En France

At the end of my freshman year in college, my mother came to visit to watch me row at Eastern Sprints up in Connecticut.  The name of the lake one which the races were held escapes me now.  The day was so miserable and rainy that my mother dubbed it Lake Wobegone, and that is the name that has stuck with me ever since.  But once back in Philadelphia we had a grand old time, and I felt very grown up being able to show my worldly mother around a major city that I knew better than she did.

I took her to my favorite bakery, my favorite coffee shop and my favorite international magazine store.  We flipped lazily through many unfamiliar publications, but it was La Maison Francais which made a particular impression.  I still remember the image that did it:  a photo of a yellow jacquard upholstered sofa in a sunny nook, the legs and arms of the sofa almost completely shredded by a cat.  My mother was enthralled that such imperfection could be celebrated in a national publication (and perhaps it made her feel a bit better about the occasional furniture shredding our cats engaged in), and I thought it was just the chicest most bohemian thing I'd ever seen.  I vowed to love all things french home then and there.

So it is no surprise that my newest bit of blog love is directed towards a french woman who photographs french interiors of friends, acquaintances and perhaps strangers as well for all I know.  Sort of a gallic version of The Selby, Ensuite is where I've been spending quite a bit of time lately.  

I wonder if I lived in France whether I would have glorious windows to throw open in the sun...

...witty cats...

...gorgeous tarts and chanterelle mushrooms just sitting around...

...fabulous and well organized shoes...

...chic perfume bottles and pink flowers adorning my bathroom...

...and on my mantle...

all photos from Ensuite

...or would my apartment look exactly as it does in New York?  

I think my shoe and perfume collections needs some work.

Home Lust

I am a bit the cliched New Yorker in that I have a minor obsession with real estate.  I am one of those irritating people that visits open houses with absolutely no intent of buying...I just like to see what's inside all of the buildings that surround me.  So you can imagine my interest in Meghan Daum's latest book Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House.

I do not dream constantly of the perfect apartment...I like my place most days.  But I am occasionally vulnerable to the sentiment that the title expresses, and was intrigued that an entire book had been written on it.

If anything this book is a memoir seen through the lens of the author's quest for a home, which manifests itself in frequent moves as she seeks the house that will be her ultimate dwelling.

Now perhaps I was primed to like this book, as I had just slogged my way through too many self-indulgent, chick lit-esque memoirs and just about anything would have looked good in comparison.  But I found Daum's frankness and wit utterly endearing, and her quest for a place to call her own was courageous, the fervor with which she pursued it, from New York to Nebraska to L.A. and back again, inspiring.  Dysfunctional perhaps, but inspiring nonetheless.  I liked the girl.  A lot.  And having read her story, I'm rooting for her to find what she's looking for.

Home Turf

I spent the first eighteen years of my life in the Bay Area, in Oakland to be precise. I tell everyone I meet that it was a great place to grow up, and indeed it was. My parents' home is pure northern California, a modestly sized craftsman bungalow on an obscenely gorgeous piece of land. There is a creek running through the front yard, fruit trees and flowers in the back, and massive redwoods and oak trees encircling the whole thing.

Luckily, this little country retreat is only twenty minutes (on a good traffic day) from San Francisco and ten minutes from Berkeley. I had the urban environment at my fingertips but lived in an oasis removed from it. Having lived a few places now, I can with a certain amount of confidence say that this combination of country and city is entirely unique (or at least largely unique) to the Oakland/Berkeley area.

So you can imagine my surprise at the reactions I got when I first left home upon revealing where I was from. You're from Oakland?!! Are you sure?  You must mean Piedmont (a wealthy municipality which oddly is entirely surrounded by Oakland)? As I tell people, all cities have good and bad areas. Oakland is no different. It happens that I grew up in one of the nicer areas. They do exist, I promise. Defending Oakland is my cross to bear it seems.

So I'll admit that, after reading the first few pages of Farm City, a book that one of my parents' dearest friends recommended that I read, I was not all that enthralled. The book, by Novella Carpenter, is a story of the author's experience moving to Oakland (not to one of the nicer areas by the sound of things) and starting an urban farm on an abandoned lot adjacent to her home. The early pages describe Oakland as a forlorn, desolate place, riddled with gunshots and crack addicts. A forgotten city, plagued with unshakable urban blight.

