Reading for Fun

I have not had much time over the last few years to read for fun.  Lately, I have made a point of reading more at bed time and on planes and on the weekends.  It has made me happy.  The most recent book I gobbled up was The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  I did not read his Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex.  But I may have to go back and read that one, too.  The characters in this book drove the plot.  And I liked them from the very beginning.  Smart and funny college students.  The locations were also stars, though to a slightly lesser degree.  Brown University, a research lab on Cape Cod, a family home in NJ and a few bits in foreign cities.  It is written from the points of view of the three main characters and I found characteristics about each of them that fascinated me.  From the somewhat lost Mitchell with his travels and fascination with religion, to Madeline's struggling to find herself and pursue her dreams, to Leonard's quick wit, science smarts and struggles with bipolar disorder.  It is all written brilliantly.  I would give it 5 out of 5 stars if I rated it.

Another book that I read recently and greatly enjoyed was Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier.  Again, I didn't read her earlier novel that you might have read: Girl With A Pearl Earring.  A little slow paced for me at the beginning, it took me some pages to start breezing my way through.  Again, there is a tie to science as the book is about early fossil hunters in England.  (By early, I mean before scientists and the general public understood dinosaur fossils, before some creatures were known to be extinct.)  This novel again focused on the characters.  And interestingly, many of the characters were based on real people.  I enjoyed the time period setting and the descriptions of the English coast line where the fossils were found.  I would give this one 4 out of 5 stars - mainly because it started a bit too slowly for my tastes.   

Good Things

Over the summer, I was lucky enough to finish two books. These are books I read for the pleasure of reading. I wish I had more time to read. This does in no way make a dent in my pile, but it was enjoyable. D is reading the first one I finished and I think he will read the second because he read something else by that author. So, here they are for your reading pleasure.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Amiee Bender
(I read this book because of a review on npr)
Not the best reviews on Amazon, but the story seemed very original and had some nice twists. I read a book by Amiee Bender a while ago that I also liked.
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
There was a lot of academic humor in this one. It was fun to read.

I also have a movie recommendation. It's a little off beat - not your typical chick flick (not that I only see chick flicks because I do love a good action movie!)
(500) days of Summer
An out of order (sort of) love story with some strange twists.

Reading

I've recently finished two great books. They receive my highest recommendation. The first is a pretty standard novel, that I found out was also read by a fellow blogger, FSP (female science professor). The books is A Gate at the Stairs. It's set in a college town but the story largely revolves around a student who becomes a nanny for a couple adopting a child. It was quite good and did really pull me in. I think the ending could have been done better, but it was okay.

The other book is A Homemade Life. My friend, Jill, gave me this book for Christmas after she mentioned it during a phone conversation and I thought it sounded wonderful. This is not your typical novel. Molly Wizenberg writes a blog that is in someways the basis for the book. The blog links her life to recipes. The book does the same. I have now made two of the recipes from the book. The ginger lemon scones are awesome. D and I ate some this morning from a batch I made more than a week ago. And I also made a dish that involved poaching salmon in apple cider. It was also delicious, though I wasn't quite patient enough to wait for the sauce to reduce as it should have.

Breakfast

edited to correct typos:
Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. Sometimes I eat it three times in one day. I recently finished reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, which was highly recommended by NPR and a bit heart breaking. One of my favorite parts of the book was her talking about a breakfast she had with her family. The special was savory pancakes. It was pancakes covered with asparagus, Gruyere and ham. Covered with two sunny side up eggs and drown the whole lot in maple syrup. I'd pass on the ham. But otherwise it sounds divine. Though I don't think I could eat it right now. I have been having a culinary adventure that I would rather have avoided. I have switched my whole way of eating to try to stay healthy. I eat bread topped with applesauce for breakfast - a trick learned from my sister. And I've been eating a lot of roasted vegetables and way more meat that I normally do. My new favorite roasted vegetable is fennel. If you aren't totally averse to licorice and can find it at your local market, roast it up (400 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so) with what ever other veggies you'd like. I recommend precooking potatoes slightly. Couscous has become a staple again, too. Today I broke all the rules and had breakfast for lunch. I ate delicious lemon poppy seed toast coated with cream cheese. The cream cheese had lavender mixed in. This was a wonderful invention, but I think I would have also added a little honey and lemon zest to the cream cheese, too.

Mothers

I have been reading for pleasure a good bit over the last few weeks. Yesterday I finished a short book that I highly recommend. Ruth Reichl's new book Not Becoming My Mother was excellent. It is all about how the women of earlier generations didn't get to do what they really wanted. Ruth talks about her mom being an incredibly intelligent women who just ended up bored - partly because her parents discouraged her from becoming a doctor. Ruth is glad she didn't end up with that kind of life and knows that it's partly because her mother thought she could do anything. (In case you don't know the name, Ruth Reichl is the editor of Gourmet and a former food critic of the NYTimes and LATimes.) I think there are still walls and ceilings that women hit from time to time (and a good bit of it comes from others who still have a certain belief about what women should do with their life). But anyhow, it's a great read if you are looking for a short, funny, enlightened book, I highly recommend it.

Jumping the line

I just finished a great book. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It jumped the line of all the other books on my night stand because I wanted something entertaining for the plane a few weeks ago. It was excellent - I highly recommend it to those of you who didn't recommend it to me. It was a brilliant look inside the head of someone who has autism. Plus the message at the end - you can do anything if you put your mind to it - is one of my mantras. I liked that the boy in the book, Christopher. He does math to calm himself down when he's in a difficult or new situation. I do math when I run. I know it's strange. And it's really not for the comfort or anything but usually it's just fractions of how far I've gone, how far there is left to go, or how much time it will take me to get there. The time thing used to be really easy to figure out when I ran 10 min miles, but I do more speed work these days, and it's usually not whole number divisions.