Posts Tagged “book club”

Book Club: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

Love the blog, now bought the book: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Don’t know why:  A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi

For work:  BrandSimple by Allen Adamson

Trying to drink the cool-aid:  Conscious Business by Fred Kofman

Can’t stop listening to:  Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb

It’s been quite a literary and culinary weekend. Friday night was Book Club, featuring Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, backed up by poached salmon with couscous and red and gold beets, spinach salad, garlic bean soup and a purchased dessert assortment of blackberry-lime sorbet, molasses-clove cookies, dark chocolate covered edamame and Mozartkugeln. As usual, what happens at book club stays at book club.

Tonight’s Book Swap party, now in its third or fourth year hosted by my good friend J took things to another level. The scheme is simple - bring some books, check out the books others have brought, take some different books home - and it’s backed up by (for many, fronted by) J’s always-impressive cooking. And this time, a couple of guests brought even more great food. I’m disappointed to report that only my freshly-read copy of Never Let Me Go and my extra copy of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn (”Lyrical Eggdog! Logical Assnog!”) were snapped up in the first round of swappage. But I picked up John Hodgman’s Areas of My Expertise (filed, oddly, at the swap table as “non-fiction”) and some other trade paperbacks good for upcoming train and plane travel.

But I’m not here to write a book report. Let’s dish dishes. I don’t have all the details on everything, but there was definitely some great cheese, an impressive spinach focaccia, creamy mushroom dip, spring rolls, fried eggplant with miso sauce (nasu dengaku), shrimps and asparagus, Thai beef salad, Thai chicken (my favorite), and a fantastic posole contributed by guest chef P. For dessert, rice krispy treats in both regular and cocoa krispy varieties, chocolate cupcakes with cream and fresh mint icing, and some kind of chocolate sandwich cookie so far removed from the common o**o that I won’t even mention its name here. The latter desserts came from guest pastry chef D.

None of the following should reflect badly on any of the foregoing courses, every one of which was impressive and delicious, but these cookies were amazing and transcendent. One guest took a bite and deadpanned, “I need a cigarette.” We knew what she meant. With apologies to the professionals who make superior food photos, here is a humble snapshot.

Some of you may remember that in the past I’ve kvelled about the mascarporeos available at Via Matta. Also here (with J) and here, too. That’s how strongly I feel about them. Well, let me tell you, these cookies are right up there. The cookie is harder and thicker, and the filling is also thicker and toothier compared to the mascarporeo, but none of those attributes detracts. These are a variation on a theme, and a damn fine one, too. I also really like the slightly squared-off circle shape of them.

A pleasant surprise: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka - Possibly semi-autobiographical, not as all as light as the premise would suggest, and in the end an engaging and bittersweet story of family, war, and immigration with a few laugh out loud passages.

Mind-bending and riveting, can’t put it down:  Tours of the Black Clock by Steve Erickson - Perhaps when I finish this book I will be able to explain it.  Perhaps not.

This month in book club: The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa - Continuing the animal theme from last month’s Giraffe, but utterly unlike it.  Word on the street is the Visconti film is better, but it’s not movie club, you know.

Deeply, deeply depressing but worth it: The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander - The son of Jewish gangsters in Buenos Aires makes a living erasing the past, takes a nose job in payment for a job and loses his son.  Wrenching.

Makes me want to move back to New York but then makes me afraid to: Oracle Night by Paul Auster - familiar Auster themes - locked rooms, shared dreams - in a well constructed short novel.  A bit like David Lynch goes to Brooklyn.  In a good way.  Especially if you’re over the Boerum hill of Jonathan Lethem.

Just finished: Mr. Muo’s Traveling Couch by Dai Sijie in which the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress loosens up and tells a shagy dog story of a befuddled Freudian in search of a virgin in semi-post-communist China.

Just started, for book club: Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard

Just picking up again after a pause: The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart in which I realized that Absurdistan is to a great degree a retread of this first novel by Shteyngart, which makes it not much less enjoyable.

Read during that slog through Europe: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.  Unputdownable non-fiction about Chicago at the turn of the 20th Century.