I hadn’t heard of Alex and Aki until a few months ago, but I’ve quickly become a fan. The wife and husband chef team explore food through chemistry. Their book Ideas in Food, named after their blog, presents food in the chapters you expect: Bread, Pasta, Vegetables, Meat, etc. What they do differently is explain scientifically the best ways to cook those things. Plus there’s lots of modern techniques such as sous-vide and vacuum sealing and a whole section on cooking with food additives like xanthan gum, carbon dioxide, and agar. I wish Alex and Aki had been my science teachers in high school. They explain everything simply and clearly in such a non-boring way. I now understand why brining works–salt and osmosis–and also learned that we can thank a man named Clarence Birdseye for frozen food.

Will I use this cookbook every day? I’m not sure since the recipes I most want to try cooking most involve tools I don’t have, like a sous-vide machine or vacuum sealer, but I’ll certainly rely on it for inspiration. They’ve made me rethink some of the basic ways I do things in the kitchen and have inspired me to try new techniques. I’ll let you know if I ever make their Grilled Potato Ice Cream.

I finished Hannah Pittard’s wonderful The Fates will Find Their Way last night. You won’t be disappointed when you pick up this book I promise. Comparisons will be made to Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, but mostly because of the perspective.

The stories revolve around the disappearance of Nora Lindell and how it affected her family and classmates. Told through the first person plural, the boys of the town endlessly speculate about what happened, who saw what and where, and periodic sightings. Meanwhile their own lives get complicated as they try to grow up. Nora’s vanishment has a profound impact on all of their lives. Pittard captures the adolescent male mind (at least as I imagine it) as they conjure fantasies and continue to use Nora as an outlet for their imaginations.

Jason Rice over at Three Guys One Book interviewed Hannah Pittard and I purposely waited to read it until after I finished. I recommend you do the same. She’s a really interesting writer, one to watch for sure.

It’s quite busy here at HBS these days, as you might imagine. I’m working on the floor and in the receiving department, making sure books get upstairs for customers. The holiday season is always interesting. Some years people are cranky; this year people are in good moods. The economy?  Who knows? We’re seeing runs on all kinds of titles and of course, publishers are running out of the hottest stuff.

Generally the atmosphere here is chaotic but lively and fun. We try not to do the usual Christmas songs either, which is great. My parents and sister are on their way to Cambridge to spend the holiday with us this year. With some snow on the ground, I’ll be able to deliver a nice New England Christmas. And no, I don’t mean uptight and cold.

I’m still reading whenever I get a chance too. I read two books since the last post, one of which is an older book, the other just guilty pleasure reading.

I’ve always wanted to read PD James’ dystopian novel Children of Men. When I saw the movie (which I really liked), I knew it was based on this novel. What I wasn’t aware of was how different it is! The book is great but I couldn’t help but notice all of the differences in plot. Set in England in 2021, the world’s population finds themselves infertile. Most of populace have accepted this and have begun rather bizarre rituals, but a small group of dissesnters arise. The narrative switches back and forth between third and first person; some chapters are the “diary” of Theo Farron, an Oxford don.

In 1994, the sperm count for males dropped to zero and the last people born are called Omegas, who remain a special race apart. Theo’s cousin Xan has become the de facto leader of the UK–he’s referred to as the Warden. Theo is approached by Julian, a member of a dissenting group who call themselves the Five Fishes. They ask Theo to approach his cousin about reforms, which he does to no effect. The story moves forward several months, after Theo leaves England for a while to travel. Upon his return, he’s contacted by one of the Five Fishes who says that Julian needs his help. Julian has a secret which she reveals and that changes everything. I won’t reveal in case you have not read the book nor seen the movie.

That’s the basic plot which differs drastically from the film. Theo has an estranged wife, but she barely figures into the novel other than to give Theo some background for his general misanthropy. And the leader of the UK is Theo’s cousin,  but he’s a huge plot point in the book. I like both versions, but the book is more nuanced and less heavy handed. Upon further research I realize that they called the film a “loose adaptation” but it’s still interesting to compare the two.

Book #84 is the fourth in Chelsea Cain’s series featuring Archie Sheridan and his torturer and serial killer Gretchen Lowell. The new one coming this Spring called The Night Season doesn’t have Gretchen however. It’s more of a straight murder mystery. In this one, Portland is flooding and a old skeleton is uncovered. Plus there seems to be another serial killer on the loose. The plot keeps you on your toes and there’s some character development as well. The descriptions of the flooding are particularly well done.

