[Narnia Content Note: Racism]
The Horse and His Boy, Chapter 15: Rabadash the Ridiculous
Many, many, many days ago, I said: I'm going to pause here because (a) it's late over here in my time zone and (b) I want to give Rabadash's "trial" its own post. Then I got flu, bronchitis, book edits, and a Laura Ingalls Wilder biography, and time passed as it is wont to do! But let us roll up our sleeves and continue on with this book.
When we last left our royals, they had decided to put Rabadash on trial. I'm frankly not sure how this is supposed to work? Lune cannot possibly be an impartial judge, given that he was just invaded, and he doesn't have any authority over Rabadash.
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Narnia: Foolish Rabadash |
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Open Thread: Ice on Wood |
The eve of Christmas Eve was marked by the worst kind of precipitation. Freezing rain is basically how nature responds to the laws of physics pointing out, "You can't drop black ice out of the sky." Liquid water falling from above when it's so cold that a drop will turn to ice the moment it actually hits something.
While its hazards are many, the results are actually fairly pretty. Somewhat difficult to get decent pictures of, though.
Basically, adding ice to trees results in every branch turns into a larger branch that's partially made of ice. For big branches that just makes them shiny, but for smaller branches, like most of the ones pictured here, there's actually more ice-branch than there is branch-branch. Thus you get the clear branches with off-center wooden cores seen above.
We have a special open thread set aside for discussion of The Last Jedi. Please take any spoiler-having discussion of it there.
Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Open Thread: Orange Glazed Brick |
Continuing the brick theme of last week, I give you the interior of the Oak Grove station on the Orange Line. This picture was specifically lined up to capture the reflective quality of the glazed bricks.
We have a special open thread set aside for discussion of The Last Jedi. Please take any spoiler-having discussion of it there.
Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 14 (Part 3) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 14
(Tweet Link: Part 14) I read somewhere once that astronauts sometimes struggle with depression when they return to earth. They've achieved something amazing, visited somewhere wondrous, and now that's over and they can never return. As we near the end of this final chapter of Prairie Fires, I feel like an astronaut, my friends. This has been the most amazing, most surreal, most unexpectedly wild ride. Where will we go after this? I don't know. I can't say. But we're here together now.
When we last left off this chapter, Rose had died and been buried with a quote selected by her libertarian grandson that was the first argument for social security. We have to ask ourselves, did he really not know that? Was this his final, fitting revenge? We also have to ask: why does autocorrect want to replace "libertarian" with "librarian"? Could it be that even machines know libertarians are bad, and they try to replace them with good librarians?
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 14 (Part 2) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 14
(Tweet Link: Part 13) #PrairieFires Alright, y'all. Are we prepared? Part 13.
Meanwhile, this is awesome. Y'ALL HELPED DO THIS.
If you want to pick up this amazing book--and I totally encourage you to, because I've really only skimmed the surface--here's an affiliate link to the kindle and paper versions on Amazon. If you've been meaning to pick up the Little House books themselves, they're also on Amazon. With the pictures in! They look really pretty.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 14 (Part 1) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 14
(Tweet Link: Part 12) #PrairieFires Part 12. Chapter #14. Let's get as far as we can.
Hahaha, omg, #PrairieFaeries would not be wrong, no. Bless, I needed that chuckle.
Chapter 14 opens with Rose being awful, and I mean. Are we even surprised at this point? She's just turned 70, Laura has died, so obviously the reasonable thing to do is leave town to go pal around with friends.
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Open Thread: The Last Jedi |
Star Wars thoughts go here, so as not to take over the other open thread.
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Open Thread: Snow on Brick |
When the snow first falls, the bare ground is usually too hot for it, and it melts. A stick or leaf may provide sufficient separation from the ground to allow it to collect. Thus there are often random islands of snow.
However not all ground has the same thermal properties, and in certain cases we get patterns. the gaps between bricks provide safe harbor for snowflakes even as the bricks themselves melt the flakes into oblivion.
Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 13 (Part 3) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 13
(Tweet Link: Part 11) #PrairieFires Part 11, and here we need to revisit some of Rose's stuff from last night because holy shit. @Shaker_aphra has noted that the Pittsburg Courier, the African-American paper where Rose landed a column, was a big deal.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 13 (Part 2) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 13
(Tweet Link: Part 10) #PrairieFires, Part 10. Proceed with caution.
Rose urges Herbert Hoover to find Rexh Meta. She fears that her "vindictive personal enemies among communists" are causing her requests to be ignored. Does... she think Hoover is a communist? She doesn't find him (he's apparently/probably in prison) and laments forever that he totes would've been rescued if she'd been a member of the communist party. Okay, like, if you really believed that, wouldn't you join up????
