On the reading table (or tablet)

• Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes by Harold McGee is a treasure, straight up. Both knowledge and wisdom are served up in liberal measure. And I found an implicit solution to a problem of cooking pasta at altitude (it takes forever): soak it for an hour! Maybe everybody else up here already knows this.
• The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton. When I was 13 years old, I read the Reader's Digest Condensed Version on a cross-county road trip. What a great thing that the book has come out again. With its great sweep across the first 50 years of the 20th century, it's a real family saga. The novel is full of beautiful language and promises, from the outset, to break the reader's heart. I loved it, again, and highly recommend it.
• I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg. From the author of Fried Green Tomatoes, a novel that is hilarious and wraps up like a fairy tale. OK, so it's a little cheesy... And your point is?
• Who knows why, but my head was deep into chick lit this week. Of these three titles, the only one I might recommend as an airplane book is The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. The father of the family insists on speaking in quotations from Shakespeare and it's a sweet story. The Island Elin Hinderbrand starts with pages and pages of language so wooden that you'll swear that you can write a novel but has some entertaining characters. Promises to Keep by Jane Green takes about 150 pages to get a thin story line going. So, in order: "OK", "eh", and "I warned you." Got that? ;-)

Comments

[melissa]

That Wierd Sisters book...one of our boys checked that out at the library this week. Must snatch it from him and see what I think.

Always love book recommendations, and that Jane Green sounds familiar...must see if the cover clicks in my brain.

Thanks! :)