Book Clubs, Anyone?
October 29, 2008 | 3:32 pm
I’ve decided to launch a local book club here on the Outer Cape, with monthly meetings, and I need your help! Yes, you, gentle reader. Who out there has started a book club? Who participates in one? I’m a relative neophyte (have actually belonged to more virtual groups than realtime ones), having once upon a time been in charge of a reading group through my place of employment, which happened to be a bookshop … with emphasis on the “once upon a time.”
So I turn to you. What are your experiences? What works, and what doesn’t? In particular …
- Can I mix fiction and nonfiction?
- How are authors and books selected?
- Is a dessert café a good venue? (I have one in mind: the Purple FeatherHow many people is considered a good size for a book discussion group?
- How long should the discussion last? One hour? Two? Open-ended?
- What questions have I forgotten to ask?
Do please comment here and tell me everything! When the next edition of Open Your Heart with Reading comes out, I’d love to be able to include a chapter on reading groups, and I’d love to have input!
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, reading books, Reading toolkit, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Jerusalem artichoke surprise
| 7:14 am
10/28/08
I’ve referred in recent blogs to Jerusalem artichokes — and discovered, now that I’ve harvested some, that the plant deserves an entry of its own.
These things could end world hunger. Not only are they astonishingly prolific, but also they are hardier than any food-producing plant in my Zone 3 garden (in fact, they actually prefer our climate — a nice change of pace!), and grow in any soil except compact clay. Few pests and diseases affect them, and they don’t require much water.
A misnamed member of the sunflower family (in other words, not an artichoke and nothing to do with Jerusalem), they form a gnarly, edible tuber that looks sort of like ginger, tastes somewhere between a water chestnut and a potato, and makes almost no starch. Instead they create inulin (not insulin), which digests into fructose not glucose, so can be consumed by diabetics.
I first encountered Jerusalem artichoke as an ingredient in my favorite brand of pasta, DeBole’s: a lovely, light spaghetti made from semolina, Jerusalem artichoke flour, and spinach flour. Not knowing what JA was, I looked it up but did nothing with the knowledge until a family member developed blood sugar issues. That motivated me to try growing some.
They were hard to come by, but I finally acquired 2 lbs. of tubers via eBay and planted them around the yard to see where they’d do best. Eight multi-stemmed plants emerged from those tubers and grew 6-8 feet tall in all locations — pushing 10 feet tall in the lasagna garden — from which I had to remove them so they wouldn’t take over! In the process I reaped POUNDS of tubers while leaving 2-3 times that in the ground. Thankfully, the roots are shallow so they were easy to transplant.
They can be eaten raw, or cooked in any way like a potato, and are well suited for soups. Properly stored, they’ll keep for months, though in just a bag in the fridge they likely won’t last more than 2-3 weeks. So I’m foisting them off on friends and neighbors, since self and spouse can’t consume so many so fast.
Jerusalem artichoke is the most successful crop I’ve had in ten years of endeavoring to grow food. Who’d've thought!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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Children’s Books
October 22, 2008 | 11:14 am
My life changed radically this past summer, when my stepson moved in with us. He’s 16, so well beyond children’s literature (and in fact has been known to borrow my copies of Beowulf, Poe, and of course my favorite author Phil Rickman); but this past week when unpacking my library (another long and completely irrelevant story), we came across some of the kids’ books I bought for him and his sister when they were small. Every night, as I recount in Open Your Heart with Reading, the kids would choose a book for me to read, and then I’d end with a reading of the Wapiti-Hoo.
