Cookbook Library: Licensed to Grill

Although it is a rainy Labor Day weekend here in Portland, tradition calls for grilling. So I turned as always to License to Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, authors of the very popular Thrill of the Grill. This time, I tried their Grilled Shrimp and Bacon Skewers with Pickled Onion and Avocado Salad. The recipe was simple, although it involved a lot of separate parts. Use one pound of raw shrimp—peeled and deveined, but with the tails on. The recipe called for 16-20/pound shrimp, which Safeway didn’t have, so I used 20-25/pound shrimp and they worked fine. Start the salad first: Thinly slice one red onion and soak for one hour in white vinegar. Chop two avocados into medium chunks. Seed and core one medium tomato and chop into 1/2” to 1” chunks. Toss avocado and tomato with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup fresh lime juice, 1 tablespoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon crushed garlic. Set in fridge while onions soak. Right before serving, drain the vinegar off the onion; toss the onions with the rest of the salad; add 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro. (See NOTE.) To make the kebabs: Dice 8 oz of slab bacon (the kind that isn’t pre-sliced) into 1/2 oz cubes. Blanch in boiling water for about 1 minute to they are cooked before the go on the grill. Thread the kebabs: alternate shrimp, a cube of bacon, a 1” red pepper chunk, a 1” piece of green onion, repeat. I got 3 shrimp and 2 of everything else on a 9” stick. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill over medium heat for about 3 minutes or so, until the shrimp are cooked through but not dried out. Serve kebabs on top of the salad. NOTE: There were a couple of things I would change about the recipe. 1) The bacon, even though it was cooked through and gave good flavor to the shrimp, was too blubbery to eat. I don’t know what to do about that. I think substituting a pre-cooked sausage like a kielbasa would give the same flavor without the blubber -- and no par-boiling required. 2) Unless you REALLY love onions, use only half or less of what the recipe calls for. I made them all, but only used about 1/3. 3) The salad needs something crunchy. I served it on a couple of romaine leaves and that turned out to be a very good addition. All in all, a good recipe because it got me to try shrimp kebabs on the grill. Needs adaptation, but I will make this one again.

Review of the Day: Life and Times of Michael K

Life and Times of Michael K is a Booker Prize winner by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. Despite the credentials, I did not like this book and I do not see the point of it.

Near the end, the main character, Michael K, questions whether the moral of the story is that there is time for everything. But if that is the moral of this story, then it was not clear at all. Michael K has nothing but time, but he does not do anything. He seems incapable of doing anything. He cannot cope with living in any kind of society; nor does he succeed in living on his own in the wilderness.

Read literally, the book is horribly depressing, because Michael seems to be mentally ill or mentally deficient (because he cannot provide for himself and he has no will to survive), but no one is able to help him. Read symbolically, I just do not get it. If Michael is supposed to represent some greater meaning, as the doctor/narrator suggests in the second part of the book, what is that meaning?

The book does not answer that question and I am at a loss to understand how Michael's numbing, endless suffering has meaning.

Guest Review: Whiteout

This is a guest review cross-posted from one of my favorite book blogs, Letters on Pages. You can find many great reviews there, mostly of non-fiction books like this one: Whiteout by Ted Conover Title: Whiteout Author: Ted Conover Publisher: Random House (1991) A little while ago I reviewed Newjack by Ted Conover and thought it was awesome. So I decided to read and review all of Conover’s other books. Next on my list was Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, a book about life in Aspen, Colorado. Conover is the type to completely engage himself in his subject, so he moved out to Aspen and got a job as a cab driver. Eventually he moved on to a much preferred position as a journalist for the The Aspen Times. Both jobs were helpful for learning about life in Aspen, but the journalist job enabled him to get inside a number places he wouldn’t have access to as a cab driver. Conover came to Aspen assuming he would hate it and all of the rich jerks that lived there. As it ends up, he loved the place…but there were an awful lot of rich jerks! Most people who live in, or come to, Aspen are rich and not really residents. They may live there, but no one is from there. A lot like Los Angeles. Plenty of famous people make their way through Aspen. Hunter S. Thompson and John Denver were both famous residents. Other celebrities traveled through often to vacation and party. Conover successfully sneaked into a big party hosted by Don Johnson (which, I suppose, was probably a much bigger deal in 1991 than it would be now.) Apparently Aspen is a major New Age location as well. Conover spent a lot of time exploring the New Age beliefs that were coming out of Aspen. That was a really funny chapter because you could tell he really wanted to learn…but hated almost every minute of it. He started with an open mind, but just couldn’t keep it together. Except for the part where he went to a house with some people waiting for the arrival of an alien ship. That was pretty much crazy. Another chapter was spent with a group of retired drug runners/dealers, which was enlightening. Apparently there was quite a drug culture (and maybe still is) in Aspen. As with Newjack, Conover did a fantastic job covering his topic. This book wasn’t nearly as exciting as the prison book…but still extremely well written. I highly recommend it…well worth your time! Rating: 4 out of 5

My 100th Post!

