I’m usually pretty skeptical of these tool-oriented cookbooks (e.g., the Dutch oven cookbook, the slow cooker cookbook, etc.) and the combination with paleo dieting is the second strike. However, it was on the recommendations table at the downtown library (which tends to have pretty good cookbook recommendations), so I picked it up. I’m not a paleo diet partisan, so I imagine I’ll ignore some of the more inconvenient substitutions made for more conventional ingredients, but I actually found a lot of the recipes here to be pretty promising. The spice profile on the ones I’ve tried has been on the mild side for my taste, but that’s an easy thing to address in future efforts.
WorldCat » Amazon »Most of my fiction reading these days happens on a backlit Kindle Paperwhite on a couch in a toddler’s room after lights out. I found this really engrossing in that context. I love Sherman Alexie generally, and it was interesting to see him do something of a genre fiction exercise that, not surprisingly, transcends the typical limitations of the psychological thriller genre.
WorldCat » Amazon »I really like Jason Aaron’s Scalped, and I like the more mystical Marvel stuff like Doctor Strange and the Silver Surfer, so it’s no surprise that I enjoyed this. I was not familiar with Chris Bachalo, but his art actually turned out to be my favorite aspect of this book.
WorldCat » Amazon »This is an insightful history of the media trajectory of the music industry that created the anomalous peak of the CD era and the subsequent crash into the era of online distribution. Having come of age as a music consumer basically in lockstep with the rise of the CD format over the course of the 90s, I have been intellectually aware of the business distortions of the CD era, but my personal experience has made it difficult to relate to it. This book provided helpful perspective and historical distance in that regard. It was also fascinating to read this 2009 perspective in the year 2017 since streaming has taken off. In collecting bibliographic information for this title, I’ve seen that Knopper has had a chance to put out a new edition with a chapter on streaming this year. I’m curious to check it out, but also appreciate the first edition as a historical document.
WorldCat » Amazon »The authors’ approach in this parenting manual is to package research in developmental psychology for a popular audience. The result, for me, is a much more interesting read than a lot of “tips and tricks”-style manuals in this space, but it is still a bit weighed down by some of the repetitive tropes of the genre. The concept of integrating and accommodating opposing mental modes (individual vs. social, emotional vs. intellectual, etc.) into a whole has been a compelling goal in approaching both positive and negative behavior.
WorldCat » Amazon »I found this novel about the mysterious death of a high-ranking government official in Albania to be an interesting exploration of political fear, paranoia, and suspicion in the context of an authoritarian regime. The language is stark and detached in a way that creates a sensation of alienation that I imagine to be intentional, but the English translation comes by way of a French translation of the original Albanian. I’m never confident that I’m not simply over-reading a difficult translation in cases like these. Despite taking a while to get into the language, I eventually quite enjoyed it.
WorldCat » Amazon »I enjoyed this quite a bit. It’s rather adventurous formally, presenting itself as a self-help book with the goal of helping its reader achieve the titular goal of getting rich in the new Asia. The protagonist is the second person singular reader and the thematic chapters also trace the arc of that second person protagonist from birth through death in an unspecified, not-quite-Pakistan Asian country. The formal conceit may sound cute, but I found that it allowed Hamid to change frames from the intimately personal to the urban to the geopolitical freely. Having surrendered to the format quickly, I found it both touching and funny
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