I want to try every recipe

Every year, the La Crosse Public Library has an event, complete with wine and tasty finger foods, for soliciting donations to the library.  This is not your usual sort of donation, however.

The staff puts out displays of books recently purchased for the library, and you get to peruse while drinking until you find a book that you are particularly happy now exists at the library.  Then you "buy the book for the library."  In this way, the library can choose books that they feel complement their collection, but you get to feel like you helped pick them out.

I have participated in this event two other times.  The first time, I donated a beer-related book, the second time a Japan-related book.  This time, I was going to go for something different, but I could not resist when I saw this cover.  And going through, True Brews by Emma Christensen is actually a nicely designed, easily readable, simply written book for the beginner looking to ferment beverages in their home.  I love that it includes non-alcoholic things like soda (who knew soda was so easy?) and even has a section on sake!

hod and bothered

Rhyming issues were apparently not a problem for my father.

I'll see you soon, I just can't wait.
I'll try real hard not to be late.
I just can't wait to see your BOD,
'Cause just the thought make me HOD.

steamy

Welcome Home Honey!  (circa 1980; written on a piece of brown paper bag)


You know when you're gone, I get all "steamed up,"
And even sometimes I get de"pressed."
But now that you're back, you can cheer me up,
'Cause the times with you are the times that are best!

(I'm assuming this was left somewhere near an iron or ironing board.)

poems of old

My father died when I was five years old, and it hasn't really been until the last couple of years that I have really started to learn about him other than little snippets from my mother and grandparents growing up.  Most of my new information has come from boxes of papers, pictures, and mementos recently brought out of basements and garages at my mother's and grandparent's houses.

In my last round of cleaning and organizing, I found the box of keepsakes from when my parents were dating and first married.  This is how I discovered that my father liked to write poetry.  On the basis of what I've found, he wrote poems to my mom quite often.  It's not particularly wonderful poetry, but it's heartfelt, and reading it gives me a small window into my father's life as a young man.

With my mother's permission, I am going to post a few of his poems here leading up to Valentine's Day.  I hope you can appreciate the sentiments of my young father as he showed his affection for my mother back in the day.

bard-a-thon

La Crosse is once again home to Bard-a-thon - seven days of around-the-clock Shakespeare readings at the Muse Theater.  Last night I attended the reading of Othello and was given the part of Montano, a governor who tries to keep the peace and then gets stabbed.  The great thing about Shakespeare tragedies is that pretty much everyone ends up dying in the end.  Othello is 2.5 hours of chatting, which leads to 5 minutes of killing everyone off.

My favorite aspect of Bard-a-thon is the joy of finding old references to phrases still used today.  A few of last night's examples include: the beast with two backs, crocodile tears, and green-eyed monster.  A new term I learned is "pottle" or "pottle-deep."  A pottle is a two-quart drinking vessel; so when you're pottle-deep, you're quite drunk!

DAY 10 (Odori - dancing ferment)
Stir in the morning
Bubbly and active at 57 deg
Add 2.25 cups koji to mash
Add 4.5 cups R-O water to mash
Put 4.25 cups R-O water in refrigerator

abraham lincoln, vampire hunter

Last year, the little known author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies jump started what is now my new reading obsession, Classics rewritten with zombies, vampires, and monsters. Seth Grahame-Smith did a fabulous job with Jane Austen (good enough to get a movie out of it) and now he has moved on to another supposedly untouchable historical figure.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is a fascinating rewrite of the life of our sixteenth president and the Civil War in serious biography fashion. Grahame-Smith weaves excerpts from well-known documents and "newly unearthed journals" to tell the tale of the boy Lincoln whose mother was killed by a vampire and takes her revenge with an axe in his hands. His experiences teach him much about death and vampires, including the existence of a war between those who exploit slavery in the United States for their own desires and those who renounce such use of the living. The Civil War becomes both a proxy for and the reality of their fight, a fight that Lincoln and his allies must win to keep all of the living citizens of the United States from becoming slaves to the dead.

Unlike most of the other monster rewrites out there that add fiction to fiction, Grahame-Smith takes a well-known historical figure and gives him a secret, monster-filled life. As I picked up this book I thought it might be a little much and a little bit ridiculous. However, Grahame-Smith effortlessly inserts vampires into Lincoln's story in a way that makes me wonder if I shouldn't be looking for hints of them in histories elsewhere.

monster madness

For me, summer means summer reading, and summer reading means easy to read, entertaining, no thought required books. And as much as I scoff at it, the recent trend for putting zombies and vampires into everything has caught me in its grip. I have been particularly drawn to retellings of Jane Austen novels, of course, but I'm not limiting my options. My list so far includes:

- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: A book I have recommended to Austen fans and non-Austen fans alike.