But what were those other books? Thank you for asking! While the list is exhaustive (I worked as a community relations manager at a Barnes & Noble bookseller when I met their father, and used my employee discount rather heavily), here are (in no particular order) the ones deemed “good enough,” enduring enough, to have been kept many years past the children’s need for them:
- The True Story of The Three Little Pigs (Jon Scieszka)
- Not One Damsel in Distress (Jane Yolen)
- Chato’s Kitchen (Gary Soto)
- Charlie Parker Played be-bop (Chris Raschka)
- Toot & Puddle (Holly Hobbie)
- Dinosaurs Divorce (Laurene Krasny Brown)
- Squids Will Be Squids (Jon Scieszka)
- The Cinder-Eyed Cats (Eric Rohmann)
- It’s Okay To Be Different (Todd Parr)
- The Paper Bag Princess (Robert Munsch)
Some of them were relevant for obvious reasons: Dinosaurs Divorce, for example, gave them a story context for their own story about Mom and Dad living in separate towns with separate people. Not One Damsel in Distress and even better, The Paper Bag Princess were my ways of trying to give my stepdaughter the gifts of strength and self-reliance.
Others were just fun. Squids Will Be Squids? Well — kids’ book or adult book? Read it and then you tell me.
What were your favorite children’s books — either from your own childhood or that of your children? I’d love to hear!
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, reading books, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Indoor veggies
October 21, 2008 | 7:48 pm
10/21/08
This past spring, in response to our region’s short growing season, and toward the hope of eventually having a little greenhouse, I planted tomatoes and peppers — my two “tropical” favorites — indoors.
Our living room has full southern exposure and is glass on three sides. Ideal! It stays toasty all year, save for deep winter, when the not-high-tech-insulated-glass gets mighty chilly. However, it’s the most consistent, protected, and bug-free environment available so worth an experiment as a pseudo-greenhouse.
I chose a tomato variety simply called “Patio” and a sweet bell pepper called “Red Beauty.” The first thing I learned is that, in the absence of wind and insects, an indoor garden must be pollinated by other means. By hand, in fact. For the tomato, I was advised by the plant seller to use a Q-tip every morning around 10:00 to tickle the open flowers; for the pepper, I was advised by the seller (a different party) to have two plants next to each other to enable pollination, though he mentioned nothing about helping things along manually.
Initially, all three plants grew tall, fast, and bushy but none set fruit. I diligently tickled flowers. Eventually — and MUCH later than the outdoor plants — little tiny tomatoes formed, and one day I spotted a pepper. Meanwhile, the plants grew taller and bushier.
Around midsummer, the tomato started putting them out but ripening so rapidly that in the space of 3 days, little green balls turned into rotten red splats down on the soil. Bummer! So I attended them more closely and eventually caught the rhythm. Meanwhile, a few peppers began forming. In both species, the ratio of leaves to fruit was way out of line.
Outdoors, the same species of pepper plant grew half the height and was wiped out by an unknown worm. Different species of tomato thrived in the lasagna garden and Topsy Turvey planter, but struggled in the hay bales.
Now that those plants have been killed by frost, and we’re looking at our first forecast of snow for the season tonight, the living room garden is taking off. I have harvested more than a dozen little red Patio tomatoes over the past six weeks, and plenty more are bending the branches. Perhaps half a dozen peppers are developing, with that first one, in very slow motion, fading from green to red. I might be eating these vegetables for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Conclusion? I’m not sure yet. Clearly, it can be done. What I did wrong remains to be obvious. How long these plants will go on is a mystery. But I’m now stuck watering three plants that are 3-4 feet tall and growing in the corner of my living room. Last year, in the same space, I kept strawberries and broccoli alive to see another summer. I hear that tomatoes and peppers are perennials in the tropics. Wouldn’t it be great if I could pull that off in Vermont?
We’ll see . . .
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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Booker (and other) Prizes — What to Read Next
October 16, 2008 | 9:41 am
A lot of American writers (and readers!) were up in arms recently when the Nobel prize committee issued its opinion that American authors are too insular, too cut off from the rest of the world and international literary thought. That committee awarded this year’s literature prize to an amazing French author, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, said to be an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”
They’re right, by the way. Run, do not walk, to wherever you purchase or borrow your books, and get yourself a copy of le Clézio’s Wandering Star. I promise that you won’t regret it.
