No, it’s not Thursday. But I’m just not feeling up to a post that requires paragraphs. Instead you get three beautiful things from my trip to Annapolis today where I went seeking a large body of water:

1. The Chesapeake Bay is one of the winter homes to tundra swans. At the waterfront playground where I eventually ended up, a bevy (yes, that’s really the right word) of them were swimming nearby, mingling with mallards and gulls. Their trumpeting was impressive, but not as much as the crackling sound their wings made as they took off from the water.

2. It was clear today for the first time in ages, giving me a perfect view of the sun, a glowing neon red orb in the ice blue sky, setting over the horizon.

3. My car is now 17 years old and is feeling its age a bit, but its original, factory-installed stereo still works well enough that when I turned the volume up to sing along at the top of my lungs with John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” I could drown myself out. The radio didn’t conk out the entire trip, letting me get through both of my favorite sing-along playlists and partway through the cd Dad made me last year.

What was beautiful in your weekend?

Three beautiful things from my week past:

1. Sunday morning’s performers at the farmers’ market were two young women. One sang a cappella the ballad of Lord Bateman/Beichan while the other operated a device I don’t know the name of (although my friend Michael is guessing it could be an old-fashioned diorama). It was a wooden box with an illustrated parchment scroll inside caught between two rollers. Each roller had a handle that stuck through the box and the girl turned them to create a panorama visual accompaniment to the story. Both the artwork and the girl’s (Elizabeth’s) voice each would have been stunning on their own, but in concert they created an extraordinary vacuum of art that sucked their audience right out of their everyday world. (ETA: The women’s names are Anna & Elizabeth, they call their device a “crankie,” and apparently they had a show that night that I totally missed, which is a serious shame.)

2. D.C. was hit with a snowstorm yesterday that arrived fast and furious, dumping snow so fast that plows couldn’t keep up with it. Although my office let us go early, I ended up staying late to catch up on some things, emerging at the height of the storm. Walking to the Metro, anytime I passed under lights, the snow pouring down looked like lasers flickering in an ’80s movie.

3. Those of you who know me will be horrified to know that when Rudi isn’t around, I eat even worse than he does when he’s here to cook. Although I am getting some nutrition from the lentil stew he made for me before he left for Colorado, I have also indulged in Eskimo cookies, a Fluffernutter panini, and sweet potato chips. Luckily, he’ll only be gone for a week and then I’ll be back to eating regular meals.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Blatantly stolen from Amanda and then modified to present fewer titles, my top 15 movies I can watch over and over again:

1. The Thin Man (always on my iPod for emergency airplane viewing)
2. The Princess Bride (my default sick day movie)
3. White Christmas (probably my favorite Christmas movie)
4. Benny and Joon
5. The Breakfast Club
6. The Muppet Movie
7. The Wizard of Oz
8. The Sound of Music
9. Anne of Green Gables
10. The Philadelphia Story
11. Mary Poppins
12. Pride and Prejudice
13. Beauty and the Beast
14. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
15. The Harry Potter series (I know! I redid the rules and then totally cheated on them with these last two entries!)

What would be on your list?

I’m going to join another reading challenge. The eclectic ones tend to appeal to me most:

Between January 1 and December 31, 2011, read one book in each of the following categories:

1. A book with a number in the title
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title
3. A book with a size in the title
4. A book with travel or movement in the title
5. A book with evil in the title
6. A book with a life stage in the title

I’m currently reading The Magnificent 12: The Call, so I’ll be counting that toward the first challenge. I’m thinking Diamond Ruby for #2 and I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President for #5.

I wonder if The Odyssey would count for #4…

Suggestions for titles you like that fit into these categories are always welcome.

NOTE: Karen, Amani, and anyone else who’s a little squeamish about food practices might not want to read this post.

SECOND NOTE: This would not be my methodology if there was company coming over, so please don’t be scared, Sarah.

I’ve been meaning to make lasagna for a while. It’s one of the few dishes I’m any good at cooking.

Step 1: Assemble ingredients.

Ingredient 1: Lasagna noodles. Is there an open box? Yes! In the cabinet. Let’s see. Three and a third noodles will not get us very far. I know I bought two boxes before the tree-trimming party that we ended up not using. Where would those be? Okay, here’s one of them. [The second will not be noticed for several more hours, despite its equally obvious location.]