Mildly incensed, I called my mother to complain. She reminded me that in truth, there are some areas of the city you don't want to go to after dusk, or in some cases, at midday. And one or two city officials have attracted more interest from the FBI than they'd probably like. OK fair point. I continued on with the book.

I followed Ms. Carpenter's adventures in gardening, in poultry rearing, in rabbit husbandry, in bee keeping and in raising pigs (and continue to at her blog), and was utterly amazed by how much this woman could do on her back porch (bees and rabbits) and on a 4,000 square foot empty lot (everything else). With a willingness to haul manure from a horse farm in the hills, to behead ducks, to skin rabbits and a propensity for dumpster diving in search of fresh food for the chickens and pigs, she reminded me of the early pioneers to the western united states, updated.  She was willing to try virtually anything to make a go of it in an inhospitable land, and she willingly shared her bounty with others, some of whom asked for it and some of whom simply took.

Through her farm she forged friendships with the man living in the beat up car down the street, the immigrant families in the neighborhood and even came across another urban farmer in the area named Willow.  In fact, at a party at the Player's Club the other night I was chatting with our hostess about the book and as I described the premise she said, oh is it written by Willow?  Apparently these pioneering Oakland women are gaining trans-continental reputations!

I was surprised at how moved I was by Ms. Carpenter's story.  She had an unusually deep connection to her farm, and I enjoyed reading about her efforts, which had a faintly subversive ring to them, to make it run.  Thankfully her story wasn't simply another an exhortation for people to grow a few vegetables and stop eating corn syrup.  It was far deeper than that.  It was an example of a woman re-engaging in a serious way with the ecosystem, not just the one in her back yard that supported plants and animals but the one in her neighborhood that connected people, who in turn needed to be reconnected to plants and animals.

Perfect Sorrow

At its best art arouses in us emotions that remain, in the normal course of life, latent. Wonderful novels or films or paintings incite these emotions to rise to the surface, insisting that we experience them, reminding us of the full scope of our humanity.


I recall that the classic young adult book Where the Red Fern Grows was the first work to arouse such a response in me. I must have been about nine years old at the time, and I remember reading the tragic end of the book late at night in bed, weeping uncontrollably at the loss of a loyal pet. Ponette, a French movie about a five year old girl's efforts to understand her mother's death, had my seventeen year old heart breaking at her insistence on waiting for her mother's return.


Bernini's gentle terra cotta likeness of a man who looked uncannily like my father on display in the National Gallery in Washington took the breath from my twenty year old chest. Fiona Shaw as Medea had my twenty-two year old body quaking in the face of her raw, unchecked insanity. And Ernest Borgnine's profound love for and devotion to his dead wife in a short vignette in the movie 11'09"01 had my newly in love twenty-three year old heart trembling and my tear ducts working overtime.


But I'll admit, since then it's been a bit of a drought. I've seen some wonderful concerts, movies and plays over the past few years, but none have touched me thoroughly enough to recall them easily as I write this.


But this past weekend, after reading Rafael Yglesias's sublime novel A Happy Marriage, the drought is officially over.


The novel (I say a novel but it feels incredibly autobiographical) is an unwavering look at a 30 year marriage, its awkward beginnings, blissful and passionate early years, and then the highs and lows of the relationship as it progresses, as husband and wife delve deeper into one another, eventually understanding and accepting those qualities in one another that had blocked and frustrated the relationship over time.

The story alternates between today, when Margaret, the wife, is in the last few weeks of her losing battle with cancer, and earlier episodes of the marriage, from courtship to child rearing, to adultery to comfortable middle age. The deft architecture of the novel allows a stunningly beautiful story to be told, commanding only total immersion by the reader.