Meme of the Day: Reader Questionnaire

Cathy at Kittling: Books cribbed the Reading Questionnaire used with authors at the book trade blog Shelf Awareness. This appeals to me the way Cosmo quizzes did when I was a teen ager! Feel free to copy and post -- leave a link in the comment section so we can see your answers: On your nightstand now:The Spirit of the Place by Samuel Shem, author of the hugely popular novel House of God, a "must read" for those in the medical profession; John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves, which I am plugging away at so I can write my IRB review; and The Accidental Tourist by Anne Taylor, because it is never to late to read a popular favorite. Book you've "faked" reading: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I never got past page 50 for a Lit. class in college, so faked class discussion and the essay question on the test. Lame. I finally went back and read it last year and thought it was excellent. Book you've bought for the cover: Favorite book when you were a child: Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. My sister even consented to have a book case tipped over on her, but it didn't make her flat. Book that changed your life: Of course, the correct answer is the Bible, but that's always a trump card that tends to end the game abruptly. So I usually leave the Bible out of any book discussion. With that caveat, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Favorite line from a book: I have several lines I've marked in books, but none are so profound that I could pick one as a life motto or anything. Jim Harrison makes me laugh out loud with lines I remember as, "Food is the main reason most people leave the Midwest" (which appeals to this Nebraska-born Oregonian) and "The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life will make you crazy." Top five favorite authors: Kingsley Amis, Jim Harrison, Vladamir Nabokov, Anthony Powell, and P.G. Wodehouse. Right now, Ian McEwan is vying for a spot on the list. Books you recommend as regeneration when people say, "I'm bored by almost all contemporary American writers": I must not run with such a jaded crowd because I've never heard anyone say this. But Postcards by Annie Proulx and most books by Jim Harrison, especially The Road Home, should get the juices flowing. Book you can't believe that everyone has not read and loved: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Book you are an "evangelist" for: A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. Technically, this is 12 books, although usually published in four volumes of three novels each. This is an all-time favorite of mine and my "desert island" book:

This twelve-volume sequence traces a colorful group of English acquaintances across a span of many years from 1914 to 1971. The slowly developing narrative centers around life's poignant encounters between friends and lovers who later drift apart and yet keep reencountering each other over numerous unfolding decades as they move through the vicissitudes of marriage, work, aging, and ultimately death. Until the last three volumes, the next standard excitements of old-fashioned plots (What will happen next? Will x marry y? Will y murder z?) seem far less important than time's slow reshuffling of friends, acquaintances, and lovers in intricate human arabesques.

-- Time and Anthony Powell, A Critical Study by Robert L. Selig. Book you most want to read again for the first time: Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I would love to recapture as an adult the amazement I felt when I read it in high school. I wonder if it could be the same.

Gadget of the Day: blog roll

OK, thanks to Adam at Letters on Pages, I learned how to add a list of my favorite book blogs to this blog. It is now over there on the right side, below the list of the books I've read in 2008 and the books currently on my iPod. Personally, I am always initially inspired then quickly overwhelmed by lists of hundreds of blogs on blog rolls. So I am going to try to keep my list to my favorite 20 or so. But for now, I only have two -- Letters on Pages and (because I love the name as well as the content) Ramblings of a Misguided Blonde.

Author of the Day: William Styron

I came later to William Styron, only reading Sophie's Choice because it was on the Modern Library list. Styron's books appear on many other "Must Read" lists and have won several prizes.

Here is his bibliography, from oldest to most recent. Those I have read are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Lie Down in Darkness

The Long March

Set This House on Fire

The Confessions of Nat Turner

In the Clap Shack

Sophie's Choice (reviewed here)

This Quiet Dust

Darkness Visible

A Tidewater Morning

Havanas in Camelot

NOTES

Last updated April 19, 2012.

Review: Sophie's Choice

In Sophie’s Choice, William Styron does as masterful job of telling a horrific tale in bearable way. Sophie is a Polish Christian who survived 18 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Of course her story is heartbreaking. But Styron unfolds the tale in a way that allows the reader to take it all in without being crushed by the sadness of it.

