Birthday

I am 29 now, going on 30.
I wear my hair parted to the left.
I let my cat lick the last of the milk out of my cereal bowl every morning.
I drink instant coffee at work.
I drink tea at home.
I learned to like aubergines.
I still love crisps.
I cook. A lot.
I can run longer now than I ever could before.
I am still in love.
I read more than most, less than I want.
I am far away from my family.
I sleep on my stomach.
I get too hot in baths.
I plan to live all over the world.
I feel like a kid.

number9dream - David Mitchell

number9dream - David Mitchell
May 2009

I am constantly amazed by David Mitchell's ability to write using different voices. In Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, the stories are disjointed, with stories nestled within stories, all told from different perspectives and by different people, yet each story is plausible and each voice is distinct. number9dream is stylistically different from both those books as it is more of a traditional narrative, but it dips into the fantastical and the breadth and pace of the story is staggering. I will read this book again, probably.

Misfortune - Wesley Stace

Misfortune - Wesley Stace
April 2009

I woke up yesterday and was intent on finishing this book. I've been reading this for weeks and couldn't wait to finish, but not because I liked the book. The book is quite thick and by the time I came to a decision that I really didn't like the book, I was already about half way through it and felt like I should continue because I had already invested so much time in it. Although the story is told from the protagonist's perspective, it didn't feel very personal and there was always a remove between the story and the feelings. The story is implausible and all of the characters act as cliches of themselves. The ending didn't save an otherwise bad book and the relief I felt upon completing it was because it meant that I could start reading something better.

Travels

We bought our Montreal flights today and I'm really excited. We're not going to be there for long, but it's been a while since we've had a relaxing holiday. Last year we went to Paris with my parents and Burning Man with friends. Both were great, but taxing in different ways. Montreal requires minimal effort. I already found a hostel where we can stay, found some places I want to eat, and like most other city holidays we've had, we're planning on just walking around a lot. Ben and Sarah are meeting us which is fantastic and makes everything so much more exciting. We have also picked dates we want to go to Prague and I've also found a really cool place to stay there as well. Gina is in Prague and seeing her again will be interesting. Tonight we're having friends over for dinner and we will talk about Ibiza plans for the summer. I can't wait for summer to finally arrive and for new adventures. This year is going to be good.

Brown rice and spinach chana dal - 15th April 2009

After work I was feeling quite sorry for myself. Yesterday at the gym I did my muscle conditioning class and came out quite sore. I went again today after work and pushed it pretty hard and was aching and exhausted and so, so hungry when I got home. Pete was ravenous as well so I decided to make something a bit more hearty. We haven't had rice in months at home so I thought a dal over brown rice would be good.

I chopped up some onion and the rest of the celery I had in the fridge and cooked that in some oil with curry powder, tumeric, garlic powder, lots of cumin, and a bit of salt. The I put in 1.5 cups of chana dal and kept stirring so the spices could have a chance to heat up and cook. Because it was a bit dry and I didn't want to keep adding oil, I put in water a couple of tablespoons at a time. Then I made some vegetable stock and filled up the pot so that everything was covered. Then I let it cook and added more water anytime it was looking too dry. I wanted the dal to be somewhat soupy because I like having lots of sauce on top of rice. If the dal were too dry, the texture of it with the brown rice would have been too similar. I kept tasting it and seasoning it as needed and after about 45 minutes of cooking, I put in a few massive handfuls of spinach and let it wilt. It was delicious and hearty and creamy and spicy. The perfect comfort food for when you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself.

Minestrone/Chili Stew - 14th April 2009

I had a sack of fresh tomatoes, some celery, a courgette, and some bell peppers. Because Pete and I met a friend for lunch and had a pretty heavy meal, we wanted something light. I decided to make something like a really fresh vegetable chili, but it came out like something between a chili and a minestrone stew.

I chopped up the celery, courgette, red and yellow bell peppers up and sauteed them with in some oil. I seasoned it with cumin, paprika, a bit of curry powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper and let that cook. The I added a can of red kidney beans and a can of sweet corn and let that all cook down a little bit. Finally I added loads of chopped tomatoes and a cup of vegetable stock. When the celery softened a bit and all the vegetables were cooked, I served up. It was really simple and fast and best of all, colorful. I had a ripe avacado so I served half on top of each portion and it went really well with the dinner.

This is kind of like a lunch I make, except with everything being raw for the lunch. It's a great lunch salad. The only thing with the lunch is that I use a can of chili beans and I don't put as many spices in as it's a bit too strong without cooking with a bit of extra liquid. Depending on what I have around, the salads vary. Sometimes there are peas or radishes or sugarsnap peas in it. Sometimes some spring onion. Usually a bit of balsamic vinegar and maybe a tiny bit of oyster sauce. Basically I keep stirring and tasting and adding until I'm satisfied.

