sprite writes

music on monday: ill submarine

soe — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:21:48 +0000

I enjoy a good mash-up, and this is just one of a whole album that melds The Beatles with The Beastie Boys, courtesy of Atlanta’s DJ BC:

You can find more information on The Beastles project here and stream the songs here.

What are you listening to today?

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music on monday: ill submarine

chase, bandaid, and merriweather post

soe — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 07:00:06 +0000

Today was gloomy, but the storm clouds started to clear near dusk, offering up a glowing skyline to enjoy. Here are three more beautiful things from my past week:

1. Fireflies showed up this week. I passed a woman who was trying to catch one last night. (She was no more successful than I was over the weekend.)

2. I did something outstandingly stupid and hurt myself. After the tears and the not fainting and the cursing of why we only have ointments Rudi likes, I applied a Muppets-themed bandage and immediately felt less awful.

3. For his birthday last month, I gave Rudi concert tickets to see Of Monsters and Men and he kindly took me along with him to the show this week. Our grilled cheeses (hooray for a venue that offers veg-friendly options) were melted, they’ve added milkshakes since last summer, and the seats I’d procured were sheltered and on the aisle (which meant we didn’t have to sit in the mud from the previous day’s deluge and that I didn’t have a panic attack about personal space infringements). The opening acts were decent, and our Icelandic headliners — and the crowd — were full of positive energy. It was a good evening.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

chase, bandaid, and merriweather post

strawberry fool

soe — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 06:03:11 +0000

Nan asked for the strawberry fool recipe and I figured others might be interested, too, since it’s so easy to make. (Honestly, it’s so simple, I thought “fool” referred to who was qualified to make it, but the etymology doesn’t seem to support that.)

Also, I know I copied this from somewhere 15 years ago or so, but my notecard doesn’t offer any insight to the source. So know the recipe is not mine.

Strawberry Fool
(serves 4 reasonable portions or 2 generous ones)

1 1/2 c strawberries
2-3 Tbs sugar
2/3 c heavy cream
2/3 c plain yogurt

Wash, de-stem, and slice the strawberries. Put in bowl and season with sugar. (If you can do this a little before the rest of the steps, you’ll get a smoother dish, but it’s delicious either way.)

Whisk the cream until whipped.

Add yogurt to the berries. Mash the berries. (I use a fork.) Your goal isn’t to end up with a smooth consistency, just to make them less solid.

Fold in the cream.

Add more sugar if necessary. (If you have quality, in-season strawberries, you probably won’t need more.)

Enjoy!

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strawberry fool

arrangement, new release, and fool

soe — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:41:32 +0000

This week has been surprisingly quick. How is tomorrow Friday? Anyway, before we get there, we have to finish up Thursday, which means three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I return to a work conference to help pack up only to find the task already done. “The only thing left to do is to take a centerpiece.” A vase of golden flowers now sits on my desk.

2. The display set up next to the library’s front door includes Sarah Dessen’s new novel, which just came out on Tuesday.

3. I feel inordinately lazy, but want to take advantage of some of the strawberries in the fridge for dessert. Strawberry fool requires only four ingredients, takes ten minutes to prepare, and is delicious.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

arrangement, new release, and fool

top ten books: travel

soe — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 08:23:49 +0000

The theme of today’s Top Ten Books, hosted as always by The Broke and the Bookish, is travel:

Top Ten Books Featuring Travel In Some Way (road trips, airplanes, travelogues, anything where there is traveling in the book!)

I had a hard time deciding where to draw the line of what constituted travel in a book. Are short, but memorable, trips in a book ok? I decided yes, so my top ten list includes a few of those:

Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone and its sequels by J.K. Rowling: The scarlet Hogwarts Express so inspired my imagination that on my first trip to London, I sought out Platform 9 3/4 at Kings’ Cross Station.

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg: I first encountered this story when read aloud by my high school French teacher. The train, which takes needy (in one way or another) children to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, is wonderful in any language.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis: A London painting of a ship at sea suddenly becomes a ship at sea — in Narnia.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein: So. much. walking. (Whenever I find people who don’t like this trilogy, it’s almost always because 2/3 of the narrative is filled with endless, hopeless walking.)

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green: If Hassan had never convinced Colin to embark on a post-high school graduation road trip, they never would have met Lindsey and he certainly never would have figured out his ~~girl~~ math problem.

Swallows & the Amazons by Arthur Ransome: The Walkers and the Blacketts captain their respective vessels around a lake during summer holiday. Their adventures are epic and remarkably free of adult supervision. (Today’s parents could take a lesson.)