I spent nearly four hours on Saturday morning finishing the novel, and spent nearly as long sobbing as I made my way through the story. Not delicate tears, but full bodied abject sorrow. And after I had finished reading the last scene, which is as touching an ending to any story as one will find, my sorrow did not abate. A stroll through my favorite neighborhoods did not lift my spirits. Another book, which I have since decided is utterly charming, only felt hollow and pathetic in the wake of Mr. Yglesias's tour de force. In fact, it took a full 24 hours for me to feel myself again.


So why put oneself through such trauma? All I can tell you is that I am still thinking of the book days later, marveling at the ability of words on a page to make me feel so intensely.

La Belle Elle

Not to be one of those annoying self-loathing Francophile Americans, but why is their Elle Decor so far and away better than ours?  I like the American edition of course, I can happily flip through it and remain entertained for a good five minutes, but the French one?  I'm there for at least twenty, usually more.  I actively covet most every trinket listed, I'm thrilled over and over by truly new ideas for rooms, and I never look at a photo and think "hmmm, looks like Restoration Hardware...next!"

Case in point, from December's issue  

How fabulously brave is this?  How totally punk (in the most beautiful, refined way possible)?

And would it ever have occurred to you to paint your dining room wall plaid?

Probably not, but how awesome does it look?!

Possibly my favorite bathtub ever, I have been thinking about it for months:

Definitely my favorite lamp ever:

One of the better kitchen storage options I've seen:

I think a shallow armoire like this is genius...deep shelves are useless unless you are actively trying to stow food away for years on end, never to see the light of day.

And let us just take a moment to celebrate...color, glorious color:

Are you listening Margaret Russell?

The Blog Omnibus

After consuming the majority of Paul's Bourbon Creme cookies [English version of chocolate Vienna Fingers, in case you were wondering] while he was in Dubai, I made Deb from Smitten Kitchen's chocolate wafers as a replacement. They were twenty times better than what I was replacing!

Dorie Greenspan gives us a wonderful non-coffee warm morning [or all day] drink option.

Michael Ruhlman debuts his rather revolutionary book Ratio, and shows us how it works here.

Hollister Hovey slays me with a source for fabulous and well priced glasses (perfect timing, since I am in need of a new pair, and can't bring myself to pay $400 for the frames that my eye doctor carries). I'm leaning towards these in tortoise...thoughts?

Emma from emmas design blog has found the most perfect dining room ever.

Jen Bekman at 20 x 200 has found yet another piece of art that I am inexplicably obsessed with.

Ulla inspires us all to go to Iceland.

Pithy and Cleaver recommend an affordable source for good vanilla beans (at last!).

Interesting....

I read this article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this past weekend and have been thinking about it ever since.  What an interesting concept that men become functionally obsolete from a reproductive standpoint at not entirely different ages than women do!

                    photo credit: Robert Capa/Magnum Photos via  New York Times

And I must say that I think the author is onto something when she hypothesizes that if this idea of male reproductive obsolescence was more widely accepted, the ways that society views older men and older women would be more similar than they are currently (i.e. not so many 20 year old women would be willing to date the 50 year old silver fox).

By the way, how much do you love the photo above?  Pablo Picasso at age 66 with his son, apparently.

That Pesky Wolf

I have a new love...the very great M.F.K. Fisher.  I have heard about her highly regarded food writing for ages, but until recently, had never explored it.  But I recently picked up How To Cook A Wolf from the library, and having enjoyed it immensely, plan to make my way through her other works as soon as possible.

This book was actually surprisingly topical, as it was written in 1942 when wartime shortages were a fact of life, so much of the book is about how one can economize and yet still eat with "grace and gusto".  I must say that, despite our current rather serious national predicament, having read this book I cannot help but think we whine too much today.  Are you concerned about how to craft your own fuel out of clay?  Do you read many chapters in cookbooks titled "How to Stay Alive" that describe a "sludge" to feed yourself and your trusty dog as a last resort?  No, I thought not.  So if nothing else, this book provides some much needed perspective.

But it also provides some quite good advice, especially with respect to eating intelligently.  Her advice?  Eat real food, do not obsess about vitamins, as assuming that you eat real food you will be provided with adequate nutrition.  She rails against processed foods, against items like refined flour and chemically laced food substitutes.  I actually found this whole thing fascinating.  To think she voiced these concerns more than sixty years ago, and the same argument is today seen as something rather new...whole bestselling books are written on the subject!

