I read Powers for the articles.

I recently finished re-reading Last Call by Tim Powers. Fans of this blog know I'm a Tim Powers fangirl, and Last Call is one of his best works, and sort of one of his weakest.

Lemme 'splain.

Powers writes occult/mythos/body snatchers like nobodies business. When a character realizes he is a direct descendant of a demi-god or a legendary archetype, or has found the foutain of youth but paid a terrible price, you know it's true. Because Tim Powers said so. That said, sometimes Powers gets a little ahead of himself, and characters and plots get a little mishmashed. Like when you've got a couple of bites of thanksgiving left on your plate, so you just put the half bite of mash potatoes, and a little bit of turkey, and the green beans on your fork and eat it, and it tastes really good, but you can't tell what's what? Unfortunately most of the middle of Last Call is like that.

the action is great, but I read Powers for the articles.

here's the easier to digest version:
Scott Crane thinks he's normal. He makes a fine living as a pro poker player, except things around him keep dying. Like pets. and plants. and his wife. 20 years ago, he played the strangest game of poker you can imagine - 13 players exactly, options to buy another players hand then sell it for a shared profit. The name of the game was Assumption, and it was played with hand painted Tarot cards. That fateful game so many years ago, how could Scott possibly know or understand what was bought and sold that night? This year, the game will be played again, for higher stakes.

Scott, along with his foster sister Diana, his foster father Ozzie, and friends Arky and Bernadette are fighting against the Fisher King and his minions, who have unlimited resources, guns, contacts, and bodies (Powers doesn't anything if he can't have some body snatching in there someplace!).

This isn't a poker book. But I did learn a lot about Tarot cards (you'd be amazed how that can come in handy!). The beginning of the novel is strong, and the end is phenomenol. But the middle? muddled. Everytime I read this book I'm reminded of why I love it, and why I waited so long to read it again.

So i'm not sure if Powers is the writing God that I tell my friends that he is, or if he runs hot and cold. But I still buy tons of his books, so that's gotta say something.

In Johnny Depp & Tim Powers news. . . .

They've announced another Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The first one was tons of fun, the second one was cute, the third was pretty awful.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is due in 2011, starring all your favorites.

First gut reaction: As fun as these movies are, we really don't need another one.
Second gut reation: they are ripping off the novel by Tim Powers! Someone get that man a laywer so he can sue the crap out of Disney for stealing his ideas (that admittedly are based on history, myth, and pure speculation, like much dark fantasy).

Oh wait, Powers sold the rights to On Stranger Tides to Disney a few years back. So maybe they aren't ripping him off? Maybe this is just the start of his magnificently bizarre novels getting the Hollywood treatment? Personally, I think Last Call, Declare and The Anubis Gates would make great movies.

Missing in Action

It's been near a month since I posted, and that's just plain sad. what could have caused this you might ask? a mixture of weather that's so beautiful i couldn't bear to sit inside, weather so hot and disgusting my brain couldn't do anything but attempt to stay cool, a growing video game addiction, an overwhelming pile of library books, and a bit of burn out.

Hopefully all that's passed. what's most unfortunate is that overwhelming pile of library books? not a lot of winners. sigh. Just like last summer, all I wanted to do was read favorites that I already own. so i did.

and cooking? sure, been doing plenty of that when the mercury isn't boiling out of the thermometer, but not much in the way of recipes: whirl up some pesto in the food processesor, toss it with some pasta and grilled chicken or shrimp. my Basil plant is out of control, I've made pesto 3 times already! and next week I'll be swimming in ripened tomatoes. Can you say Caprese?

I don't enjoy saying that books weren't winners, and maybe they just weren't winners for me. so many losers in a row however, got me mighty discouraged. Lessons learned: don't keep saying "add that to my ILL list" in conversation with the nice librarian, and what your buddies at the library like you might not like.