I really want to read 1o0 books in 2010 for some reason. Right now I’m only on my 83rd book. Can I read 17 more books in 14 days? We’ll see. I certainly don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity. I did manage to read a few books in the past week that were worth mentioning.

• The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball): Ever dream of quitting your job and moving to a farm? This book will make you rethink that dream. Kimball meets a farmer, falls in love, quits her job, and moves to the farm. Farm work is hard! Kimball finds farm work rewarding but doesn’t sugar coat the sweat, blood, and tears part of it.
• Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson: The fourth installment (due in March 2011) in Atkinson’s series featuring private eye Jackson Brodie. Again, this one relies on odd coincidences, but Atkinson always makes it work. Plus there’s a cute dog. The various story lines are Tilly, an aging actress; Tracy Waterhouse, a retired policewoman who makes a split second decision that changes her life forever; and Jackson Brodie, returning to the are where he grew up in search of someone else’s roots.
• Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick: Ozick has taken the plot from Henry James’  The Ambassadors and retold it as a “photographic negative”. The problem for me is that I’ve never read James’ book, something I hope to remedy soon. No matter, as I enjoyed this book thoroughly in soite of that. Bea Nightingale is a middle-aged, divorced school teacher in the Bronx who has lived alone for decades. Her estranged brother Marvin asks her out of the blue to go to Paris to retrieve her nephew Julian, whom Marvin believes in in the city’s thrall. In fact, the nephew she doesn’t know is in thrall to Holocaust victim Lili. Add to the mix Julian’s feckless elder sister Iris, who also flees to Paris in search of Julian, so she says. With simple, direct sentences, Ozick manages to convey the despair and emotional turbulence of her characters. I’m onto James’ original next!

Connie Willis’s Blackout returns to the time travel that she explored in the Domesday Book, and brings back some of the same characters as well. Historians reasearching WWII travel from 2060 to 1940s Britain, but then have trouble getting back to the future. There’s no Marty McFly, though– instead, you’ll find  lots of detail about everyday life in London during the Blitz and a huge cliff-hanger, but I really liked it. I’m glad that the follow-up All Clear is already out.

I’ll join other HBS booksellers in recommending another historical/speculative mix, A Matter of Magic by Patricia Wrede, previously published as two novels but now available in a single volume. It’s set in England during the Regency period, and features a homeless girl named Kim, who’s hired to break into the wagon of Mairelon the Magician. Instead, the magician catches her, but then takes her on as an apprentice instead of turning her in. Adventures ensue.

With the holidays upon us, I’ve been negligent in posting the past two weeks even though I’ve managed to read some good books!

I read Jay-Z’s memoir Decoded on the way to Virginia for Thanksgiving. It’s brilliant. I know this book has been getting the sort of hype that makes you wonder if it’s really good or if they really just have a good marketing machine. I wrote a whole post about memoirs and how often they fail for me, but Jay-Z’s is no usual memoir. I’d call it more of a reflection on his life and how he got where he is mentally. Full of lots of color photos, it also has annotated lyrics to a selection of his songs. I think he’s a genius.

Another biography I finished recently which you should go and read right now is Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life. Schiff  upends some of the major myths about Cleopatra. In a male-dominated society then and now, Cleopatra has never been given fair treatment. Schiff explains that Cleopatra was no beauty, even by Classical standards. She was, however, an amazing conversationalist, trained from birth in literature, art, rhetoric, and philosophy each day of the week. She was also the first pharaoh to actually speak Egyptian–the Ptolemys were Greek, not Egyptian. Schiff mines all sorts of details from her research giving the reader a well rounded portrait of Cleopatra and the time period. Given the sheer number of books on Cleopatra, why would you want to read another? This one brings history to life again and has the benefit of not being dumbed down.

No one does inner lives quite like Paul Auster. In Sunset Park, Miles
has dropped out of college and makes a living cleaning out foreclosed
houses in southern Florida. He falls in love with a 17-year-old high school
student, whose older sister then tries to blackmail him into stealing
from the foreclosures, so he flees to a squat in Brooklyn. The plot,
while well-paced and interesting, isn’t even the best part of the
book.  well, the plot’s strong, but that’s not the point. It’s the
minds of the characters that makes this book a great read. Different
chapters detail the inner lives of Miles, his father, and his
fellow-squatters, as they try to escape emotional and financial
disaster.

The tail end of the book isn’t as satisfying as the middle, and the
last two pages just left me confused. That might be just me– I’m
looking forward to hearing the opinions of other readers on this one.