Ingredient 2: Sauce. I bought a jar of baking sauce back in the fall. Yep, here it is on the floor. Maybe I’d better rinse the dust off it before I open it…

Ingredient 3: Ricotta. Hmmm… I stopped Rudi from throwing it out last week. I hope it’s still good. Maybe I’d better check before I open the jar of sauce. Good, it hasn’t been opened before. Nothing growing on it. Bodes well. It doesn’t smell funky. Should I taste it before I look for the mozzarella? Nah, it’ll be fine…

Ingredient 4: Mozzarella. Let’s see. Here’s the store-bought stuff we bought last winter. Best by … February 2010. It looks fine. Let’s open it up and get a closer look. Smells fine. A little rubbery, but it was supposed to be a dry one to begin with. I guess this I’d better taste. Bland, but that’s storebought cheese for you. Where’s the farmers’ market mozzarella? Okay, here it is. Hmmm… Did it dissolve into yogurt-like goo? Ah, no, that’s just the accumulated water and whey. Dump out the liquid. Oh! It’s little mozzarella balls! Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Is that enough? Rinse. I’d better taste these, too. Hmmm… A little … sharp … but I don’t think I’d call them bad.

Step 2: Arrange ingredients in layers until the pan is full.

Noodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Hmmm… It smells a little strong. Should I have tasted it before we started? Nah. Well … maybe. Okay, fine. I’ll taste it now. That’s … well, I can definitely see why Rudi had to burp the container. Good thing I didn’t wait any longer to make this. Is it still good? Well, I don’t think I’d call it bad. I wish Rudi were here to taste it and tell me. He’s so much better at this. Oh, for Christ’s sake. Either you’d eat it or you wouldn’t. Fine. It’s fine. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Farmers’ market mozzarella.

Step 3: Cook. Either set a timer or plan to make adjustments when a major event, such as Rudi’s arrival home, pulls you out of your book. Cheat on the cooking process by getting him to take the tin foil off the top.

Step 4: Warn your partner that the dinner you’re serving at 11:30 at night might be total crap. If it is, you reassure him, there’s more bread and you can just chuck the lasagna out.

Step 5: Serve with garlic toast. It tastes fine (although apparently as mozzarella ages it gets less melty), and Rudi goes back for a second piece. Score!

Step 6: Do not get sick. This is proof positive that there is nothing wrong with your methodology.

Epilogue: I wanted to fact-check for this post, so I checked the sell-by dates on the farmers’ market cheeses. The ricotta had a sell-by date of mid-November and the mozzarella was the end of October. So they were fine, really. Really.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

From the jacket Powells: “Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it — and themselves — afloat. Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines.” [Dear publishers: I really hate it when you fill the backs of your book jackets with quotes instead of a synopsis of the book. If I hadn't already been aware of this book, I absolutely never would have bought it.]

My take: I held off several days after reading this book to try to collect my thoughts, but five days out and I’m still at a loss. I started hearing buzz about this book last summer shortly after the hardcover came out. As so often happens, I filed it away to look for at the library and then promptly forgot about it until the holiday season, when I was tasked with buying presents for two old ladies who exchange gifts without actually really knowing one another or doing their own shopping. I contemplated it then, but ultimately went with a different book for each of them. However, when I saw that the author was coming to my local bookstore for a reading associated with the release of the paperback, I was intrigued.

Tom Rachman seems unassuming and bashful and charming (although whether he is any of those things I leave up to people who’ve spent more than a minute with him) and the part of the book he read underscored my excitement at reading the book. I jumped right in.

The book itself, although described by many, including its publisher, as a novel is, in fact, a series of interconnected short stories, each focusing on a different person involved with a failing English-language newspaper based in Rome. Although each person interacts with the newsroom in some way (some are reporters, others editors, and a few outside the production of the daily paper), the focus of each vignette is on the character’s personal life and how that can affect their work life (and vice versa). Each character is individual and multi-layered and both likable and unlikable at the same time, and I suspect it is this that has garnered Rachman’s debut novel such praise. It’s a difficult skill for any writer to achieve at any point, let alone in their first published book.

And, yet…

I don’t think I liked it.

