Readathon Hour 12 Update

Good news, everyone: I started O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King on audiobook, which I've been wanting to read for a while, and am enjoying it! I got slightly derailed when my grandparents stopped by, but it's all good cuz they're my grandparents. I gave my grandma some of the cookies I'd baked for the Readathon but she wouldn't join me in a shot of vodka for some reason. *pouts*

As for the read-a-chunkster strategy... not going too well so far. I gave up on Map Of Time, as well. I think maybe I'll just try to finish the book I was reading last night and call it good.

Stats!

Food consumed: One quarter of a fritata and 2 3 cookies, a bowl of beef teriyaki (Japanese take-out, yay!) that Vasilly bullied me into eating, a handful of grapes, and 1 Brötchen (bonus points if you know what that is).
Drinks: A cup of coffee and a 2 glasses of water
Mini-Challenges: I managed to complete two mini-challenges! My Perfect Anthology and Book Trailer

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Readathon Hour 8 Update

Hour 8, y'all! The Readathon is chugging right along. I've decided to give up on The Historian; I wasn't fifty pages in and already skimming through extraneous info. Plus the things that were supposed to be creepy were instead making me laugh. It has an interesting narrative structure but I'm not in the mood for something so esoteric right now (or ever). Going to move on to Map of Time, recommended by the lovely Memory.

In audiobooks, I'm finished with the first disk of Turn Coat and TOTALLY CONFUSED. I started the series (Harry Dresden) years ago but only read up to book four, and I think this is book, like, eleven? I should probably pick another book but whatever. The narrator's pretty good, anyway.

Food consumed: One quarter of a fritata and 2 cookies
Drinks: A cup of coffee and a glass of water

That's all the updates that are fit to be made so far! How's your reading going?

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Read-a-thon Start Post!

Hello, everyone! I am officially starting the 24-Hour Readathon. Yays!

I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'm just skipping straight to the meme. Will be more chatty later.

1)Where are you reading from today? Colorado.
2)Three random facts about me… I need a haircut, the TV show Chuck is my anti-drug, and my favorite flowers are gladiolas.
3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? One. I just have to decide which one.
4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? Staying awake. Haha.
5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Yes, have fun with it! Don't feel like you're falling behind because you're not finishing books or doing a bunch of mini-challenges.

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Interview: Morgan Greer from Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires series

A visual approximation of Morgan via models.com

To celebrate the release of the fifth book in Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires series, I invited Morgan, the head of Navarre House, over to my blog for an interview. Bonus: this is the first time I've ever interviewed a vampire! (I think...) Check out Morgan's answers and be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post!

TBFB: Hi, Morgan! Thank you for talking with me today. You're my favorite character from the Chicagoland Vampire series.

Morgan: Wow, thanks. That's pretty high praise. Especially since everyone is all atwitter about other vampires these days. *Grumbles*

TBFB: Are we going to see more or less of you in Drink Deep?

Morgan: *Scowling* I wouldn't call Drink Deep my high point as a character; Chloe didn't exactly give me a lot of screen time. On the other hand, I have my hands full with all this supernatural weirdness in Chicago and a House to run. Celina was head of Navarre for a long, long time. I'm still playing catch up in a lot of ways.

TBFB: In Hard Bitten, many readers felt like you betrayed Merit. Would you agree?

Morgan: *Paling* Like I betrayed her? Did she act honorably toward me when she was dancing with Ethan? Sneaking around with him after promising--in front of her entire House--to allow me to make a claim? I was humiliated by that, you know. As for betraying her, I act in the best interest of my House. *Shrugs* I guess she can interpret it how she wants.

TBFB: Speaking of interpretation *obvious segue-way*, do you think Celine's actions will help Navarre House in the long run?

Morgan: Celina was a great Master. I'm not saying she's perfect, but look at the status of our House. We're the oldest House in the country, the most prestigious. We have the largest private art collection, an historic home, and we're incredibly financially stable. It's easy to make Celina the fall guy when you don't want to look at your own problems.

TBFB: Moving on to something more personal, are you happy you were changed into a vampire?

