My Reading Obsession

Hey there!  It’s been a week since I posted, and so much has happened, it’s felt much longer.  My brothers and sister from Oregon and their families and my brother’s family from North Dakota came on Thursday for the weekend.  One sister, her son and her boyfriend stayed with us.  Because we have the pool, various others were over at any given time.  I love having company, but it does get busy, messy, and pressurized if you know what I mean.  It’s been nice seeing everyone, but gosh, I’m tired!  We spent most of Friday at the pool, Saturday up Hobble Creek Canyon barbecuing, and today up at Amy’s playing.

I’ve also started a couple of new books.  The Probably Future, by Alice Hoffman is my ‘home’ book.  ‘The Namesake’, by Jhumpa Lahiri is my vanpool book.  I may have mentioned Lahiri in former posts.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, which was a collection of short stories.  I loved it so much.  The Indian experience in America is not a topic I ever explored or expected to, but this book was just amazing and the stories make a mark on you.  The new book is much the same way.  Within a few chapters I found myself having to hide my tears from my commuting pals. Ugh.  I’m not sure if I’ve read Alice Hoffman before.   Let me check.  Okay, I’ve read ‘Local Girls’ and seen the movie ‘Practical Magic’.  The book I’m reading concerns a bit of magic, so perhaps that is a theme.  It’s difficult– mothers and daughters with issues. I’m quite a way in and don’t really feel into it. The story is interesting, so I may just not be paying enough attention.  We’ll see.

Tonight’s cookies are Rocky Ledge bars.  Chantel and Kimball are loving them. Jude is out, but after being berated last time, I’ll make sure some are left for him. The thing is, they are a bar cookie with chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, marshmallows and caramel.  It’s a bit much for me.  Honestly, a bit too sugary and rich for my enjoyment. I defer to my family however.  They love them.  And they look beautiful in my cookie jar.

So company will be with us until Tuesday morning, at which point life will be back to normal for a few weeks.  In July we are hosting a couple of families during K’s family reunion.  Wow. It is going to be crowded! We are totally excited because we like both families so much and this way we really get to spend time with them.  Really.  At close quarters.

Yes, we have no cookies!  On the schedule were Rocky Ledge Bars, and everyone was really looking forward to them. I have a good excuse however!  The sushi places in Orem/Provo were all closed for Sunday, so we had to drive all the way to Salt Lake for sushi, which got us home late enough that I was simply not up to it. For various reasons, none of them really good, I slept about 6 hours Friday and Saturday, and I was just dragging.  Got home, cleaned up my quilting mess, and got ready for work.  Boring I know, and definitely not tasty enough for the family. 

Next week however, my family will be in town from Oregon, and the Rocky Ledge bars will be better to share with them than Madelines, which I still have to go buy the pans for.  I’ll actually be making cookies twice this week–Bronson wants to make some when he is over and then watch LOTR III.  His request, which is odd, is to make two batches–one with chocolate chips and one with nuts.  I think he wants chocolate chip cookies, because that’s usually what we make. I’m hoping he wants to add nuts to the one and not go without chocolate chips in one! Whatever he wants though, he is gonna get.  Char, unfortunately has friends to visit at night, so I most likely will have Bronson Friday and Saturday.  Oh so sad, huh?  When she asked I was just happy.  Of course my darn mother will probably want to come over! LOL.

My quilting project did not get far enough along this weekend.  I can’t speak of it openly as it is a gift, and despite the fact that the person it is for does not seem to follow any family blogs, you never know, right?  I’ll just say I’m making more work for myself later.  We visited K’s parents on Friday and Sat though so he could work on their Honey Do list, and I couldn’t really take the big thing with me.

In other news, I’m already ready for the weekend.  The Oregonians arrive Thursday night.  Whoopee.

This morning on the van I finished Suite Francais, and the rain pouring down seemed fitting.  Here was the end of the story–only because it’s author was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. The story ended where it shouldn’t have, and she left notes as to what would have happened in the next one or two books. 

The thing is, Irene Nemirovsky was arrested and taken to a camp where Jews without state (non-citizens) were then parceled out to concentration camps in other countries.  One of the Appendix is the correspondence between her husband, her publishers, and others, all trying to effect her release.  Sadly, many of them were written after she’d actually died in Auschwitz. 

Reading her husband’s panicked words; his fear that she have warm enough blankets, money, medicine, and food, bring you to realize the depth of ignorance as to what was really going on.  Within a matter of weeks she was dead, and within a couple of months, her husband was also arrested, leaving their two daughters, at 7 or 8 and 13 or 14 to the care of strangers, and also in fear of arrest themselves. 