Reader's Digest wants to run Hurricane. She meets with the editor and he brings his 14yo son Roger to meet Rose. While he is in high school, Roger regularly spends evenings and weekends at Rose's house. That's all the details I have on Roger MacBride at the moment. I will report as the situation develops.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 13 (Part 1) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 13
(Tweet Link: Part 9) Okay. Let's... let's gird our loins. Deep breaths. Chapter 13 of #PrairieFires. Part #9 in my series of threads. I'm gonna admit to being a bit exhausted. I will continue because I don't like leaving things unfinished, but... these are awful, depressing people. Genuinely, I had to go take a break after Part #8.
Laura and Rose are some kind of case study in how traumatized people can turn around and absolutely terrorize others in an attempt to assert control over their lives. Rose is the most obvious problem, what with the "adopting" and abusing of young boys, and sucking up to famous friends only to castigate them unfairly when they fail to perform to her fantasies.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 12 (Part 2) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 12
(Tweet Link: Part 8) Part #8 of #PrairieFires, here there is only rage.
[TW] After Rose alienates Don and Ruth Levine, Rose turns suicidal again, but I have zero sympathy for her and I say this as someone who struggles with suicidal impulses. You sympathize with Hitler, Rose. You ought to feel bad! Feeling bad is the correct reaction!
In an argument about politics, John Turner (adopted son; probably abuse victim for 6 years) storms out of the house and joins the Coast Guard. She will basically never see him again, feeling that he had gone over to the enemy by enlisting in government service.
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Open Thread: Water under the Bridge |
This is what happens when I can't think of a decent name for a picture. There's a bridge. There's water under it. There's an idiom that goes "It's water under the bridge." Thus: title.
More of me being enamored with reflections.
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Review: D'Lish Deviled Eggs |
D'Lish Deviled Eggs: A Collection of Recipes from Creative to Classic
by Kathy Casey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
D'Lish Deviled Eggs / B00AZKUERY
I love this cookbook so much and I keep coming back to it again and again. I know that seems silly, like, what more can you do with deviled eggs than the basic recipe? But this book has the best base recipe *plus* awesome variations with pulled pork, buttered corn, pimiento cheese, and a zillion other flavor combinations. For someone who really likes deviled eggs and has a lot of picky eating issues, this cookbook is great because it's good at presenting ideas (with gooooorgeous pictures) and letting you experiment with those ideas. "Hmm, what if Classic Picnic with Bacon Cheddar?" WHAT IF, INDEED.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Cheese and Beer |
Cheese Beer
by Janet Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cheese and Beer / 1449421849
Be aware right this is a *pairing* book. It's not about cheese and about beer, it's about cheese-and-beer together. That wasn't quite what I was looking for, but that's okay! Pairing books are important too.
This is a gorgeous book with a lot of beautiful pictures and a huge variety of pairing suggestions. I've seen another reviews complain that the selections are too easy to find, but I think that's going to vary widely--I'm in Texas, not California, and even the nicest grocers around here don't serve half the cheeses in this book. Fortunately the pairing suggestions are very versatile so you're not going to be "trapped" into being unable to use half the book. The instructions for storing and serving cheese are especially good to know; I'm kind of a foodie when it comes to cheese and I still learned stuff which is always awesome.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Amish Friends Cookbook Desserts |
Wanda E. Brunstetter's Amish Friends Cookbook: Desserts
by Wanda E. Brunstetter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Amish Friends Cookbook Desserts / 978-1616262921
There's nothing really wrong with this book, but there's also nothing really right. There are almost no pictures for the recipes, and it's not clear whether these even *are* pictures of the recipes or just generic stock photos of "apple pie", "pumpkin pie", etc. The recipes are short and sweet--about the size of a recipe card, which is convenient for storage but not if you want any kind of in-depth instructions. But if you're an advanced chef, I feel like you already know about these recipes; there's very little in the way of variety or invention. If you have even a single church cookbook from the past 30 years, you have most of these recipes already. If you don't, then I guess this is a decent collection? But don't expect instructions or pictures to help you out.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Open Thread: Something Purple |
Yeah . . . I got nothing. Could show up as pink depending on local conditions.
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Review: Holiday Cookies |
Holiday Cookies: Showstopping Recipes to Sweeten the Season
by Elisabet Der Nederlanden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Holiday Cookies / B01N6FSVZB
I seriously thought I reviewed this months ago, but it turns out I got lost in cookie making and forgot! I picked this book up on NetGalley thinking "oh, Ana, how many more holiday cookie books do you NEED when you own so many already" and it turns out the answer was "AT LEAST ONE MORE".
