This is not a review.

Aside from limited internet access and too-much baking (homemade Oreos are next on my list!) my time lately has been filled with an old hobby that had, until this week, somehow become a dull and tedious requirement lacking all luster and appeal: reading! Reading books! Reading books for fun! Magical, to say in the least. And, without the constant pull of the internet's wicked glow I read four books this past week, one of which I began Saturday at noon and completed before dinner. I forgot what deep and complete pleasure it is to do that.

A brief recap:


A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

There were so many delights in this book I don't even know where to begin. Ignatius (there's one-- the main character's name is Ignatius Jacques Reilly!) is a morbidly obese, over-educated and understimulated slob, whose self-righteous rants and selfish, myopic worldview is at once the perfect pitch of obnoxious and hilarious. I'm learning that this was a dude book, the kind of conversation that will generally garner blank stares from most women I've spoken with but produce the kind of giggly, wide-eyed affection from men that is usually reserved for The Big Lebowski (interestingly enough, I do see some glimmering thread connecting Ignatius and the John Goodeman character in that almost every time they speak they are confrontational and, more often than not, in the wrong). I was recommended this book by a dude with supreme reading tastes (and a booklust that I find both intimidating and impressive) and though it took me a few bumpy tries to get the ignition to turn I couldn't put the thing down by page 25. It's large but reads incredibly quickly, with a wit that lurks behind every exchange of its dense population of characters whose intricate webbing throughout the story is both surprising and satisfying. Also, I've heard that the perfectly written Creole dialect could also phonetically produce a Boston accent, though I'm not familiar enough with it to do the math. Much of the notoriety for this work undoubtedly comes from the sad story about the author's suicide and his mother's posthumously shopping around the manuscript, though I promise that even without the juicy circumstances contributing to its existence, the book is a good one, all on its own.

Tinkers, by Paul Harding

Anything that I say about this book will sound bumbling and silly and horrible, like the slobbering cries of a boy band devotee with a free back stage pass. It's a perfectly formed snowflake, an ice-dream of such a sad unfolding of the quiet, rich lives of a father and son. The language is stunning. Like Confederacy of Dunces, it is also a small press Pulitzer Prize Winner. Unlike Confederacy, it's small and will take much longer to read if you're anything like me, when a moment on a lake will become the quietest explosion you've ever experienced in a single written line. The way Harding drifts from narrative to a character's interior life and then to his out-of-body consciousness is astounding. I read it twice and felt almost as though I'll need to read it ten more times before I'll be able to appreciate every jewel. Read this, read this, read this.


Open House, by Elizabeth Berg

Okay, I couldn't love everything I read, right? If ever there was a reductive, trite attempt to explore the unfolding of a women stunned by divorce, this is it. Every craft decision was transparent and predictable, and the main character is anything but sympathetic-- an unapologetic housewife with a sometimes-racist outlook whose flimsy connection to some hardcore past is not only unbelievable but totally uninteresting. When she becomes suddenly confused by the freedom from serving her husband I found myself just wanting to shake the shit out of her. Her post-divorce relationships are meagerly developed and cliche at best. The only thing I liked about this book was that I could read it in a single sitting.


The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

One of the many pleasures I got out of this book was the digressions, which held all the magic and wonder that I feel the love story probably sought to possess. I just wasn't compelled by the lovers at all-- not a single one, or any combination of their relationships-- but I found myself reeling when Kundera wandered off to talk about kitsch or subtly jab the over-enthusiastic, demonstration-for-demonstration's-sake tendencies of liberal parties. The characters were only mere vehicles for these delightful moments, and the lush texture of their individual intimacies held more weight for me than any amount of grief over Tomas' infidelities and Teresa's resulting sadness. What I loved: the repeated Es muss sein! which had the richness of an idea undergoing several translations and interpretations. Of course, the philosophy behind the title-- the question of cyclical, repeated time, whether our actions are singular and therefore unimportant, or endlessly repeated and thus of the heaviest of burdens-- is a pleasurable thing to ponder. Also, Sabina's bowler hat, Teresa's symbolic dreams, Tomas' matter-of-fact correspondence with his abandoned son, a man he'd given life but felt no love for, only fear and discomfort of the man's having and using his own mouth right before his eyes.

And I actually cried when Karenin was put down, though thanks to Kundera's timely relaying of the famous Nietzsche story (where the philosopher ran crying into the neck of a horse as his bewildered owner looked on) I didn't feel as embarrassed about it.

I am not a critic, but I am a reader. If you're a reader too I'd love to hear what you're reading, and am always looking for recommendations. I've just been to the library to pick up my next stack: Robert Lowell's Life Studies and Notebook (for the class I'm teaching in January); Annie Dillard's Pilgrim on Tinker Creek (because I've only ever been able to read it in parts before); and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, last year's Pulitzer prize winner and of which one of the girls in my program has been singing the praises all summer.

Happy Reading!

Baby Pie Love

(I have a new favorite thing... handpies!)

Well, I'm still computerless and rather gloomy about all the things that I've forever lost, but I'm finding a silver lining in my fairly internet-free existence: I haven't been on Facebook in five days, and I feel fantastic. I never realized what a blackhole that site really is for me-- the compulsive way I'd flip from gmail to Facebook, looking at nothing really, for hours on end. I've always been an advocate for the thing as a virtual address book, and I don't think I'll ever get rid of it, but all the "J" parts of my ENFJ personality really swelled to monstrous proportions as I became almost addicted to monitoring my Newsfeed. I'm better off breaking it as a habit, demoting it to occasional novelty.