These letters to German officials, friends, colleagues, all try to show how Irene was anti-Bolshevik, Catholic, a good french citizen, an important writer.  Now we all know none of this meant anything because one of her grandparents was Jewish.  The scope and amount of people who were taken at this time–can you imagine all the letters and justifications for release that were sent?  It all seems so sad. This poor man, himself to die in a gas chamber shortly, perhaps was better off never knowing what his wife had gone through.  His letters beg of any news, good or bad, and even beg to be traded for her.  I’m sure when he himself was shipped off, he began to understand.  This in itself is heartbreaking.

The book and story itself was so important, showing the lives of those not in concentration camps, but dealing with the war and the subsequent occupation was wonderful.  To understand the context of it’s composition made it so much more important.

Finished up the weekly cookies; “Hazelnut Orange Shortbread”. In this case however, it’s Almond Orange Shortbread.  It was in the section Crumbly and Something, which I have to say is not really my cuppa.  But K loved them and can’t quit eating them.  I’ve made shortbread before, and so has K. If I remember, his was better than mine.  The only wet ingredient is butter!  There are also more chopped nuts measured into it than there is flour.  Just odd. Tasty, but odd.  K liked them so much I looked up how many other shortbread recipes are in the book–I think seven or nine or something. He was happy.

Chantel and I were planning on doing the Utah Quilt Shop Hop again. Unfortunately, it lands on the week that my dad’s birthday falls on, and this year being his 70th, all my bros and sis are coming to town. So we’d sort of thought we couldn’t do it. Chantel then suggested that I ask for Wednesday off, as everyone arrives on Thursday, and we go see everything outside Orem/Springville in one day. The idea is to be in Brigham City, and hour and 45 or so minutes away by 9ish in the morning and basically try to hit 12 stores during the day.  Then while the family is here, we’ll have to sneak off to the local stores.  Possible…but we’ll have to see. I need to see if taking the 16th off will work of course.

Anyway, not much else to report this weekend. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 80’s, so it will be hot for my walk at work tomorrow. I’d better dress in light clothing.  Other than that, I’m out of words!

This morning, Saturday, I woke up at 5:26am, of course.  At least it’s better than 4:09am, which is when I awoke yesterday, right?  I guess so.  Anyway, for the second morning in a row I came out to the quiet living room to work on finishing Garrison Keillor’s ‘Pilgrim’s, A Lake Woebegon Story’.  Now I mentioned at the beginning I wasn’t feeling it as much as the last book of his I’d read. The thing is, the experience of the first book was a bit like being set down in the middle of a small town and immediately being privy to every piece of gossip from every source about every person in that town.  It was really nice reading because every point of view was just another piece of each character’s puzzle; if you want character development, it was an entire book of it.  This time, not so much.

I couldn’t keep people straight and really didn’t care to, you know? They were telling stories about people throughout their trip, but frankly, I couldn’t care less. I had to force myself not to skip entire sections. And I don’t understand Keillor, putting himself into the story in such an overly self-deprecating manner. I mean, I get it, I get the style, but I don’t really want to hear about some poor soul being used and then abused by his users for an entire novel. And there is this part where a woman is conned out of a lot of money (don’t worry, it’s all good) that frankly just irritated me.  It was like in that John Grisham novel where the guy finds all the money and then acts so stupidly he is intimidated out of it.  So you have a few million dollars and people are trying to get it from you? Leave the freaking country already!  This was the same.  Maybe I need to be in the middle of a mid life crisis to sympathize more…but I doubt it.

Generally, there are authors I know I can buy and will always love.  Margaret Atwood, E. Annie Proulx, Jane Austen, etc.  I rarely find an author with one book I like and the rest I hate.   Only once do I remember this being the case.  As it happens, one of my favorite authors is Joyce Carol Oates.  However, I could not finish her book ‘We Were The Mulvaney’s”.  I have a suspicion that I’d read too many of Oprah’s book club books back when they were all had to do with someone being raped, or molested, or otherwise victimized, and I started Mulvaney’s and somehow just couldn’t finish experiencing that poor girl loosing everything. Ugh.  Maybe I could go back now and finish it.  I don’t want to try, however, it’s over.   Well, maybe this is something like that- perhaps too much Garrison in too short of time made me loose patience.  Whatever the cause, I won’t be visiting Lake Woebegone for quite some time.

I’m quilting today, which should be funnish.  A project for someone else with fabrics not of my choosing, so not as entertaining as putting together something I want to do, but still hanging out and sewing, so that is good, right? Better than work, better than cleaning, better.  Have fun people!

Jude’s going away tomorrow–actually tonight because he’s spending the night to make it easier to leave early.  His friend Kaitlyn’s family has a big boat-it pulls them water-skiing, but also has like a cabin and stuff. Not a houseboat, but something like that. Anyway, they are going away until Monday! Monday!  So Jude wanted me to make cookies for him to take.  He decided on Snickerdoodles, and I picked them out of Martha’s cookbook. K says it’s cheating, but they are delicious.  She knows her cookies. I did use 1 cup of brown sugar in place of white (the recipe was doubled) because I ran out. Sue me!

