ForcedPerspective

May Reading

A home for foundlings / Marthe Jocelyn
I was really curious to learn more about London's Home for Foundlings, but this book isn't terribly well written and leaves out the sociological information I was hoping to find. Overall, the whole thing sounds quite awful, even though the alternative for most of the time was being left for dead on a garbage heap. One star.

Dead High Yearbook
Remember that show on the HBO, Tales from the Crypt? How everyone met grisly and sometimes ironic ends, then there was that punning Cryptkeeper Puppet? This is like that, but without the puppet. A class-worth of dead high school students get to retell their horrifying ends in the process of putting together the yearbook. Quite fun, though not the best graphic lit ever. Three stars.

Will and Abe's Guide to the Universe, Groening
A collection of the comics about Groening's kids, Will and Abe. I like that they are chronological so you can see how Will and Abe's interactions mature over time. Kinda reminds me of me and my brother.

The lightning thief, Riordan (Y)
Percy Jackson turns out not to just be a kid with trouble sitting still, he's a half-blood, a child of an Olympian. Very well-paced and plotted, a fun read without being a guilty pleasure. Four stars.

Hollow earth : the long and curious history of imagining strange lands, fantastical creatures, advanced civilizations, and marvelous machines below the earth's surface, Standish
A history of the idea that the earth is hollow and that people live inside, through early scientific ideas to literary explorations to semi-crazy people. Very well organized, has good summaries of the novels mentioned, and the author shines through the material with a wry sense of humor. I really enjoyed it. Four stars.

21 Proms (Y)
Anthology of prom-themed short stories for teens, by high profile teen authors, to benefit the sex-ed organization Advocates for Youth. Most of the stories are really good (though the reason I picked it up was for Ned Vizzini's story, which was one of the few clinkers). I really liked John Green's story, which makes me want to try harder to get to An Abundance of Katherines on my to-read list. Good. Four stars.

They hate the feet, though

I don't know whether to be reassured that everybody's kids want to eat nothing but chicken fingers, or driven to a firmer resolve to encourage more gustatory diversity.

Maybe hold off worrying about the bees for a bit

The bee problem (known officially as Colony Collapse Disorder) may not be as bad (yet) as I had imagined: The symptoms have happened before; even if all European honeybees die, they're responsible for only 30% of global agriculture's pollinating; and in their absence, other pollinators will usually fill the niche. Almonds seem to be especially affected, with a large proportion of the available mobile honeybee hives trucked in for the bloom in January.

The Rules for Hearts Review

The Rules for Hearts: a Family Drama, Ryan. Yes. While this book did not irritate me in any of the myriad ways possible, I did not find it especially moving. Maybe “family drama” is less moving than first love, maybe a whole bunch of things. The writing is solid; the story did nothing for me.

All American Beef Pizzle!

All American Beef Pizzle! Which should totally be the name of a band. Instead, it's a dog chew, contaminated with Salmonella (towards the end of the alerts). I am so proud of yet another product of Washington State.

Their opening act would be Muscle Pig IV. Which should contain sulfathiazole, but actually contains sulfamethazine.

Countdown to Fictionalization!

How long until this mysterious illness is an episode of House, MD? Oh, who cares. Even the lovely and talented Hugh Laurie can't save it for me. It's a turd on toast of unmotivated character actions and ridiculous costuming. TV sucks.

Chop Suey: a Collection of Simplified Chinese Recipes Adapted for the American Home

Chop Suey: a Collection of Simplified Chinese Recipes Adapted for the American Home
by Mei-Mei Ling, B.S. Home Economics, University of Hawaii, M.A. Home Economics Education, T.C. Columbia University
1953

A lovely souvenir of Hawaii, with other titles from the publisher including HULA!, UKULELE SONG BOOK, and WIKI WIKI KAU KAU—Quick Meals Hawaiian Style.

The recipes are simplified and adapted enough for the American home that it’s mentioned that if you can’t get ginger, substitute “round onion”. Also no sign of garlic or hot pepper. The recipes are a nice cross-section of Chinese cuisine. But because standard mild-ified Chinese recipes are not terribly newsworthy, I’ll feature a couple of exotic ones.

Sweet Sour Pigs Feet
Ingredients:
6 – 8 pieces pigs feet
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups vinegar
1 piece ginger root
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tb. cooked oil [“Preferably peanut oil. Bring raw oil to a smoking point. Cool and store."]
Salt
Method:
1. Put pigs feet in boiling water and cook for 3 – 4 minutes. Drain.
2. Sprinkle salt over pigs feet and rub with shoyu. [Note: this is Hawaiian soy sauce]
3. Brown in generous amount of oil.
4. Put vinegar, sugar and ginger in pot and bring to a boil. Add browned pigs feet, soy sauce, cooked oil and enough water to barely cover.
5. Cook gently for 3 hours. Serve.