Declare, by Tim Powers - a cold war spy story with some occult thrown in. Powers does occult far better than he does spy. The book takes place in 1941, when Andrew Hale is a British Agent who infiltrates the ComIntern in Paris, meets up with Kim Philby, and all sorts of strange things start the happen, and in the 1960s, when Andrew is reactivated to find out exactly what happened to Philby. A metal ankh Andrew wears saves his life more than once, a strange half human creatures he meets around Mt Ararat begin to expose the truth to him. If you know your biblical mythology, you know where this is going. and it is, but it isn't. Powers has the gift for turning pockets of forgotten time into the best story you ever heard. unfortunatly, Declare is not the best example thereof. The beginning of the book was great, the end was excellent, but the middle was muddled and suffered from putdownableness.

The Stress of her Regard, by Tim Powers - far better than Declare, and the enjoyment faults were all mine. Taking place in the early 1800's, we start with Michael Crawford who is about to marry the beautiful Julia. Julia is thrilled to leave behind her provincial family and her clingy yet antisocial twin sister. The couple is married, and in the morning, Crawford is horrified to find bloody Julia, brutally murdered, lying beside him in bed. Knowing he will be found guilty of murder, Crawford runs. Meanwhile, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are up to their regular shenanigans, wooing women then leaving them, enjoying themselves in Europe, and getting involved in secret societies. Crawford eventually hooks up with them only to learn that Julia was killed by a lamia, or vampire, and who now sees Crawford as her legal husband. And she is very jealous, and will kill anyone who shows loves for Crawford. Already involved with Shelly and Byron, the Lamia is slowing killing their families and loved ones. The only way to kill the lamia is to do so while the Graie (remember them from Mythology? three old hags who shared one eye?) are awake, but blind. I wish I had paid more attention to literature class in high school, so i could have known more about the livse of Shelley and Byron before reading this. Sure, i know Mary Shelley, who doesn't, but I never read her husband. The Stress of her Regard is a great book for students of literature and mythology, and a good book for everyone else.

Hominids, by Robert Sawyer - the easiest, quickest, and least cerebral read of the group. It's not an insult to Sawyer when I say this book isn't cerebral, it's just that unlike Powers, Sawyer connects all the dots for the reader. All you have to do is read, he'll do all the thinking for you. THe premise of Hominids is great - through a quantum computing experiment gone wrong, a portal is opened to a parallel universe in which Neanderthals are the primary hominid, and homo sapiens were wiped out generations ago. The Neanderthals lean towards hunting gathering rather than agriculture, which along with a strictly maintained population size, makes their world very much in peace with nature and the earth. The Neanderthal earth is Sawyer's ideal world: everyone is happy, everyone is safe, no one is unemployed or hungry, no one is cruel or greedy, there is very little crime, there is culture, but no religion. A perfect vehicle for Sawyer to preach about all that is wrong with homo sapiens and our society. This is where no thinking is required on the place of the reader, because Sawyer will bash you over the head with his "Neanderthals are the perfect peaceful creature, and you horrible disgusting humans killed them all and did a million other horrible things!" again and again and again, until you are blue in the face. All that said, this was a good, easy read, which was much appreciated after those two Powers novels that made my brain nearly melt. This series has three books, and I might just read the next one, just to see the damage Sawyer can do. Not the best reason to read a book, but hey.

speaking of my brain melting, I borrowed a copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver from a friend, and I'm already running into familiar names: Enoch Root, the Waterhouse family. . . not to mention a 10 year old Ben Franklin. This book is going to kick my ass, and I verily think I'm going to enjoy it. Having survived his Cryptonomicon, at least now I know what to expect with a Stephenson style brain melting ass kicking.