I love this book. I love the recipes; they're simple, and easy to read and follow. I love the pictures, oh gosh, the pictures. There is a picture for each recipe (as god intended for recipe books!) and they are all so gorgeous I want to lick the page. I love the variety; oh sure, we start with gingerbread and pinwheels and chocolate chunk but in no time whatsoever we're serving up cookies from Sweden, Italy, Austria, South America, Denmark, Mexico, and so forth. It's largely a very European selection and I would've loved to see more global variety (maybe for a sequel? please?) but what we have here is scrumptious, yummy, and there's almost certainly something here that isn't already on your cookbook shelves.
There's also some amazing decorating work on the pages, and some creative ideas like cookie place cards (for settings at the table) and one of the prettiest 3-D Christmas tree cookies I've ever seen. The section on gingerbread houses comes with guides for you to trace and cut out on paper. (Though this won't be much use, probably, to kindle users. I wish cookbooks would start writing the measurements on guides now that tablets are becoming ubiquitous.) If you love winter cookies--and these are definitely winter/yuletide/christmas cookies, don't be mislead by the "holiday" in the title to think there's a Labor Day cookie in here--this is a great book for your collection.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: QUESO! |
QUESO!: Regional Recipes for the World's Favorite Chile-Cheese Dip
by Lisa Fain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
QUESO! / B01MT4WC2K
I feel like I should like this book more than I do, and I've been sitting on this review for awhile but I need to post it and get it out of my system: this is a good book, but it's not quite the book I wanted.
I thought I was picking up a cookbook... and I was... kinda. There are a lot of chile con queso recipes here, there's no doubt about that. There's only pictures of about half the recipes, which is never a bonus in my book because I want pictures of *all* the recipes. On the one hand, these are queso recipes so the pictures aren't going to vary a whole lot from each other until we hit the more complicated fare. On the other hand, there *is* more complicated fare deeper in--queso with pork and corn and mushrooms, and vegan queso--and yes, I want pictures of those. The pictures which are on the page aren't labeled (or weren't in the Advance Review Copy I received) which means that every 3-4 recipes there's 1-2 pictures and you have to try to match the pictures to the recipes. For a book that I want to browse through when I have a hankering to throw cheese in a pan, that feels like more work than I'd wanted.
This is also a touch of a history book... sorta. The author grew up in Texas (as did I) and was raised on the Velveeta-and-Rotel recipe that white Americans grew up on in the American South back in the day. Then she started branching out and researching the roots of the recipe and visiting different Texas towns to gather regional samples. She's looked into fondues and rarebits and other melted cheese dishes. All of this research has gone into little 2-3 page "histories" before each section of queso recipes, along with little paragraphs of historical context with each recipe.
I love food history so I feel like I should like these parts more than I do. There's a distressing shallowness to a lot of the history, like there's a deeper story and we're just getting a couple condensed sentences that would go on a Wikipedia stub until someone fleshed the material out properly. And the history we do get feels very much like a white outsider peering in--and sometimes in the wrong directions. From the very beginning, the author explains that her trek-for-queso took her from El Paso to Corpus Christi to Austin to Houston to San Antonio. I would've expected at least one jaunt over to Mexico while she "drove along the Texas-Mexico border". The first section of queso recipes features recipes from Los Angeles, Boston, San Antonio, El Paso, Arkansas ("Arkansas Cheese Dip"), Lubbock (a Velveeta-based recipe), and Lady Bird Johnson's Washington Post recipe.
Those feel like very unusual choices to set the stage for a book that is trying to be a history of queso. I feel almost like I'm reading a gentrification of queso--the Arkansas Cheese Dip is called "the term preferred by folks in Arkansas". Do you mean white folks in Arkansas? Because you can say "white folks". I'm assuming Spanish-speaking Arkansans still just called it chili con queso. (Though they probably didn't make it with "1 pound yellow American cheese" and ketchup, so maybe "Arkansas Cheese Dip" is the better term after all.)
I dunno, I feel like I'm being mean. As a coffee table book for Christmas, I think this is perfectly adequate. As an addition to your cookbooks to flip through when you want cheese to nosh on, I think it works. If you're interested in the history of chili con queso in America as adopted as part of the American culture, I think this is an interesting read. If you go into the book with that mindset, I think you won't be disappointed.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Baking Class |
Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake!
by Deanna F. Cook
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Baking Class / B06XPQX1ZC
This is an extremely cute little book which I think would be great for small children wanting to get into baking--especially if they've been watching cooking shows for years (like my nephew) and wanting to dip their toes in the water. The graphics are colorful and helpful, and the steps are easy to follow. I love how all the helpers in the book are kids (with a good variety in racial representation!) because it really emphasizes that yes, kids CAN do these recipes and so can the kids reading along at home.
