2019 Book Bingo, Day 1

It's Memorial Day which means that this year's Seattle Public Library/Seattle Arts & Lectures Summer Reading Bingo has kicked off. I toy with the idea of keeping track of my progress here; we'll see what I actually do.

I am falling behind pretty much immediately though I spent much of the day in an Adirondack chair in the backyard, reading. My book is The Slaves of Solitude which I started some time last week which means, I think, that I can't count it as a book bingo entry since I didn't start it on Memorial Day or later. And, aside from the fiction square, which I always like to save, it doesn't fit any category anyway. So I kick off book bingo season by reading a book that won't end up on my card. So it goes.

Honestly, I find a lot of these squares a challenge to fill--suggestions welcome!

Brief--or not so brief--update on reading of books recently purchased

I'm two books into last week's #SEABookstoreDay purchases and, somewhat surprisingly, they were both so very good. Maybe some might think that a discerning shopper shouldn't be surprised when she likes two of her purchases but, for the most part, I was buying blind, taking a lot of books to the register on faith.

News of the World was the first book I read and, sort of, the first book I purchased last Saturday. It was recommended by a bookseller at Magnolia's Bookstore where I uncharacteristically asked for a recommendation. I asked because the same bookseller had endorsed or recommended, I don't remember which, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep last year which fully lived up to its charming title. (It's the sort of title I'd pick up on my own, obviously, but I'm pretty sure it was the bookseller insisting that it was good that made me keep it in my hand.) I learned from her this year that the Goats and Sheep author, Joanna Cannon, has a new book out but they were no longer stocking the hardback and the paperback isn't out until later this summer. So I asked her what else she had liked and she picked up News of the World, explaining that it was an entirely different book but it evoked the same reaction in her as Goats and Sheep.

And she was right. It was a very different book, but with lovely strange language that I had to read slowly to understand. It was funny and exciting and heartstopping and sad and just lovely. I remember stopping to consider a nicely turned phrase more than once, one of which had to do with how scalping is wrong: "It is considered very impolite." Mark Twain is often quoted saying something about the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. If I was brighter, I'd be able to say why that "very" is so crucial to the scalping sentence. I can't, however, I just know that it's the "very" that makes that sentence so damned good. It is, of course, also coming after a very tense scene so the humor is helpful. There was also this: Great limbs overhead were alive with birds on their spring migration to the north, lately come up from Mexico; the quick and nervous robins, the low song a yellow oriole, painted buntings in their outrageous clown colors.

I'm not entirely sold on "clown colors," but the rest of it is so fine that I overlook that slight misstep.

 The second book of the stacks that I picked up was The Travellling Cat Chronicles which has a cat narrator which is almost always going to work for me. (I hastily note that I Am A Cat was a disappointment to avoid jinxing things.) This was a quick and lovely and charming story of a man and his cat, traveling around in Japan visiting his old friends as he attempts to find a new home for the cat, Nana, which turns out to be Japanese for "seven," and also as a mechanism to tell the story of the man's life. I will say only that I started crying twenty pages from the end of the book. It is a very sweet little story. The Financial Times blurb on the back notes, "It has the warmth, painterly touch, and tenderness of a Studio Ghibli film--and it is a delight to read." I could not agree more.

 So it's with some trepidation that I pick my next book. I feel like Louise Penny's Still Life, a mass market mystery, isn't too much of an investment one way or another so if it's not as good as the first two, I won't be too distressed. Still. Fingers crossed.

Independent Bookstore Day, Seattle, Year 5

Sadly, I can't remember what our first Independent Bookstore Day was; did we bike from store to store as long ago as 2015? But, of course, this is just the sort of question that justifies the existence of blahdeblahblah for with a little effort I can see that we did, indeed, bike the event in 2015. We made it to only four stores, but we visited Jennie Grant (and her goats) on the day. 

This year, alas, featured no goats, but we hit ten stores which is, I think, a new record for us. The numbers: ten stores, thirty purchased books (plus two free pretty-awful-awful looking ARCs), forty-one miles total, thirty of those by bike, an as-yet untoted up dollars spent.

Our first store, Arundel, was new this year--not just new to us, but new to the whole #SEABookstoreDay business. As I sort of thought, it's almost entirely used books, which made for a more interesting selection and less expensive visit (two books: Dorothy Sayers: The Complete Stories and The Great Fire. Total spent: $13.21)

Bessie and Bernardo outside Arundel Books, posing for the first of many photos of the day

It was pretty much immediately after we left Arundel that things started to go pear-shaped. The plan was to bike along the waterfront, but the bike lane seems to be a victim of the viaduct deconstruction and the crowds were insane. (Have I said we didn't get going particularly early? We did not.) We detoured up to Second Ave's bike lane only to discover more construction and more detours.