Now I'll admit that I'm not itching to make many of the recipes in the book.  Tomato soup cake doesn't sound too appetizing, and she does seem to have an odd love affair with pigeons.  Perhaps because it was a cheap way to feel rich by eating a whole bird?  My one experience cooking squab was just too traumatic to repeat (I didn't remove the feet, so when I pulled the poor little thing out of the oven the legs were stick straight with burnt little nubs that had once been clenched feet, it looked as though it had been gassed and died in tremendous pain), even for Ms. Fisher.  And I find consomme (which she highly recommends) to be a lovely diversion, but not worth the trouble of making it oneself.

But the recipes do provide an interesting history lesson of sorts, and are charming in the slightly retro way that many of Nigella Lawson's early recipes were.  In fact, both women advocate for an odd dish called petit pois a la francaise...peas cooked with lettuce of all things!  I can't bring myself to try it, cooking lettuce just feels a bit too odd to me.  But perhaps I will eventually work up the courage to make the bacon fat "wartime cake".  Now that pork is so fashionable, perhaps I can start a new trend.

And most importantly, the woman can really write.  Her assertion that the most private thing in the world is an unbroken egg is simply genius.  No wonder W.H. Auden was so taken with her literary prowess.

The Books of Chefs

A fun article in Saveur...what famous chefs have in their cookbook collections. I seem to have the most in common (with respect to book choice anyway) with April Bloomfield of Spotted Pig and John Dorry fame...we both are into Charcuterie, Roast Chicken and Other Stories and the River Cafe books.

I have virtually nothing in common with the rest of these guys, but from the looks of it, I should put an order in for Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, as virtually all of them mention it.

A Global Community

You know when you read one of those books and it stays with you? The kind where you'll be walking down the street and a passage or thought from the book will pop into your head, you'll mull it over for a few minutes, and get something more out of it than you did during your first read? Common Wealth: Economics For a Crowded Planet is that book for me.



First of all, Jeffrey Sachs is an economist who I'm told is completely brilliant. Which I realize does not necessarily recommend the book. I mean, economists are not exactly considered to be a barrel of laughs. But I will say that from what I hear Sachs has a wonderful soul...he's not some supply/demand curve robot, but really cares about the plight of the poor around the world, and that compassion comes through in his writing.


The book essentially describes the broad problems we, the world, have...environmental, social, political, moral...the whole shebang. Now I often find these types of treatises irritating. They usually tell me things I already know, depress the hell out of me and rarely introduce solutions to the problems described. But as I mentioned, Sachs is brilliant. Hence, just when I think I already know the issue that he writes about inside and out, he puts a new spin on it, and makes me think about it in a completely different way. Plus which, he puts what seem like large problems in perspective by proposing solutions that, while not easy, seem at least feasible on some level.

Now you need to be pretty mentally alert when you read this, otherwise it feels like a bit of a slog. But I feel strongly that this is an important book to read, both to give us all an awareness of what the causes of what seem like utterly intractable problems are, and to give a sense of how solvable they are if the rich countries in the world were to work in concert. I fully believe that it is worth the effort required to make it through, and hope you find the same to be true.

Weekend Reading, Part III

I'm a little late to the Chelsea Handler party.  Marissa turned me on to her late night talk show on E! while we were lazing about in a hotel room in Santo Domingo last spring, and I've been a fan ever since.

So how excited was I when I saw that she had written a book!  (It turns out it is her second, as I said, I'm late to the party).  And how excited was I (again) when it came in for me at the library!

In order to chase away the post-holiday blehs, I decided to treat myself to a romp with Are You There Vodka, It's Me, Chelsea.  Luckily, it's everything I hoped it would be.  Namely, hilarious.  I literally was laughing out loud, nearly to the point of tears, while reading it.  Paul repeatedly gave me quizzical (at first), then vaguely annoyed (the longer it went on) looks, and then finally went out to a movie to get away from my hyena-like peals of laughter.

