I've posted separately about most of the books I read this year, but Sam posted her list, so I suppose I'll do the same ( Read more... )

I can't remember any farther back than Friday, so I'm starting there. (Actually, okay, I was sick last week. I do remember that. I took Monday off and my throat still hurt until Thursday or so ( Read more... )

Finished A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel (except mine's the 8th edition - that link is the 9th). This took me a while to read, because it actually requires thought, unlike most of the books I've read recently. (They both have their place in my reading, in case that sounded biased ( Read more... )

Finished book something-or-other for the year, Elements of Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman. Now, I really like Ruhlman (heck, I went to two different book signing nights!) but I give this book a big "meh." I knew it wasn't necessarily going to be a fun read - it's sort of a cooking dictionary, with a couple of essays in the beginning on things that ( Read more... )

1. Spamalot (Friday) was good. I hadn't realized just how much like The Holy Grail it was - I would have preferred something with more new plot because it seemed like the funniest parts were things we'd seen before, but I did enjoy it. We went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant (Pabla's on 2nd downtown) which wasn't in the best area. The food ( Read more... )

Book 14: The Gastronomical Me, by MFK Fisher. This book was interesting, and I wanted to read it because I knew that MFK Fisher is considered really important in modern culinary writing. The book tells the author's life history in terms of food, but I found it a little sparse. She rarely explained characters or side situations if they weren't ( Read more... )

Not in order, but I just realized that I read Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. This was one of the cooking books that Brian bought for my birthday. The stories were pretty unrelated (including a chapter about her memorable mistakes in the kitchen) but some were pretty amusing.

I still think I've read more than 12, but book 12-ish for the year was A House in Corfu, by Emma Tennant. This was another of the Greece travel novels that Becca and Adam bought me for my birthday. This was about a woman whose parents had bought land on Corfu and built a house there in the 70s and about her experiences visiting there. Some ( Read more... )

I'm pretty sure I've missed some books in my journaling this year, but here are the last few that I remember reading, not in order:

Book 8: The Language of Baklava, by Diana Abu-Jaber. This is one of the cooking memoirs that Brian bought me for my birthday. It was good but not great - some of the stories take on a certain "you had to be there" ( Read more... )

I took Brian to the airport this morning. He'll be in the California desert for a few days for work. Tomorrow will be my first full day without him since... I guess since I went to Cedar Rapids in December of 2005? I went on one other business trip (to St Louis, in Oct or so of 2005) and he went to China for a month in Sept of 2005. Those are the ( Read more... )