Reading List

I haven't really read at all for the last six weeks. Now that I'm "working" (ha!ha!) again, the little bit of free time I previously had to read is now spent on Stella & Dot stuff. But when I'm not reading I get cranky. I feel like it's so important to continue to make time for the things that are really, really important to me--that really define who I am (cooking, reading)--despite how crazy it gets around here so that I don't lose myself. So my goal is to finish this stack of books by then end of October:

• On my Kindle...I must finish Misguided Angel, the fifth installment of the Blue Bloods series by Melissa de la Cruz, because the sixth, and final book, comes out TOMORROW! If you haven't read this series, but dig the vampire/YA genre like I do, I highly recommend it. It's really the smartest, most well-written of the bunch (more on that to come).
  
• Hardy Boys #1...I'm in the mood for a serial mystery, and I've read all my Nancy Drews. Now that I'm collecting HB for G/Q, I figure I may as check them out.
• The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl...set around the suspicious demise of Edgar Allen Poe, this book seems like a perfect Halloween-y read.
• Birth Matters, by Ina May Gaskin...no, I'm not pregnant again--just chronically interested in the subject. My neighbor lent me this book last week after a convo about her upcoming book of poetry segued into me telling her about my birth experience (it made sense at the time, trust me). I know this book will only fuel the murderous fire of rage I already feel about the maternity system in this country, but c'est la vie.

What's on your nightstand?

Let the Summer Reading Begin!

It could not feel less like summer here. It's currently 51 degrees, foggy as heck, and drizzling. It's putting me in an incredible funk because instead of sitting on my sunny back porch playing with G and Q, I'm huddled on the sofa under a down blanket, nursing a luke-warm cup of coffee, wasting time on the Nets while the boys take their morning nap. Surly, I tell you...I'm downright surly.

But despite the very unsummerlike weather conditions, last night I kicked off my summer reading with Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. Mother's Day weekend I saw the Jane Eyre movie that's out right now, so I decided it was finally time to tackle this book. I'm about halfway through already and love the spooky, slightly disjointed narration (which, incidentally, feels very much like the tone of the new movie). I have a feeling reading this book is going to forever change how I feel about Jane Eyre, making me completely sympathetic to the "first Mrs. Rochester" like how reading Wicked has now made me sad for the Wicked Witch whenever I watch Wizard of Oz.

Next up...John Knowles' The Magus and Caleb Carr's The Alienist. (Think the weather is influencing my decisions at all?) What's on your summer reading list?

p.s. I'm always in love with Ruth Orkin's photos. Don't you want her sandals?

The Masque of the Black Tulip

I finally settled in to do some non-baby-related reading this weekend. In the spirit of kicking off summer, I picked up The Masque of the Black Tulip, which has been on my shelf for ages. It's the second in the Pink Carnation series. These books are just so fun and frivolous...the perfect mix of a little mystery/intrigue and historical romance. You know, the perfect summer reading, right?

While reading, I sort of fell in love with that little black and white tulip illustration on the cover, so I started nosing around to see what cool black tulip-themed items I could find...

...like this pretty little painting (I think it would look really cool hung on a black accent wall in a hallway or bathroom)...

...and this Pyrex casserole dish (seriously--is there any pattern Pyrex didn't do?! Gotta love it!)...

...or these sweet, dainty lucite earrings (these totally look like something one of the heroines in the books would wear!)...

...and this enamel brooch.

I've now started on the next volume in the series, The Deception of the Emerald Ring...I hope it doesn't make me want to shop for emeralds! YIKES!

Bea Arthur + Pizza = My newest Tumblr Love

Just when I think I can't find anything more random and fabulous on the Internet--or Tumblr in particular--I stumbled upon Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza, a site that describes itself as "the definitive collection of pictures featuring Bea Arthur, mountains, and pizza." Now, I believe my feelings for Bea Arthur are well-documented, and God knows I love pizza and don't dislike mountains in the slightest, so this discovery really feels like a coup for me! Check it out...seriously.

Sorry for the lack of posting last week--time really got away from me. Work is so, so crazy right now, and things are busy, busy at home gearing up for two big projects: a bathroom renovation and the nursery (more on both to come!). I promise more posts this week!

xoxo

(via bea arthur mountains pizza)

Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!

I have a deep and abiding love for children's books and adolescent fiction. Chalk it up to never growing up, I guess. I'm constantly adding to my collection of Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Trixie Belden mysteries and love finding a new, adorably-illustrated and well-written story for the under-10 set.

So imagine my delight last summer when I stumbled upon Mo Willems' Pigeon series while browsing in the most awesome toy/book store in Glens Falls, NY. I love the clean, graphic illustrations, the irreverent storytelling, and the subtle moral to these stories. But most importantly, Pigeon completely cracks me up!