First, instead of marching out the story of Sophie’s capture and imprisonment in chronological order, Styron layers it on, each layer building on the next. When the 22-year-old narrator, Stingo (a Southerner moved to Brooklyn to write novels), first meets Sophie in the summer of 1947, she gives him only the briefest version of her experience in the war. It is only as they grow closer as friends that Sophie, through a series of drunken encounters, provides more details to Stingo, each time admitting that she had lied to him before in earlier versions of her tale.

By presenting the horrifying particulars bit by bit, Styron seems mindful of the warning, and even quotes Stalin as saying, that a “single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The reader sees the tragedy of Sophie’s experience because, by offering just a little at a time, Styron allows the reader to digest her story, along with a great deal of information about the Holocaust in general. If Styron had presented her story in full from the beginning, the awfulness would be numbing.

Also, Styron balances Sophie’s tragic past with her tragic present in Brooklyn. In love with Nathan, a brilliant drug addict subject to violent fits of jealousy, Sophie has no chance of building a “normal” life in America. But, given her experiences in the concentration camp, it is impossible to imagine how she could. Rather than present an unbelievable fairy tale of survival, Styron uses the tortured relationship between Nathan and Sophie as the catalyst for her revelations to Stingo, as well as the vehicle of her ultimate, and well-foreshadowed, undoing.

Finally, for all its sadness, there is plenty of humor in the book. Some of Stingo’s failed romantic adventures are downright funny, as are his self-deprecating descriptions of his writing efforts. Again, without these side stories offering a respite from the main narrative, Sophie’s story would be unbearable.


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NOTES

Sophie’s Choice is one of my Top 10 favorite novels of all times. It won the National Book Award in 1980.  It is on Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels.  It is on the Modern Library list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and Radcliffe's rival list. 

Review: Siddhartha

I've been reading several books by Nobel Prize winners lately, in part because I signed up for this Nobel challenge, in part because I have a goal to read at least one book by every winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Siddhartha was one more step forward on both counts.

I can't say that it did anything for me. Siddhartha is the hero of this allegorical tale of an Indian man's development, from Brahmin student, to mystic, to successful business man and pleasure seeker, to wise ferryboat tender. Maybe back in 1922 when it was first published, or even in the 1960s and '70s when American hippies took it to heart, the examination of Indian mysticism and Buddhism would have been fascinating. But now, when Indian culture is more familiar, it just seems pretentious and overwrought. Many people love it. It just is not my cup of tea.

Book Notes: John Stuart Mill

So, I am about halfway through John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, the new biography by Richard Reeves, and I still do not know if JSM was the Father of Libertarianism or the Father of Socialism. That's quite a philosophical conundrum! Individualism and collectivism are both central to his thinking. We'll see if these two theories can be reconciled before the end of the book. Some of my confusion may be the way Reeves uses terms such as "liberal," "progressive," and the like with their contemporary meanings when they had a different meaning back then. For example, the "radical reformers" Mill supported wanted a more laissez faire economy to encourage industrialization, while the "conservatives" thought industry was bad and wanted a return to nature. These definitions seem topsy turvey now. Hopefully I'll be able to make heads or tails out of all this so I can write my review for The Internet Review of Books. It's due for the October edition.

Review: America, America

America, America is Ethan Canin’s masterful portrait of American political life on the cusp of Watergate, balanced between the relative naiveté of amateur-driven, old school politicking and the cynical, scandal-worn future of professionally-run campaigns driven by instant access to information.

The story of Senator Henry Bonwiller’s 1972 campaign for President is told by Corey Sifter, son of working-class parents who is taken under the wing of the powerful Metarey family. The derailment of Bonwiller’s campaign (with its heavy tones of Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick adventure) is more morality play than murder mystery. Through Sifter’s first-hand participation as a minor campaign worker and his later reminiscences touched off by the Senator’s death, Canin unfolds the parallel stories of how Bonwiller’s downfall played a key part in the country’s and Sifter’s political maturation.

This is not a fast paced book, but it is beautifully told, pitch perfect, and, particularly for readers who came of age prior to Watergate, poignantly captures the last glimmers of an earlier political era.