Morgan: *Pausing* I'm glad to be alive. I didn't always appreciate that, but I do now. But do I wish I'd had all the information when I made the decision to join the House? Yeah. Yeah, I do.

TBFB: What is the one thing you admire most about Merit? About Celina?

Morgan: Merit always thinks she's doing the right thing. She has a certainty about that that's admirable, even if she's wrong. Celina puts her House first, even if it doesn't reflect well on the other Houses.

TBFB: Thank you so much, Morgan! One last question: have you ever thought about using your vampire powers to help the Cubs win?

Morgan: I have not. But now that you mention it . . .

As part of the Drink Deep blog tour, Chloe Neill is offering a giveaway for a swagpack of Chicagoland Vampires-related material. To enter, fill out the form below, or click here.

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Book Review: THE RELUCTANT HEIRESS by Eva Ibbotson

Guy Farne, an English businessman, has bought the castle of Pfaffenstein in WWI-torn Austria to impress his toffee-nosed fiance. But while waiting for her to arrive, he falls for Tessa, the Princess of Pfaffenstein, who is the complete opposite of Guy's fiance in almost every way. Will these two crazy kids get together?

This is a very sweet, romantic novel that feels like a fairy tale adaptation even though it doesn't follow any particular fairy tale. It's researched out the wazoo as far as music--and opera in particular--in the city of Vienna is concerned, and has great characters and great writing. Ibbotson's writing style is fantastic; this isn't the short, straight-forward tone of voice that one might expect from someone like Ernest Hemingway, for instance. It's very lyrical and full of references to art and music that's perfect for this type of story. Take this sentence, for example: "...eyes the color of a Stradivarius, eyes which might have been put in by the thumb of Titian himself when he grew too old for detail and was concerned only with the extreme condition of the human soul." Don't you know exactly what Tessa's eyes look like now?

I also loved the characters in this book, particularly Guy. Creating an alpha hero who is also believably kind and an incurable romantic is quite the challenge, but Ibbotson pulls it off perfectly, mainly by showing and not telling. Guy's actions, even without an explanation for them from the author, demonstrate perfectly what he's thinking and feeling.

As for the heroine, Tessa, she's a very interesting character. I wouldn't say she's too stupid to live, but it's hard to connect with her because she seems to have no sense of self-preservation. I understand she's supposed to be innocent and pure--not necessarily sexually pure (though she is that), but pure of any vanity or avarice--and that this is part of her appeal. However, for me Ibbotson went a little too far with it and as a result Tessa is not a believable character. I'm not sure I would ever trust her to take care of herself, which soured the conclusion of the book for me. I also thought Nerine, Guy's fiance, was a bit cartoonish. If Vernon and Petunia Dursley had a daughter, she'd be Nerine in a handbasket.

As I mentioned before, the romance between Guy and Tessa is very sweet, but the more interesting aspect of the book for me was the portrait Ibbotson captured of Vienna in the early 1920s. As a piece of historical fiction, this book is really evokes a romanticized vision of the place and time, sort of like the movie Anastasia. It feels exotic and fresh because it's so unusual in YA fiction. Plus there are fun names, like Pfaffenstein and Spittau! You can't beat that.

My point being, if you're a fan of romantic stories like this, I highly recommend this novel. I wasn't blown away by it, but I did enjoy it and am more than willing to try more of Ibbotson's writing--which is the best thing about this book--in the future.



Musical notes: Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" reminded me of Tessa's excitement over living in Vienna.

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"Girl"-y Books

Thanks to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there are now way too many books out there with the word "girl" in the title. Here are just a few I've noticed:

• The Girl In the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
• The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy
• The Girl Who Disappeared Twice by Andrea Kane
• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
• The Girl In the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman
• The Girl In Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith
• The Girl with the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron
• The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
• The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
• The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
• The Girl On Legare Street by Karen White
• The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane
• The Girl Who Became a Beatle by Greg Taylor
• The Girl Who Wanted to Dance by Amy Ehrlich
• The Girl In the Steel Corset by Kady Cross

There are a lot more, but I got tired of typing. As you can see, these titles come from books in many different genres, fiction and non-, and marketed to a very broad spectrum of people, some of whom probably haven't even read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or maybe even heard of it.