My bff's sister and her family are here visiting this week, so in honor of our pre-summer hot dog cook-off the other night, I decided to take the two little guys in attendance each a copy of The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! It felt so good to finally buy Pigeon books for some real kids!

p.s. Want to kill some time at work? Check out the super fun web site, Pigeon Presents.

Unhappy Hipsters

Have you seen the Tumblr Unhappy Hipsters? I'm obsessed. It's so clever and sardonic. Plus, being the lover of modernist interiors that I am, the photos do make me drool a little bit. I mean, how awesome is this fireplace?

Seriously, add this blog to your daily reads if you haven't already. You'll get at least one good chuckle a day, I promise.

(via Unhappy Hipsters via Dwell)

My Vegetarian Pregnancy

One of the really crazy things that happened in my time away from the blog was that after 17.5 years of being a vegetarian, I tried (emphasis on the word tried) to start eating meat again. My decision to do so did not come easily. Although it was partially fueled by fear of the insane amount of protein you need each day when you're having twins (100g!!!) and also pressure from people who kept telling me I'd simply have to eat meat to have safe, healthy babies, I feel like I know enough about diet and nutrition that I really came to the conclusion on my own that it was the right thing to do. And what finally spurred me on was that my body reached this point where I was just so starving from being so sick that I felt like I needed something substantial to fill me up, and meat seemed like the best solution.

The first thing I ate was a meal my mom used to make me as a little girl when I was recovering from the stomach flu or some such ailment. It's a really simple dish of stewing beef (we used grass fed organic beef, of course!), egg noodles and beef broth. Taking the first bite was so gut-wrenching and scary! I mean, after such long time I had NO idea what real meat tasted like, what the texture would be, and morally it was just so, so hard. But frankly, the very worst part was that the beef actually tasted really, really good, and it did provide me some momentary relief from the nausea and the hunger.

But from there it was all downhill. I tried turkey bacon (threw it up), chicken cacciatore (ew--don't even get me started), my mom's ribs (delicious, but they still completely grossed me out), my bff's chicken salad (again, super delicious, but the chicken cacciatore had already done me in for being able to enjoy chicken), a slice of pizza topped with proscuitto (the one meat I always regretted not being able to try was disappointingly chewy, fatty, and tasteless). Trying to eat meat and think about eating meat became this vicious cycle that was making me even more sick. Every day I would think, "I should eat meat today!" I would try to force myself to find something that would sound good and then I wouldn't be able to eat anything, which only made me sicker.

So I gave up eating meat again--almost before I had really started. I decided that getting back to a place where I was eating something was way more important than eating meat and that ultimately I needed to stop listening to outside opinions and do what was right for me and my babies. I started doing research online about vegetarian pregnancies, bought the book Your Vegetarian Pregnancy, and met with a veggie friend who is a nutritionist who helped me put together a plan to reach 100g of protein per day without eating meat. So far, so good. Yesterday I topped out at around 90g of protein, and it was actually pretty easy!

Sorry this was such a long post...it just feels like we have a lot to catch up on!

Holly Hobbie Christmas

Wow! I can't believe I went two whole days without posting! It's been such a crazy and exciting few days. Hopefully I can share more about it soon!!!

Anyhoo...one of my favorite parts about the holidays is getting out my collection of Christmas books from when I was a little girl. Two of my favorites--hands down--are Holly Hobbie's Christmas Book and Holly Hobbie's The Night Before Christmas (my parents and I still read this version every Christmas Eve!). Something about Holly Hobbie's art is so sweet and captivating. I can totally picture myself frolicking in that gingham-clad world.

This photo totally reminded me of a Holly Hobbie house. Doesn't it seem like the perfect place to spend Christmas?

(via My Christmas)

This month's reads...

Since the spring I have been formulating a very exciting plan for my October reading agenda, which is to read only books that are Dracula-related. This plan has been mainly fueled by the release of the Dracula sequel, written by Bram's grandson, on October 13, but in fact I have been amassing stories about Vlad for quite some time. Somehow I feel like reading about Dracula is far more dignified than reading about the Cullens or Stefan and Damon, but these stories will still feed my bloodlust in a spooky, Halloweenish way.

In case you'd like to read along, here's my syllabus:

• The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula, by Glen Larson and Michael Sloan
• The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
• The Dracula Dossier, by James Reese
• Dracula: The Un-Dead, by Dacre Stoker
• The Complete Dracula, by Leah Moore and John Reppion

(Please note that I had also picked up Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula earlier in the summer, but I was impatient and had to read it as soon as I brought it home!)

(via Dee Adams)

This week's reads...

