The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Well, I'm definitely in the minority here. The Pioneer Woman Cooks has 586 customer reviews on Amazon and 480 people gave her 5 stars.

For my money, though (and I'm glad I didn't spend any ) this is a book to be looked at once and then taken back to the library. There is nothing here I would care to make, the recipes are way more complicated than they need to be, and the quantity of photos is ridiculous. I mean, seriously, do you really need a picture of how to mix dry ingredients together? Of how to pour broth? They're also laid out funny, in my opinion. I kept trying to follow them left to right, but the pictures read top to bottom. Oh, well.

If you're a big fan of the Pioneer Woman, or if you just like to collect cookbooks, you might want this book. But even her biggest fans report that all of these recipes are available on her website.

Stay Close by Harlan Coben

Stay Close - Harlan Coben

Ray Levine is a man with the worst job imaginable. He's a for-hire "fake paparazzi" -- a man who gives Bar Mitzvah boys and awkward suitors the full experience of being relentlessly pursued by the media. Megan Pierce is a happily married suburban soccer mom, but years ago she was a stripper named Cassie, who loved to walk on the wild side. 17 years ago the two were lovers, until a savage murder forced them apart.

Now, a similar murder has occurred, and soon it becomes clear that's it's just the latest in a long string of grisly events. Ray and Megan are forced to work together, and who knows what will happen next?
Stay Close was a fairly absorbing novel, although I can't say that the characters were particularly well drawn, or that the "mystery" was much of one. It's pretty apparent from early on who the real killer is, and what the motivation was. Still, it was an quick and easy read, and fairly enjoyable summer entertainment.

The Effect of Living Backwards

The Effect of Living Backwards

Last month, I read and enjoyed The Vanishers, a rather bizarre tale of dueling parapsychologists.

I hadn't had quite enough weirdness, so I undertook another book by Heidi Julavits. Living Backwards is the story of two sisters, Alice and Edith, who get hijacked on their way to Edith's wedding by a bizarre set of characters. The story is told from Alice's point of view, with frequent side-bar "Shame Stories" -- stories that Alice has invented about the people she meets.

If you're looking for a story with a straight narrative, this isn't it. In fact, it's a little difficult to make out exactly what did happen in this book. But for a rollicking tale of absurdity and sibling rivalry, interspersed with a threat of maybe-terrorism, this book can't be beat!

A Conspiracy of Friends

A Conspiracy of Friends

What we have here is yet another bright and breezy novel by Alexander McCall Smith. A Conspiracy of Friends is book 3 in the Corduroy Mansion series, set in London's Pimlico neighborhood.

This book finds William less concerned about his issues with his slacker son and more worried about fighting off an unwanted admirer (which he accomplishes by getting himself entangled in another web.) His greatest concern, however, is the disappearance of his beloved pooch, Freedie de la Hay. He is right to be concerned -- Freddie has a terrifying experience.

Meanwhile, literary agents Barbara Ragg and Rupert Porter quarrel over the right to represent a Yeti author, and the despicable politician, Oedipus Snark -- whom even his own mother loathes -- undergoes an amazing transformation.

If you've enjoyed any of Alexander McCall Smith's books, you'll doubtless enjoy this one, too.

By Blood by Ellen Ullman

By Blood by Ellen Ullman

By Blood is set in 1970's San Francisco, where the main character, a disgraced professor, is taking a mandatory leave of absence from his university and attempting to put his life back together. He rents an office in a seedier part of town, and soon discovers that on the other side of his paper-thin wall (and a badly fitting connecting door) is a practicing psychiatrist. She generally employs a white-noise machine during sessions, but one of her patients cannot abide the sound, and for her, the machine is turned off.

Our professor soon finds himself enthralled by her story. He sits very, very quietly in his office, not daring to move for fear that the squeak of his chair will alert his neighbors of his presence. (After all, he can hear the sound of their nylon stockings when they cross their legs.) The patient is trying to deal with issues regarding her adopted family, and decides to begin a search for her birth mother.

She soon learns that she was adopted through a Catholic agency that may have been involved in "stealing" Jewish babies from their extended families in the wake of World War II. After finding only a few shreds of information, however, she is thwarted in her search.

But if there's one thing the professor knows how to do, it's research. He soon undertakes the mysterious patient's quest, and learns quite a bit about her origins. Since he has no excuse to contact her directly, he develops a subterfuge to get the information to her, and then listens as she recounts her experiences to her therapist. Soon he becomes entirely entangled in her life.

To tell you the truth, I almost stopped reading the book after the first chapter. Ullman's style (at this point, anyway) is particularly stylized and ornate; I found myself wondering if she was trying to channel Poe. In fact, I did stop reading after the first chapter, and went and read another book. Eventually, though, I came back and finished it. It was a fairly absorbing book -- I'm glad I did.

Lily Dale : The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead

Lily Dale by Christine Wicker

In New York State, just an hour south of Buffalo, there is a little village named Lily Dale, where the inhabitants speak to the dead. The town became a center of the Spiritualist Movement in the early 20th century, and is still. It has workshops and demonstrations year-round, and is especially active during the summer months. In the past, it hosted such famous personalities as Harry Houdini and Mae West. Today it sometimes hosts speakers such as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and James Van Praagh.

Christine Wicker, the author of this book, went to Lily Dale for the express purpose of investigating this community and writing a book. She is, I believe, very honest in her writing, and reports to us her thoughts as she goes back and forth between belief and skepticism. She reaches no conclusions, or, at any rate, none that she sticks with. I found her writing interesting and entertaining, and almost felt as though I had been there myself.

Enchantments

Enchantments 

When Grigori Rasputin was murdered in 1916, he left behind two daughters, who were living with him in St. Petersburg at the time of his death. They were taken in as wards of Nicholas II, and lived with the Imperial Family until the Romanovs were exiled to Tobolsk in 1917.Enchantments is the story of the eldest daughter, Maria Rasputina, in that time of terror and trouble.

The story is narrated by Maria, in bits and pieces as she jumps forward and back through time. If you are reasonably familiar with the story of the last of the Romanovs, it's not particularly confusing, but I can see that it might give you trouble if you're not. As far as I can tell, most of the historical information is accurate, but Harrison has infused the book with her own whimsy, inventing fanciful conversations between Maria and the young Alexei (or "Alyosha" as he is called by Maria), and even a bit of youthful sexual exploration. It is a novel, after all.

Rasputin did have a daughter named Maria, who, I have learned, did survive the Bolsheviks and later became a lion tamer in Europe and America, even working for Ringling Brothers at one time. She also wrote several memoirs about her father, one of which I am currently trying to track down.

We all know the horrifying story of the fate of the Romanovs, and this book did little to add to that knowledge, but I found Harrison's treatment of Maria's memories of her enigmatic father (which I suspect are based on Maria's memoirs) to be the most interesting part of the story. I also enjoyed the tales she told to Alyosha. They have that dreamy air of fairy tale mysticism that seems so characteristic of much Russian literature. Harrison's treatment of Alexei's budding sexuality, on the other hand, seemed crass and unnecessary.