Review: Lentil and Tomato Soup

Lentil and Tomato Soup (November 2011 Taste of Home)

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars













Husband is, of course, the finest chef in a generation, and particularly the finest soup chef. He got a few new cooking tools and a lot of cookbooks for Christmas, and now that the rush of present-shopping is over, he's got plenty of energy to let loose in the kitchen.





Tonight's soup was a light-yet-hearty tomato and lentil from the November 2011 issue of Taste of Home, embellished with chicken-and-onion sausage.

It is, hands down, my favorite way to eat kale so far. It did have an oddly sweet taste overall, probably because so many of its ingredients (carrots, onions, the sausage, even the tomatoes) are sweet. (Of course, my palate was already ruined by oversalted canned soups -- I think I still half expect every tomato soup to be creamy and seasoned with Goldfish crackers -- and by the tortilla chips I was eating alongside tonight's soup...) The sweetness almost made it taste like it ought to be a soup for spring, not for the cold weather.



But I enjoyed the whole bowl, and it was SO nice to have a grown-up meal with lots of vegetables, like we eat when we're with our parents, friends, and other Bona Fide Grownups.

Review: Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



What a fantastic book. A Christmas (!) present from my in-laws, and I stayed up late to finish it. Mirka's my favorite sort of heroine: smart and stubborn. Her family is great, too, especially her not-so-wicked-after-all stepmother. The story is a smooth blend of classic fairy tale and lively originality -- the details that make it fresh and new aren't just pasted on the surface. I thought the battle with the troll was rather flatter than the rest of the story, but that might be because the rest of it is so bursting with life. I hope this is just the beginning of Mirka's story!



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Review: Die Hard

Die Hard

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






 My husband can't believe there are all these cinematic classics I've never seen. I prefer to think that I had to wait to see them until my art-sense was mature enough to really get them.

One of the reasons I write reviews online is because I love, love talking and thinking about books and movies and themes and how everything ties together, but I have a congenital inability to say what I mean, clearly. It gets better with practice, of course, but I haven't had nearly enough practice yet. And my mother-in-law is an English teacher, who raised her boy to see these things and talk about them clearly over the dinner table. I feel profoundly NOT up to the challenge. So, you see, I also need to prove to myself that I can think clearly. Just, apparently, not fast enough for real-time conversation.

(It would not hurt either one of us a bit to edit our blog posts, rather than (mostly) just spewing them out. )

So, Die Hard. Alan Rickman is an amazing actor; his role could have been ironed out flat, but with him it was genius. Most of the characters are complete tropes, for that matter, but they're so excellently done it doesn't even bother me. I hear there's also a book -- possibly one of those rare cases where the movie is better, but the plots are different, and the book also sounds good.

I have to be at least the seven-millionth person to observe this -- the filmmakers are grinning and mugging and pointing to the idea during the end credits -- but Die Hard occupies sort of the same place in cinema that Beethoven's Ode to Joy (the proper, choral-symphonic version) occupies in music. I can think of dozens of things I ought to like better, and probably even do like better in some ways. But this is the one that not only makes me say "Oh! That was the perfect way to say that!" but also makes me haul my date off afterward to somewhere dark and quiet where he can just be quiet for a minute while I absorb the experience. (I actually did this after my first viewing of both.)

That doesn't tell you much of anything about the movie, and that's on purpose. If you're one of the other four people who somehow didn't already know the plot hooks, this is a fantastic movie to see in that state of blessed ignorance. Just remember that my husband is right: Everything in this movie happens for a reason.

Review: Persuasion

Persuasion by Jane Austen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



(Listened (again) to Juliet Stephenson's excellent reading. February 2009, April 2010, December 2011.)

My husband can't stand Jane Austen, and most of the people I've encountered who do like her seem to almost think that she's a 21st-century author writing historical fiction. Not that they literally believe that, but it's the closest I can come, in a hurry, to the impression they give me. I think she's a clear and witty observer. Her characters are sometimes dismissed as mere caricatures, but in my opinion the ones who are caricatures are subtly, intelligently rounded ones, and the rest are real human beings drawn in an artificially clear, even glaring light. They are exaggerated after the fashion of a posed portrait, not a flat pun.

Persuasion, in particular, makes me very glad I'm not subject to the constraints of high-class Regency social life, or the hardships (so they would seem to soft me, anyway) of Regency life for everyone. Anne is believable as a woman, a role model (not perfect, but thoughtful and worth thinking about), and an imaginary friend. As a dilettante historian, I'm so glad to have writers like Jane Austen whose work can throw us back into their world.

Austen is far enough removed from the present day, though, that her language and her world can be very hard for us to keep track of. Like Shakespeare, she's best experienced (at least at first) through the voice of a skilled reader, and Juliet Stevenson is remarkable.



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Review: Ross Poldark

Ross Poldark by Winston Graham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



(Juliana has been recommending this forever; bought it while at Pinewoods July 2011, and finished it October 2011.)

I'm pretty sure this is the Last Book I Finished before our wedding, so it's as good a place to start as any. I picked Ross Poldark up on the recommendation of a dancing friend. I reacted to it so differently from her that I'm almost not sure we read the same book, but I did like it very much.

It's got the classic problem of modern historical fiction -- I can't figure out whether or not Ross Poldark's way of thinking is that of an Authentic Person of His Time, or whether his dogged independence is more of a twentieth-century veneer. If the former, it's odd that he's chosen his own view of the right and proper with no reference to duty; but maybe that's exactly the point, and what little we know of his past has certainly prepared him with intelligence, strength, and bitter experience. If the latter, it's a much more skillful conflation than usual; Ross's every thought and action are shaped just as you'd expect a well-traveled, complex 18th-century gentleman to do things, if he were ever going to do exactly these things. Even if it is pasted together, I loved both the world-building and the characters.



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Reboot!

So, it's been more than five years since I posted to this blog. I'm a very, very different person now, with a Ph.D. and a full-time job and a house and a husband and a completely different emotional life than that n00b of a grad student had. The house is as messy as the apartment ever was. My brother has taken over our family's share of being in grad school and worrying about things. The job, much to my chagrin, really does leave me with less free time and energy than I had in grad school.

And the husband has started posting book and movie reviews to his blog, and I've gotten all behind on the list of Books Read that I try to keep, and so the blogging urge has struck again.

Round the spinney we go, as they say...