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Crossing the open territory in a covered wagon (which they then had to dismantle when they got where they decided they were going to Pa and a very pregnant Ma could use its bones to build their house.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson: A non-fiction account of hiking the Appalachian Trail, filled in with Bryson’s trademark humor about appropriate gear, fellow travelers, and the countryside he’s traversing.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: I wouldn’t want to float down the Connecticut, the Potomac, or the Anacostia, let alone the mighty Misissippi — and on a raft!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling: Rowling hooked me with a magical train, then pulled me in with a car enchanted to have expandable seats and trunk, invisibility, and flight.

Honorable mentions go to John Steinbeck’s fictionalized cross-country memoir Travels with Charley; Madeleine L’Engle’s Austin Family camping excursion, The Moon by Night; and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, because without a road trip Taylor would never have encountered Turtle.

Did I forget any crucial ones?

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top ten books: travel

weekending in early june

soe — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 07:07:10 +0000

This is a not-fantastic photo of a box elder nymph hanging out in my strawberry patch. It refused to stop and pose for a photo, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was bright pink, like a fresh strawberry. I hope it didn’t mistake my garden for a family reunion. That would be so disappointing for it.

Other than bug-viewing, my weekend also included:

Armchair BEA posts, comments, contest entries, and Tweetup participation. It was a fun experience and I’d do it again, but if someone presented me with the opportunity to attend the real conference instead, I’d totally take them up on that offer.
Friday night at The Yards. There was a breeze off the water and I remembered our travel speaker so we could still have music after the band wrapped up for the night. Sarah brought a tasty fruit salad (nary a banana or melon in sight!), and friends of the group came and brought their 2-month-old baby, who was delightfully serene. The speakers were turned up way too loud this week, so the salsa band drowned out conversation with anyone not immediately adjacent to you, but it was still a good time.
I rearranged a cabinet and pulled out books to read this summer or to get rid of at the end of it (most of them, anyway). The pile includes Cybils nominees other judges read, advance reader copies I’ve picked up through the years at library conferences, and prizes I’ve won in online contests. A few books I’ve bought and a few that were gifts also resurfaced from where they were hidden before I got a chance to read them. I also put together a bag of books that (get this!) I’m going to donate to the charity bookshop. (I know, right?!)
Picked up fava beans, among other things, at the farmers market.
Ate lots of strawberries, including some from our garden.
Accepted an invitation to a small dinner party from a couple we’ve known since early in the Dean days. It was quite enjoyable.

How about you? How was your weekend?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

weekending in early june

armchair bea: from picture books to young adult

soe — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 04:40:00 +0000

The final genre topic of Armchair BEA is one near and dear to my heart: kidlit and yalit.

Until last fall, I would have told you that I was a young adult aficionado. I like Sarah Dessen, John Green, and plenty of others who are shelved in the teen room at the library. But then I was chosen as a Cybils young adult realistic fiction judge and I was simultaneously inundated with recently published novels aimed at teenagers and by fellow panelists who read books at speeds that put me to shame. And I discovered I don’t love all young adult fiction equally.

I do not love books with depressing endings. In fact, it might be fair to say that an unhappy ending can entirely reverse my opinion of a book. I also don’t love books that feature virulent illnesses or with serial killers in them.

What I do love is books with strong characters who create a sense of family with people who aren’t related to them. I also love books with characters who make interesting choices or who can be described as quirky or offbeat.

And it may be that I like middle-grade fiction, where the stakes are a little lower and where the stress isn’t as ratched up, just as much as young adult fiction. I had previously suspected that middle-grade fiction was all Wimpy Kid books, but it turns out that some of my favorite books — the early Harry Potter, the Little House on the Prairie books, Anne of Green Gables — all fall into the middle grade category.

If you’re looking for a place to start in either category, these are some of my favorites (with linked reviews where I wrote them) from the past three years:

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Among Others by Jo Walton
Crunch by Leslie Connor
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Endangered by Eliot Schrefer
Frindle by Andrew Clements
Heat by Mike Lupica
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Unusual Children by Ransom Riggs
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Savvy by Ingrid Law
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

And thus far this year my favorites have included Wonder by R.J. Palacio, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, Dodger by Terry Pratchett, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente, The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde, and Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George.

How about you? What’s been your favorite YA/MG book of recent years?

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armchair bea: from picture books to young adult

armchair bea: non-fiction

soe — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 04:14:59 +0000

Today’s Armchair BEA genre topic is non-fiction. Do we read it? If so, what kinds?

When I first started considering this topic, I was sure my list would be short, but it turns out I am a sucker for a broader swath of non-fiction than I expected.