I am tempted to quote funny passages in order to pique your interest, but I started and found that I was essentially transcribing the whole book.     

But instead I'll give you this advice (which hopefully will pique your interest as well as provide some valuable information):  do NOT skip the essay about her time in prison.  I do not mean jail, I mean prison.  Women's prison.  In L.A.  Granted it was only 24 hours, and was largely a mistake brought on by her stupid sister's petty vindictiveness, but it was quite an eventful 24 hours (and frankly is an excellent prison deterrent...if you need one, other than, you know, the whole incarceration thing).  Lesbian action, body cavity searches, the whole deal.  And by the way I love that her major concern during the cavity search was the unkempt state of her bikini line.  And I love even more how quickly that concern was neutralized once she saw what kind of forests her fellow inmates were cultivating.

OK, I'll stop.  I'm verging intro transcription territory.  All I can say is that if you need a little wicked levity in your life, look no further.

Weekend Reading Part II

I have a tendency to check out way more books from the library than I can ever possibly read.  It is one of my New Year's resolutions to get my piles of books under control, so yesterday morning, with an eye to my mounting late fines, I sat down to thumb through a couple of seriously overdue items.

One of them was the Olsens twins' latest effort, Influence.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few months, the book is a collection of interviews with and images from various people that Ashley and Mary-Kate feel have been major influences in their lives, mostly from the worlds of art, fashion, and design.

And you know what the interesting thing for me about the book was?  I had only heard of maybe 40% of the people profiled, so it was not only entertaining, but actually fairly educational (I now feel much more arty and edgy than I did prior to reading the book).  Diane Von Furstenberg was obviously a fun interview, as was Karl Lagerfeld (although he did step out of his crazy fashion designer personality to impart some actual wisdom which was sort of unexpected), but I favored the interview with writer Bob Colacello over all of the others.    

Anyway, a great effort by the mini-moguls, and certainly worth at least a gander in the bookstore.    

Weekend Reading Part I

There is a lot of attention focused on America's eating disorder in the media these days.  And while we do, as a nation, most certainly have some very serious issues with eating habits, agricultural practices and practices in the meat and poultry industry, there is a lot of good in this country when it comes to food.  And frankly, although I maintain that it is absolutely crucial to understand the bad in order to be an informed eater and informed citizen, I always enjoy learning a bit more about the good.

It is for this reason that I so thoroughly enjoyed David Kamp's The United States of Arugula.

This book was published in 2006, so if you are both an avid reader and an avid follower of food, I'm sure you've already read it.  But if, like me, your reading list tends towards the overly optimistic at various points, it may have passed you by.

The book is essentially a history of cuisine, restaurants, cooks, chefs and food personalities over the past fifty years.  It tends to bounce back and forth between New York, the Bay Area and Los Angeles (sorry midwest, I guess Chicago's extraordinary contribution to American cuisine and restaurants came a bit late to be included), which is probably one of the reasons I found the whole thing so fascinating.

I'm from the Bay Area, have lots of family in Los Angeles and currently live in New York, so I am intimately familiar with the places and personalities that Kamp discusses.  

I grew up listening to my parents talk about Chez Panisse when it was just a neighborhood restaurant, to my mom talk about how underrated a guy named Jeremiah Tower was (thanks to this book I now know who he is and kind of agree with her), and what a revelation Julia Child was to America when she burst on the scene in the 60s (although I imagine somewhat less of a revelation to my mom than to most American women, as she was living in France at about the time Julia was and thus was exposed to some of the same influences).

I recall when seminal New York restaurants such as La Cote Basque, La Caravelle and Lutece closed.  Now I know what they were and why they were a big deal.  And I also know how the extraordinary network of greenmarkets that we now have started (in midtown east by the way, by the father of our current Parks Commissioner!).

And perhaps most exciting, I got a burning question about Jacques Pepin answered.  I remember watching a cooking show of his, I had to have been about fourteen, and seeing him making a lobster roll, and hearing him remark that this was the way they did it when he worked at Howard Johnson.  Hold the phone, Jacques Poupou (as my sister and I used to refer to him as) worked at a HoJo's?!!  Turns out he was a corporate consultant for the company in the 60s.  It was apparently sort of the done thing at the time.  Who knew?