Have you ever watched The Office? It’s filled with characters you can sometimes sympathize with, but in general you don’t necessarily like, with the exception of Jim and Pam. This book was a lot like that, but without Pam or Jim to give you a clear protagonist to root for. You could make the argument that the newspaper itself should be what you’re cheering for, but by the end, I didn’t even really care if it survived, even if it was the major force in the lives of the dozen characters I’d just spent time with.

I admit to ambivalence about the book because I’m not sure I would have had the same reaction if I hadn’t read the final two chapters. I felt like these two stories veered off into darker places than I wanted to commit to, and the final piece, in particular, left me feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach. Without these final pieces, I can maybe see having liked the book overall, and just finding pieces of it a bit stressful, rather than leaving me with a distressing taste in my mouth that pollutes my whole opinion of the novel. [I had a similar reaction to The Elegance of the Hedgehog when I read it last year.]

I guess, in the end, I still don’t know what to tell you.

Pages: 283

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Sleet and freezing rain moved through the area Monday night, leaving us to awaken in a fairy land Tuesday morning. Every tree and leaf and railing was encased in a shining, shimmering glaze of ice, offering up a dazzling piece of ephemeral, seasonal artwork.

2. When John invited a bunch of us over to dinner Sunday night, Rudi and I decided to bring dessert. Lost for something fast and elegant (John subscribes to more gourmet cooking that wouldn’t pair well with many of my standard quickies) from my standard repertoire and thwarted by an inability to use fruit, Rudi and I sought inspiration in a birthday cake Mum made me a few years back and settled on a flourless chocolate cake. It ended up being just what we were hoping for and (I thought) a nice ending to a fancy meal.

3. Monday was a holiday and I celebrated by lounging around the house all day with books and knitting. After a while I was ready for some other type of diversion and ended up coming across the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet version of Sense and Sensibility secreted amidst Rudi’s collection of James Bond movies. I had forgotten just how good it was (although I do think Gemma Jones’ portrayal of Mrs. Dashwood is more restrained than Jane Austen wrote the character).

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

This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic is:

Ten Favorite Games from your Childhood (in no particular order)

1. Mille Bourne — Mum is not much of a board game player, but she was always up for this French Canadian card game that combines racking up your own numbered kilometer cards with throwing auto-related hazards in the way of your opponents. Oh, and acquiring the four safety cards that grant you immunity to those roadside dangers. There’s nothing like being hit with an “arrête” card and being able to “coup-foúrre” it away. I introduced it to Eri, Rebs, and Rudi at college, but it took until meeting Shelley and Mike in 2001 before I encountered anyone else who’d grown up playing it.
2. Trivial Pursuit — I am a child of the ’80s and this is our game. Still a favorite at parties.
3. Tag — We played it at recess and we played it in the upper level of the front yard when we were old enough to be out there. There were a zillion variations, from your standard, garden-variety to freeze tag to tv tag.
4. Rummy — Eri, Rebs, and I played this for hours in college. That we kept playing it after one memorable night our freshman year when a guy we vaguely knew came over to join us and could not understand the rules, forcing us to play an entire night’s worth of Rummy 500 open-handed gives testament to how much we enjoyed it. It still gets mentioned in emails along with cocoa breaks and comforters and milano cookies and They Might Be Giants.
5. Monopoly — Perhaps better called Monotony when played the way I prefer it, I’m happiest when you don’t play with houses or hotels. Yes, it does last hours that way. No, no one really likes to play with me.
6. Scrabble — This game is beloved by Dad and Gramma and Karen and was, for a while after Rudi and I moved in together, the only board game we owned that worked for two people. We’d play, but games would end when Della decided the board looked like a good place to lie down. We stopped keeping score and instead just tried to use up all our tiles as quickly as possible. Note: Most Scrabble enthusiasts do not enjoy playing this way.
7. Outburst — This was one of the few party games we owned and we’d play it with the Wilcoxes when we got together with them. A precedent of Apples to Apples or Scattergories or Family Feud, your team was given a category and you had to guess the ten items that the game creators had believed best fit within it.
8. Yahtzee — The only purely dice-based game I really enjoy.
9. Parsec — My first and favorite computer game, played on the TI, which, for you young whipper snappers, operated by plugging into your tv set. This was a space-based game and I can remember being so proud of breaking … half a million points? … when no one was home to witness my score that I left my family a note strung across the kitchen entry, waiting to garrote the first person in the door with my news.
10. Hardball! — A two-person baseball game (later featured in The Princess Bride) played with a joystick (I think the other person had to use the keyboard?). Dad and I played quite a bit of this one on our Apple II. I believe pitch selection was what usually made the games last so long. That and my computerized ability to hit the ball was not especially better than my real-life batting average…

How about you? What games did you like to play when you were younger? [King of All Board Games, Grey Kitten, I'm looking your way...]