The sign for the day

And then we took some wrong turns getting to Magnolia, making the Arundel to Magnolia's Bookstore trip the longest leg of the day: nearly ten miles. But Magnolia was charming when we reached it and, as with last year, the trick was to limit my purchases there: Peculiar Ground and News of the World purchased for a total of $36.31.

Magnolia's Bookstore also had a lovely display of Molly Hashimoto's books in the front window

Last year we had just eaten at the cafe next to Queen Anne and thus had to give the Petit Pierre Bakery a miss; this year we skipped Queen Anne Book Company and thus welcomed a restorative coffee and pastry at this most excellent bakery.

Pop tart, blueberry tart, two fine short lattes

The advantage of traveling by bike: Crossing from Magnolia to Ballard via the Locks

At Secret Garden, I gave in to the inevitable and bought Salman Rushdie's The Golden House, now in paper, and a book I'd resisted in Magnolia, The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Total damage: $40.74.

Obligatory bikes with store signage shot

It was at this point that I suggested a bus up the hill (traditional since last year) and also that we go ahead and hit Phinney Books, just in case we didn't make it to the new Madison Books location. On the bus I struck up a conversation with a woman who was reviewing her passport. While I was impressed by anyone attempting the day by bus--she was only hitting the Seattle stores, but had made it to Fantagraphics--I was a bit disgusted when she proudly proclaimed she hadn't bought any books. 

Phinney is always further north than I expect, but it was an easy flattish 1.5 miles to get there. It was again packed and Scott handsold a copy of Lucky Per. I don't think he asked for a commission. Phinney is where I broke my two-book rule and came away with three: Innocence, The Slaves of Solitude, and The True Deceivers--the last one almost entirely because I was charmed by its cover.

A total of $50.48 changed hands. Ouch.

Not obvious in this shot, it had started to rain while we were in Phinney Books

The ride from Phinney to Book Larder felt like November with a cold hard rain pelting down on us. Scott, unfortunately, had not brought a waterproof coat and, at this stage I was wearing fingerless gloves. We were both feeling like cold drenched rats when we reached the packed-to-the-gills Book Larder. Unbeknownst to me, Scott quickly found and purchased M.F.K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf. I put back whatever frippery I'd finally settled on after I tasted the cheese/smoked paprika appetizer they were sampling and walked out with a crazy impulse buy of Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking. I hope I use it, having spent $44.04 on it.

This was the year I moved a lot of sidewalk signs to accommodate my photo

We worked our way over to Open Books, mostly on Wallingford backstreets and by the time we'd reached the poetry emporium, the sun was out again. Open Books was another packed shop and it took me a long time to find my treasures there: The Albertine Workout and Moo: A Novel. A welcome return to the world of under $20: $17.94 plus tax.

It wasn't easy getting this photo without people in it: they were literally coming in by the busload

Some more lovely residential streets in Wallingford kept us off busy 45th for much of the next (short) leg, but I still suggested a restorative pint at the Blue Moon Tavern on "Roethke Mews." Scott did not object.

It says something about our state that I didn't think to take a photo until the beers were mostly gone

The bikes through the (surprisingly clean) Blue Moon window: I am amused by the Zagat sticker.

But maybe they were rated for the high quality of their bathroom grafitti

Restoredish, and maybe a little tipsy, we continued on to University Bookstore, encountering more detours along the way, causing me to be cranky yet again. I even forgot to get raffle tickets when getting my passport stamped. Grrrrr. They are remodeling the store and all of fiction has been moved to the main floor once more. Upstairs was given over to a space for readings and people sampling food. I heard all about where Molly's gets its bread (Macrina) before finally taking a sample of a turkey sandwich. Not brilliant but it was good to give the beer something to chew on. I finally remembered/stumbled across the author that Karen Molenaar Terrell had recommended and also found a used copy of a Toni Morrison I'd looked at earlier: Still Life and God Help the Child set me back a modest $17.59--and I got a button for a 25 percent discount on small-business Saturday. Woo-hoo!

Bessie, Bernardo, and some photo bomber bikes outside UBS

By this point we'd admitted that we were abandoning the Great Circle Route and would not be ending things at the Seward Park Third Place so we biked north to Third Place Ravenna instead, another pretty easy, pretty pleasant ride--especially after we cut over from the main drags to some prettier neighborhood streets. Seattle is truly a gorgeous city this time of year. I impulse-bought because it had a charming cover and good shelf-reader tag Unclay and a cheap copy of Going to Meet the Man. Since I'd been so responsible with my books, I tossed in a couple of lip balms (mine having fallen apart back in Fremont) and postcard. Total damage thanks to irresponsible sideline purchasing: $36.54. I also forgot to get a photo here, possibly because Scott was starting to bonk. 