- Mr. Darcy, Vampyre: I gave this one an "eh" for storyline, but a "read it" for the lovely descriptions of Europe.

- Jane Bites Back: Jane Austen is a vampire running a bookshop in New York and gets caught up in a mystery. I enjoyed this because it made fun of itself and other Jane Austen fad books that are capitalizing on the craze.

- Vampire Darcy's Desire: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, while this book is a wonderful retelling of P&P with a vampire curse and more explicit romance than Jane would ever have written.

- Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter: I was just browsing the New Releases at the library and I couldn't resist. The first half is a historical buildup, and the second half brings out the monsters.

And the next on my ever-growing list of monster-infused classic literature is Mansfield Park and Mummies.

It's not amazing stuff, but I just can't stop.

vampyre pride

"A married man in possession of a dark fortune must be in want of an eternal wife..."

Zombies, Sea monsters, and now Vampires. Or in this case, Vampyres. I just finished reading Amanda Grange's Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice in which a centuries-old vampire Darcy puts himself and his lovely Elizabeth in danger by marrying her.

The book recounts Elizabeth and Darcy's honeymoon tour across Europe as Darcy attempts to keep himself from the passion which could turn Elizabeth into a vampire. The honeymoon tour is an excuse to visit vampire friends on the continent who might be able to tell him how to successfully navigate a vampire/human relationship, but results in adventurous flights from those who want to thwart his endeavor.

Through it all, Elizabeth is kept in the dark about Darcy's true nature and his ultimate goal, but her suspicions of something not quite right eventually lead her to the discovery of her beloved Darcy's secret.

Overall, this book is not stunning, but it had two things that kept me reading. The first was the beautiful descriptions of the cities and countrysides across Europe as Elizabeth and Darcy traveled from Paris, over the Alps, and to Venice and Rome. The second was the heartache I shared with Elizabeth as Darcy's strange behavior made her think he really did not love her. I had to keep reading so I could believe that their true love really did make everything right in the end. (Yes, when it comes to books, I am a sappy romantic.)

sensationless and barely sensible

A few months ago I read and favorably reviewed the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What I particularly enjoyed was the co-author's deft interweaving of the zombie scenario into Jane Austen's original story. The result was an entertaining enlivenment of a classic Austen tale.

Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters is the complete opposite. I will admit that I do not have Sense and Sensibility memorized to the same extent as Pride and Prejudice, but even still, I had a hard time finding the original story line, to say nothing of any of the original text. Ben H. Winters buries Jane Austen's tale of the Dashwood sisters under a plot as heavy and unrelenting as the evil ocean he places it within.

S, S & S takes place in a world where the ocean and its creatures have turned against man, causing all sea travel to be fraught with the dangers of giant octopuses, organized parties of man-skewering swordfish, and the like. Despite this, Winters sends the Dashwoods to live on an island in the the most dangerous waters off of England's shores and recreates the high society of London in a doomed dome on the ocean floor. As if these disasters weren't enough, he plagues the sisters with the curse of a seawitch and a primordial Leviathan.

Perhaps I could have withstood the over-the-top wicked sea theme, if it weren't for the way Winters handled the integration of Jane Austen's characters into his world. The inevitable attacks and deaths to dreadful sea creatures are treated as a triviality next to the Dashwoods' incredibly important problems with love. Giant lobsters chopping people in half? Marianne doesn't notice because Willoughby won't talk to her. Hundreds of swordfish breaking tiny holes in the underwater dome? Eleanor can't seem to keep it in her mind when Edward is around. Margaret shaving her body, filing her teeth to points, and chanting some weird language? Mrs. Dashwood is too busy writing letters to her crossed-in-love older daughters to pay any attention.

Winters destroys all of Austen's explorations into the subtle play of emotions of the Dashwood sisters and their varying reactions to love. He makes them out to be self-absorbed, fickle, and narrow. He even creates supporting characters to enhance this reflection, for example, a Pirates of the Caribbean Davy Jones-esque Colonel Brandon who provokes puking on sight. Winters places the Dashwoods in situations they can only look bad.

I do not recommend this book for anyone, Jane Austen fans or sea monster fans. It is clunky and ridiculous. I barely made it through, and that's just because I was sitting in an airplane with nothing else to do.

pride and prejudice and zombies

I am the first to admit that I am a Pride and Prejudice purist. This novel by Jane Austen is my favorite book of all time. I scoff at movies that do not strictly follow the original dialogue, and I have mixed feelings about the many sequels, prequels, and concurrently set stories which take Pride and Prejudice in directions not sanctioned by Jane Austen herself.