The Booker Prize doesn’t need to deal with Americans at all, as it’s specifically for British Commonwealth citizens. If you’d like a glimpse into the creation of this year’s winning novel, take a look at the very good interview here.
Interested in exploring books outside of the United States’ insular outlook? Try one of these, recently reviewed on National Public Radio:
- The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya
- Spring Flowers Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare
- The Three-Arched Bridge also by Ismail Kadare
Fall’s a great time to curl up with a book; but think about challenging yourself this fall. Stepping outside of your usual genres can be a terrific intellectual and cultural experience!
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, reading books, Reading toolkit, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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After the frost
October 15, 2008 | 8:42 pm
10/15/08
Should you ever suffer from conformity pressure, think of plants if you need inspiration to hang on to your individualism.
Plants routinely defy rules and expectations. This year, in my garden, a few individuals overcame the odds by surviving back-to-back killing frosts.
The Purple Wave petunias, for example, downright astonished me. These are expensive annuals, and when I planted them from seed last spring, protected and cosseted, all failed to germinate. So I sprang for healthy plants started at a nursery, and they blew me away all summer with their profuse, vivid blossoms. I covered them for the first few light frosts, but when we had 2-3 nights in a row in the 20s, I abandoned all the tender annuals to their fate. Everything within a 50-foot radius of the petunias died instantly: impatiens, nasturtiums, marigolds, tomatoes, zinnias, celosia, asters. Yet the petunias are soldiering on, in tissue-thin trailing trumpets of royal purple and fuschia. Huh?
Likewise the black-eyed Susan. This species finished blooming a month ago, long before threat of frost. Yet this afternoon, while crossing the lawn, I tripped over an ankle-high fully blooming specimen — smack in the center of the yard, with no protection from above or the side — “ground zero,” if you will, of where the frost hit the hardest. Why the heck is that thing still alive?
Some of the hardier perennials always make it until winter. The Jerusalem artichokes — surely the plant that inspired the Jack-and-the-beanstalk legend — are blooming merrrily away as if nothing happened. A few monkshood and phlox in the sheltered part of the garden are also in bloom. But there’s one phlox up on the hill in the most exposed, always-walloped part of the yard which is still blooming. Why? Everything near it (except broccoli) is a shriveled mess.
Johnny-jump-ups, conversely, seem to hold on forever. More than once I have found them in blossom under snow. And there are plenty of plants still hanging on in protected corners: one hydrangea, one Queen-Anne’s-lace, one bluebell (which should have expired even before the black-eyed Susans), and assorted carrots. I just don’t get it. Freezing is freezing. Why don’t they all die?
The fact that they don’t assures me that life goes on despite adversity and is always full of surprises. What an antidote to depression!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation — Carolyn Haley
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More on the Future of Books
October 8, 2008 | 7:58 am
What will people be reading fifty years from now?
Okay, they’ll probably still be reading books. But how? On ebook readers? Listening to them as audio files?
Someone forwarded me this article about the future of books and reading. Some say that the novel as we know it is doomed.
I think, though, that that depends on what one refers to as a novel. My generation equates “novel” with “book” – an object one can hold, with covers and printed pages. Most importantly, the book I read will be the same as the book you read: the ending is always the same (the whale sinks the Pequod, the little boy falls asleep).
I’m not sure it will always be so. Already audiobooks are a step away from the sameness of that experience, as the actor or actors reading will make a not insignificant contribution to how the “reader” understands and experiences the story.
And perhaps that’s a good thing. It’s stories that keep societies alive, and the telling of the stories is, at the end of the day, less important than the stories themselves. Comic books tell stories, though many turn their noses up at them. So do television programs and movies. Novelists don’t have a monopoly on the practice.
Different people learn and experience the world in different ways. There are visual learners. There are auditory learners. There are people who must participate in order to really understand something. So why do we view these different approaches as competition for each other?
There will always be people who want to read novels, who will want to hold them and mark up the pages and pass them on to their friends. There may be fewer of these people, as ebooks and pdfs and videos become more and more popular, but they’re not going away.