We rode down the luxuriously paved 25th to the Burke Gilman and continued our easy ride to the UW Lightrail Station where we boarded a southbound train. Scott was uncharacteristically sparky with the officious platform guy who told him not to block the (not-in-service) door with his bike, but eventually the train started moving without us getting tossed off. Scott opted to wait outside while I went in to Elliott Bay, so his final passport had one less stamp than mine. We'd deliberately chosen not to end at EBBC this year because we felt very second-class for not having full passports there last year. This time around the woman who stamped my card was very complimentary about us having biked. I still bought only one book: Dreyer's English for $27.53.

Amusingly, if you're me, I was chided by an EBBC person for staging this shot. Scott and I were both rebels by the time we were pushing the ten-hour mark.

We stopped at Central Market for lemons en route to Ada's, our last bookstore of the day. That slight detour had us riding along 16th East, another lovely residential street in a neighborhood neither of us frequent. We overshot Ada's a wee bit but backtracked. Since Ada's has a cafe, Scott opted to come in and have a coffee while I scoured the shelves for something to buy. I love Ada's, but it can be challenging. I'd resisted buying the new Ian McEwan all day, thinking that it was sci-fi-y enough that Ada's might be carrying it but no luck. I eventually went to my usual fallback: Atwood and YA: Oryx and Crake and Un Lun Dun came home with me in exchange for $30.83.

 Ada's sign was hella-heavy but I persevered.

 The ride back down the hill was lovely--and since there was 19-minute wait for the next train, we opted to coast all the way down to the bus stop downtown.

The Space Needle is so small here and you can barely see the mountains. It was gobsmacking in reality.

Who is that artist whose work frequently includes numbers and vehicles? This could be my homage to him.Or it's the final shot of the bikes from inside a bus. You decide.

Books, buttons, bookmarks, miscellanea

Seattle Snowpocalypse, February 2019 edition

Snow! Lots of snow in Seattle! That means a lot of photos.

Gradka isn't so sure about this

We went for a walk this afternoon, to the Admiral district, in order to stock up on a few more provisions because, sadly, it turns out that I am the sort to worry about running out of things: milk and eggs, in this case, though we also picked up chocolate bars and cheap sparkling, just in case. Don't ask me in case of what. As we walked, the sun came out and there was blue sky, but on occasion gusts of wind would blow flurries of snow from the trees all about us.

We walked across Hiawatha Park, an Olmsted Brothers creation (of sorts):

And on the way home we came across a tree that had fallen under the weight of the snow, bringing down some power lines and pretty much destroying the telephone pole to which the wires were connected:

I don't know who this man is but I think he's mad to be standing where he is.

There were also less alarming sights:

One of my favorite streets in West Seattle; it feels so New Englandy

Not the largest snowmen we saw, but some of the cutest

And, of course, birds (mostly in the backyard):

Robin on the line: will you hold?

Cottonbelly looking particularly spherical

Male thumbprint waiting for a table to open up at the suet feeder

Taken from inside through two layers of glass for the vaseline on the lens effect

I snapped a few photos early this morning, while still too sleepy to figure out the correct settings for the conditions, but I sort of like this one anyway:

Abstract

And to finish up the Gradka snow story:

She did not so much care for it

There is talk of more snow to come and we assume there will be no farmers market tomorrow. Perhaps we'll blow the dust off the sled and join the crowds on one of the local streets. Or maybe we'll stay inside and read our books like rational adults.

Kitchen sink cookies, slightly modified

The "kitchen sink" aspect, prepped

Most Fridays I help other people make books, but today I stayed home and made cookies, obliquely inspired by Scraps, Peels, and Stems. That book includes a recipe for kitchen sink muffins which I've not tried yet. I bake scones, cookies, pies, and the occasional cake but very rarely do I make muffins. I'm not sure why that is, especially since Jill's recipe looks pretty darned delicious. But when I stumbled across this recipe for kitchen sink cookies in the New York Times and saw that it called for a mix of sweet and salty things, whatever you happen to have on hand, I was pretty much sold immediately. You see, I've been troubled by a couple of candy canes that have been sitting on the coffee table since Christmas.

A digression. There are some fixed points in my belief system and one of them is that a Christmas stocking must contain a banana, a tangerine, some chocolate coins, and a candy cane. The tangerine and coins are generally consumed without much delay, and making banana bread the week after Christmas is pretty much automatic around here. But those candy canes? They sit around for months, eventually melting messily onto a pile of linens if I've been so foolish as to shift them to a drawer without thinking. So although the recipe called for homemade toffee, I quickly realized that I could probably use candy cane instead. Not only that, it looked to be a way to use some of the heap of broken tortilla chips that I've insisted I'll find a way to use.