Why do you think titles that begin with "The Girl Who/In/On/With" are so popular right now? Why do some titles take off like this and others don't, even if the books are just as popular?

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Weekend Cooking: WHAT THE WORLD EATS by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel

If there's a book just asking to be made into the PBS version of No Reservations, it's this one. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio go around the world and take photos of families with a typical week's worth of food, comparing diets, prices, and a bit about the food culture of the country.

Any foodie worth their salt is interested in what other cultures consider staple foods, so this book is really fascinating, just as I expected it to be when I read Natasha's review of it at 1330v. I was surprised at what parts I found most interesting, however. The variation in what a family spends on food in a single week, for example, can be really mind-boggling. One family in Bhutan feeds 13 people with a little over $5 USD a week; a family of four in France, meanwhile, spends close to $420 USD a week on food! Of course, the French shopping trip included things like wine, cheese, croissants, sausage, and other things I personally wouldn't want to do without. Big spenders on food also have a lot more variety in what they eat. And if there's one thing I've learned from this book, it's that meat is a big expense. Nearly a fourth of the French family's budget was spent on meat, while the Bhutan family only ever ate eggs and a small amount of dried fish for protein. In fact, almost all of the big-budget weekly meals devoted the majority of their money to meat.

I also loved the addition of the family members' favorite foods, just because something like that is always so personal and random. People tend to go either really broad ("everything") or really specific ("spaghetti carbonara"). Unfortunately, we don't get that information for every family, so that was a bit disappointing. The recipes were another odd addition, as the probability of me making something with ingredients I've even heard of, let alone can find, is pretty small.

On an ideological level, I had some issues. This book can get very preachy and the authors definitely have a point of view, one in which McDonald's and processed food is evol. No, I don't eat at McD's; and yes, I am one of those people that's all about fresh and seasonal food, but that's partly because my family is German and I was raised that way.

There's a reason processing and preservatives exist--because eating McDonald's is better than starving. Since the start of civilization, the fight against starvation has been one that requires a way to preserve food for a long time, and nowadays we're pretty good at it. Maybe it's not as healthy as eating everything fresh, but unless we're all going back to being hunter-gatherers (and I can tell you right now I'm not), that's reality. The authors rightly point out that there's a cruelly ironic dichotomy between the fight against obesity in the US and the fight against the hunger that exists in other parts of the world; but they seem more concerned with the former when one would think the latter is more important.

There's also a colonial tone of romanticizing the "primitive life" of non-Western cultures here, an "Oh, look how we're destroying the simple lives and eating habits of these people with our wickedly advanced grocery stores and fast food restaurants" message that I found to be annoying. And if Menzel and D'Aluisio think that this book doesn't invite generalizations (as they say in the introduction), they're deluding themselves; it's titled WHAT THE WORLD EATS, not What a Select Group of People Eats. Overall, though, I think this book is worth at least paging through if you're interested in food and culture. It contains a lot of good information, and the photographs are very interesting (Menzel and D'Aluisio should consider designing supermarket window displays). Plus this book inspired me to compose my own mini-photographic essay! Here is what I eat in a day:

Name: Tasha (31)
Favorite food: Miso soup

Breakfast:

I'm not a big breakfast person and usually just have coffee with cream and peanut butter toast.

Lunch:

Not a big lunch person, either. Today it was chicken enchiladas with what I have to say were some pretty sub-standard tortillas and Spanish rice.

Snacks!

I ate three chocolate chip cookies. Munch munch munch.

Dinner:

Dinner's my big meal. This chicken piccata with noodles and asparagus tips looks really unappetizing, but it tasted all right. I literally ate everything on this plate.

After dinner:

I usually have some wine late at night. Also another snack, but tonight I wasn't that hungry.

Total cost: No idea, that would require way too much math. I do think we spend between $150-200 a week on food for four people, though.

To find out more about Menzel and D'Aluisio's current project, check out this lecture Menzel gave at EG4:




Mini-survey time! About how much does your household spend on food every week? What's your favorite food?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

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