The selection of recipes here is not the widest or most diverse. The bread section is loaf bread, banana bread, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough, etc; the cookie section is chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar cut-out, snickerdoodles, etc. I do feel like a follow-up book could branch out just a wee bit into some more multi-cultural directions than just what would've been incredibly safe and familiar to me as a white American kid. I don't think this is a point of criticism for the book, just something I wanted to note for potential buyers.
This is definitely a book for KIDS, though. Some baking 101 books are accessible for adults, but this one is geared strongly for the under-12 age crowd. As a birthday or holiday present for a kid wanting to get into baking, though, I think this would hit the spot. Helpful, colorful, cheerful, and creative within the confines of the "safe" recipes served up on the page.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 12 (Part 1) |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 12
(Tweet Link: Part 7) If you're just joining us, this is a completely accurate summary of Rose Wilder.
Can I just say that I re-read the first chapter of Big Woods last night and I can 100% see why I like/d it. The food descriptions are amazing and Laura is really good at making shitty things seem like amazing adventures. This was apparently a real-world talent of hers which Rose scorned, so it's interesting to see how that plays out in her writing. I really would love to know what Rose thought reading/editing her stuff. Reading between the lines of their letters, she wasn't thrilled.
Chapter 12 promises us that we're entering "the most editorially incestuous phase of their relationship." That's never a good sign.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 11 |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 11
(Tweet Link: Part 6) It's striking to me that Laura's writings are about hope and joy and beauty even in hard times, while Rose's writings are about grim unhappiness in relative wealth. (The Depression is happening and she never misses a meal; she's relatively rich.)
Rose joins the local men at foxhunting (further alienating the wives) looking for new story material to gather. She mocks their dialect to her literary friends. Similarities of scenes and turn of phase between Little House on the Prairie and Willa Cather's 1918 novel My Antonia are noted along with the fact that Rose was very familiar with Cather's work.
Oh shit.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 10 |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 10
(Tweet Link: Part 5) Part 5, in which the books are written and I assume everything goes horribly right.
Chapter 10 opens with Laura and Almanzo taking a road trip to De Smet (Charles' old town). They're horrified by the ruination of all the farm country (crop prices tanked due to over-growth) and everyone is losing their farm to taxes. I can kind of see why farmers would gravitate to anti-tax positions when they associate taxes with foreclosure and those taxes have never been used to properly safety net them. Sigh.
Laura's manuscript for Little House in the Big Woods is accepted, but Knopf folds because of the Depression before she can sign. (Sorry, to be clear, Knopf folds the children's arm of the publishing company, not the entire company itself.) Rose insists the Depression will be brief, nothing is wrong, people are just being cowards. She's $8,000 in debt.
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Prairie Fires: Chapter 9 |
[Prairie Fires Content Note: Racism, Settler Violence, Nazis, Child Abuse]
Prairie Fires, Chapter 9
(Tweet Link: Part 4) Rose Wilder has invested all her money into the stock market and is planning a palace with servants and guns to keep out the riff-raff.
[TW: Self Harm] When you're being Dramatic Online: [Rose's article] appeared under a sensational title: “I, Rose Wilder Lane, Am the Only Truly HAPPY Person I Know and I Discovered the Secret of Happiness on the Day I Tried to Kill Myself.”
Oh my god, I cannot summarize this article of hers. I am screaming. It is the most dramatic childish thing ever. It is 100% the slow-faint-on-the-stairs-lady gif.
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Writings: Release |
[TW: Death of a Parent, Failed Pregnancy Attempt, Talk of Self-Harm]
I wrote this many years ago after two failed IVF attempts with my spouse, during which one of my parents (survived) a bout with cancer. I wanted to reconcile myself to loss--both the upcoming one I foresaw when my parents died, and the loss of dreams and the future I'd planned as I acclimated to the fact that I was infertile.
I sometimes tell anti-choice trolls that I lost "thirty babies" during IVF, which is not incorrect per their worldview, as thirty fertilized eggs stopped developing one by one. But though I don't feel like I lost thirty children--and am squicked out by fundies who insist I'll meet my excessively large brood in heaven--I do feel I've lost one child. Not a child I carried, but a child I'd planned a future around and towards. This story is my farewell to that child.
This is also a ghost story, which seemed fitting for October and All Hallows' Eve.