I'll admit, the book ended on a little bit of a mixed note emotionally, as the last topic was the modern "celebrity chef" and the conflict between purists who think a chef should be behind a stove and those who think they should be allowed to make some cash off of an empire.  But overall, a very uplifting, fascinating book if this is your bag.

Food Sense

I know that this whole "the government subsidizes corn, which means it subsidizes high fructose corn syrup which means it subsidizes obesity" drum has been beaten to death already, and the case has already been laid out very well in books by the likes of Michael Pollan.

But in his editorial last week, Nicholas Kristof puts a slightly different spin on it that I think makes for some worthwhile reading.  He adds details, such as the fact that he, as an owner of farmland in Oregon and a successful journalist, is paid $500 per year by the government not to farm his land.  And he calls for some fairly concrete change with respect to the Agriculture Department by the Obama administration.  Interesting stuff, and nice to see it in a mainstream publication such as the New York Times.

Gwynie, Gwynie, Goopy

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Gwyneth Paltrow.  I feel like I should like her--I mean she comes from what seems like a nice, artistic, community-oriented family.  I've always liked Blythe Danner in interviews, and, before his untimely passing, Bruce Paltrow seemed like a funny, smart, down to earth person.  Gwyneth is into some of the same things I am...recycling, yoga, Spain, food.  Plus she's gorgeous in that beautific, angelic way that tends to be a magnetic draw, for me at least.

And yet, for some reason I find her irksome.  I think problem number one is that she is married to one of the more boring personalities out there.  I had a moment with Coldplay back in 2002 when Chris Martin was still sitting behind his piano, but now that he's attempted to adopt (and is really not quite succeeding) Bono's persona on stage I just can't take him seriously.  Problem number two:  she's smug about her eating habits which is annoying enough in the first place, but on top of that she's not consistent in her philosophy.  Who tells you (or in this case, Oprah) that you don't eat "animals with four legs"?!!  What the hell do you have against chickens exactly?  God knows how Mario Batali survived his spanish road trip with someone who doesn't eat pork.  And problem number three:  I know this is sort of an easy target, but naming your son Moses is a little presumptuous, don't you think?

Anyway, when I read in Page Six Magazine (which by the way is quickly becoming one of my favorite publications, and yes, I realize that this is an anti-intellectual statement) that she was launching a lifestyle website, I immediately looked it up, not knowing if I would fall in love with all of her tips about living in the Hamptons and being blond, or if I would make fun of her attempts to get her readers to eat a fully macrobiotic diet.  Turns out it's been sort of a combination of the two.

First of all, the website is called GOOP, which I have to say I think was a mistake.  Second of all, there's really not much on the website, except her vision statement:

My life is good because I am not passive about it.  I want to nourish what is real, and I want to do it without wasting time.  I love to travel, to cook, to eat, to take care of my body and mind, to work hard.  I love being a mother who has overcome my bad qualities to be a good mother.  I love being in spaces that are clean and feel nice...

...Make your life good.  Invest in what's real.  Cook a meal for someone you love.  Pause before reacting.  Clean out your space.  Read something beautiful.  Treat yourself to something.  Go to a city you've never been to.  Learn something new.  Don't be lazy.  Workout and stick with it.  GOOP.  Make it great.

I can't really disagree with any of this and yet there is sort of a supercilious air here.  So I basically reacted to the website in the same way that I react to Gwyneth herself. 

You go to the website essentially to sign up for her weekly newsletters, which vary in topic from stuff to buy, stuff to do, advice and things to cook (i.e. Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See).  It seems a little weird that past newsletters aren't posted on the website, but maybe that's part of her whole "clean out your space" ethos.  So far I think I've received four newsletters, and I'd say I enjoyed 2.3 of them.

The first was all about how to put a stylish outfit together easily, and I'd say she accomplished it.  The look was cool, although definitely skewed towards the tall and slim, and the price points were out of my reach (had they not been, I totally would have bought that Tod's trench coat).  But I certainly won't begrudge her the fact that she's rich and hot.