That being said, I loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Seth Grahame-Smith did a superb job of taking the exact words of Jane Austen and augmenting them with a tale of a mysterious disease overrunning the English countryside. True Pride and Prejudice fans will note that a good 75% of the book is in tact as Jane Austen wrote it. The differences are in certain plot points (London is surrounded by a wall to keep out the zombies, zombies attack anyone out traveling or walking, and certain characters are treated to untimely deaths instead of fading out of the narrative), and the replacing of key words within phrases to keep consistency with the plot.

My favorite technique of Grahame-Smith, though, is the way he created a new goal in life for Jane Austen's women. Instead of being prized for their accomplishments in music, languages, pose, and conversation, women as well as men are congratulated for the achievements in the deadly arts - swordplay, martial arts, gun use, and agility. All of the Bennet sisters studied in the Far East and were known around the country side not only for their beauty, but for their skill in protecting their neighbors from the zombie hordes. A true Austen fan will note the places where Grahame-Smith deftly changed certain phrases to accommodate his heroines' new hobbies.

As I said initially, I do not usually go for this type of alteration in the purity of Jane Austen's works, but I do suggest this book for purists and zombie fans alike. The addition of zombies does not take away too much of Jane Austen's style and voice, but it does add an element of action which many who have not enjoyed Austen in the past may find entertaining.

curse of colonel sanders

The Red Sox have the "Curse of the Bambino" and the Hanshin Tigers of Osaka, Japan have the "Curse of Colonel Sanders." In 1985, after the Tigers won the League Championship, some over-enthusiastic fans threw into the Dotombori River one of the ubiquitous statues of Colonol Sanders that sits outside of every Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan. The team has not won a league title since.

This week, that curse may be lifted. Divers found the Colonel fairly intact at the bottom of the Dotombori River and brought him back to land. He's missing a foot, a hand, and his glasses, but that doesn't deter fans from declaring that his return means a return to the League Championships for the Tigers. It is rumored that the team owner will request the statue to be placed in the new Koshien Stadium's history museum when it opens this spring.

For more about the miraculous return of the Colonel, see the article at Mainichi Daily News.

a canine story

The internet has bored me. I'm going back to reading. Among the books I've settle down with are some in Japanese that have been sitting on my shelf gathering dust. There are enough of them that I've decided to read a book in Japanese between every book I read in English. This way, I "study" Japanese without sitting down and re-memorizing vocabulary words.

My latest book was the "Hakkenden," which translates into "The Story of Eight Dogs." This is a Japanese tale set in samurai times (1600-1700ish). I'd always heard about it, and thought it might be another cute tale like Momotaro, the boy born from a peach who goes off to fight the ogres with a monkey, dog, and pheasant as his companions. About two chapters into the book, however, I learned this was not to be the case. Here's my shortened version:

A beautiful princess raises a cute puppy. Her castle gets attacked and is about to be overrun when her father promises the dog anything he wants if he'll go out and bite off the head of the enemy leader. The dog does, the castle is saved, and the dog indicates that he wants to marry the princess. Her father is a man of his word, and the two are married. They go up and live a secluded life in the mountains, where the princess spends her time in Buddhist prayer.

Unfortunately, the man the princess was supposed to marry is very angry at this arrangement. He goes up the mountain and kills the dog. The princess commits suicide in grief. When she dies, her rosary (consisting of eight beads) breaks apart and each bead magically disappears to a different part of the country. The rest of the story recounts the gathering of the eight beads, each of which end up with a child whose name coincidentally carries the character for "dog" and whose skin carries a special mark.

The children grow up to be great samurai (thanks to the protection of the beads). When two of them realize that they both have a special bead and mark, they conclude that there are other "brothers" like them out there, and begin searching the country for them. The tale recounts their adventures on the way to creating a great brotherhood. (Lots of fighting, being caught in schemes by evil lords, and meeting monsters.) In the end, they are all gathered together, just in time to save the princess's kingdom once again from enemy invaders.

They are greatly rewarded and settle comfortably. When they are old, they all go up on the mountain where the princess is buried and live there until one day, when all of their bodies disappear.

The End.

collection development

The problem with working in a library at a job with a generous amount of free time is that I suddenly become aware of too many exciting books that I want to read. In my line of sight I have an entire shelf of "new books" and "browsing books" which just call out my name.

Today I found What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? And 100 Other Great Cultural Lists. This gets added to my bookshelf with Edible Estates: An Attack on the Front Lawn, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Twinkie, Deconstructed.

To add to all these, of course, today is the Friends of the Library Book Sale, and when I went out to pretend to buy something I found a book I had to have, no matter how silly. Winnie Ille Pu (Winnie the Pooh in Latin) is now in my permanent collection, right next to Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit (How the Grinch Stole Christmas in Latin).

I had considered putting the front covers of the few books I'm reading on the side of my webpage in the "reading" section, and in fact, I did. But if I add another two or three, it's gonna get a bit ridiculous.