Moby Dick Mondays – Week 3

In Chapter 9, Ishmael, our narrator, is attending the little church in New Bedford and reports on the sermon he hears. This chapter is one of the best so far. It’s full of humor, drama, awe, and inspiration. As Ishmael reports, “Father Mapple had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for [...]

Sunday Salon – Review of “The Gift” by Cecelia Ahern

This modern Christmas fable that shares some commonalities with both “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s A Wonderful Life,” although it isn’t precisely like either. In this book, the gift of time is given to a man who thinks he never has enough; who is too busy for his family, and is always wishing he could [...]

Review of Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Note: There are no spoilers in this review. It’s probably good that I’m one of the last people in the universe to read and review this book, because unlike many others, I didn’t actually like it very much. The story concerns two twins, Julia and Valentina, twenty-years old (although often mistaken for twelve). They are [...]

Recipes for The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies Virtual Cookie Swap

Julie from Booking Mama and Kathy from Bermudaonion are hosting a virtual cookie swap for the upcoming holiday season. Today is the day participants post their recipes. I have two recipes to post. Julie is hosting links to the chocolate recipes and Kathy is hosting links for traditional cookie recipes. I am a total Kahlua [...]

A History of Thanksgiving

The original Thanksgiving was marked by prayer and thanks for the untimely deaths of most of the Wampanoag Tribe due to smallpox contracted from earlier European visitors. Thus when the Pilgrims arrived they found the fields already cleared and planted, and they called them their own. But the “holiday” was not yet declared by the [...]

Yams Versus Sweet Potatoes

The New York Times weighs in this morning on the important question of whether yams and sweet potatoes are interchangeable. It explains the difference: Sweet potatoes are New World tubers [a member of the Morning Glory family] that were adopted by enslaved Africans on the American continent. They could be grown in the temperate climates; [...]

Review of Kristin Lavransdatter, Volume II: The Wife, by Sigrid Undset and translated by Tiina Nunnally

I signed up for the Kristin Lavransdatter Readalong, sponsored by Richard of Caravana de Recuerdos and Emily from Evening All Afternoon. As Emily pointed out, “we’ll be reading the Tina Nunnally translation, which won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize in 2001 and apparently restored a number of the more experimental passages, which had been excised from [...]

Moby Dick Mondays – Week 2

Ti of the blog Book Chatter is sponsoring a challenge/readalong to read the classic Moby Dick. On Mondays, we’ll be posting about our progress. I am listening to the unabridged audiodisks for this book, which my husband listened to and loved (see his review here). I am very much enjoying the audiobook. I did, however, [...]

Sunday Salon – Review of Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan by Ali Eteraz

Ali Eteraz’s coming of age memoir takes us from his upbringing under conservative Islam in Pakistan, to his education in philosophy and postmodernism in the West, to his epiphany about who he is when he is back in the Muslim world. Eteraz has no qualms about showing us all his wavering, flaws and warts. It’s [...]

Review of “Definitely Dead” by Charlaine Harris

Don’t despair, faithful blog readers! I’m almost done with this series! This review does not have spoilers, but Book Six in the Sookie Stackhouse romance-mystery-vampire series definitely does: it is full of revelations about the characters and events taking place in the previous five books. Sookie Stackhouse, the hottie waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, finds [...]