If you divided up my reading time, only a tiny proportion of it would be devoted to non-fiction. Fiction fills a far larger percentage of my reading life. But if you looked at my shelves you could fill a whole bookshelf with non-fiction. That means, in general, I’m more likely to buy non-fiction than fiction, although I suppose if we took away books I purchased for college or grad school classes that number might shrink back to being more proportional.

Among the books you’d find on my shelves are:

I like a good reference book. Dictionary, thesaurus, literture desk reference set… I know my use of these books have been cut down by the internet, but it doesn’t matter. I still want a hard copy. If I ever win a lottery, I’m going to buy myself a full-size set of OED. Then I will need to move in order to have enough space to store it.

Writers manuals. I acquired some of these as a teen and still can’t help picking them up when I see them for sale for cheap.

Foreign language textbooks. Apparently I really feel I can learn how to speak a foreign language just through reading about verb conjugation. Failed attempts at three languages aside, I still have hopes.

Women’s studies texts. Also books on minority studies and American studies. I have an unofficial minor and a graduate degree in these topics, so they’re near to my heart. Also, when I first read Women in the Global Factory, I carried the thin book with me from dorm room to dorm room just pelting my friends with horrifying facts about atrocities visited upon women and children all in the name of our getting cheap goods.

Cookbooks and knitting books. I want to live in the worlds portrayed in their pages. This theory was first posited in the podcast Stash and Burn in regards to particularly nicely styled photos of unremarkable knitted goods. I have expanded it slightly to include cookbooks, since I like to buy them, but I hardly ever cook.

Identification guides. I love being able to flip through and find the bird I saw on the canal or a tree with unusual leaves.
Poetry. Why this is considered non-fiction, I don’t know, but it is. And I love it. Mary Oliver. Elizabeth Bishop. Anthologies. All good.

Shakespeare plays. Again, it feels particularly weird to classify these under non-fiction, but that’s where a library would put them.

Travelogues. I quite enjoy reading travel narratives, be they about the Appalachian Trail or the Provençal countryside. Guide books are also interesting, but I only really read the ones for places I’m going, with the exception of themed guides, such as Storybook Travels, which offers vacation ideas for places like Chincoteague Island and the Plaza Hotel.

Memoirs. When I was a kid, I devoured biographies, particularly that series of books that focused on famous people’s childhoods. But these days I more prefer memoir to biography. I have Penny Marshall’s on my iPod now and am looking forward to listening to Tina Fey’s and Mindy Kaling’s, too. Epistolary memoirs, such as The Delicacy and Strength of Lace or 84, Charing Cross Road, are especial favorites.

So that’s about it. Are there any aspects of non-fiction I didn’t touch on? Sure: history and economics and design and science and medicine and self-help and philosophy, to name just a few. None of them really do it for me as a class of books, although there are certainly individual books that fall into those categories that stand out.

How about you? What non-fiction categories are your favorites?

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armchair bea: non-fiction

sing along, sport, and bounty

soe — Fri, 31 May 2013 08:12:46 +0000

It’s getting late, so I want to quickly highlight three beautiful things from the past week and then head to bed. Here we go:

1. Friends invite me to join them for dinner. Holden, who’s 2 1/2, started singing the English translation of “Frere Jacques,” then moved on to “The Alphabet Song” and later “Twinkle, Twinkle.” For a while he was content to serenade us (Susan and Phillip tell me this is new), but then he commanded us to sing along. And we did. (For what it’s worth, I think we’d probably be a much happier society if we broke into song more often.)

2. This was the final week of spring volleyball. I hadn’t yet picked a summer league, but a teammate told me about one that plays at a local park (rather than across town or state lines), informed me of a Groupon expiring that night that would give me half off the cost, and suggested I see about being added to her team’s roster.

3. In addition to leaves of spinach, we also picked a head of bok choy and a quart of strawberries from the garden tonight.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

sing along, sport, and bounty

armchair bea: literary fiction

soe — Fri, 31 May 2013 04:06:25 +0000

Today’s genre topic in Armchair BEA is “literary fiction.” I’m not sure there’s an official definition for this term, but I use it as a snobby code word for general, non-genre fiction that’s particularly well-written. Classics and historical fiction also tend to get lumped into this category.

My favorite classic literary fiction (since I didn’t write a separate post on this topic earlier this week) would include works by Jane Austen, the Brontës, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, and Mark Twain.

Among more modern literary fiction, I’d highlight books by Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, Fannie Flagg, Jane Smiley, Marilynne Robinson, Sandra Cisneros, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Brunonia Barry.

What do you think? Any favorite authors of literary fiction you think I should sample?

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armchair bea: literary fiction