I do think, as I look into my crystal ball, that the paper book will not necessarily be with us forever. Kindle is doing well, and better readers are no doubt in the pipeline. Hardcover books are selling less and less well, and ebook sales are up. As a friend noted recently, “Paper costs more every day, trees are scarcer, printing costs a lot more than setting up an ebook, huge bookstores consume energy in vast quantities, energy costs more every day, distribution in big trucks costs more than sending something over the Net.”
Perhaps one day hardcover books will be luxuries and most people will read ebooks. I think there’s a good chance of that. And maybe if the books are cheaper (and ebook reader prices come down), they’ll become accessible to more people. Libraries will be used electronically. Big-box stores will disappear.
Or not!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of books and reading! Comment here or send an email to me at jcezanne@jeannettecezanne.com.
РJeannette C̩zanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, reading books, Reading toolkit, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Tomato Comparo
October 7, 2008 | 7:10 pm
10/7/08
Well, we finally had the killing frost, so gardening 2008 is history.
A primary experiment I did this season was with tomatoes. (Then again, that’s the primary experiment I do every year!) I put two Jet Stars in hay bales, two in the lasagna garden, then planted a “patio” tomato in an indoor planter, and a Roma tomato in the Topsy Turvey planter.
Results: The Jet Stars in the hay bales suffered for most of the season, then rallied when it was too late to succeed before frost. I believe the bad start was because of the hay bales themselves: Unlike last year, they were drier to begin with, a different type of hay, and the weather that followed was also less rainy, so they didn’t get a good rot going inside to feed the plants. In addition, I inserted the seedlings in the “correct” direction, which allowed water to pass through too easily and made the roots work too hard to find purchase and nourishment. So they were feeble and yellow for the first half of the summer, even though, oddly, they set fruit before any of the other tomato plants. Those fruits were diseased, or rotted, so I chopped them off, along with all the awful leaves, then the plants revived and started flowering and setting fruits like mad — too late.
Meanwhile, in the lasagna garden: The two Jet Stars from the same pack thrived! They gave me the best crop of tomatoes I’ve ever had. Big round red ones from strong, healthy vines. The difference? Good soil, lots of sun. Same water. I put them under plastic cover a few weeks ago, and I think they’re still alive after last night’s 28-degree temps. It will get that low tonight, followed by an upsurge into the 60s day temps and 40s night temps. We’ll see in a few days whether the plants survived.
The Roma in the Topsy Turvey planter did well. That location doesn’t get huge sun, but this year I remembered to water the planter regularly, and was rewarded with many salads worth of lovely grape tomatoes (smaller than I would have expected from a Roma, but tasty and abundant). The real surprise was the indoor planter. It grew tall and leafy but the number of tomatoes it set was small, and their weight broke the branches. They ripened with astonishing speed — one day they would be green nuggets, 1-3 days later I’d find them lying on the soil, red and rotten. I had to manually pollinate them, which gave erratic results.
Once I got the hang of things, the tomatoes started coming more evenly and I caught them before they got overripe, which resulted in a small quantity of very nice, very small, very round tasty tomaters. Supporting the plant presented its own problems; ditto the two red bell peppers I planted beside it. There’s no sign that it will stop producing, so I may be harvesting into the winter — which was a goal of this experiment. Quantity? Pffft. But keeping the plant alive and producing? If it gets to be December or January and I’m still picking red ones, I’ll be very happy, indeed!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart — Carolyn Haley
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No tomatoes today
October 1, 2008 | 9:27 pm
10/1/08
I was planning to write about tomatoes this week, but the insane rollercoaster of the U.S. financial debacle distracted me from the subject.
At the same time, it underscored the importance of opening one’s heart to gardens.
Granted, there are parallels: Having an insect plague wipe out a crop is like losing your savings in a market crash. Watching the daylight shrink and the leaves spiral down is like seeing the approach of death. I can’t pretend that gardens are Edens safe from the travails of life.