I knew it would happen sooner or later

It was bound to happen eventually. I knew i couldn't live in book bliss forever. I knew one day the other shoe was going to drop.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's happened. I have discovered the true meaning of the phrase "I got too many books from the library". but it wasn't my fault, i swear! i was chatting with one of the librarians, and he was putting a book or two on my interlibrary loan account, and i lost track of my tab, and I'd already gotten some stuff at the other library and browsed around before I even remembered to check my interlibrary loan at the desk!!

the husband has promised to keep me away from libraries (except to return stuff!!) for the next 3 weeks at least. that's a tall order, this is me we're talkin' about.

Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
Declare by Tim Powers
The Stress of Her REgard, by Tim Powers
Hart & Boot, by Tim Pratt
Looking for Jake, by China Mieville
Hominids, by Robert Sawyer
Sword & Citadel, by Gene Wolfe

that's a lotta reading. at to top it off, I got an advanced reading copy of a new Larry Niven, and since i didn't feel like i had enough to read to begin with, I felt the need to pull down one of my Mom's old books on biblical commentary. go figure.

Lord Valentine & Stranger Tides Reviews up

must write reviews! books are due at the library! and my "books to be read" pile is getting out of control, as usual.

New reviews up:
Lord Valentine's Castle, by Robert Silverberg (he's my new obsession.)
On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers

In boring book news, i picked up something called Distorting the Law, by William Halton and Michael McCann. It's basically about the media sensationalization of tort law, and the need for tort reform. for example, remember the woman who sued because getting a CAT scan took away her psychic powers? yeah, big joke. before the Cat scan, she said she was allergic to the dye they were going to inject her with. They injected it anyway and did the scan. Her allergic reaction causes pain and debilitating headaches. Regardless of her claim of psychic powers before or after the Cat Scan, they injected her with something she was allergic to, and part of her lawsuit was medical malpractice and pain and suffering. the jury awarded her a boatload of money, the judge lowered the amount, and on appeal the whole thing was reversed. medical malpractive or no, "psychic" or no, she never saw a penny and it became a perfect example of how the media has allowed tort cases to be spun out of control. Would people have thought different of the case if she had never mentioned her profession was psychic medium? A dry but interesting book, i'm only understanding about half of it, because of my lack of education in law/tort/media/etc. back to the library for Law 101: Everything you need to know about the American Legal System, by Jay Fienman. Okay, so it's certainly not everything, but it's many steps up from some Law for Dummies type thing. Fienman keeps everything in words I can understand, with real world examples, and a few made up ones. Now everyone at work thinks I'm a law student, which i'm not.

Pita: It's all about the pockets.

I've always wanted to try making pita bread, but it always looks so daunting! How do you get that perfect bubble inside? Does it puff up into a big ginormous ball in the oven? it looks scary! and the pita I buy at the grocery store doesn't taste so good that I'd want to make a batch of that stuff at home. Grocery store pita tastes like wet cardboard.

But I had a recipe. and my husband pestered me until I psyched myself up. boys and girls, this was so frightfully easy, so wonderfully fun, and so amazingly deliciously perfect, i think I might make a batch again next week. I will never fear the pita again.

note: this recipe called for 100% whole wheat flour. I used 100% unbleached flour, and the results were lovely.

Pita Bread, from The Breadwinner's Cookbook, which sadly, is no longer in print. I have modified only slightly.

Pita Bread
1 pack yeast
1 cup warm water
small dollup of honey
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
2-3 cups flour, plus a bit more, just in case
cornmeal

Mix yeast in a bowl with 1/4 cup water and the honey. mix well, and let sit 10 minutes. if it doesn't foam up like the head of a beer, your yeast is bad, do the whole thing over again.

in a large mixing bowl, put the remaining water, oil, salt, and foamy yeast mixture. stir in the flour, a half cup at a time, blending each addition in before adding more. When you have a light dough that holds together, flour your hands and knead the dough for abotu 10 minutes, adding more flour if it gets too sticky. after kneading, shape into a ball and roll in a greased bowl. cover, and let sit in a warm place for 2 hours.

punch down, and let rest for 10 minutes. divide the dough into 5 or 6 peices of as equal as possible size. shape each peice in to a ball, knead for a minute or two, and set to rise for 30 minutes. after 30 minutes. place each ball between two sheets of floured wax paper, and carefully roll with a rolling pin (this is where i decided to cheat, and smush the balls down with my fingers. bad idea. The magic pocket of air had already formed, and i killed it. use the wax or parchement paper. use a rolling pin. be gentle) into an 8-10" round that is 1/4" thick.