The second issue skewed towards the annoying.  She asked some of her experts...life-coach types I suppose, why some people in life always see the negative.  Turns out they were scarred as children, for the most part.  But this revelation doesn't change the fact that I avoid these types of personalities like the plague.

The third was some of her everyday recipes, and I must say they looked pretty good, and were blissfully soy free, which was unexpected.

And this week's was three interviews with various holistic healers telling us how to stay balanced and healthy.  They delivered the earth shattering news that we should sleep eight hours a night, exercise and eat healthy food.  Shock!  Although I do think there is something to the idea that you should wait until twelve hours has passed from the time you eat dinner to the time you eat breakfast to allow your body to cleanse itself.  Maybe worth a try going forward.

So overall?  I don't hate it, and will probably continue to read for both information and the possibility that there will be some absurd content that I came make fun of mercilessly.

Geeking Out

Kearney, who is much more book obsessed than I (in a two week span down in Brazil last winter I literally saw her go through at least five books, it was humbling to say the least), just introduced me to GoodReads, which is essentially Facebook for bibliophiles crossed with a book version of Netflix.  

You can add friends, see what they're reading, what they've read, what they thought of the books they've read (the Facebook part), and you can while away hours and hours reviewing books you've already read by clicking between one and five stars (I spent at least 50% of my time at my first job in New York doing just this on Netflix).  So far quite entertaining, and an excellent way to indulge my geeky side.  

The site also provides an easy way to keep track of books you'd like to read...highly superior to my current method of writing down titles on scraps of paper floating around in my purse when I come across books that seem interesting (mostly when I'm in McNally-Robinson) and then emailing them to myself.

Another book-related recommendation:  if you like books but still haven't made the transition over to using the library, check out PaperbackSwap.  People looking to unload their books in exchange for other titles post them on the website.  If you're interested in the book all you pay for is the shipping.  You get credits for posting books, which are then redeemed when you request a book.  The Wall Street Journal explains it all here.  Great site, and tons of titles.  And the whole recycling/reusing aspect is so very now.

Jumping On The Bandwagon

I seem to be doing a lot of jumping on bandwagons lately...here for instance, and also here.  As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I plan to jump on one more today.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 19 weeks, and I think Oprah even selected it for her book club.  Actually, no, who am I kidding?  I know she selected it because I love her.  I watch her show more than I would like to admit.  I occasionally even go to her website and page through O Magazine in bookstores.  And yes, I realize that she thinks she's Jesus Christ.  I don't care.  Frankly, she may very well be.

Anyway, I just finished reading this book and loved it so much that on the off chance that people haven't heard of it through one of the channels listed above, I felt the need to feature it here.

The writing is truly beautiful....evocative, lyrical, but without the grand flourishes and complex vocabulary that lesser writers often resort to in an effort to impress the reader.   It just paints an extraordinarily vivid picture, and gets you inside the head of each character.

I won't go on too much about the story since it is fairly suspenseful and mysterious, and I think that the less you know about it going in the better, but suffice to say it is not simply "a story about a boy and his dogs", which seems to be the blurb the marketing people have settled on.  This is much much more than an adult version of "Where the Red Fern Grows".

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why I responded so strongly to this story, but the best reason I can come up with is that it somehow harkens back to, and I suppose is in the style of, some of the great eras in American literature.  Growing up it was always the authors like Faulkner, Cather, Steinbeck that I found myself falling in love with.  Something about the troubled but stoic characters out in the American Midwest always spoke to me, and I liked the spareness of language that these authors favored.  It always just seemed very honest to me, and it also seemed respectful of the reader.

David Wroblewski follows in this tradition.  Although the book is more than 500 pages, it is actually an easy read.  There are no extraneous passages or chapters, just a story that flows and characters that you feel compelled to follow.  There are not too many books of this length that really deserve to be so long, or deserve the time it takes to read them.  This one does.  Allow yourself the wonderful luxury of losing yourself in a story of this length and intricacy.  You'll be surprised at how much regret you feel when it becomes apparent that the book is coming to an end. 

