2024 #34 Peace, Love, and Fibre (Smith)

 

Peace, Love and Fibre: Over 100 Fibre-Rich Recipes for the Whole Family by Mairlyn Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mairlyn Smith, who has recently gained traction for her #FartWalk initiative (yes, you read that right) making the rounds on social media, is a professional Home Economist and former member of the Second City Comedy Troupe. Her winsome personality, that shines through in her videos, is no less present in the text of this cookbook. More than just recipes, Smith offers a practical (and humorous) way to incorporate more fiber in your diet. She warns that an increase in fiber needs to be gradual, coupled with an increase (usually) in water intake.

She weighs in on sugar and salt too, reminding us that table salt is not such a bad thing when you look at iodine needs. Ultimately, she offers a gameplan for the "Big Picture" by offering 10 healthy habits (that range from diet, exercise, to emotional well-being), and suggests picking one a month. After 10 months, you can perhaps find two good habits of your own devising, and you'll have a year's journey toward a healthy lifestyle. And no, I'm not sharing which habit I'm starting with.

There's a pragmatism behind Smith's advice that makes it seem achievable and her joie de vivre leaps off the page, whether it is her prose, or a photo of one of her prized teacups.

Since it is a cookbook, I've done my standard "3 recipes before reviewing" practice, although I have to say it is really 2.5 in this case. I used her "Potato & Asparagus Salad with Basil & Arugula Pesto" as a base recipe to use up some frozen Fennel frond pesto (from Hetty McKinnon), so I can't comment on the pesto in the recipe. The salad itself, however, was terrifically easy to put together (steaming baby potatoes is a great option rather than boiling), and it seems like it would adapt to most green pestos.

Next I made the "Chorizo, Brown Rice, and Lentils" and wow...this was terrific. High quality chorizo from a local butcher and Rancho Gordo's French-Style Green Lentils shone through and the spices were beautiful. While not light, it was surprisingly not as heavy as you might think--which was good since for some reason I felt like August was a good time to make it. I'll be returning to it in the fall!

And then "Traditional Overnight Oats for the Steel-Cut Purists"--I'm new to the concept of cooking overnight oats the next morning (which absolutely makes sense with steel-cut rather than rolled oats), and once again Smith's practicality comes into play -- after a couple 1 minute cycles in the microwave, the concoction sits for 15 minutes while "you run around getting ready for your day."

Each recipe comes with truly helpful and informative nutrition data per serving (newsflash: overnight oats have a lot of calories!), including fat breakdown, cholesterol, sodium, sugars, protein, potassium, and of course... fiber! If you are looking to make healthy changes to your diet and life, Smith offers some really sage (and fun) advice in this book.

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(Crossposted to Lady of Shallots)

2024 #33 High Conflict (Ripley)

 

High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book because I'm going to be facilitating a conversation about it at work, and I found it far more interesting than I imagined. Ripley offers a variety of case studies: an attorney-turned-mediator, a gang member, a Colombian guerilla fighter, a rabbi and his congregation...and a lot more. Through excellent storytelling, Ripley weaves together these stories to both explain "high conflict" and offers great counsel for how to move out of it, and perhaps even avoid it. But the point that resonated the most for me is her discussion of "good conflict"--something that sometimes gets lost in a lot of conversations about peace and mediation. Curiosity is key. But we have to make the space to allow for curiosity. Also a key point about the conflict-industrial complex: "To keep conflict healthy in an adversarial world, the encounters can't end... But keeping the conversation going in a huge challenge in a country where people increasingly live, date, and marry in their own political tribes. As in any segregated society, encounters won't happen naturally." (273). I would have liked more about managing the sustainability of this process.

So, it takes work. The book offers many resources about how to do that work, but Ripley's main focus is how to identify high conflict in the first place. There are some major tips for preventing it as well: investigating the "understory", reducing binaries, marginalizing "firestarters", buying time and making space, and "complicating the narrative." It is this last one that I think is seldom talked about as part of reducing binaries. There is value in complexity, it turns out--sometimes we call it nuance--but actively seeking out the complexity can help us foster good conflict, instead of high conflict.

Ripley's writing is accessibly human, but backed up with research and journalistic insight. She seems to practice the humility necessary for good conflict, even in the way she approaches this topic. She shares the stories of people with care and consideration for multiple truths and lived experiences. This is an EXCELLENT book for a group read of folks who work together, but really most people could benefit from considering a thoughtful approach to conflict (rather than conflict avoidance, or firestarting, as polar extremes).