Food

Since I started cooking a lot, my diet has changed drastically. The first things I learned how to cook were quite heavy, fat and meat intensive affairs or very boring stir-fries. I can make a damn good lasagna or chili, but that's not the kind of food I wanted to eat every day. I started venturing out and trying new recipes, cooking with a lot of chicken, dabbling in some fish, but I found that I relied a lot on some core protein and a pretty predictable carb. We had a lot of pasta and rice and it got a bit boring. Over the past two years I've really tried to switch to cooking with whole grains and cooking pretty much vegetarian food at home. When I go out I almost always order meat, but at home most dinners are vegan with the odd egg or two here and there. When we have guests is when I expand a bit and try out new meat recipes, or when I have a bit of extra time on the weekend. Our main pantry is full of spices, various grains, lots of beans and tins of tomatos. Usually with just one or two fresh vegetables we can rustle up a pretty good dinner. I've even influenced a few friends to go this route. Something people always ask me though is what we eat and somehow I can never think of anything apart from some kind of stir-fry. In an effort to remember what it is we do eat, I'm going to try to document our food as often as I find the motivation to do so. The thing is, I don't cook using recipes anymore. I've pretty much established what flavours I like to cook with and usually things come out okay. Sometimes it's a bit weird, but Pete is used to having odd meals and doesn't even bat a lash when I tell him to throw seemingly incongrous food into the pan anymore. Hopefully this saves me time when I give Michelle my dinner reports!

East, West - Salman Rushdie

East West - Salman Rushdie
February 2009

I was reading Midnight's Children a couple of years ago when Alicia came to visit and after she accused me of reading it to "look smart", I actually put it down. I've since read most of it, but while the writing was excellent and Rushdie proved what a master of language he is at every turn, I was not engaged by the book and found my attention wandering all the time. I was also reading it during a really busy period and it's the kind of book that requires a bit of commitment.

East West is a book of short stories with a common theme of East meeting West running throughout. The stories all have a bittersweet quality to them and the feeling that for everything that is given, there is something taken. It's a tension that I've felt in my own life and have sometimes found difficult to resolve. There were a couple of stories that I felt were long-winded and while they were extremely clever, they were not fun or interesting to read. I think ultimately I am not a Salman Rushdie fan, but he is one of those authors who I will try out every now and again because I want to "look smart".

Red Dwarf

I just saw the first two episodes of the new Red Dwarf. There were a couple of funny moments, but on the whole I was bored. I'm not sure if it was because I was so tired or because I've lost my sense of humour. It didn't make me indignant and scoffy as a lot of shows do, but I would have just as happily been cutting my cuticles for the time I spent watching it.

Really satisfying weekend.

We just had a 4 day weekend and it was amazing. I slept in, read, went to a friend's club night, ran 10k with 4 other girls, had a really nice lunch, went back to the party that I left to run the 10k and partied on, slept more, spent a day being lazy at home, went to the beach, walked around a castle, ate ice cream out of a cone and wore a short sleeved shirt for hours for the first time this year. I'm drowsy and tired and not looking forward to work tomorrow, but I am so content and can't wait to stretch out in bed and wrap sweet dreams all around me. More on books later...

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
March 2009

When I found out that The Handmaid's Tale won the first Arthur C. Clarke science fiction award, I was surprised. I can see how it could be classified as science fiction, but I agree more with Atwood's opinion that it is more speculative fiction rather than science fiction. Regardless of what it is classified under, I loved this book.

The way in which Atwood builds her dystopian future piece by piece is very effective. The narrative is told as a memory of a person within the society and it jumps back and forth through time, leaving the reader to slowly piece together what happened to create such a world. The beginning of the book is a bit confusing because the reader does not know the circumstances which the narrator takes for granted. Because of this, there is a constant mystery surrounding the narrative, and even at the end, the reader is left pondering the events that led up to the present moment in the narrative. Because of this, the reader is also left to make more connections between the events in the book to the world we live in. The social critique is obvious, but does not feel overbearing.

Every Atwood book I read I enjoy more than the last. She is definitely one of the best authors I've been introduced to recently.

The Kissing Step

Since I started my new job in January, Pete and I often leave the house together in the morning and I walk him to his work on my way to mine. The door to his office is on a side street on a little hill. We do this thing where I get up on the first step and we kiss so he doesn't have to lean down as far. This morning, as we were walking towards the door, I hastened my pace without noticing it and he asked if I was running to get on my wee step. We burst into giggles and I got on my step I got my kiss. Then I smiled the rest of the way to work.

Matter - Iain M. Banks

Matter - Iain M. Banks
February 2009

I really love Iain M. Banks' sci-fi books set in the Culture series, particularly when the stories deal with the interaction between Culture "Minds" and Culture citizens, and how this affects the society.

Matter has probably been my least favorite of these books, although I did enjoy reading it. Unremarkable is probably all I have to say about it. I have nothing else to add.

Ask the Dusk - John Fante

Ask the Dusk - John Fante
January 2009

Ask the Dusk is the second book by John Fante that I've read; the first being Brotherhood of the Grape. The language is very stark and the emotions in the book are very strong and extreme. Fante is an author who can say a lot with simple words and can create a mood without superfluous descriptions. I admire the concise way in which he writes and the determination his characters all seem to have, even if it's an obstinate stubborness veering towards self distruction.

