Tarot? Heck, no.

I never really got into tarot cards.  I always saw them as lame and cheesy, and the people that I knew that liked them REALLY liked them.

Speaking of lame and cheesy, now I will discuss The Castle of Crossed Destinies.  Basically these people gather in a castle and can't speak.  Instead they use tarot cards to tell each other their stories.  So the whole book is like this:

I surmised from the fact that he laid down the Seven of Cups that something had happened to him in the wood.  Could it be an attack?  Yes, it must have been, since next he put down the Eight of Swords.

No thanks.

In other news, I would like to share the best recipe for Migas I have found on the Internet.  We LOVE this.  Rachael Ray's Mighty Migas  Recipe is (optionally) cheesy, but NOT lame!

Tedium.

Some people think that stay at home parents have tedious lives.  I don't think I do.  At least, it is not tedious to me.  Sure, there is laundry, and there are poop diapers and dirty dishes, but there are also amazing, interesting, fun things that I get to do.

Every once in a while though I get the most mundane dreams.  I'm talking a whole dream where I carry a basket of dirty clothing to the basement, put each item in the washing machine, measure out the soap, etc.  The worst part about it is that I don't end up with actual clean laundry in real life from it.

Summary: happy, interesting life.  Tedious dreams.

You know what was really, really tedious?  The Castle.  I did not like this book one bit and it became such a drudge to get through.  I held out hope that it would be interesting (hey, it's about a castle after all!) but it's a story about how this guy got summoned to be a land surveyor at the castle, but can't go inside the castle because of mountains of bureaucracy.  Everyone in the village accepts the bureaucracy and makes excuses for the officials, but the main character is just baffled by the whole situation.

I read a summary of it on Wikipedia because I wanted to figure out how much I missed and the suggestion was made that it had religious overtones.  If that was indeed Kafka's intent, I think Kafka was wrong.  Perhaps it's just my own religious viewpoint, but I don't think the path to salvation is tedious or fraught with bureaucracy.

In any case, I'm glad to be done with this one and moving on!

Allow myself to introduce...myself.

"Danger Powers.  Oh, that's not quite right.  Danger is my middle name."

I could not read Casino Royale without imagining Mike Myers as the main character.  The whole time I was reading, I was just chuckling to myself what a fantastic spoof of the James Bond movies Austin Powers actually was.

Casino Royale seems so dated now.  There's a lot of stereotypes and what is now predictability in this book.  At the time it was written though, I could see how it could have been gripping reading.  The first of a genre that launched a thousand copycats and spoofs.  I just happen to read them out of order.

The one issue with this book that isn't the fault of its age is the inconsistency of Vesper's character.  She's portrayed on the one hand as this cold seasoned spy and on the other hand she gets caught making a phone call early in the morning.  It just didn't make sense that the cold spy would behave as she did.

I enjoyed this book a lot and it kept me giggling.

You don't really want that onion.

Pea is extremely cautious about food.  We suspect that it is partially from having reflux as a baby - everything hurt her belly.  Now at almost 4, she sticks to a few safe foods and is reluctant to try anything new.

Except this one time.  I was chopping onions for risotto and she was standing next to me on a stool watching intently.  She nonchalantly says, "I'm going to go play...but first I'm going to just eat this onion."  And pops a piece in her mouth.

Oh, Pea.  She reacted as you could imagine a 3 year old trying a raw onion for the first time would.  I felt so bad for her.

My onion is similar to Communist Party membership in The Case of Comrade Tulayev.  Pea thought she would like the onion because she saw me cooking with it and decided to try it for herself.  Most of the non-Party members in the book wanted to become Party members because they saw it as a way to advance in society and gain particular advantages.  However, like the onion, the Party membership winds up being terrible.  The Party members can't do anything without fearing the consequences and have to deal with other Party members actively trying to usurp their positions, or being sent to exile in Siberia for some minor transgression, or being executed despite innocence.

This is particularly evident when a non-Party member murders a high Communist official pretty much on a whim.  It is inconceivable to the people in charge of the investigation that the murder could be anything but a vast conspiracy within the Party, so they investigate, charge and eventually execute 3 Party members for the murder.

This book was a great commentary on Stalin-era Russian life and the corruption and intrigue within the Communist Party of that era.  It was a little slow in parts, but I am glad I read it.

I don't think that Pea will be eating any more onions anytime soon - and I don't think any of us will be joining the Communist Party either!

Oh no. Ohhh no. Oh no.

My son has said his first word!  And it wasn't "ball!" as he crawled around after a ball, or "mama," as he gazed at me lovingly, or "doggie," as the neighbors' dog sniffed him.  No, my son's first word is "oh no!"

"Oh no!"  Which he then repeats several times in a row.  "Oh no!  Ohhh no!  Ohh no!"  I'm not sure what this says about our parenting that our little 10 month old son crawls around fretting like a housewife trying to remove ring around the collar.

I could not put down Special Topics in Calamity Physics.  This was a book I stayed up late to read and also read a paragraph or two at pretty much every opportunity throughout the day.  It was SO good.  The main character, Blue, is a 16 year old girl who gets caught up in a murder mystery.

Blue, however, behaves a lot like my little son.  Sure, she tries very hard to solve the mystery and unravel what is going on, but there is a LOT of handwringing.  I'm not going to give away too much of the plot because this book should not be missed and I don't want to ruin it for any prospective reader.  But I came away feeling like there was maybe a bit too much "oh no!" going on and not enough good old fashioned sleuthing.  But that is just a minor criticism (and I also need to take into account that the main character IS 16, and is probably behaving exactly as a 16 year old would - even if I wanted her to be more proactive about certain things, it is probably more plausible the way the author has written it).

This book is creative, clever and fun and I loved it.  I'm SO glad I read it.

Thoughts on Cane.

Usually the fact that a book isn't available in my library means it is going to be some obscure, random book that is often difficult to read or understand.  Cane, an ILL book, did not let me down in this regard.  I can tell it is good literature.  Dealing with the experience of being African American in the early 20th century.  Unfortunately, I don't have the educational background or historical understanding to really appreciate this book for the excellent literature that it is.  It's embarrassing - I'm like, uh, yes, I can tell that this is good literature, but I can't get much more out of it than that.

Pea has discovered Where's Waldo the last couple of weeks, which has been really fun.  I fondly remember enjoying those books when I was young.

The big fat Greek book.

Corelli's Mandolin started off very slow, and very long.  I just couldn't get into the portrait of life in Cephallonia - it was all very nice, but just didn't do it for me.  I feared a long slog through the 430 pages.  Thankfully, the character of Corelli showed up and saved the book.  I read the portions dealing with the love story between him and Pelagia with interest, and read the sections dealing with the horrors of the war with somewhat less interest.

Here's the thing about war books - we know that war is terrible.  And I acknowledge the effort on the part of the author to make us understand what it was like for the Greek people to go through what they went through at the hands of the oppressors.  It doesn't make it less sad, or easier to read about.  I am not suggesting that writers should not write about it - I just personally don't like to read about it.

Mike says that this book was made into one of the worst movies!  It did get a 29% on the Tomatometer.  I did not know that Penelope Cruz was in the role of Pelagia.  I think I'll skip the movie on this one.  (Not a shock, I know - I don't watch movies)!