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2024 #32: Mrs. Death Misses Death (Godden)

 

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a reason I characterize this as both poetry and fiction. I'll borrow from Sara Collins who described the work this way in her review in The Guardian:
The effect is to produce a collage of speech and speechlessness, a story that sometimes slips away from you even while you are reading it, becoming a memento mori in form as well as content. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing you expect when a poet writes a novel, and exactly the sort of thing you’ll devour if you like huge helpings of experimentation with your fiction..

Experimental, yes. I occasionally subject myself to the whimsy of algorithms and the title was captivating, so I bought it as an audiobook without reading anything about it. I had assumed it was going to be a cutesy mystery of some sort, but evidently the algorithms were feeling my one reading of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse more than my plentiful cozy mysteries. From the outset, it is fairly clear this is not a standard novel. Godden is fond of litany as a poetic form, and I felt relieved I was hearing her read it, rather than reading the litanies in print myself. This is a book where it is very much an advantage to hear Godden's reading because she illuminates her own poetry in a way that few might receive it on the page.

To be fair to the algorithmic gods, it does remind me of Woolf's To the Lighthouse as there is only a modicum of actual, traditional "plot" and it is more about musings on death, and even more so, life. We don't get a tidy explanation for Wolf Willeford's mental state vis-a-vis their conversations with Mrs. Death, so the latter straddles allegorical figure and actual character. One might argue drawing conclusions about that aren't very important, but I suspect most readers will find themselves curious, although no doubt carried along by the talking desk and sessions with the therapist. There is plenty of biting social commentary, and the moments of wit pop out of a fabric that is woven from some very dark and dense cloth.

Quote: "Since you were here and sh*t, you might as well give a sh*t."

There was one sentence that I wanted to be the end of the book:
"It's a very simple question that life asks: will you walk with me?"

Godden doesn't end it there, and one can see why, but even after reading the "diary entries" that follow, it was that line that stayed with me the most. It is a helpful question--hopeful, even. But I cannot wholesale give this book a description of "hopeful." It is a longform poem (mostly) that digs into questions of gender and existence in a fresh way that is both alarming and familiar.

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2024 #31 The Good Daughter - The Good Daughter #1 (Slaughter)

 

The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A really good example of the genre, The Good Daughter has all the right pieces in terms of characterization and secrets. The plot stalls in a few places in service of lengthy dialogue between characters (some of the characters don't say much to each other, but when they do, it is several pages of dialogue).
There are some moments I found predictable, some secrets obvious to the reader before they are obvious to the characters. That said, there are some surprises too, and Slaughter paces these really well. The two sisters, Samantha and Charlie, are well-crafted in character and there are several characters who really trigger ambivalence, something I actually like.
Content warning as there is graphic description of sexual assault, and murder, but that's not unexpected for the genre.
The book also rests on some stereotypes of rural life, but is relatively gentle in its condemnation, painting with a medium width brush, let's say, assigning the worst to specific characters.

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2024 #30 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Shaffer/Barrows)

 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a charming little book. There are moments where it reaches beyond charming, but the depth is so momentary that it hard to hold on to it. I found myself wanting more from Juliet and her voyage of discovery, particularly when it came to Elizabeth. The various inhabitants of Guernsey are colorful and fun, although some of the characters felt a tad overwritten in some cases (e.g. Adelaide). I liked the epistolary mode more than I thought I would, and the length of the letters is well-considered.

The subtext is important, however. Narratives from war are always important, and Guernsey provides a glimpse (sadly, only that) into the many dimensions and complications of being occupied and occupying. Included too are the more well-known horrors of WWII, but we have hardly a moment to process that before we are back to the lighthearted eccentricities of the Literary Society. The uneven-ness made me feel as thought I couldn't quite commit emotionally to the story. Juliet herself is also partially to blame for that -- she is clearly clever, smart, and has great ability for compassion and empathy, but her behavior toward two of the male characters grated on me. All that said, this is a lovely beach read, with moments of pathos and moments of laughter, and it is delightful if not particularly robust.