Dust 2 baking sheets with cornmeal, and put two rounds of dough on each baking sheet. let rest fo 30 minutes. change the oven racks in your oven to have one as close to the bottom as possible, and one about half way up.

Near the end of the rest, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. No, that wasn't a typo, you really want 500 degrees. One baking sheet at a time, put the sheet on the bottom rack for 5 minutes. after five minutes, move it to a top rack, and bake another 3 minutes. it will be all poofy when you take it out, that's the magic air pocket! let breads cool on a rack, they will sink down a little, but it's OK. keep baking, one sheet at a time, 5 minutes on the bottom rack, 3 minutes on a higher rack until you've baked all your pitas, dusting the baking sheets again with cornmeal inbetween breads.

We had these with tuna salad, and I can honestly say i was just ho-hum about pita until I had these. can't wait to make another batch, and i'll use a rolling pin, i promise!

Book news, review of Dies the Fire is up, with a nice little discussion.


Finished reading Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, what a fun, weird, crazy book! The only Powers book I've come across to completely take place in a historical time, we're in the Caribbean, in the early 1700's. Hey, didn't they just make some movies about this? I'd say Powers ripped someone off, except his book was published in 1988. Blackbeard was trained by escaped slaves in the art of Voodoo, and he uses his powers to find the Fountain of Youth in Florida, but something goes wrong, and now he has ghosts that are, well, attached to him. Innocently involved with pirates and magic and voodoo and love is Jack Shandy, who needs to decide what he wants in live - return to England? approach his uncle who stole an inheritance from his father? rescue a beautiful woman who may have lost her mind before Jack can get to her? A fast paced fun Powers-esque read, On Stranger Tides was recently reprinted, and it's a grand find.

Also reading Lord Valentine's Castle,by Robert Silverberg. THis is my first Silverberg novel, and so far, I'm having a good time. It's got that Michael Moorcock chilled out feeling to it, where the main character, also Valentine, just kind of goes with the flow, and whatever happens, happens. My kinda character.

Not so much a recipe as . . .

Sometimes i just want to through a bunch of stuff together and hope that it tastes good. about half the time I win. means next week i'm going to have two experiments that don't taste real good.

Berry Cobbler (very similar to Peach cobbler
1 bag frozen sweet cherries
1 bag frozen raspberries
thaw frozen fruit at room temperature for about an hour, or all day in the fridge.

1 1/3 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
5 tbsp cold butter, cut into peices
1/2 cup milk

topping
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp butter

preheat oven to 375 and grease a 8x8 baking dish pour fruit in. in a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, and baking powder together. blend butter in with a pastry knife. when well blended, add milk and stir well, adding more milk if needed to make a soft dough. put dough by the heaping tablespoon on top of fruit. sprinkle brown sugar on top and dot with butter. bake at 375 for 45-55 minutes.

and this is what comes of craving beans, lentils and rice, and really not wanting to go out to the store on a snowy winter day:
Sort of Southwestern Rice
Small onion, chopped
1 cup diced carrots
olive oil
1 can chicken broth (or veggie broth, or water)
1/4 cup green or brown lentils (dry)
1 can kidney beans
1 cup salsa
1 cup uncooked rice
1 cup frozen corn
1 tsp chili powder
good pinch hot pepper flakes

saute onion and carrots in oil till soft. add broth and lentils and bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 15 minutes. still in all remaining ingredients, and again bring to a boil. cover and simmer another 25 minutes until rice and lentils are tender. If it starts to burn, add some water.

