yoga & other stuff

I've been reading quite a bit lately and I've got to say my latest guilty pleasure is the Magic series by Ilona Andrews. Well- written, fast-paced, kick ass protag, and interesting world building. Two thumbs up, highly recommended. Reminds me of what Anita Blake could have been before she became a magic-induced nymphomaniac without principles.

The Year of Magical Thinking is pretty fantastic. I thought about picking it up for ages and finally did. Didion's memoir of the year after her husband's death will resonate with anyone who's lost a loved one. This bit especially:

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shck. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able to even get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and the meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absecne that follows the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness.

I also finished the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is precisely as good as you've heard it is.

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman is a recent release and it's beautiful and touching and wrenching and honest. Love her work.

All the recipes I've been making lately come from Dana Jacobi's The Essential Best Foods Cookbook. Unlike Rachael Ray, they don't promise you'll be done in 30 minutes but I haven't run into anything that takes much longer. The food HAS been fantastic, including the Salmon with Coconut Curry Chutney that I served for dinner on Friday. I've also discovered that the rice which cooks perfectly at 10,000 feet is Basmati, properly soaked.

I also read the latest Mercy Thompson book by Patricia Briggs - she's a consistently good storyteller, period.

I can't remember if I mentioned it previously but I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's one of those books whose cover design grabbed me but I didn't pick it up. Finally got it on the kindle and it's great. An interesting mystery with compelling characters, and a dose of social commentary thrown in. I'm very much looking forward to the next one.

I keep finding free books for the kindle, so I've got a mess of things in the TBR list. Probably I will not do much reading while Mom is in town and I've been keeping track of the books as I finish them on my facebook page. I believe I'm in the high 30s so far, which means hitting 50 by year's end shouldn't be tough.