Some means of production (yes, the hammer was part of the process)

 I modified the recipe slightly (and occasionally accidentally). More than one person suggested that there were too many bits and pieces in the recipe so I reduced the "kitchen sink" content by about a third (I might not do that another time . . . ) I don't have the patience to wait for dough to chill in a refrigerator and so many of the cookies I make are of the "roll-in-a-ball-and-squash" school that I opted to go with that familiar approach. I baked for more like 10 - 15 minutes at 350ish rather than the 20 minutes at 325 that the recipe suggested. And the dough was pretty stiff so I inadvertently increased the amount of vanilla a bit and also added a splash of milk.

One commenter on the original recipe said she freezes the pre-formed cookies to save to bake later; that seemed a fine plan to me so I set some aside for later. My cookies turn out a lot smaller, more plentiful, and tidier than those in the original recipe; I'm okay with that.

The kitchen sink has never looked so delicious!

Books of 2018

It seems I didn't post at all in December, but just look at how promptly I put something up in January! It is, of course, just the annual list of books read in 2018, and I don't know how much I'm going to analyze or draw conclusions about my reading habits here. I will say that it looks like I read 63 books (not including those read at work so this list does not include Walking to the End of the World, Arctic Solitaire, Campfire Stories, Scraps, Peels, and Stems, Wildfire, The Sharp End of Life, Birds of the West, The Salmon Way, and a handful of others whose titles I have simply forgotten that being the nature of my mind).

But I can see that I read some children's books and did a fair bit of re-reading over the last year. The Trollope titles stand out as books I actually remember, to some extent, while some of these I honestly have forgotten almost entirely. A few were truly abysmal, but I think that overall it was a pretty good year for books. That statement surprises me as I recall being disappointed by a lot of what I read. I look at the list and find myself thinking, "Oh that one. It was good," or at least "it had some good elements."

Once again, summer book bingo was good for getting me to read more -- and more varied -- books than is my natural inclination. I see The Goat and smile to remember the absurd children's story about a goat that lives on a NY high rise. I see Ship Wrecker and smile fondly remembering the teenager who suggested it to me. I see Theory of Shadows and click on the link to see what the hell that book was . . . oh, it's the chess one. Huh.

I think the first book of 2019 will likely be a return to a book I set aside at the start of Book Bingo: Our Uninvited Guests.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Black Swan Green
Stealing Home
The Three Clerks
The Tale of Despereaux
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Dr. Wortle's School
Rising Abruptly
French Exit
A House in the Country

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
Guard Your Daughters
The Ivankiad
Ayala's Angel
The Indifferent Stars Above
London War Notes
Middlemarch
The Feast
Lucy Carmichael
Alias Grace

Early Riser
The City is More Than Human
Lawn Boy
The Goat
Down and Out in Paris and London
The Fire Next Time
Persepolis
Of Mice and Men
The Two Mrs Abbotts
In A Lonely Place

Silent Spring 
Diary of a Provincial Lady
Death at the Chateau Bremont
Notes of a Crocodile
Wolf Hollow
Warlight
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
No Matter the Wreckage
Jane Eyre
Ship Breaker

Ecstasy
High Rising
The Girl Who Smiled Beads
The Only Story
A Fairly Good Time
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
The Essex Serpent
The Genius of Birds
Theory of Shadows
33 Days

The Secret of Nightingale Wood
A Long Way From Home
The Juniper Tree
Lincoln in the Bardo
Minka and Curdy
Rumour of Heaven
The Mitford Murders
The Duke's Children
Woodpecker
Katalin Street

Visitation
On Trails
A General Theory of Oblivion

Drowning, not waving, but really I'm fine

So it's been six weeks or more since I posted here, in large part because I found that most of the hits I was getting were coming from "girls-girls-girls" sorts of portals and that was just gross and icky and disquieting. Should that happen again and any such visitors be reading this, just stop. Go away. Look at yourselves in the mirror and just, well, be better people.

It's not like there's any reason for any rational person to want to read my meanderings anyway. I thought I'd just stop posting entirely, but it is a handy place to keep track of my reading and to post the occasional recipe or other bit of nonsense that I, personally, might want to find again so, for the time being I'm going to continue here.

This evening I make the extra effort of actually writing something because I feel compelled to record just how little I thought of A House in the Country which seems to be a favorite of every other person on the internet who posts about Persephone Books they have read. I found it dull, unrealistic, preachy, and smug. It may not make my top ten worst books of all time, but it certainly has a shot at the top one hundred.

 Which was disappointing as the other shot-in-the-dark Persephone on my last order, Guard Your Daughters, was truly terrific. Unexpected and fun and clever and amusing and somewhat insightful without making a fuss about itself. It was good enough to offset the disappointment of the Jocelyn Playfair nonsense. I imagine that's what keeps me ordering from Persephone. That, and the fact that their most recent Biannual (No. 24) includes an extensive article about cooking with a haybox.

 Should I wonder in the future, yes, I am deliberately not posting about the world at large.