Book news is also on the tasty side, but probably won't clear your sinuses like that rice dish is bound to.

I'm still deciding how I feel about Tim Power's Three Days to Never. from page 10 on, i couldn't put the book down, and it's got the usual Powers paranormal time travelling relic hunters. I think i finished the book in 2 or 3 days, because it's one cliff hanger after another, after car chase, after near death experience, after real death experience. Quite the ride. But thinking back, there were bits and peices that were muddled, and just didn't resonate with me. Powers is till on my fave authors list, but i think he's done better work that this.

I gave up about 100 pages into Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. It had the typicall cyberpunk flavors - a virtual reality world (think Second Life) where people go with their avatars to hang out with other people, do business deals, etc. and you know what? Cyberpunk really isn't all that and a bag of chips. watching Hiro Protaganist (is that sarcasm or lazyness?) fart around his virtual world having all his dreams come true got old fast. In a world where you can have anything you want with a snap of the fingers, nothing is special, and nothing is worth anything. SO that one went back to the library unfinished. and of course, i can't take something back to the library without bringing something home.


I was hearing about Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss manga a few years ago, but i never saw it at any bookstore. It looked cute, but i couldn't find it anywhere!! Now it's everywhere, and I got volumes 1 and 2. First off, I hate super cute super saccharine super lovey dovey manga. give me some comedy, some drama, anything other than the two forlorn lovers who could never tell each other how they feel staring forlornly into each others eyes across the courtyard. Boring! that said, Paradise Kiss is the cutest, most romantic manga I've ever read, without ever crossing over into the boring/barf arena. Highly suggested.

Seriously, does any part of this animal not taste good?

don't tell my kosher-ish parents, but I have yet to discover any part of a pig that doesn't taste good. Picked up a fantabulous cookbook at the equally fantabulous Kazoo Books last week, called All the recipes Pasta of Italian Cuisine. The front cover notes that this is the "English Edition", with a pretty little British flag. English? yeah. everything is in metric with abbreviations i've never heard of, the entire seafood chapter is a little scary, and there are recipes that call for wild boar. yeah, this book was never supposed to be available in the US! we found something (many things, actually) that looked tasty and do-able, and went to our local fancy pants gourmet meat/cheese/wine shop. converstion went something like this:

us: do you have, um, something called Parma Ham?
shop: yes, it's called Prosciutto. Would you like some?
us: Yes!
shop: don't you want to know how much it costs per pound?
us: No!

I can honestly say I have never seen meat sliced so thin. it was truly a work of art. then we ate it. it tasted even better than it looked. again, is there any part of a piggy that doesn't taste good?

adapted from All the recipes Pasta of Italian Cuisine:

Fettuccini Alla Papalina

1 lb fettuccini
1/4 lb prosciutto, sliced thin, then sliced again crosswise.
1 cup frozen or fresh peas
1/2 large onion, chopped
olive oil
2 eggs
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
salt & pepper

start pasta water boiling on the stove. in a heavy skillet, saute the onion in some olive oil over medium heat. Stir the peas into the onions with some salt & pepper. Don't go nuts with the salt, as the Prosciutto is pretty salty. lower the heat, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Turn the heat off, and lay the sliced Prosciutto over the peas and onions, but DON'T stir the ham in!! just let the meat sit there, and watch the fat slowly melt as you cook your fettuccini. in a small bowl, beat eggs, and stir Parmesan Cheese. When Fettuccini is tender but still slightly firm (that's called al dente), drain and put into large serving bowl. Pour the eggs over, and quickly stir. When well blended, stir in the meat and onions mixture.

This is unbelievably good. it's not kosher, it's not Passover friendly. And it is the most incredible home cooked pasta meal I have ever made.

Other than that, made a batch of Olive Chicken the other day, which came out as deliciously yummy as usual, and pot of Mushroom Barley soup, which somehow was not at all improved by the addition of shitake mushrooms. This weekend promises my husband's award winning chili, cornbread, and nefarious culinary plotting for thanksgiving.

