Review: The Wife

The Wife by Sigrid Undset

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I read it too slowly and lost track of some of the characters who get less screen time. Looking forward to a reread, though! Some books (even ones I enjoy rereading) I can take in more or less all at once. So far, reading the Kristin Lavransdatter books has been more like wandering through a real landscape, noticing a lot of things, but missing many others. I'm looking forward to more walks through it.



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Review: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A number of interesting stories, but didn't entirely deliver on its promises. Worth a read just for the anecdotes, though!



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Marriage Equality Anniversary Chicken

Marriage Equality Anniversary Chicken
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So, we like Chick Fil-A's chicken, but we don't like buying food from them since we learned that they're anti-gay. For our first wedding anniversary, Husband made simulated fast-food chicken! The main trick is brining the chicken for a good long time before cooking. It was fantastic!

Review: The Eye of the World

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Read on paper, on Kindle, AND on audiobook; so far, only a week or so behind the WoT (re-)read I'm hanging out in.

This was the first time I'd read The Eye of the World, although I've started it a few times before. The cover (as is traditional) is an appallingly inaccurate depiction of the characters, but a reasonably accurate depiction of what they're up to most of the time: travelling, often under cover of darkness, and looking over their shoulders for what might be (or, commonly, definitely is behind. The characters weren't well fleshed-out enough for my tastes -- the young women and young men from Two Rivers, especially, often felt like so many featureless dolls with One Distinguishing Characteristic pasted on. The flow of the story drifted from nerve-wracking to placid, but it always had momentum. I'm excited to see how this world develops!

At the time I'm writing this review (9/9/2012), I'm a fair bit of the way through [b:The Great Hunt|233649|The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time, #2)|Robert Jordan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312031081s/233649.jpg|1574475], and the characters have rounded out quite a bit. What's really surprised me, though, is how much the world-building has improved -- I thought it was awfully good already! Looking forward to more.



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Review: Daddy Long Legs

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I think I read this as a kid, but maybe not; the only details that really seem familiar are at the very beginning.

I loved every bit of this book except the ending (and I knew what the ending was ahead of time, and wasn't surprised that I hated it, although I hoped not to). It's not an appalling ending like The Mill on the Floss, and it's supposed to be a happy one, but it's just not properly supported in Judy's character, I don't think. And I like her so much, I had hoped for an ending that fit better with her own nature.



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Review: French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Look, you can't tell ANYONE that I read this, OK?

I read it because I'm on a common-sense-glamorized-by-the-French kick, and because a coworker with excellent taste in books (the last thing I borrowed from her was an omnibus of Roald Dahl's short stories) spoke highly of it. I think diet books are stupid and weight loss is a pointless goal, but Guiliano makes me think. One of the French Women X books I've been reading says you can't sell anything in France without emphasizing the pleasure it'll give, and Guiliano has thought long and hard about pleasure, and how to maximize the pleasures of food. Her goals aren't all the same as mine, but that's never stopped me from borrowing someone's methods!



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Review: Uglies: Shay's Story

Uglies: Shay's Story by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I always like a Westerfeld fix, but this isn't the best. For me, at least, the Uglies world is much better described in words than in graphics. Still a good fix!



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Review: Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I'd been wanting to read this one for some time, and when a friend saw me coveting her copy, I happily took her up on her offer to lend it. Just what I expected; loads of common sense (my husband pointed out that it's not so different from how we were raised, nor from the way our friends are raising their kids), but wrapped up in charming writing, chic Frenchiness, and some grounding individual experience. A great reminder to me of a lot of things I kind-of-sort-of know; it launched me on a little "French women this" and "French women that" kick at the library, but if one of the bunch stays on my shelves, it'll be this one.



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Review: Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World

Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World by Mark Frauenfelder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I picked this book up while I was at a conference in Ottawa; I had brought along a reel of wire and needlenose pliers to work on a project from a recent issue of Make magazine, so the appeal was obvious. I enjoyed reading this book plenty; it made me want to pick up things I'd once dabbled in (like whittling) and maybe even some things that I'm hardly likely to enjoy (making kombucha, for example). I didn't find this book life-changing or full of new information; for me, it was cozy. Mark Frauenfelder sounds a lot like my dad, except that my mom would never have let us keep chickens, and my dad is by and large more interested in more practical projects.



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Review: Sheepfarmer's Daughter

Sheepfarmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Read on the Kindle April 2011 (I think). Listened to the Audible version May/June 2012. The reader irritates the skin off me -- she doesn't seem to have read ahead to the end of a sentence before starting it, or to know the right intonation for some colloquialisms. She also made some odd decisions for accents; in particular, as the mercenaries travelled south, the people they met had accents that seemed more and more Celtic (as she read them); but then, inexplicably, when a particular character was described as having a "Southern accent", she did an accent from the American South! Incroyable!! Since I'd read the book already, this was OK, but I'm still trying to decide if I can bear it for the second in the series, which I haven't read before...