Public Service Announcement

I realize that what I'm about to say is unusual for someone of my age, but I LOVE the New York Public Library.  And each time that I mention to a friend that I've just gotten some great book out of the library, or that I just read a wonderful book and they should pick it up at the library, my remark is met with either a raised eyebrow, an affectionate smirk or outright laughter.

People, in case you haven't noticed (and clearly the people I hang out with haven't), New York has what is probably the best public library system in the country.  And your tax dollars are paying for (part of) it!  Use it!

A tutorial:  

1)  A public library tends to have many branches.  New York has 87 branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island (Brooklyn and Queens are separate library systems).  There are 42 branches in Manhattan alone, so there is most likely one very close to either your home or office.  Thanks to some generous support from both the City and the philanthropic community, these branches are often open as late as 8 p.m., and most are open on Saturdays, so don't give me this "I'm too busy, my life is too complex to use the library" excuse.  

2)  Everything is online.  You can apply for a library card online here, you can request books to be sent to your local branch here and you can renew books online here.

3)  Any restrictions that exist are totally reasonable.  You can check out as many as 30 books at one time, request as many as 15 at one time, and keep a book out for 3 weeks without having to renew it.  If no one is waiting for the book that you have out, you can renew it up to 5 times, which means you can keep one book out for for almost 4 months!  This is great especially for items like cookbooks, which I usually want to keep long enough to try out a decent fraction of the recipes before I make the decision whether or not to buy the book.

4)  Many of the branches are quite lovely.  We all know about the stately main library at Bryant Park (or at least I hope we all do, things are worse than I thought if that is not the case), but there are many other branches that are very beautiful as well.  Now I will admit that my local branch has a bit of a junior high school library feel about it, so I avail myself of those branches serving other neighborhoods nearby.  For the longest time I would go to the Jefferson Market branch, which is the building on Sixth Avenue and 10th Street with the clock tower.  

Jefferson Market Branch

But lately I've decided that I like the exterior of that building more than I like the interior, so I've switched over to the Mulberry Street branch, which is just south of the Puck Building.  It was designed by the talented Rogers Marvel Architects, and opened just over a year ago. 

Mulberry Street Branch

For some reason, the place always smells great, sort of faintly like lavender.  Either the stylish residents of Soho somehow requested this as a condition of allowing the branch to be built, or it is simply a serendipitous side effect of being a neighbor of the delightful Santa Maria Novella store.  Either way, I love walking in the door.  If you want to browse and read magazines, there's ample window seat space for everyone, if you want to go downstairs and browse the book selection, there's lots of seating and light (considering that most of the library is below ground I think this speaks very well to the efforts of Rogers Marvel).

5)  They have lots and lots of books.  I read a lot, and I think I've only ever run across about three books that haven't been in the library's collection.  And those were relatively obscure cookbooks or design books.  Yes, you may have to wait a bit for the best sellers to come in, but if you're like me you've got 20 other books checked out to get through, and by the time you're ready, the best seller is waiting for you to pick up.

6)  You have no more room in your apartment.  If you live in Manhattan and like to read, you're probably getting run out of house and home by your book collection.  Using the library avoids this problem.

7)  Times are tough.  It's free!  Suze Orman would be very proud of your for slashing your book budget.

Worth Reading

I'm not a history buff by any stretch.  I tend to leave the 700 page David McCullough tomes to those made of sterner stuff than I (ahem, Dad).  But I do like history (as long as it is spoon fed to me), so when I read about One Minute To Midnight,  which was said to be a relatively easily digestible version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I picked up a copy.

I don't intend to write about every book I read, but with this one I felt compelled.  Aside from the fact that it did turn out to be altogether readable (you almost could see it as the script of a movie), I learned a good deal from the story.  Not only about the crisis itself, which to this point I remembered only as a short paragraph in my ninth grade history book, but about human nature, leadership, negotiation, and the nature of conflict.  I feel strongly that anyone even vaguely introspective would find much food for thought in this narrative.  And be sure not to skip the afterword;  Michael Dobbs' reflections on the crisis will no doubt provoke new ones of your own.