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January 5, 2012

Holiday Reading Roundup


Well, we’ve almost finished all the Sister’s Grimm books with our nightly read-alouds at home.  We now have to wait with everyone else for book nine coming out in the spring.  My daughter loved them and gave copies away to friends for Christmas so they can catch up and “play Daphane and Sabrina!”  Now we’re reading the last How to Train Your Dragon Book.  Then it’ll probably be the third Harry Potter because she liked dressing up as Hermione so much that she wants a Harry-Potter-themed birthday in March.

The book club read an unnamed Russian minor classic last month.  It remains unnamed because I couldn’t get through the darned thing (and most of the rest of the group didn’t either, including the guy who picked it).  But the great thing about our book club is that the book is often a jumping off point for many other wonderful discussions too.  And anyway, we had to pick next years books!

We’re doing something special for January.  We’re reading Kitchen Confidential and meeting at one of the guys’ houses to cook lots of food and drink to everything.  Should be
fantastic.  The book was certainly a hoot.  I finished it on my holiday travels (along with a few others I have coming up in separate posts).  I especially like how Bourdain describes in detail the pirate-like crew and raucus kitchen he runs, telling you exactly the rules you need in place to have everything go smoothly.  The he observes another chef’s kitchen and points out how basically every ironclad “rule” he has at his own place is broken here and probably for the better.  Even if you don’t cook, you’ll learn some things about what to order (and what now to order) in restaurants and you’ll just learn a whole lot about food in general.  It’s also an R-rated romp of excess and hilarity that’s just fun for it’s own sake.