• Steve Almond writes in about why he chose to self-publish his latest book This Won’t Take but a Minute Honey on our book machine at the LA Times. On a side note, why the Boston Globe isn’t printing this article about a local author printing on a local machine, I don’t know. Oh wait, the Globe sucks….
• The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for their book award on Saturday. The fiction list is pretty stunning. Three of my favorite books of last year are on it! That would be Wolf Hall, Blame, and The Book of Night Women.
• 5 Chapters is serializing Sigrid Nunez’s short story called “Nameless”. Nunez might be one of the best writers you’ve not heard of before. I read The Last of Her Kind a few years ago and loved it.
• The Millions has posted the Confessions of a Book Pirate.
• Publishers, want to see what makes a good e-book? Read Kassia Krozier’s article on Publishing Perspectives. Instead of worrying about adding flashy new extras, worry about the basics!
• Edwidge Danticat writes about Haiti in this week’s New Yorker.

My friends all know how much I love to cook. They’ve come to rely on dinners on Sunday nights. I spend hours in the kitchen trying new recipes and improving on old ones. In addition to all of the book blogs I read, I’ve got an equally long list of food related ones. On top of that, I’m a bit of a cookbook whore too. So, writing about what I cook seems like a natural extension of this blog. On to last night’s dinner!

Last week, Mr. Bookdwarf brought home some Macomber turnips, which originate from Westport, Massachusetts funnily enough. I’m used to the ones with the purplish tops about the size of baseballs or smaller. These were huge! I decided to make a turnip gratin with them. I stuck to a basic gratin recipe substituting turnip for potato. I also used Ree Drummond’s (aka The Pioneer Woman) recipe as a guide for assembling and cooking times. I don’t have a mandoline, so I sliced them all by hand. Luckily I got fancy new Shun knives when I got married last Fall. Piece of cake…er, turnip! You add some garlic, some herbs, and lots of gruyère as you layer it up. I popped it into the oven and about 35 minutes later, I had this:

Of course after I had assembled four layers, I was left with almost a whole turnip sliced. What should I do? Turnip chips! But how best to make them? Fry or bake? I decided to try both. I threw some of the turnips in a bowl with olive oil, S&P, and thyme then spread them on a baking sheet. I put them in the oven with the gratin. I took them out when the edges started browning.

The rest I tried frying in a little canola oil.

The baked ones tasted best in my opinion. Mr. Bookdwarf seemed happy with them–hence all the empty spots on the pan! I served it all with an arugula and Parmesan salad dressed with lemon vinaigrette.

I’m realizing as I’m writing this post how poor my camera skills are. Hopefully I’ll get better as I practice. And that ladies and gentlemen is my first food post of 2010. Feel free to comment on whether you liked it or not, or if you like turnips, or if you want to see more of these posts, or simply to say hello.

The death of parents scarred June, Hector, and Sylvie. The repercussions of their deaths cause ripples of grief through all of them. Lee has written a very powerful novel about not just how awful war can be, but how love can be damaging as well as uplifting. He offers no easy endings or heartwarming coming-together, instead bringing to life a powerful, unpredictable, and occasionally painful story.

I’m sad to be not watching the Top Chef season finale as it airs, but at least I can watch it later. I had the pleasure of eating at chef Kevin Gillespie’s restaurant Woodfire Grill while visiting my parents over Thanksgiving. The meal made it to the top ten best meals ever list. Just course after course of fresh deliciousness. And Kevin was there! He seemed glad to be back at his restaurant. He spent about ten minutes chatting with us and was as nice as can be.

In other news, critic and James Wood has made his list of favorite books of the year. It’s an interesting list. We actually overlap a bit.

The Millions has a great interview with translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Knopf just release their translation of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. Currently they’re working on a new translation of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

• The New York Times has announced their Ten Best Books of the Year. Meh. It’s a good list. Nothing exciting though.
• Cory Doctorow put together some thoughts on the future of bookselling.
• The Wall Street Journal asked me and some other booksellers to recommend books to particular people. It ran in last Friday’s paper. There’s sort of a link, but you can’t see the cool graph they printed!
• The Millions has started their annual Year in Reading lists!
• There’s a new Ian McEwan story in this week’s New Yorker.

You want to reread “Invisible” because it moves quickly, easily, somehow sinuously, and you worry that there were good parts that you read right past, insights that you missed. The prose is contemporary American writing at its best: crisp, elegant, brisk. It has the illusion of effortlessness that comes only with fierce discipline. As often happens when you are in the hands of a master, you read the next sentence almost before you are finished with the previous one. The novel could be read shallowly, because it is such a pleasure to read.

Poetry: Keith Waldrop for Transcendental Studies

Non-Fiction: T.J. Stiles for The First Tycoon

Young Adult: Philip Hoose for Claudette Colvin

Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste is surely one of these gems. Set in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the cusp of the revolution, the novel follows one family’s tumultuous time. In 1973, a television program revealed the true effects of the drought and famine on the Wollo region of Ethiopia, destabilizing Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime. It also allowed growing popularity of the socialists. Hailu, a skilled doctor in the capital, must shepherd his family through this rough era. His older son Yonas, a university professor, feels impotent against the violence, trying to protect his wife and daughter. The younger son Dawit meanwhile feels the fiery convictions of the college age. When soldiers request Hailu treat an obvious torture victim–she must not die, he is told–he makes a decision that will change his family’s fate. Their tragic story makes Mengiste’s debut novel powerful and gripping.

I don’t think I was alone when I was surprised to see Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came to the End nominated for the National Book Award in 2007. I mean surprised in a pleasant, excited way. Here was a fresh new voice and it was being recognized. Ferris returns in January with a new novel, The Unnamed, which couldn’t be more different from his first book. Attorney Tim Farnsworth thought he had recovered from a mysterious illness that causes him to walk to the point of exhaustion, but it’s returned and not getting better. His wife Jane does everything she can think of to keep him safe. Packing backpacks with GPS for him so she can eventually find him. The illness affects his daughter Becka as she is forced to take care of him over time. Ferris keeps the suspense up. Is he getting better? Will he go home again? Plus there’s the tragedy of Tim and Jane’s marriage. They truly love one another, yet he can’t stop the constant walking. It’s heartbreaking.

The last book I’ll mention is by one of my favorite writers William Boyd called Ordinary Thunderstorms. Climatologist Adam Kindred is back in England looking for work. A small good deed puts hurls him into the world of assassination, conspiracy, and the underworld. It comes across at first like a straight forward thriller. Yet Boyd uses the plot to examine different aspects of English life. Boyd tells the story from various characters’ viewpoints, including the head of a multimillion dolllar pharmaceutical firm, a prostitute living in public housing, a hired killer, and of course Adam Kindred. It succeeds in certain areas, fails in others. I don’t think it’s Boyd’s best work, but even his less successful efforts are better than most.