What they are is sanctuary, even if only for a moment, because they take us outside ourselves and put our human concerns into perspective. When some natural force causes a bad thing to happen, it’s got nothing to do with greed or short-sightedness, or other human frailty. It’s just part of the broad cycle of the seasons, the forces, the elements of life — of which we are a part, just as important and just as insignificant as an individual leaf.
Looking out the window, or stepping outside, brings instant vacation. Here, at this time of year, it’s a veritable bonanza! Peak fall foliage in screaming primary colors. Sky, ever changing between blues, grays, and pastels. Flowers that have survived first frost: deep maroon mums with yellow hearts; the aptly named Heavenly Blue morning glories tumbling from the tower they spent the summer climbing; clouds of pale periwinkle asters; the last stragglers of pink phlox, orange and gold and cream marigolds, zinnias, and nasturtiums; tomatoes red against their vines like Christmas tree ornaments against pines; royal purple monkshood; grass on the lawns, still vibrant green, while wild grasses in the fields turning beige and mustard. And, at last, the Jack-and-the-beanstalk-sized Jerusalem artichokes have put out their flowers, little yellow sunflowers at the very top, like stars.
When I can’t stand the news any more, I go outside and tend to the garden. Soon it will be time to cut everything back and tidy the beds, getting ready for the next cycle. Which will go on, and on, no matter what’s happening in the petty world of humans.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart — Carolyn Haley
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The Future of Reading?
| 3:36 pm
The history of world includes the history of ideas; and ideas require communication in order to flourish. How does that communication happen?
People talk, and people write. Talking hasn’t changed much over the years; but reading and writing certainly have.
I’ve finally taken my own first steps into the future of the manuscript: last week I bought my first ebook reader in the form of Amazon’s Kindle. And it’s certainly an interesting experience.
I bought it mostly because, as a writer myself, I feel I need to experience what is clearly the future of books, at least for many people. I also am enormously attracted by the ability to carry a whole library with me when I travel, and (with the easy ability to order more books) no more panic when I’m on a trip and run out of things to read.
So while it’s early days, for what it’s worth, here are my impressions so far:
- The screen is terrific. It’s really easy to read and the font size can be changed quickly if necessary.
- I have not yet gotten used to the page forward and page back buttons, which are all aligned on either side of the screen — the places where I’m most likely to grasp the “book” and therefore inadvertantly flip around. I expect that ease will come with practice, but right now it’s damned annoying.
- Also annoying is the fact that the spiffy jacket fits loosely and falls off easily.
- I thought I’d be mostly reading books, but it’s absolutely marvelous for magazine reading. So you don’t get the pictures (and obviously Smithsonian and National Geographic aren’t therefore good candidates); but I get to read articles in one of my favorites, the Atlantic Monthly at a fraction of the offline subscription price, and don’t use dead trees to do it. That pretty much rocks my world right there.
- I haven’t yet got the process down, but a deal-breaker for me had always been that I was confined to buying books from Amazon to read via the Kindle. This is not the case: other ebooks and even pdfs can be sent to the Kindle from my very own MacBook. It’s trickier to do than to simply buy from Amazon, but it’s feasible, and some rainy Saturday afternoon soon I shall learn how to do it.
- The looks aren’t as bad as I’d feared, Yeah, it looks like a clunky version of some medical device that would be used in sick bay on the starship Enterprise, but it grows on you. I have dreams, still, of what Apple’s eventual ebook reader will look like, but for now I’m willing to settle for this one.
- The first three days I had the Kindle I was in Boston taking the subway all over the place and it’s absolutely terrific for reading in small crowded spaces. It remembers what page you were on and gets you admiring glances from people around you.
I don’t yet have any gradiose conclusions about the future of printed books or how we’ll communicate our ideas in the next century. But I’m having a lot of fun in this one dipping my toe into the waters of the future.
As long as there are words, I’ll survive!
РJeannette C̩zanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: reading, writing, reading books, writing books, Reading toolkit, Words, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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