Nonfiction, Cakes, and Rugs

I said (maybe just to myself) that I really shouldn't sign up for any more challenges. The reason being that I've never finished one and my reading is very eclectic and unplanned. Another reason is, that book I'm reading right now? Annals of the Former World? is HUGE. And dense. And all about geology. It's gonna take awhile. BUT there is a challenge on the horizon. A challenge I'm not sure I can resist. It's a nonfiction challenge and you can find out about it here at Thoughts of Joy. When I first noticed a new challenge in the air, on Cam's blog, and before I knew the details, I thought, No way, baby due first week in March. But then I looked at the source and found out that this challenge doesn't start until May. Well, May is a different story. And I do often read nonfiction. I could count the one I'm reading now (because it'll take me until May to finish it) and there is another nonfiction I'm curious about that I saw on A Garden Carried in the Pocket called Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead edited by Paul Bahn. Jenclair discusses it here. So that's two. And there are other John McPhee's and Stephen Jay Gould's I want to read. But here's what will happen. Say I read the first two books I have planned. Then I'll want to read fiction or something will make me go off on a tangent. I would have until September, but I don't know. Sure is tempting.

In other news, I made French buttercream today for the first time in a long time. It was surprisingly easy and fast. I guess I'm getting the hang of it and feeling comfortable with it now. It pays to do things many times. Hey! Let's call this phenomenon I just discovered, practice! I'm making some kind of Valentine cake tomorrow plus vegan mini-cakes, probably heart-shaped. The main cake will also have something to do with white chocolate ganache. It'll either be filled with it or decorations piped with it.

New rug coming tomorrow. Yay! We have to have wall-to-wall unless we put in our own hardwood because we live in crappy 1980s-built builder-grade crap. It's not all that bad, actually, but it sure looks crappy when you pull up the existing carpet and then have to walk on subflooring with the big ring stains from the builders' 5-gallon buckets of whatever.

A Note on One L

I finished my second From the Stacks Challenge book, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School, by Scott Turow (author of Presumed Innocent). Although I don't imagine many people would be much interested in this book, I'll post a little bit anyway just because it was part of the challenge. I didn't really love it, but I didn't dislike it. As far as literary nonfiction goes, a favorite genre of mine, it pretty much fits the bill. It's nonfiction, personally experienced with no hiding of the author in the narrative, reflections on the author's experiences, written with a sense of story as similar to fiction rather than an onslaught of facts like a textbook. The book is made up of journal entries Turow wrote while in his first year of Harvard Law School interspersed with commentary he added in a year later. He attended his first year of school in 1975 so it's a little dated at times, but mostly it still works. Although he puts in a disclaimer at the beginning about how much he likes the law school itself and it proud to have gone there, he spends the rest of the book saying how stressful and horrible it is. He gives an interesting critique of the American law school system in general and it sure doesn't sound fun. It's a highly competitive, antagonistic, and dehumanizing environment for which he gives good suggestions on how to make it more practical and compassionate for up-and-coming attorneys. In 1999, I almost went to law school (took LSAT, applied, was accepted, paid money for seat in the class) then backed out and I'm glad I did. It wouldn't have been right for me, but the book was interesting nonetheless.

Challenge Organization

So I joined the From the Stacks Winter Reading Challenge hosted by Overdue Books. So far I've finished one book and I'm about halfway through the second. The challenge doesn't end until January 30, so I do have some time, although I did pick some big books for the list. I made a list of more than five that I said I might still choose from, replacing books from my "final" list, so I might have to do that to make the challenge more doable.

But now there is not one but TWO other challenges I'm interested in.
There is the 2007 Winter Classics Challenge from Booklogged at A Reader's Journal. For this, during the months of January and February, you have to read five classics. This I would love to do, but it overlaps with the From the Stacks Challenge. Booklogged allows for overlap but, unfortunately, very few of the books from my Stacks challenge list are classics. So I may have to hold off on that one until I see how I do with the Stacks Challenge, to which I am already committed.

The next upcoming challenge I'm interested in is the TBR Challenge from Mizbooks at Literary Cache. For this challenge, you read a book a month for the whole year from a list of books you've been wanting to read for 6 months or more.

Then there's the Chunkster Challenge from Bookfool. I'm thinking I won't be able to do this one (you can't do them all, can you?).

OK, I'm going to plug away at One L now while my next two batches of cookies are in the oven: Tea Cakes and Moravian Spice Cookies.

2006 G.I.F.T Challenge Plans

A new challenge proposed by Carl V. of Stainless Steel Droppings:

You have to post on 4 of the following:
Christmas movies
Christmas novels/short stories
Christmas songs
Christmas poems
Christmas traditions
Christmas memories

For whichever 4 things you choose you will post about them. That is where the giving comes in. Giving of yourself for the shared edification and inspiration of others. Your favorite Christmas movie, story, song, etc. may just inspire others to try it out. At the very least we will share in your joy and enthusiasm as you give us a glimpse into who you are by sharing memories, traditions, and favorites.. “Where is the challenge?”, you may ask. The challenge comes in here: two of your 4 choices must either involve something completely new to you or something you haven’t read or watched in an inordinately long amount of time. Take some time to read a Christmas related story or watch a Christmas movie that you’ve wanted to watch for years but never got around to. Seek out a Christmas poem and share it with us. You can post on each thing individually or do one big group post or combine things…do whatever you want to complete the challenge.

But what if this new thing ends up being something I just don’t like? That is okay, just give us an honest review. After all, sometimes lumps of coal do end up in the
stocking.

So I'm thinking I will post on the movie The Polar Express which I just saw the other night. That was something new. And I'll post on my "A Very Special Christmas" CDs as an old favorite. The other two I'm not sure yet.