Summer Reading Lists: Status Report

In the six weeks or so since I adopted a Summer Reading List, I've read several of the books on the list, abandoned others, and added quite a few. So far, I've read: Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer. This is the first of his "Eastern Europe" series, in which various police detective heroes solve murder mysteries in an unnamed Soviet satelite country. The books are dark, gritty, and compellingly evocatove of Cold War Eastern Europe. Resistance Fighter by Jorgen Kieler about the Danish resistance movement in WWII, which I reviewed here. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I'd been avoiding but the book club chose. It didn't bother me as much as I anticipated, but I could have done without. The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy, a 19th Century anthropological novel about the native people of the Caucasian Mountains. America, America by Ethan Canin, which I need to review. The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie, which I carried around in my car for emergencies and finally finished. House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler, which I briefly reviewed here. Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn. Neon Rain by James Lee Burke. Night by Elie Wiesel. The Fracture Zone by Simon Winchester. Errors and Omissions by Paul Goldstein. John Paul the Great by Peggy Noonan.

Review: Secret Portland

Having greatly enjoyed Secret New York and Secret San Francisco from the same series, I was looking forward to reading Secret Portland by Ann Carroll Burgess. The New York book has successfully guided me to several hidden treasures. When I lived in San Francisco, that book was my invaluable guide to deep exploration of my adopted city.  But the Portland edition doesn't stack up to the other two.

As a Portlander, I am more picky than a visitor reading the book. Still, it just does not have the same insider flair that the New York and San Francisco books have. The other two were written by people who live in the cities they wrote about. It is obvious that this author does not live in Portland and has not spent much time here. The information is standard for any guidebook of the city. Chuck Palahniuk's Fugitives & Refugees is a much better, although seamier, resource for finding the quirky side of the Rose City.

In addition to only covering the "sites, sounds, & tastes" that you can find in any hotel room visitors' guide, Secret Portland is full of several small, but irritating, errors. For example, while the book includes a truly secret Portland gem, Martinotti's Italian cafe and deli, it misspelled the name as Marinotti's. Even more confusingly, several listings misidentify the neighborhood. For example, the book identifies many downtown locations in southwest Portland as being in the "Buckman" neighborhood -- a neighborhood across the river in southEAST Portland. The nail in the coffin was the author's tip on how to pronounce the name of Portland's river, the Willamette: "Want to sound like a local? Make sure to pronounce it "will-uh-met," with the accent on the "uh." Wrong-o! As any Portlander will tell you, "It's will-A-mitt, damn it!"

List of the Day: Books about Napa Valley

Ah, Napa Valley. In my mind, I love to hate it. The traffic, the commercialism, the tour buses, the conspicuous consumption -- there are so many things about the "Napa Lifestyle" that rub my essentially Puritan and agoraphobic nature the wrong way. But when I am actually in the Napa Valley, I love it. I really do. Napa itself is a charm-free zone, but Calistoga, up at the far end, is still funky and fun. And St. Helena may be the most adorable town in California. The whole valley is a gourmand's paradise, with all the wineries, restaurants, and Gucci groceries. Reading The House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler has stirred up all these mixed feelings about Napa Valley. And it reminded me of several books about Napa Valley that I have greatly enjoyed. For instance, Sean Wilsey's delightfully quirky memoir Oh, the Glory of it All! perfectly captures San Francisco and Napa in the 1970s and early '80s, when he grew up with a goofy mix of socialite parents and stepparents. Both Wilsey and Siler share the anecdote about Wilsey's father flying his helicopter around Napa Valley, insisting on buzzing the Spring Valley Winery owned by his rival, famous as the opening shot in Falcon Crest. There is a "Napa Valley Mystery" series by Nadia Gordon that I particularly enjoy. The protagonist, Sunny McCoskey, is a chef and amateur sleuth with friends in the wine industry. I've read the first two, Sharpshooter and Death by the Glass, and am looking forward to Murder Alfresco, currently on my TBR shelf, and the soon to be released Lethal Vintage. Are there any other books about or set in Napa Valley that are worth reading? Late summer seems the perfect time to lounge on the porch with a glass of wine and a good Napa book.

Review: The Ambassadors

Henry James is not one of my favorite authors, although I feel compelled to read his books because he so powerfully influenced 20th Century writing. As I've mentioned before, his talent reminds me of artists capable of painting portraits on grains of rice.

I found The Ambassadors to be typical James sludge. For example, a convoluted paragraph a page and a half long that I had to read twice just to realize that all the guy was doing was wandering around, looking for a place to read a letter. Ugh! Slow going to the very last page.

Because I didn’t get the main point of the plot, so veiled was it in Jamsien fog, I didn’t care about any of the characters. Their dithering drove me up a wall.

As always, I am reminded of the famous observation by H.G. Wells that a novel by Henry James is

like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverentially placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . . . It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea, which has got to the corner of its den.