I have a degree in English Literature. As you can imagine, there is a certain amount of literary snobbery that comes along with such a classification. I started on the classics at a very young age and spent most of my high school and college years with my nose stuck in a book (minus my forays into Sassy and Harper's Bazaar), feeling I was the literary superior of my classmates. But I'll let you in on a secret: after years of reading "real" books and four years spent dissecting plot lines and outlining social commentary, I became a heretic. I've already admitted that I read comics. But you should also know that I read bad mysteries and scifi, too. And food books. I even read the Twilight saga--and, moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed it! The truth is, I haven't read anything of real value in probably two years. That isn't to say I don't feel guilty about it...I do. Just not enough to put my Anita Blake novels down and pick up Wharton or James or...Austen.

And then along comes Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. You can imagine how excited I was to have my love for the classics combined with my new love of trashy science fiction. I was in heaven! Today Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (which are probably even cooler than zombies!) is being released, and I'll be picking it up at lunchtime. I know these retellings have caused quite a stir amongst Austen purists, but I think the concept is simply genius. It gives a whole new meaning to "guilty pleasure."

Crimes of Fashion

Comics and fashion do not usually go together (except in my world, where I lovelovelove both of them!), which is why this new endeavor by Marvel is so genius.

Tim Gunn as a superhero fighting crimes of fashion? Hell yeah! I'll be adding this book to my pull list!

And if Tim Gunn, caped crusader, entices you to delve a little deeper into the world of the fanboys, I highly recommend the fashion-y Glamourpuss.

This week's reads...

This week I’m catching up on two books I probably should have read a while ago: The Lovely Bones and The Virgin Suicides. I thought the Virgin Suicides movie was brilliant and have had the book in my queue for ages, but it has just kept getting moved further down the pile. Lovely Bones has never been on my radar screen until I saw a preview for the movie on Saturday night. I think I’m going to love it, considering it’s both a murder mystery and scifi.

I like juxtaposing two books with similar themes, set in similar times, etc., so I can do a little compare/contrast excercise…yes, that’s the lit major in me talking!

(originally published on Sassy in Trousers, 8.31.09)

This week's reads...

I grew up going to Cape Cod every summer. Some of my fondest memories are from those trips. They were always such a special time for my parents and me. And I really think when you start going to a place like the Cape at such as early age it makes an indelible mark on the person you grow up to be.

I haven’t been there in two years and am missing it terribly, almost like you miss a loved one. So this week, to fill the void of how much I’m missing it, I’m reading two books set on the Cape: Invisible Eden and That Old Cape Magic.

(via Home Sweet Home; originally published on Sassy in Trousers, 8.25.09)

Insomnia

Sleep is not my friend. I’d like it to be, but for some reason it decided years ago that we just aren’t compatible. So, after many, many nights of waking up and putting on TVLand so I could (hopefully) fall back asleep, I finally took pity on the hubby (who let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that he could no longer deal with the “Three’s Company” theme at 3 a.m.) and asked for one of these little LED reading lights last year for Christmas. It rocks: it’s bright (but not bright enough to keep the hubby awake), it’s sturdy, it’s adjustable…it allows me to read the entire second Vamp Diaries book when I wake up at 2 a.m. and don’t go back to sleep (like I did last night…and didn’t go back to sleep…nope, not at all).

Take that sleep! Who (YAWN) needs you?!

(originally published on Sassy in Trousers, 8.13.09)

This week's reads...

I got waylaid last week by getting sucked into the entire Vampire Diaries series. I’m about to buy the new book today. If you haven’t read this series and are at all a fan of YA fiction/vampires (who isn’t right now?!), I highly recommend it. (I have to say that it really makes me question the validity of Stephenie Meyer’s claims that Twilight was completely uninfluenced by any other novels. This series was first published in 1991, and there are parts of Twilight that are almost identical.)

I will be finishing Monster of Venice this week and also dipping into this exciting new-ish series from Marvel based on Wizard of Oz.


(originally published on Sassy in Trousers, 8.17.09)

This week's reads...

I’m simultaneously reading The Monster of Florence, a true crime depiction of Italy’s most heinous serial killer, and the first omnibus of The Vampire Diaries. It’s an interesting combination due to the fact that Monster gives a lot of back story about Florence, the Rennaissance, and Italian morals and mores, while the protagonist of Vamp Diaries is a Florentine Rennaissance man himself. I love coincidences like that!

In other book-related news: who’s excited for Friday night’s premiere of The Time Traveler’s Wife? I have a hot date planned with a box of Kleenex!

(originally published on Sassy in Trousers, 8.10.09)

What I Read on My Summer Vacation

Oh Sookie Stackhouse…I couldn’t put you down!!! I’m anxiously awaiting season 2 of True Blood…flew through books 2 - 4 of this series while on vacation last week. It’s total trash, but what more do you want when you’re laying on the beach drinking rum swizzles?

(orginally published on Sassy in Trousers, 6.4.09)