Mayflower: Finished!

I finished the first book I set for myself for the From the Stacks Challenge, Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick. It was a good read, especially during the Thanksgiving holiday. The first part of the book tells the story of the Pilgrims from their origins in Scrooby, England, (the birthplace of William Bradford), to their settling in Leiden, Holland, to all the trials and tribulations they went through just to plan their move to America. They had two ships booked originally: the Mayflower and the Speedwell. It turns out that the Speedwell's captain sabotaged the ship by putting too big a mast on it and then using too much sail for the size of ship it was. So the Pilgrims left from Southampton for the big trip to America, only to have to turn back a few days later and land a few miles west of Southampton in Dartmouth for repairs to the Speedwell. They left again only to have the same thing happen and they had to turn back to England and stop in Plymouth for more repairs. This is when they ditched the Speedwell and all crowded onto the Mayflower. That's why there were 102 passengers on one ship. A lot of people dropped out of the trip, too, fed up and/or freaked out by all the complications, otherwise it would have been even more crowded. This first part of the book goes up until the legendary "first Thanksgiving."

The second part of the book is devoted to King Philip's War which took place between 1675 and 1676, about 50 years after the landing of the Pilgrims. By this time, Massachusetts Bay Colony was in full swing, having been populated by the Puritans starting around 1629. They flocked to Boston and its outskirts by the thousands. So now there was Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the beginnings of Rhode Island started by Roger Williams and the beginnings of Connecticut. The children of the Pilgrims and Puritans and the children of the Native American sachem Massasoit (and others) did not work on their diplomatic relationships as their parents had before them. One thing led to another and a war started. Basically the Native American population was decimated after this.

You know how reading is an organic process and you want to read your next book kind of based on what you just finished sometimes? Well, I was thinking about reading the original Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford himself. It's on order at Barnes & Noble. Plus I'm also interested in following up on two people who were in the book Mayflower: John Sassamon, a Native American who was five when the Pilgrims arrived and then attended Harvard in his thirties (isn't it amazing how fast things grew?) and Mary Rowlandson, a woman taken prisoner by Native Americans during King Philip's War. Eventually I might do this, but for now, in order to get some From the Stacks reading done, I'm moving on to One L by Scott Turow and Back Bay by William Martin. Both revolve around Harvard and Boston which are inextricably bound with the Puritan/Pilgrim stories anyway, so I'm still kind of following with my theme, but reading books I already had.

First Thoughts on Mayflower: Winter Reading Challenge: First Book

I really love all of the seasons and relish their changes every year. And like many people, I love to do seasonally related things, i.e., apple picking in the fall, taking pictures of all the flower buds and bees in the spring. etc. And this year we tried Alton Brown's popcorn recipe where you use a large silver bowl over the stove instead of a pot with a lid (or the microwave). And M. thinks we'll be able to do it over my parents' chimenea so, of course, I'm all gung-ho to do it over Thanksgiving weekend so it'll feel closer to authentic Native Americans and Colonial people. And this is all why I chose to read Mayflower first for the Winter Reading Challenge. How much more timely can you get?

So first of all, I'm excited about the History Channel's "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower", airing on Sunday night at 8 pm, because this book is also an untold story. You get all the "behind the scenes" of what the Native Americans went through in the years before the Pilgrims showed up. Let's just say they were not unfamiliar with Europeans. And Europeans in general had not proven themselves to be friendly, reliable, or respectful. But we knew that.

Another cool thing is that the dates of 1620 happen to match up with the dates of 2006. So when Philbrick refers to the Pilgrims' arrival in America on Saturday November 11, that date falls on the same day of the week this year, too. So last night I was reading and he mentioned Wednesday November 15, and lo and behold, it was Wednesday November 15 for me, too.

And my final first thought is that Philbrick gains credibility with me (not that he needed to) because astronomical and geological information he includes to add depth and detail to the Pilgrims' story jives with information I just read in A Short History of Nearly Everything. For instance, Philbrick says that the Pilgrims saw a comet in 1618, and I remember reading about it in the Bryson book, although I need to look it up to remember the details. Also, when we read about the Pilgrims' first winter in Massachusetts, we always read about how cold and harsh it was. Well, it really was colder and harsher than winters there now because they were in the middle of a mini ice-age until about the early 19th century, I think. Again, I remember reading about the mini ice-age in the Bryson book. It's so fun to be able to connect books like this.

So I'll continue reading and give my opinion at the end, and at the Thanksgiving table, too, I'm sure. (We'll have an Englishman there, too. My sister's new boyfriend is from Brighton.)

From the Stacks: Winter Reading Challenge

Winter Reading Challenge

I love the idea of the reading challenges and reading projects. I try to institute reading projects on myself, but they never last very long. I signed up for one of the blog reading challenges that go around once before but then I kind of quit blogging for awhile, so I didn't participate. But this one is great because it's all about targeting books you already have on your shelves that you haven't read yet. This is an ongoing issue for me as it seems to be for other bloggers, too. This challenge requires you to read five books you already own. Narrowing it down to five is the problem. I put Toddler in his bed for naptime and went into my room to creep around my shelves for a few minutes, taking inventory on what I had and what looked good enough to make it into the challenge. I came up with a list of eleven books.

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould

Mozart in the Jungle by Blair Tindall

One L by Scott Turow

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

As I started posting the comment saying that I was ready to join the challenge but wasn't ready with my list of five, I started listing five of the books anyway. Were they the choices of my subconscious? I guess. They are the ones in bold above. So I'll go with those, and like Lesley of A Life in Books, I, too, reserve the right to switch out.