I like having things to read, but it's a funny thing: I have to be in the mood to read them. The other day, I brought a book back to the library that had a lot of potential -- it was The Bakers Manual, and it's a really good volume; not quite a theory book, not quite a collection of recipes -- but I just couldn't get started on it. I made some cookies from it (which I liked; they were denser than normal, mostly because they used a skosh of shortening, and grittier, because they used a goodly amount of both white and brown sugar), but looking at the rest of the book - Do I want to make some yeast breads? A pie? Different kind of cookie? - I just couldn't get started. So I went to the library to bring it back, last night, and while I was there, I used their bathroom.
This is significant only because of the layout of the library: the bathrooms are near the Large Print section, so I idled there, thinking about when I would pick up large print books for my mother. It usually wasn't too hard to find one that she'd like, as most of them were mild romance. They're not, as a rule, my taste, which is why I was surprised to find one mixed in with them that intrigued me. And since I've since read 84 pages of Storm Cycle (remember, this is large print), and want to know what happens next? , I'm thinking: maybe I'm in the mood for it.
Or for The Baking Answer Book, which I started leafing through while waiting for my daughter to exit karate, last night. You know you've read, perhaps, too much about baking when you read that 'Most chefs agree that pure vanilla extract gives a more intense flavor' and find yourself looking in the glove box for a pencil so that you can note that the people at Cooks Illustrated don't agree -- they think that imitation is just as good, and they were so surprised, they did the test twice more, with the same results. Or that when you come home, having read that 'a large egg weighs about two ounces; an extra-large, two and a quarter ounces', and immediately get out the digital scale and weigh one of the 'large' eggs in the carton. (Which, to my surprise, turned out to be: two point three ounces. Extra-large? Surprising.)
I'm still reading, and enjoying, Mindfulness, of course. But it's a book that you can't rush through -- you almost have to read a little, let it percolate through your brain, and then go back and reread it a bit before moving on. And there's this article about a magician, in the Sunday Times, that I want to get back to, too. I usually get irked when people make a million dollars a year -- but this guy, I think Yeah, okay, he's worth it. So I want to read that. And there's an article about David Axelrod, in the Washington Post....
In the meantime -- what did the Answer Book say about buttermilk?
6 comments:
Too bad you don't live next door cause I could use you instead of Google.
I'm more of a giggle than a Google, actually.
I think its ok when people know how a trick is done...because there are three or four ways to create ANY effect. So when I perform my tricks, I usually am explaining method A but doing method B. And then proving that method A could not be the right.
I have not done magic in a long time though. Its too much like Detroit municipal politics.
Oh, you kill people....literally?
I have to be in the mood to read certain books, too. Sometimes I have a stack of books that I think would be good to read, but I have to wait until the right moment to actually read them. (so says the girl with four perfectly books in her bookcase that aren't just right to read yet)
Not to mention the exhaustion that having a small child can bring. Does wonders for the desire to sit and read. We tended to find that just sitting was enough for us.
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