The majority of the books I read are from the library, which is unsurprising, given how much I read. What I come home with tends to include a combination of random picks from the shelves and displays, books I’ve come in intending to track down, and books I’ve put on hold through the library’s web site (when you have 25 branches around the city, it can take a few days for end up someplace nearby).

This week, in addition to the afore-reviewed The Westing Game, I also brought home:

• Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which I’ve been meaning to read for a couple of years (this is at least the second time I’ve checked it out from the library)
• Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant, which I heard about from Nan (I thought about buying it for Gramma for Christmas, but wasn’t totally convinced it would be her cup of tea without reading a bit of it)
• Leslie Connor’s Crunch, which I overheard recommended by a bookstore employee at Christmas and which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils (plus it has a bike on the cover)
• Michael Grant’s The Magnificent 12, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils
• Cornelia Funke’s Reckless, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils (and which I notice Grey Kitten just finished)
• Tara Kelly’s Harmonic Feedback, which recently made the shortlist for the Cybils

I have a few more books on hold at the branch by work that I have to pick up this week:

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (I’ve been meaning to read this mystery since it came out; the third one in the series is either just out or due out any moment)
• The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (another mystery that’s been on my list for a while…)
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is the next book for the Classics readalong (I really hope it’s not too scary!)

What are you currently reading? Do you borrow much from your local library or do you tend to buy the majority of your books?

This week’s Weekly Geeks, coming on the heels of major award announcements in children’s literature, encourages participants to choose one of four options relating to award-winning kiddie lit. Having just read the 1979 Newbery Medal winner last night, I thought the timing was perfect to avail myself of the third choice:

Review a new-to-you award-winning book this week

The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin

From the jacket: “This highly inventive mystery involves sixteen people (including a dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge, a bookie,a burglar, and a bomber) who are invited to the reading of the very strange will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. The could become millionaires, depending on how they play the game. All they have to do is find the answer — but the answer to what? The Westing game is tricky and dangerous, but the heirs play on — through blizzards, burglaries, and bombings.”

My take: Somehow I missed this children’s classic when I was growing up, but periodically since leaving college it has popped up on my radar screen and I always think, “I should track this down the next time I go to the library.” But by the time I next am choosing books to check out, it’s slipped back into the crevices of my mind.

This time, though, I was contemplating what to read for the Back to the Classics challenge and remembered to go looking for it at the library.

I’m so glad I did.

The general synopsis is this: Six families/individuals are approached about
moving into an empty, five-story, luxury apartment building on the banks of Lake Michigan. The rents are just what each of them can afford and they sign the leases immediately. Later in the fall, each of them (as well as the building’s three general employees) are called to the mansion of the building’s reclusive owner, Samuel W. Westing, paper magnate, to hear the reading of the will of the recently departed millionaire.

Instead of receiving a straight-up inheritance, they find they are paired off and tasked with solving who is responsible for Westing’s death. Each team is presented with a $10,000 check that both must sign to cash and four words to puzzle over.

Everyone returns to the apartment building to meet up with their partner and begin pursuing their task. As time goes on, they begin spending more time with one another, and, to their surprise, they find that their partner gives them just what they need, if not to help win the game, then to win at life.

I heartily recommend this to fans of mysteries, regardless of age, because it will keep you guessing until the end. Its madcap style also will appeal to fans of Clue (the boardgame, but I suppose also the movie), Monty Python, or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

I also want to note that the 2003 edition, which is what I borrowed from the library, contains the most heart-warming introduction I’ve ever read written by Ann Durell, Raskin’s editor and friend.

I’ll be checking out Raskin’s other books to see if they, too, are as sweet and as worth reading as The Westing Game ended up being.

Pages: 182

This novel also qualifies for a couple other challenges:

Just Read More Novels Month, for which this is my first contribution

Back to the Classics Challenge 2011, which I blogged about joining here. This qualifies as my children’s/young adult classic book.