The new job was good this week.  I’m settling in.  The tech department still has not gotten me my LAN, so I can’t log into my computer, or my groupwise or the state accounting system, which puts the kibosh on a bunch of work, but finally the people I was working with started signing me in with their user names. Finished one big project, got in an ‘office-type’ fight, and messed something up big time. Other than that, just did a lot of work. I’ve never signed/approved so many things in my life. I’ll always know what date it is, that is for sure!

They have the greatest walking path down by the Jordan river. Bridges and geese and everything!  Plus, an added bonus is that there were no homeless people yelling at me while I did my walking as there was downtown.

I am in a vanpool now as opposed to a bus.  I was home in 35 minutes tonight!  As opposed to the normal 1.5 hours, it was heavenly. It feels wonderful to have an hour or so extra every night. Really!

Anyway, just going to hang this weekend, do some quilting, etc.  Should be fun.  Maybe watch a couple of Karl Urban movies….

Well, Thursday was my last day at CVR, and they were just so nice.  My supervisor Christine brought in lunch from Cafe Rio for our side of the office and bought a bamboo plant as a good bye gift.  I don’t remember where we were, but once we were out together and saw one and I mentioned that they were lucky and that ours had been broken by the firemen in our house fire (should it have stopped the house fire or been impervious to breakage due to it’s supposedly lucky qualities? I guess that question is for another time).  She remembered that. It is really quite tall already with spiral in the main stem.  Very pretty.  Then the office bought a cake, decorated in purple, and we had a little ‘party’ down in the conference room. I thought that was sweet.

Hopefully the people at my new office will be just as nice.

Sunday night of course is cookie night. I’ve been a little… well, not looking forward to it much to tell the truth. I mean, this week is chocolate chip cookies. Martha’s recipe is good, but mine is just as good if I am judging.  It has a bit too much chocolate for my taste. I like to get some cookie instead of feeling like I’m getting a mouthful of semi-sweet (my preference over milk) chocolate.  I also should have added a little extra flour to adjust for our altitude.  They were bit flat. Still a success. I’m much more exited for next week.  Hazelnut Orange Shortbread.  Tune in for that.

On the reading front, I started Suite Francais, which I could barely put down after reading it on the bus Thursday.  Yes, I read for fun instead of studying for the darn CPA!  Okay, I’m sorry. I contemplated reading as I walked to work, but figured I’d either step out in traffic and die, or wander into a next of violent homeless people. I couldn’t risk it.  So I am excited to start again.  It’s stories of several families leaving France as the Germans occupy it.  I love those personal stories.  And evidently it was written during the war and lost when the author died.  Now it’ s translated and published.  Fascinating. There are some letters and notes found with the manuscript as well. She had planned a few more stages–it’s sort of like two books published as one, but there were to be more parts.

I am also working on the Keillor Pilgrim book, which I am liking more and more.  I think I’ll sell everything and take off to wander Italy. Sigh.

I keep a little list in my head of books I want to read. Unfortunately, when it’s book buying time, I sometimes forget it. So here is a partial list, entitled, ‘Those books I remember wanting at this very moment.’

1. ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’ by Malcolm Gladwell

2. “Charlotte and Emily: A Novel of the Brontes” by Jude Morgan

3. ‘The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit’ by Jennifer Lynn Megyesi, Geoff Hansen

4. ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel  (About Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII’s court, which you may know I love to read about)

5. The Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris  (The Series True Blood is based on these novels)

Well, for now that’s what I’ve got— next time I’ll start at #6.

Yum. They seem an odd sort of cookie, don’t they? I wasn’t excited, especially when I realized they’d take a couple of hours and a lot of steps.  But most of the family loved them, including me. The apricot jam with the cream inside was just decadent.

Today is the first night of our weekly cookie bake from Martha Stewart’s Cookie book, which you may remember I received for Mother’s Day.  Big debate on how to get through the book.  They are grouped by type, so I was against, front to back, and if we chose what we wanted, we’d have the icky cookies all left to the end. So we decided to do the f1st cookie from section 1, then the 1st cookie from section 2 and so on until finished. I’ll skip the holiday cookies until appropriate of course.  Cookie one, Meringue Porcupines. Thinking maybe I should have gone from easy to hard instead.  Kind of complicated, and I’m not sure how this will work out.

Here is a pic of the meringues before going in the oven.  I put the vanilla in out of order already and don’t have parchment paper. It was tricky getting them off the sheet.  When we tried to cave in the bottoms for the filling, it was a bit ….well, one is broken and a few others wounded. Now I’ll make some cream filling and they’ll have that and apricot preserves inside two of them like a little sandwich.  Hope it’s good.

Reading another Garrison Keillor novel. Not sure if this will be as much to my taste. His character is in it and everyone is mean to him!  Also reading The Golden Compass for the second time (I know, it’s cheating), and The Alchemist recommended by Kimball via Will Smith.

Oh no! Time to whip the cream.  Gotta run!