wednesday september 30
Whether you’re a baker or someone who reads cookbooks the way armchair travelers read travel guides, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Rose’s Heavenly Cakes will transport you somewhere sweet.
Beranbaum is the author of The Cake Bible, one of the standard texts for bakers. That classic is filled with scientific detail (for those who want it) on how baking works, and filled with yummy recipes and pictures (and who doesn’t want those?) to demonstrate all of the wonderful things that cake baking science can achieve.
Rose’s Heavenly Cakes offers more of the same, beautifully precise and delicious recipes for a wide variety of cakes, cheesecakes, cupcakes, wedding cakes, and more. Some are simple and some are showstoppers that require multiple days in preparation.
Feast your eyes or feast your family! (And don’t miss Beranbaum’s wonderful cookie book, Rose’s Christmas Cookies, either.)
monday september 28
If a book could be analogized into a pretzel this is it. Dennis Lehane surpasses
Mystic River with
Shutter Island. In the beginning, the story is all about a missing person from an island institution for the criminally insane. Marshals, Chuck and Teddy are sent out to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, Ashecliffe escapee who drowned all three of her children.
Continue Reading…
friday september 25
The National Book Foundation is celebrating its 60th anniversary by asking readers to pick their favorite National Book Award fiction winner from the past 60 years. This is the first time in the Foundation's history that an award is open to a public vote. The six finalists, selected by 140 writers from across the country, are:
The Stories of John Cheever (1981), Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1953), The Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1951), The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (1972), Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1974) and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1983).
Starting this week through October 21st, you can
vote at the National Book Foundation’s website, and the winner will be announced on November 18th, the day of the National Book Awards ceremony in NYC.
wednesday september 23
I’ve written posts about a few novels set in the Appalachian mountains—Serena, The Well and the Mine, the novels of Silas House—and here’s another one. Kentucky writer C. E. Morgan’s All the Living is another beautiful work with that setting.
Orphaned young, Aloma was sent to a mission school by her aunt and uncle, so she’s not quite as native to her native mountains as she was. She poured her heart and soul into her piano lessons, having few other joys or attachments in life, until agriculture student Orren Bell swept her up at a school dance, and they began an intoxicating affair.
Now, after his own family’s sudden death, Orren has inherited his family’s mountain farm, and Aloma has come to live with him, daringly unmarried. But the house is so grim, the work so unrelenting, and the piano he promised her an untuneable wreck. She learns to work in the house, at least, but her dreams of getting out clash with Orren’s dreams of rescuing his family farm.
Continue Reading…
friday september 18
High school senior Holland Jaeger has the typical teenage life. She has siblings, a Mom and Dad who love her, top percentile grades, a posse of friends, a bright future and a loving boyfriend. Holland believes with all of her heart she has her whole life flawlessly plotted out. She probably does…until she meets Cece. Out and proud transfer student Cece Goddard breezes into Holland’s life and that flawlessly plotted plan changes just a weensy bit.
Continue Reading…
wednesday september 16
The publishing news of the day is The Lost Symbol, the new novel by Dan Brown of (need I tell you?) The Da Vinci Code fame. Harry Potter himself hardly got more hype than symbologist Robert Langdon is getting this week.
If you're in the line for Brown's book--or have no intention of getting in line for it!--there are plenty of other historical puzzlers to enjoy. We posted a list back in 2004.
One of my favorites is Sarah Smith's Chasing Shakespeares. It's a really enjoyable work of scholarly conjecture and chase. About that other famous controversy, you know.
Continue Reading…
monday september 14
From "Eleven Things", a weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle - writer Louis Peitzman offers his list of Librarians Not to Mess With. Although I know plenty of real librarians who might easily fit into this category (myself included?), Peitzman's list is littered with fictional librarians who may present a calm demeanor until decisive action is called for, and then they are transformed into Those Who Can Take Care of Things When Necessary.
From the list, these "Superheroes of the Stacks" are represented in the Library's collection:
1. The Time Traveler's Wife; a novel by Audrey Niffenegger
2. Tales of the Slayers; a graphic novel based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
3. The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; starring Brendan Fraser, on DVD
4. "The Librarian" series starring Noah Wyle on DVD: Quest for the Spear, Return to King Solomon's Mines, and Curse of the Judas Chalice
5. The Marvel Comics Encyclopedia, where you can find Karma the Librarian
6. The Art of Discworld; a companion to the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
7. The Music Man on DVD, featuring the oh-so-stereotypical "Marian the Librarian"
8. Black Mask; starring Jet Li, on DVD
9. It; a novel by Stephen King
