As Winter Continues

I need to somehow dull down that yellow into more of a gold.

Another thing I recently did was complete my kitchen inventory. Last year or so I decided to undertake an inventory of everything in the house. I started with the mudroom and then moved on to the kitchen. I have some 900 items in my kitchen. This includes everything from large appliances to liquor. Everything in the cupboard, from all-purpose flour to xantham gum. Spices, from allspice to white pepper. Utensils, from apple corers to wooden tongs. You get the idea.

Book Corner 2023.9

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World

by John Baxter

Better than I thought it was going to be; because I thought it was going to be, “OMG, Paris is so freaking beautiful, this is beautiful, that’s beautiful, OMG Paris is so beautiful.” Yawn! It wasn’t that. It bounced around severely. It was kind of tied together by the author’s recounting of how he stumbled into a job giving walking tours of Paris; and some of the fun things he includes on his tours. I liked that all the chapters were super-short. I liked the amount of himself he put into the book – enough so you aren’t wondering who in the world is speaking to you; but not so much that it’s a Me-Me-Me book, which is also boring. Altogether, you’d think that I’d love it. Ultimately, though I hate to sound like an ugly American or a jaded snob, I went to Paris once and I wasn’t all that crazy about it. I prefer Italy.

Book Corner 2023.8

Nobody’s Looking at You

by Janet Malcolm

I’m not sure why I picked this up, except that it was essays, and I’m sure I thought, “Oh! I love essays”, some of them from the New Yorker and some from NYRB and I’m sure I thought, “Oh! Those will be quality.”

Maybe they were, but they were so very, very dated. I guess it was a nice walk down memory lane as we were reminded of the confirmation hearings for now-Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert’s march to restore sanity, etc.. But the essay about email – what a hoot. “As email’s novelty wears off and its limitations become clearer, we will revert to the telephone…” Ha ha ha!

Essays in the beginning of the book tended to profile people with some unusual vocation or avocation, such as concert pianist or running a rare-print book shop. These weren’t terribly gripping. I have to admit I skipped one about a classic music radio show.