Books, books, books galore! had WAY too much fun shopping at the infamous Kazoo Books, and came home with the following:
The Anubis Gates by Tim Power- one of my favorite steampunk/horror/adventure books EVER
Gloriana, by Michael Moorcock - Very much a satire of Queen Elizabeth. Humorously erotic, erotically humorous. I'm highly entertained, as usual.
Brokedown Palace, by Steven Brust - appears to be in the world of Vlad Taltos, but without Vlad. Brust has never led me astray before. No, it's not the Claire Daines Brokedown Palace, or at least I don't think so.

Received my ARC of The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim Hines. Looks cute, looks like lots of grrl power.

home made pasta is suprisingly easy.

What do I do when I'm on vacation, and bored out of my bleeding mind? I make pasta. From scratch, without a pasta machine (i'm not even sure what a pasta machine is, or does).

For approximately 1 pound of pasta, blend the following in a bowl:
3 large eggs
2 cups flour
pinch of salt

when your mixture is smooth and mixed well, and has become a dough, divide it into 4 dough balls, put them back into the bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. On a floured surface, roll out one ball at a time into a very, very flat rectangle. This stuff is not going to want to roll. Nope, it's elastic, and doesn't like stretching. And you want to stretch it and roll it, not crush it under the rolling pin. So, every few rolls, pick it up off the table, gently stretching it, and flip it over. Gravity will do most of the hard work for you. Get it as thin as possible (can you see the fake wood grain of your laminate kitchen table through the dough? It's thin enough), and cut into long strips with a pizza cutter.

The strips have got to dry. I dry them on my folding clothes drying rack, but you can use the backs of chairs, or lay a broomstick across two chairs and use that. Roll out at cut the rest of your dough. It's more tedious than difficult.

After your pasta has dried for about two hours (or whenever you want to eat it later), start a big pot of water boiling on the stove. Get out a big skillet, and chop up the following to go in the skillet with some olive oil or butter:

1 zucchini, cut in quarters and sliced
1 sweet pepper, diced
8 oz mushroom, sliced
1 bunch green onions, sliced thin
1 tbsp minced garlic
salt & pepper

saute all that up as your water is boiling. Put the pasta in the water and boil for about 5 minutes, or until it's “al dente” (flexible, but still has a little bite to it). Because I used plain old regular flour, and not that traditional semolina stuff, this pasta won't be anywhere near as starchy or sticky as store bought pasta. It also cooks much faster, because it isn't industrially dried.

Pasta done? Good. Drain it and pop it back into the empty pot. Dump in sauteed veggies. Now, here's the cheating part. Dump in one jar of your favorite store bought alfredo sauce. Stir, enjoy.

What's with the store bought sauce? I suck at making white sauces, and I made the flippin' pasta from scratch, so i'm going to use a store bought white sauce. Deal with it.

Now, wasn't that tasty? Yes, it was!

I'm about half way through Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's memoir of growing up poor and starving in Ireland. This book is hard to read, because it's damn depressing. Frankie's dad is a drunk, and his mother is simply powerless. I'm kind of surprised there isn't more suicide. Oh yeah, they're all Catholics. But if i'm going to finish this book, I better finish it soon, because it's on loan from a friend.

For something happier, i've gotten sucked into the warped singularity of insanity that is Tim Powers Last Call. Powers has that ability to write up rediculous magical happenings that are just wrong, and it works, and the only thing you want is more. The man writes literary heroin. This book is mostly poker and tarot card stuff, which I have just about zero knowledge off, but it's still really good, and no one does body swapping like Powers. Oh, it's good stuff.

Oh yeah, happy new year! We're making cookies and chili for the party tonight. I'll only give you the cookie recipe if they come out tasty, and I can't give you the chili recipe, because it's a secret.