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2024 #29 Writings on Contemporary Notation: An Annotated Bibliography

 

Writings on contemporary music notation: An annotated bibliography by Gerald Warfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that in-print bibliographies seem dated, and they are, but there's a certain pleasure in combing through them that just isn't equalled by using a contemporary database. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to review Warfield's annotated bibliography which, at the very least, provides a fairly accurate snapshot of the state of research on notation in the 1970s. This was a heady time, with Kurt Stone and others initiating the Index of New Musical Notation project in 1971, and a significant conference on notation in Ghent in 1974. The typescript is frustrating in all the expected ways--the occasional typo, the taxing-to-read font, etc, but it is a valiant effort to at least include some European sources on notation (in French, German, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Belgian) with annotations that were rather helpful in paring down what might be useful for my own research. Frustrating of course, were the items that were unavailable to Warfield (and his team) for review--some of which remain elusive (if not obsolete) today. The "mimeograph" items aren't connected to archives, so the bibliography is NOT helpful in terms of hunting down these things (often conference proceedings).

I was trained by an "old-school" (ethno)musicologist to value bibliographies. In grad school we spent HOURS looking at über-bibliographies and hunting down sources in the library, making notecards for each source (this was before Zotero was a thing, but you might be surprised to know the Internet was well into use by this time, haha). But there's something valuable about this enterprise, and combing through Warfield's bibliography reminded me of it. There's a human-to-human transfer that says "this is important" or "this might be of interest." There's a different impetus to sit and read through a bibliography that to type in a series of different search strings in hopes that you find what you are looking for. When you read this type of bibliography, you find things you didn't know you were looking for. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is the joy of research for research's sake.

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2024 #28 Kill Season - Jake Cashen #2 (James)

 

Kill Season by Declan James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I mentioned in my review of the first of the Jake Cashen series, I'm so impressed with Alexander Cendese's reading, that it is enough that I'm sticking with the series via audiobook. James wisely refrains from building too much upon the first book, so there are no spoilers, but there are light references--nice for those reading the series, but vague enough to entice readers to hit up Murder in the Hollows if they haven't already.
Wrestling does not take a front seat here, thankfully, but hunting does, so those who do not approve of hunting in any form are likely to want to pass on this one. There's a lot of testosterone that gets thrown around in this series, but my favorite character is actually Sheriff Landry, who is a great character and she is beautifully voiced by Cendese. In this particular book I found myself losing patience for hearing the killer's thoughts, but at the end it does help make us more convinced of the killer's mental state. I was less than thrilled with Jake's treatment of "Birdie" (Erica), the younger sister of his friend Ben--he was patronizing at best--so the insinuation at the end of the book does not make me look forward to seeing her character in the next book.
As a mystery it works well---James sets up the typical red herrings and didn't rest on the gambit he used in the first book. With Cendese's reading, the book is more of a 3.5 for me, and I'm looking forward to Bones of Echo Lake.

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2024 #27 To The Lighthouse (Woolf)

 

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first Woolf, and I struggled a bit, but I think that was partially due to the audiobook format. Written in 1927, the story centers on the Ramsay family, with a particular focus on the perspectives and thoughts of Mrs. Ramsay--at least in the first part of the book, which is set prior to the war at a vacation house in the Hebrides. The title, "To the Lighthouse" serves as a metaphor of sorts, but does actually describe the trajectory of the "plot" from prior to the war, during the war, and after. The plot, much like a post-Impressionist/abstract painting by Lily Briscoe, the Ramsay's houseguest, is more of an echo from the amalgamation of mundane activities that cover up the inner tempests and struggles of the characters. When little James Ramsay wants to go the lighthouse, an approaching storm sends his parents into a philosophical and gendered struggle which lets the reader know right away that this is not a plot-driven book.

Nicole Kidman provides a fine reading, with a certain passivity that channels the Victorian sensibilities that are an ever-present undercurrent in the book and are perhaps to blame for the Ramsay's inability to truly communicate with each other. I think I would have enjoyed it more in print, and may read it later on in that format. That said, Woolf's language was poetry and Kidman's fluid reading really brought that out. I try not to read too much about a book before I read the actual book, because I feel it biases whatever relationship I'm going to establish with the book. So while I did not know what to expect, and I can't say I'd like to listen to a lot of books with this same approach, Woolf's writing and insights (and occasional razor-sharp wit) were enough to pull me through to the end.

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2024 #26 This is Ragtime (Waldo)

This Is Ragtime by Terry Waldo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CW: Offensive racial language quoted in song titles/genres

This is a fascinating book that is as relevant now as it was in its original release in 1974. Written for a more general audience, rather than an academic one, the book serves as a Who's Who in Ragtime from its beginnings in the nineteenth century through the 1970s (and the 2009 Jazz at Lincoln Center Library Edition adds some additional names and info), as well as an excellent primer on the genre/style. The JALC edition also has some beautifully digitized images of sheet music, that do not come without their share of problems in terms of context, as I will come back to. Also valuable is the discography and bibliography (although in need of an update).