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Review: Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Dark and Doctorovian, with a lot of premonitions of [b:Makers|6422238|Makers|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266690436s/6422238.jpg|6611457]; it explores a lot of the same themes, including creativity, trust, the families we're born with, and the families we make.



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Review: Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting

Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A very entertaining light history of handwriting, including the author's own memories of pens, ink, and Catholic-school handwriting practice. Lots of fun.



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Review: K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain

K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain by Ed Viesturs

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Another "idiots on Everest"-type audiobook to listen to while I run. It took me a long time to finish this, because I kept getting sidetracked halfway through the 1939 expedition and having to go back to the beginning of that chapter when I came back to it. That got a bit tedious, but it's not the book's fault. Overall, quite an enjoyable read.

This is the first K2 book I've read, so I have no idea how Viesturs' ideas stack up against other theories (many of which he mentions and supports or refutes) about what happened on some of the more poorly understood K2 missions. He seems to be quite clear about the line between fact and fill-in (a lot of fill-in is necessary in some cases where there were no survivors or the survivors' stories are mutually incompatible), and his theories make sense as he tells them.



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Review: Scored

Scored by Lauren McLaughlin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Not sure exactly when I finished this, but it was some time mid-April, and before I picked up [b:Matched|7735333|Matched (Matched, #1)|Ally Condie|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311704885s/7735333.jpg|9631645] (which allowed me to return to the library, simultaneously, TWO dystopian YA's with single-word past-tense verbs as titles).

The premise seemed a bit silly to me at first, but it's woven into the near-future-America setting in an unusually convincing way. The story is set just far enough forward that the teenagers were born about when I expect my own kids to be born; I found it less forced than usual, trying to believe that we'd accept so much change in so little time. And quite a lot of the details that seemed implausible to me can be explained by "high-pressure high school makes you a bit weird" better than by "the author missed a plot hole there."

I liked the world and the characters much better than I liked the plot, but I'm not sure how to explain why without spoilers.

Another solid, worthwhile read, if you're into dystopian YA.



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Review: Matched

Matched by Ally Condie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A good solid dystopian love story. Owes a lot to The Giver, and it's got the same plausibility holes as some of the dystopias I've made up -- no good explanation for the war, for example, or for how on earth things got to this point without a rebellion. Like many others, it's not the best dystopian YA I've read, but it's very good fodder for the dystopian-YA appetite, and I'm looking forward to reading the next one.



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Review: Bill Rodgers' Lifetime Running Plan: Definitive Programs for Runners of All Ages and Levels

Bill Rodgers' Lifetime Running Plan: Definitive Programs for Runners of All Ages and Levels by Bill Rodgers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The clothes and hairstyles in the pictures have gotten pretty dated, but the advice is evergreen. Great next step after a Couch to 5K.



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Tacos and applesauce

Tacos!
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There isn't really a recipe for tacos, is there? Husband cooked up ground beef with green bell peppers and spices. Then we ate it on little flour tortillas with fresh tomatos and lettuce. I think he had salsa on his. It was awesome. So was the homemade queso dip that went with it. (And the episodes of Community we watched with dinner!)



Applesauce!
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook. While we were shopping for car snacks for a recent cross-country drive, I found bags of Jonathan apples and demanded them -- they were my Most Favorite Apple when I was a kid, and I don't see them very often now. I do still enjoy them, but their Most Favorite-ness has been eclipsed by the Honeycrisp. So Husband made the extras into applesauce. Apples and cinnamon and sugar -- what's not to like? Also, all that stirring in cinnamony steam made his hair smell like pastry.

Review: The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Weird and completely Doctorovian -- so, tons of fun. Highlights Doctorow's weird obsession with Disney even more than Makers did. Feels, in some ways, like an alternate-universe version of who some of the characters from Makers might have been if things went differently in the future.



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Review: Makers

Makers by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Re-read (previously finished February 2010).

Makers is as excellent as I remembered. Awfully depressing, but hopeful as well, and a wildly entertaining journey through the world of inventors, publicity, and business.



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Review: The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My dad tried to read The Call of the Wild to me as a bedtime story when I was five. I told him it was too scary and made him stop. I'm twenty-eight now, and I've finally finished it. I cannot believe he wanted to read it to his five-year-old, but it's an excellent story.

I've read too many things by Jon Krakauer and others like him to take Jack London's pictures of northern frontier life completely at face value, but London's voice makes the northland a magical place. All through the book, I had the distinct feeling that London understood people rather better than he understood dogs, and had truer things to say about them.

Listened to Gene Engene's reading -- very nice. He does great voices, and clearly enjoys the book he's reading to us. He mispronounces a few words, but seems to know what they mean, if that makes any sense.





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