Swamp Cabbage with Shrimp Sauce
Ingredients:
1 lb. swamp cabbage
1 clove garlic [Ah! I’m wrong! But there sure isn’t much of it in the book.]
1 Tb. oil
1 tsp. shrimp sauce
¼ tsp. salt
2 Tb. water
Method:
1. Heat oil to smoking point. Add garlic, salt and shrimp sauce. Fry 1 minute.
2. Add cabbage, mix well. Add water and cook until done.

Why thricewise?

Partly because we could, and partly because it's a cool word. My best guess as to what it means in context (and yes, I'm a very bad fanboy; I read issue one only because it was convenient, and have not yet read any subsequent issues) is that it's being used as a peculiar synonym for Jotun (Mimir, the thrice-wise, was one). They were giants, Dawn got all big, that's how the math appears to me today to work. There's no clear indication, as far as my librarian and I can tell, that it means anything other than “really wise” in the original, but the Eddas are full of threes, so three wisdoms that we're overlooking wouldn't entirely surprise me.

But she didn't mind the word "shit"

Here are the top five cover stories that alternative papers should avoid in order to prevent irate parents from complaining that the paper is in the library lobby where their six year old could see it, based on a true incident involving Seattle Weekly cover art that featured the words "Fuck School."

Santa Claus: We Prove He Isn't Real
Matches: Super Fun
Plastic Bags: the New Hip Toy
The Best Ways to Kick and Punch Friends and Family
Five-Second Rule? More Like Five Minutes!

March Reading, April Reading

A double issue super-spectacular! Or I just forgot to post March.

Mr Dimock Explores the Mysteries of the East, Dimock
A renowned academic on the topic of Indian religion writes about his time living with his family in India in the mid-fifties and early sixties. He writes charming anecdotes interlaced with stories from Indian philosophy. Nice. Three stars.

Tiny Tyrant, Trondheim (review book)
Enh. Really aimed more at an elementary audience than a teen one, the jokes are pretty kid-ish, since the hero is a super-spoiled kid king. Sort of like Ritchie Rich but less nice. And because it's French, it can have stereotyped presentations of both Chinese people and Detroitians. One star.

Sardine in Outer Space 3, Guibert (review book)
Another French graphic novel, again aimed at a young audience. Should volume three already be consumed with self-conscious in jokery? One star.

Goosebumps Graphix 2: Terror Trips, Stine (review book)
Graphic novelizations of the RL Stine Goosebumps books. Pretty good for what they are. Not great lit, but I would definitely give them to a reluctant reader and/or 6th grade boy. Two stars.

The Transformers: Infiltration, Furman (review book)
I have always been kind of amazed at how the UK has it's own comics industry that is so similar yet different from the US industry. Like finches on Galapagos or something. This one is British but combines threads from both the UK and US past series of Transformers comics. It's trying to give a serious back story to the robots that turn into trucks and stuff. Perhaps I remember the toys too well to like this. One star.

My Pet Virus, Decker
Good premise (humorous telling of youth and adulthood with HIV and hemophilia), poor execution. Maybe he needed a co author or better editor? One star.

Batman Year 100, Pope
Dystopic Panopticon-ey future with underground Batman. How can it go wrong? By being sorta boring. I really liked the new getup, though (steel-toed work boots and long underwear!). Two stars for the outfit.

Black Hole, Burns
Graphic Novel with a Novel form factor, literary fiction type telling of a plague turning 70s teens into monsters. Super compelling and spooky, but someone has to do a straightforward adventure spinoff to tell how the plague starts and ends and have some flawed mutant heroes or something. Four stars.

No magic bullet: a social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880, Brandt
Very savvy look at the social movements against venereal disease and their flaws in the face of the reality of human behavior. The book was written in 85, so it cuts off before some more very interesting movements, but is otherwise very thought provoking and well argued. Four stars.

Scientific American Cutting Edge Science (series, titles reviewed: Fighting Infectious Diseases, The Nanotech Revolution, The Future of the Web, and Extreme Engineering) (review books)
Reason number skidillion why I dislike the publisher Rosen: These are attractively and sturdily hardbound books that cost $32 a pop. The contents are articles from Scientific American from TWO OR MORE YEARS AGO. The copyright date on the books is 2007, but there are no articles from 2007 or 2006 in any of these books. These cutting edge books. Even the further reading section is directly from the old article, and there is no update of any of the content, even when further studies have been done. No stars!

Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner
Interesting, and a quick enough read that I can see how it would get to the bestseller list. Not super compelling, though. Three stars.