読書の秋📖食欲の秋🍎
It´s Fall! And Fall, in Japan, is known as The Season of Reading, The Season of Appetite. The Season of Sports...etc etc. So here I am with updates on two out of the three :)
Remember last week I made some lemon jello to go with the cheese cake? I had bought a big bag of lemons and Audrey got the idea that she would like to make a lemon tart with the leftovers. But, she didn't want to make any old tart from a recipe, she wanted to make her own creation. My kids are all like me how stubbornly they want to do things "their way." Julian is too, with his art. I just kind of have to let them do it and learn the hard way or their way. So she made a sweet tart crust using a recipe online, then made a lemon jello as a topping. It turned out ok but the jello was not as sour as we would have liked, while the lemon pieces on top were too sour, It looks good though XD
I had actually been hoping myself to make some lemon tarts with lemon curd like my mom used to have for Christmas. Audrey hadn't been very keen on the idea but when she´d finished making her thing, I got some more lemons to make lemon curd and made some tart cups using a pie crust recipe to put it in. The curd turned out pretty sour too, but good in combination with the sweeter jello tarts Audrey made and of course the extra tart cups.
I then finally got our blueberry harvest from the freezer where I had been saving them up for a pie. We only have one tree in front of our front door, and it yielded around three cups worth. Unfortunately not enough for a pie, so I decided to make tarts. So, anyway, lots of baking this week!
As for the reading, I finished Percy Jackson and the Olympians (1-5). I had been interested in this series since it was in a reading meme I did a while back, asking which was preferred, Percy Jackson or Harry Potter.
It was a fun read. I read all five books of the series quite quickly. I think the story has a wonderful, premise - of Olympian gods and their present day demigods. The main character is a boy who is the child of Poseidon, the god of the Sea. A basic knowledge of the gods is really nice to have but the author does do some explaining through the characters because Percy is not that knowledgeable of the gods or the history either. Percy and his friends help save the world from various threats throughout the books. One unique aspect of this story is that most of the demigods have an ADHD and dyslexia, explained by their brains being wired to read ancient Greek. I think this idea and numerous mention of it both help people without reading disabilities or ADHD to understand some of the difficulties, and also it makes children with the disability feel special. Although the constant reminder did get a bit tiresome for me personally, I get that the author felt it was important to do so. Writing wise, it is definitely a children's book. The writing style felt very loose and simple, as opposed to the tightknit, descriptive style of Harry Potter, for example. Having read American Gods and recently getting caught up on the show, I saw Percy Jackson's adventures as the kids version (and Greek version) of American Gods.
I finished reading those on Friday last week and having checked out two other memes I had done previously, I chose my next book called The Time Traveler´s Wife, from one of the memes. This may be a new favorite. If you like time travel and epic love stories, you may really enjoy this as well.
This book is on a list of 100 books "The BBC thinks you will have read 6 of the books on this list". All through the book I had this excited little dwarf jumping up and down in my head going, "This is Vonnegut! This is Vonnegut!" so I have to note here, as I did in my Slaughterhouse 5 review - "the whole theme is that all times are connected so if you die, you aren't really dead. You are still being born, or going to school or getting married etc., So basically don't fear death, and all things are meant to be - nothing can be stopped. You should just concentrate on remembering the good times."
That's the gist of it, but what made it so much more meaningful was to see it in the epic love relationship between the time traveler and his wife. It was beautiful. It was riveting. I couldn't put the damn phone down (kindle version here). There was the occasional confusion with the ages and time period and the relevance of these. I did turn back the pages a couple of times to confirm. But that was just the fun of piecing together the puzzle. Definitely recommend reading if you haven't already.
Today I read 1984, which I had bought with the Percy Jackson books from Amazon. As novels go, it was heavy. Someone said over at Goodreads that it´s more like an essay, and I can understand why.
Another in a list of classics I thought I should read, for the sake of knowledge if nothing else. It was made more interesting from having read Fahrenheit 451. If this book is the Big Brother, that is the little brother that could easily be part of of the same Universe.
What Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 have in common is the use of surveillance technology by government to control the people(which is amazing considering this book was written in the late 1940s), the movement toward simplifying language and destroying literature to discourage individuality, imagination and thought and of course the use of war to validate the governing system and keep the people cowed and busy. The difference is that while Fahrenheit ends with the possibility of change and hope, 1984 ends in disillusionment and death.
The most important thing is, they both make us realize how precious our freedom is - our freedom to speak out about what we as individuals feel is important and live life with all of our emotions, our freedom to find out the truth and learn from history and be thankful that reality is not just in our heads and 2 + 2 will always be 4. I wouldn't really recommend this book as a novel, but I´m glad I read it.