That said, I didn't enjoy reading the book. All of the characters annoyed me and I not only didn't connect with the protagonist, I actually despised him. I didn't really understand the anger and the venom he felt and couldn't really place it within a context. I am interested in reading more Fante though, if only because he was such an influence on Bukowski and because his books are relatively short.

Gina

Gina got in touch with me recently and at first I was a little bit apprehensive.

I haven't really been in touch with her since moving to Scotland, and from what little bits about her life I gleamed, it seemed that we were traveling in completely different trajectories. We shared a lot together and when we met we both just left home for the first time and were clutching our dreams close to us, sure that in a few years' time somehow our lives will have taken on the shining of stars. It was the years of the dot com boom in the Bay Area and friends all around us were making fortunes with crazy ideas, conceptual art, and almost everybody seemed at least able to find some administration job that paid the rent and paid for partying. We assumed that by the time we were done with uni, we would join those ranks and even if it took us a while to realize our more idealist dreams, we would get there comfortably someday. While we bemoaned the fact that so many among our ranks seemed to get caught up in the comfortable yuppy lifestyle, I think we were secretly reassured by the fact that we would at least be able to have that and that student poverty was a choice and could be cast aside for a more comfortable, if more status quo adult life.

Obviously those days are over. We never actually got to the point of being comfortable yuppies together, filled with self loathing for choosing comfort over ideals. I chose to move to Scotland and chose to live a life rich in happiness and contentment, but poor in grand adventures full of immeasurable risk and reward. Gina chose to move to New York on a whim and I suppose I assumed that because she chose instability, that our paths, if they converged, would be full of misunderstanding, judgment of each others' choices and perhaps a latent envy of each others' lives.

She is in Prague right now and although our lives have taken different paths and will maybe never parallel mine as closely as it once did, we still do speak the same language, just with different accents now.

I think we are visiting her this Autumn.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds
March 2009

Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days are two novellas that have been published together in one volume. They take place within the Revelation Space universe.

I've read a lot of Alastair Reynolds' science fiction in the past couple of years. A lot of the technology that is in use in his universe seems plausible, and I like his interpretation on the societal effects of said technology. There is a focus on the people on fringes of society in his stories and his commentary seems to be that despite the advances made in science, there is little hope for a post-scarcity society because there is always human greed and human error to contend with. There are still poor and desperate people who have become every more cunning or violent and there are rich people who have grown bored and have devised games of death so they can experience the thrill of danger. There is also an imbalance of wealth and technology between worlds so that within the same universe he can explore societies at different points of development.

Diamond Dogs was enjoyable, but I thought the end was predictable. There were a few points made in Diamond Dogs that I found interesting, but the story seemed a bit long-winded and there were points where my interest flagged.

I enjoyed Turquoise Days more, possibly because there was more an exploration of the protagonist's feelings and because the Pattern Jugglers are one of the things I like most about Reynolds' universe.

The Blue Door - Andre Brink

The Blue Door - Andre Brink
March 2009

The Blue Door is a surrealist novel in which the protagonist finds himself returning to his art studio to find that all of a sudden his life is completely different than the one he remembers living. The family he finds there treats him as if he's always been part of it and he begins to question whether the life he remembers living is real or if somehow it was all a trick of memory and perception. I thought that the references, the imagery and the metaphors were all a bit heavy handed and the ending a bit cliche.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
March 2009

I read this in Bergen while on holiday and visiting Alicia and Morten. I haven't read much Neil Gaiman before, more because I didn't want to pay full price for books and couldn't find them at charity shops than because he escaped my notice.

I really liked the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter and enjoyed the writing. I find that a lot of tongue in cheek young adult books can sometimes feel like the author is trying to hard to make it obvious that it is meant to be a bit witty, but the narrative style of this book seemed natural and funny. The chapters felt a bit disjointed, but because the book spans many years, I suppose that was necessary. It would be a fun book to read to somebody chapter to chapter.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
April 2009

I'm always wary of books that are No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. I suppose it's a latent snobbery and not wanting to read things that are too obvious or accessible. Okay. It's a blatant snobbery. This is not to say I will not read a book that is a bestseller, but I usually will approach it with more skepticism and despite my best attempts not to be biased towards it, I probably offer a harsher critique because of its stature.

The Book Thief was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

I enjoyed reading it and it even made me cry, but not because I connected so much with the characters in the book as much as I recognized the loss they each had to endure. I don't think that it "deserves a place on the shelf with The Diary of Anne Frank...Poised to become a classic." Basically, slightly overrated.

A Little History of the World

A Little History of the World - Ernst Gombrich
January 2009

Tony gave this to me for Christmas. This was a history book written for children which tells a story about world history without bogging it down with too many details and dates. The chapters are short and overall it's a really easy read. I enjoyed it immensely because it's been a long time since I've studied history and it brought back into focus which events happened first and how various big events are tied together. It gave a great overview and inspired me to research a few different things through the course of reading it. However, I do find the title a bit misleading. Although it is called A Little History of the World, what it should be called is A Little History of the Western World with Brief Mention of Other Parts of Other Parts.

Also, I liked the cover of the book.