Instead of mindless internetting, I have been baking. I've decided to try to become a pastry genius, and begun the journey with precious mini treats called "handpies."

I've never cooked with rhubarb before but have always been drawn to its beautiful red stalk and electric green meat. After coming across some particularly vibrant bundles at the market last week, I decided that the time had come to test out the pastry and rhubarb all at once.

Handpies are basically fancy poptarts that you can shape to look like tiny pies. After gathering several cartons of strawberries, top-quality butter and flour (my Vermonter friend MC swears by King Arthur and after this experience I'm definitely a convert), I began the Great Experiment.

I made two batches to start: one whole wheat, and one all-purpose. The flakiest, most delicious kind of pastry is kept very cold at all points, so the best thing to do is measure everything out and then put it all in the fridge for about an hour. Here's the pastry recipe:

1/2 C unsalted butter (1 stick)

1 1/4 C flour (I found the best was a mix of wheat and all-purpose)

dash salt (if you're like me and want a more savory-tasting pastry. Otherwise, omit.)

(Please forgive the terrible photos-- all I've got is my Blackberry!)

Dice up the butter and measure out the flour-- put it all in the refrigerator for one hour. If you have a pastry blender you're much more sophisticated than I am, and once the hour is up you can cut the butter into the flour with impressive swiftness, stopping only once the stuff resembles coarse breadcrumbs. If you're a peasant like me, rinse your hands in cold, cold water and crumble it all up with your fingertips. Be careful-- the best pastry is the pastry that is the least handled and stays very cold. That's what makes it flaky.

Once you've got your coarse breadcrumbs, add water by tablespoon until you can JUST combine the flour and butterballs into a single, large ball. Don't over-water. The water should also be ice, ice cold.

Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate. (I don't have a photo here, mostly because it's not pretty and I think you can imagine what plastic-wrapped dough looks like without much visual cues on my part.)

Next, chop up your fruit filling. I used rhubarb and strawberries, and I never measure these things out so I usually have tons left over that I put on yogurt or in oatmeal for breakfast... or, you know, just spoon out of the pan. Here's a kind-of recipe list for the filling:

Fresh fruit of your choice.

Spoonful of brown sugar

Water or orange juice-- enough to boil the fruit in a thin layer in a sauce pan

1 tiny bit of cornstarch if you want the filling thick.

Chop up all the fruits into tiny bits, and put in boiling liquid on stove. Add sugar and cornstarch. Stir and keep stewing over low to medium heat. Set aside once it looks like a filling to you.

(The chopped up fruit. When I made this the second time, I diced it much, much smaller.)

(Once it began to thicken.)

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Next, roll the dough out using a healthy bit of flour. Cut into disks being inventive and using a butter knife and a round-shaped item from around the kitchen.... or a cookie cutter if you're fancy. I used a ramekin and a wine glass.

Place the things on greased cookie sheet. Fill with fruit stuff, making sure to leave room for the crust. Place another disk over the top, pinching the sides or pressing with a fork for that traditional "pie edge" effect.

I don't have a photo of it, but don't forget to cut vents into the top part! You can also do a quick egg wash or sprinkle the tops with raw sugar.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden, or until you're too impatient and hungry to wait any longer. This was sort of my slapdash way of making them. I used the leftover pastry and filling to make that mini lattice-top shown earlier; I'm going to eat it tonight!

Fruity treats are the best way for me to use overripe fruit. I've got a box of blueberries I accidentally crushed walking home from the store the other day that will soon be reincarnated into a blueberry-peach-cobbler-thingy.

I'm going to see how long this no Facebook thing lasts-- probably until I get my new computer. In the meantime, I see more baking in my future: I'm on a mission to produce the perfect baguette crust, and my oven is not very agreeable to the steam bath.

Happy baking!

A loss.

Over the weekend, some teenagers found their way into my landlords' backyard and threw a party that spanned the pool house to my little hayloft. Neither my landlords nor myself were there that night, and when I came home in the morning I found one hungover boy amidst a smattering of late-night-munchies debris and another boy still drunk, passed out, in nothing but lobster-print boxers, sprawled across my bed.

After a series of stupid(er) events, the boys very bashfully and apologetically left. Ten minutes or so of shock passed, and I went to email my landlords in Costa Rica about the situation. And that's when I noticed the missing laptop.

It's almost embarrassing to admit this, but I'm devastated. That computer had three years of my life on it, documents that I didn't back up because they seemed less important, but in loss seem paramount. My poem-a-day project is gone. The letters I wrote to departed friends and father are gone. All of my photos, including my trip to South America. The list is ever-expanding.

Nigel and I are currently living with a wonderfully generous friend. It may seem overly-cautious, but I feel unsafe as long as my landlords are still gone and the boys in question have been threatened and are knowingly pursued by the police. While I know it's silly to feel almost apologetic about my fear, I think I should explain anyway:

Two years ago last month my childhood best friend was murdered in Austin. The circumstances surrounding her death bear similar marks to my current situation: a scared boy who finds no way out can attempt to take the situation into his own hands. I keep saying, "while it's unlikely that they would try anything.." the word holds no weight against my fear. No amount of profiling makes this situation any less or more likely than the events and people involved in Stacy's death, or any other number of crimes committed every day. When in doubt, heed your instinct-- and my instinct says to stay away.

There's a slim chance I can still get the computer back, but that chance is grim. While trying to fund the purchase of a new laptop is incredibly stressful, it's what's been lost that really wells in my chest as I think about it all throughout the day.

A cheerful post to come soon.