The language reflects norms of the 1970s, so it would be nice to see any further updates consider paying attention to some of that, although I acknowledge it might be that in another twenty years those norms may change again. Waldo doesn't do much to engage with his own positionality as a white man, but he certainly has the professional and experiential credentials to write about Ragtime. The discussion of minstrelsy is fairly objective, and he hints at ideas of internalized racism and respectability politics without naming them. There are some "question mark" moments, particularly in regard to his discussion of the sheet music. For example, p. 22 reproduces sheet music for Ernest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me" with a strange caption: "This song actually has innocent lyrics and is not a typical "coon" song" with no further explanation until p.100-102 when he modestly clarifies: "...this song, which had very innocent lyrics, for its title alone became a symbol for racism and haunted [Hogan] for the rest of his life." It would have been good to see the actual lyrics, which are only innocent in the context of a Black man in the 1890s writing about being discarded for another man by Lucy Janey Stubbles. While it would have been beyond the scope of the book (and probably the time) to engage in a discussion of ownership of derogatory names (and Waldo does try to explain that "coon songs" became a much more egregious genre), one omission is any discussion of the "art" on the sheet music. The sheet music for this song, in particular, makes use of racial caricature, similar to that used by the Nazis for their publicity surrounding "Entartete Musik" ("degenerate" music), which Waldo does not mention in his otherwise ample discussion of the racial stereotypes and caricatures perpetuated in minstrelsy. Several of the color plates included in the book feature these caricature depictions--notably Harry von Tilzer's "Moving Day" on p. 92. Given the role of sheet music in marketing these songs, it seemed like a missed opportunity to mention the impact of the graphics in perpetuating ideas--even just of plantation nostalgia. In retrospect, it is hard to see any of it as "innocent."

As the book progresses, Waldo relies more upon anecdotal recollections of living performers, which is not a bad thing, but comes with it a responsibility to edit and frame. Six pages are given over to lengthy quotation from conversations with trumpeter Lu Watters (1911 - 1989) which felt better suited to an oral history project, particularly when they veered further afield from actually discussing Ragtime.

The information about Joplin's opera Treemonisha does a good job of mostly objectively explaining the sticky political mess of its copyright and initial productions, and unfortunately the "Introduction to the paperback edition" (1991) was just before University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign mounted a production. There's no update given to what happens with the rights/royalties, which was in litigation as in 1976.

The book does suffer from some copyediting errors, including a rather significant typesetting issue with some musical examples, one that seems to have persisted through the three editions.

Waldo does present ample perspectives about performing Ragtime, although seems not to want to commit too strongly to parsing Ragtime from Jazz (although he does just that in many instances). The recollections from Joshua Rifkin stand in to represent the "academic" perspective (not that it is at all singular), and the subtext here is that "legitimacy" and "authenticity" are moving targets, depending on who is trying to defend what. Waldo notes: "So on a personal level, we all bring the bias of our particular disciplines to the music, we begin to categorize and nail it down in terms of what we already know" (223). This observation at the end of the 1974 edition lends a lot of value to the book as a whole, and helps keep the recollections in check in terms of documentary value. While the book is dated and deserves an update, it is a solid starting point for anyone interested in learning more about Ragtime.

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2024 #25 The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (Jurczyk)

 

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this up on a whim because I figured it would appeal to my librarian alter ego. While the "Mystery of the Missing Manuscript" might not appeal to everyone, anybody who has any experience with the politics and personalities of academia will find something to enjoy here. Jurczyk writes with a dry humor that befits her protagonist, Liesl. Liesl is an interesting character -- full of inner desires and hopes, but moves through her life with a wry smile and grudging utilitarian tolerance for the fools (all men) she must suffer to keep her job. There is definitely a subtext here, but it is written with a complexity of character that lends the book an intricacy and intellectual heft. There is also a message about how well we know the people we work with--the assumptions we make, the choices as to how close to get...when one becomes a "friend" beyond a "colleague." It is a puzzling novel in that if you were to describe the basic plot to me, I probably wouldn't think it would go far, but Jurczyk does an admirable job of building dimensionality into the characterization and the plot so that the reader can't help but be interested.

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