Constitutional Law is totally fraking awesome.

Lesson learned from Fienman's Law 101? Constitutional law is as fascinating as contract law is boring.

Lesson learned from the case against Philip Harvey's Adam & Eve company, as chronicled in The Government vs Erotica? Constitutional Law is totally fraking awesome, it makes me feel all and warm and fuzzy and empowered n'stuff. I have this urge to look up a bunch of first amendment lawyers and randomly send them thank you cards.

Finished Silverberg's Valentine Pontifex. An excellent book, but my least favorite of the trilogy. My order of favorites equals the order in which they were written. Each book focuses on something very different, which is nice and refreshing, I just enjoyed most the focus of the first book. Was a little funny, I finished Pontifex the same day my copy of Silverberg's Dying Inside arrived. Silverberg's writing style reminds me a little of the dreamy style of M. John Harrison's, as found in his Viriconium stories, and this is a good thing.

On the recommendation of a friend, I picked up Gordon Dahlquist's The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters at the library. Holy crap is this book heavy! In pure tare weight and prose! Dahlquist sure loves his details, from the laces on green boots and trim on robes to mysterious facial scaring, and the sounds the road makes under a carriage. This Victorian adventure is beautifully rendered, well paced, and loaded with characters both cruel and intriguing. Romantic and sexy in the original senses, it'll be a sad ending if there isn't a single romantic hook up. Weight of prose wise, the novel lands half way between George R R Martin Song of Ice and Fire novels (obscenely long, but so good you don't care) and Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (obscenely, needlessly long and rambling and in dire need of some severe editing). I believe Dahlquist is a playwright for his dayjob, I have to wonder if his plays run 6+ hours?

"boring books", good books, and good food

how's that for a vague post title? well, I've been reading what i like to call my "boring books, and been reading "good books", and been eating lots of of good food, so it's perfectly descriptive.

Book review is up for Sergei Lukyanenko's Nightwatch. I'm quite sure there are more books in this series, and now I've got to track them down!

I finished reading Robert Silverberg's Majipoor Chronicles, which is the second book in the Lord Valentine series. Chronicles follows Labyrinth urchin Hissune as he gains access to the Record of Souls. Hissune lives a few hours as early colonists of the planet, dreamspeakers, coronals, soldiers, and others. This shapes his education in a way no other experience could, and sets him up to be Valentine's heir apparents, much to the dismay of the princes on the Castle Mount. Lord Valentine's Castle gives the foundation of getting to know the multitude of cultures on Majipoor, and Chronicles gives the history and the details. So now I'm on to Valentine Pontifex, and i'm find that I'm avoiding it for the same reason I was avoiding finished LVC - I don't want it to end!

In the land of boring books (anything non-fiction), I'm still slogging through Fienman's Law 101. I'm picking up a lot of needed terminology, and learning that Contract Law is really, really boring. I couldn't resist a book entitled The Government vs Erotica, by Philip Harvey, the owner of Adam and Eve, a mail order "adult products" company. The government went after him with all it's might for distributing obscene materials, and Harvey and his company fought back. This book is funny, scary, and passionate. I can't put it down. Distorting the Law is going back to the library unfinished, it is too over my head. Never in a million years did I ever believe I'd be reading a book about tort law (other than John Grisham), and at least now I can say that I've never finished one.

Foodwise, i'm already starting to test drive recipes for Passover, which is only a few weeks away! Okay, so this isn't quite kosher, and it isn't quite kosher for passover, but it's only a few easy to substitute ingrediets away from both.

Mushroom & Potato casserole
2 lbs potatoes
olive oil
1 lb mushrooms
2 tbsp lemon juice
a few ounces thinly sliced salami
2/3 cup parmesan cheese
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
few tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 350. slice mushrooms into 1/4" slices. clean and slice mushrooms, and sprinkle them with the lemon juice. in a small bowl, blend parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and parsley. generously oil a large baking dish, and put a layer of potatoes to cover the bottom. follow this with a layer of mushrooms, a layer of salami, and a layer of the cheese breadcrumbs mixture. season with salt & pepper (go easy on the salt if your salami is salty). keep layering in this manner until you run out of ingredients. Pour a few tablespoons of olive oil over the caserole, and bake until potatoes are cooked through, about 60-75 mintues.