment? But I've yet to join one. If I turn reading into a compulsive list-making exercise, it will be like everything else in my life! I just want to keep it special.

How do you pick the next book you're going to read? Do you have a system? Is it completely spur-of-the-moment, based on your mood? Do you set goals for yourself? Do you accomplish them?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Pasta Night

Wednesday is pasta night in my household. About every other week I make this recipe, Broccoli Pasta Alfredo. The mock "alfredo" is sauce made from plain yogurt, ricotta, parmesan, and walnuts. It is the perfect busy family-working mom recipe. Why?

1. It cooks in 30 minutes or less and requires only 1 pot (plus the food processor).
2. It contains a green vegetable - and you can easily make it with frozen broccoli to make it easier.
3. Fresh garlic!
4. The half cup of walnuts is a great way to give your family some good fats.
5. It contains no meat, and the ingredients can be kept in the fridge for a week or longer so it is always on standby.
6. It's super easy to vary with seasonal veggies and herbs. Mmm, fresh basil makes it so yummy.
7. I have made it with low fat and no fat yogurt and ricotta and it's been just has good.

I love making this recipe -since it's no-fail, I feel so confident and talented when I do it, like when Bridget Jones goes shopping for her dinner party, before the cooking turns into a disaster! Does anyone else have favorite go-to recipes like this?

Friday, April 18, 2008

Friday Bookish Meme

(Sorry I skipped last week folks . . . it was that evil cold.)

From BTT:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Post your answers in the comments!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Virgin of Small Plains: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was ok - 0
liked it - 2
really liked it - 4
it was amazing - 0
didn't finish it - 0

6 votes total.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Read these books!

Or at least, read the list. The book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, was published a few years ago. I am always drawn to it when book browsing, but then I talk myself out of it - why do I need to spend my time reading about reading books . . . wouldn't it be better spent reading actual books?

Then I found a neat little tool. Someone called Arukiyomi has created a spreadsheet that you can use to track your progress through the list. I spent about 5 minutes filling it out for myself. I have read 80 of the listed books, or about 8%. According to the spreadsheet, that means if I die at the average age of a female (provided by the spreadsheet), I have to read 19 of these a year for the rest of my life to finish the list!!

OK, that's stressful. But the really cool part of filling out the spreadsheet? A total of 21 of those books, I'd read in book club. At our current rate of about 2 per year, that means in another 500 years we'll have the list completed!

Here are the book club books on the list, in reverse chronological order:

Middlesex
Atonement
Life of Pi
White Teeth
The Blind Assassin
The Poisonwood Bible
The God of Small Things
Alias Grace
A Fine Balance
Corelli's Mandolin
Cat's Eye
Beloved
The Handmaid's Tale
A Confederacy of Dunces
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Lolita
Tender is the Night
The Awakening
The Portrait of a Lady
Anna Karenina
Jane Eyre

All I have to say, is good thing we read all those Margaret Atwood books!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake is one of my favorite books we read in book club. I just can't wait to read Lahiri's new collection of stories which, as usual, is getting stellar reviews.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Live Blogging Sense and Sensibility!! Part 2

This week, I read some other live blogs and realized that I did not use the conventional style for mine. So this week I'm going to do that, for example:

9:01 Getting started. Hi Gillian! Oooh, X-Files movie coming out soon.

9:02 Oh jeez this Tom Le Froy crap. Why does it have to be a man who taught Jane about love? Of course he had been in love with her . . . she was famous by then! Probably everybody who met her when she was 18 said that.

Anyway so I will just post and edit as we go.

9:03 I'm not really in the same mood as last week. I have some proposal crap to work on and I'm leaving for the airport at 6:30 AM. Not even close to being packed. And I'm getting Charlie's cold because yesterday morning when he coughed, his output landed in my eye.

9:05 In college, as a proper Janeite rationalist, I much preferred Elinor. Romantic sensibility, bosh. But these days I feel more sympathy for Marianne. Jane is a little harsh with her. Maybe that's why I find this gentle version of her appealing.

9:08 I agree with Dawn, this Edward is better than Hugh Grant.

9:09 And now he's chopping wood and sweating. And brooding. OMG. He's the bomb.

9:11 Oh Mr. Palmer!! I miss Hugh Laurie so much. Who the heck is Dr. House anyway?

9:12 Back to the chopping and sweating - that damp ruffled white shirt is the Davies formula. And it works!

9:14 Oh the Misses Steele are hysterical!! I love them!!

9:16 This Elinor is so good!

9:20 LOL! Charlotte's silks!

9:24 Colonel Brandon.

9:25 If only Hugh Laurie and those Misses Steele would get together. Oh it would be so funny.

9:26 Poor Marianne. Does anybody else remember going to the school dances and looking for that one guy all night? Especially after you spent one delightful night flirting and bonding with him, over Dinosaur Jr and the Cure, or something like that, and he told you he'd see you at the dance? Only when you finally found him he was dancing with someone more popular and blonder? Yep, I had that same misery and his name was Kevin Peterson. Good on me, I didn't faint. Thankfully so, because there was no Colonel Brandon to catch me. But I like to believe I am better for it!!

OK no need to dwell on age 15 anymore. Ick.

9:30 Wait, while I was reminiscing, Colonel Brandon is fighting Willoughby? I am confused. Did this happen in the book? It's completely enjoyable, but is it canon?

9:34 Oh poor wretched Marianne. I just can't stand it.

9:37 Oh right, I remember. That's why he's fighting Willoughby. Elinor's black with white striped dress is so awesome.

9:44 Miss Lucy Steele. So funny! I love her!

9:45 "I have heard him say he was never any happier than with us at Norland." Go Marianne!

10:04 Does this Jane Austen book have the best sisterly relationship? I think it might. Will have to think about it some more.

10:15 Those are falcons and not carrier pigeons right? OK, definitely a falconer.

10:17 Poor Elinor! She is too restrained. I never studied this in school. But the ideal is something between Elinor and Marianne right? Elinor is not Jane's ideal is she? I mean I love her, but she's not just practical she's terribly repressed.

10:23 Chickens?!! That's how it ends? With chickens??

10:27 Russ is home from Kentucky. I need to catch up with him (then write my proposal, then pack for Cincinnati) and I will have to process this later. It was really good until it ended with barnyard fowl.

Friday, April 4, 2008

White People??

The blog Stuff White People Like is kind of amusing and fascinating, in an Onion sort of way.

Friday Bookish Meme

From BTT:

  • When somebody mentions “literature,” what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?)
  • Do you read “literature” (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?
Comments, anyone?

(This one's not as good as some . . .)

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Big TV News

News for Dawn Joss Whedon fans: his new series starts this fall on Fox! Starring Eliza Dushku. It’s called Dollhouse and here’s a description:

The drama, stars Dushku as Echo, a member of a group of men and women who are imprinted with different personalities for different assignments. In between tasks they are mind-wiped, living like children in Dollhouse, a futuristic dorm/lab. A group of people, known as "Actives" (or "Dolls"), have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas and hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies and occasional good deeds. When not imprinted, the Actives live, childlike and unremembering, in a hidden facility nicknamed "The Dollhouse". Although the Actives are ostensibly volunteers, the operation is highly illegal, and under constant threat from a determined federal agent on one end and an insane rogue Active on the other. The story hinges around a greater and more subtle threat: Echo, a female Active, begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

Sounds very complicated. But good! It will be so nice to have Whedon back on TV. Also for Dawn BSG fans: one of the main characters is played by Helo from Battlestar. Yep, I like him.