Anyway, some pics!
Remember last week I made some lemon jello to go with the cheese cake? I had bought a big bag of lemons and Audrey got the idea that she would like to make a lemon tart with the leftovers. But, she didn't want to make any old tart from a recipe, she wanted to make her own creation. My kids are all like me how stubbornly they want to do things "their way." Julian is too, with his art. I just kind of have to let them do it and learn the hard way or their way. So she made a sweet tart crust using a recipe online, then made a lemon jello as a topping. It turned out ok but the jello was not as sour as we would have liked, while the lemon pieces on top were too sour, It looks good though XD
I had actually been hoping myself to make some lemon tarts with lemon curd like my mom used to have for Christmas. Audrey hadn't been very keen on the idea but when she´d finished making her thing, I got some more lemons to make lemon curd and made some tart cups using a pie crust recipe to put it in. The curd turned out pretty sour too, but good in combination with the sweeter jello tarts Audrey made and of course the extra tart cups.
I then finally got our blueberry harvest from the freezer where I had been saving them up for a pie. We only have one tree in front of our front door, and it yielded around three cups worth. Unfortunately not enough for a pie, so I decided to make tarts. So, anyway, lots of baking this week!
As for the reading, I finished Percy Jackson and the Olympians (1-5). I had been interested in this series since it was in a reading meme I did a while back, asking which was preferred, Percy Jackson or Harry Potter.
It was a fun read. I read all five books of the series quite quickly. I think the story has a wonderful, premise - of Olympian gods and their present day demigods. The main character is a boy who is the child of Poseidon, the god of the Sea. A basic knowledge of the gods is really nice to have but the author does do some explaining through the characters because Percy is not that knowledgeable of the gods or the history either. Percy and his friends help save the world from various threats throughout the books. One unique aspect of this story is that most of the demigods have an ADHD and dyslexia, explained by their brains being wired to read ancient Greek. I think this idea and numerous mention of it both help people without reading disabilities or ADHD to understand some of the difficulties, and also it makes children with the disability feel special. Although the constant reminder did get a bit tiresome for me personally, I get that the author felt it was important to do so. Writing wise, it is definitely a children's book. The writing style felt very loose and simple, as opposed to the tightknit, descriptive style of Harry Potter, for example. Having read American Gods and recently getting caught up on the show, I saw Percy Jackson's adventures as the kids version (and Greek version) of American Gods.
I finished reading those on Friday last week and having checked out two other memes I had done previously, I chose my next book called The Time Traveler´s Wife, from one of the memes. This may be a new favorite. If you like time travel and epic love stories, you may really enjoy this as well.
This book is on a list of 100 books "The BBC thinks you will have read 6 of the books on this list". All through the book I had this excited little dwarf jumping up and down in my head going, "This is Vonnegut! This is Vonnegut!" so I have to note here, as I did in my Slaughterhouse 5 review - "the whole theme is that all times are connected so if you die, you aren't really dead. You are still being born, or going to school or getting married etc., So basically don't fear death, and all things are meant to be - nothing can be stopped. You should just concentrate on remembering the good times."
That's the gist of it, but what made it so much more meaningful was to see it in the epic love relationship between the time traveler and his wife. It was beautiful. It was riveting. I couldn't put the damn phone down (kindle version here). There was the occasional confusion with the ages and time period and the relevance of these. I did turn back the pages a couple of times to confirm. But that was just the fun of piecing together the puzzle. Definitely recommend reading if you haven't already.
Today I read 1984, which I had bought with the Percy Jackson books from Amazon. As novels go, it was heavy. Someone said over at Goodreads that it´s more like an essay, and I can understand why.
Another in a list of classics I thought I should read, for the sake of knowledge if nothing else. It was made more interesting from having read Fahrenheit 451. If this book is the Big Brother, that is the little brother that could easily be part of of the same Universe.
What Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 have in common is the use of surveillance technology by government to control the people(which is amazing considering this book was written in the late 1940s), the movement toward simplifying language and destroying literature to discourage individuality, imagination and thought and of course the use of war to validate the governing system and keep the people cowed and busy. The difference is that while Fahrenheit ends with the possibility of change and hope, 1984 ends in disillusionment and death.
The most important thing is, they both make us realize how precious our freedom is - our freedom to speak out about what we as individuals feel is important and live life with all of our emotions, our freedom to find out the truth and learn from history and be thankful that reality is not just in our heads and 2 + 2 will always be 4. I wouldn't really recommend this book as a novel, but I´m glad I read it.
Anyway, some pics!