Seeing vs Reading

Denny Hartford posted a Real Audio version of an older broadcast where he talks about why he and his wife won’t see The Lord of the Rings movies.  An insightful reasoning on why the book is always better.  Click The Book Den: Seeing vs Reading

Review: Heat

I mentioned this book earlier, but this is the full review.

Heat is a true story about Bill Buford who was assigned to do a profile on Mario Batali for The New Yorker. What his boss probably didn’t know is that Buford has always wanted to be a cook in a restaurant, to really understand food. Soon, he’s working as a prep cook at Babo. A year later, he’s still at Babo almost every night. After that, he finds himself in Tuscany as a butcher’s apprentice. Not just any butcher but Dario Cecchini, considered the best in the world.

What could have been just a tale about a mid-life crisis was very endearing. Buford made you relate to the blood, sweat and tears of the restaurant kitchen and the characters that live there. I’ve never been a big fan of Batali — I find his shows annoying but the book addresses some of that. In short: Batali looks hung over in many episodes of Malto Mario because he probably was.

If the book would have stopped at Batali and the people in Babo it would have been good. But what made it great was the time in Tuscany with Dario. Dario considers himself an artist, using meat as his medium. As he works, he likes to quote Dante and listen to Mozart. His mentor, who is only referred to as “The Maestro” also works in the shop. So do several other people, although some just get paid to read the newspaper outloud. Dario is the most interesting character in the whole book, — Buford portrayed him extremely well.

Needless to say, I loved this book! I had a hard time putting it down. It’s a book about food but, mostly, it’s about the people who make the food and really have a love for creating dishes and learning new ways for us to eat. Thanks to Cooking for Engineers for bringing it to my attention. It gets a rare 5 out of 5 pork shanks stars.

We may have to keep HBO after all . . .

Variety.com – HBO turns ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ into fantasy series

I hate to say it, but HBO is the only network that may do it justice.

Review: The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Liveship Traders Trilogy by Robin Hobb is truly a swash-buckling fantasy of epic proportions. Robin takes fantasy in a new direction with a nautical/pirate theme and she pulls it off well.

The trilogy centers around the Vestrit family of Bingtown, a trading city on the edge of a great social change. Bingtown society is very proper and structure, but their quasi-ruler in Jamillia isn’t honoring their age-old agreement.  Of course, secrets abound in Bingtown and their relationship with the mystical Rain Wild Traders, especially concerning the liveships — speaking and sentient ships which are the secret for Bingtown Traders’ success in trading with the world.

Bingtown and other settings in the series are all mentioned in Hobb’s previous The Farseer Trilogy, but this isn’t really a sequel — really just taking place in a different part of the same world.  A few things are mentioned in this trilogy about the previous one, but that takes little away from this story.

I’ll admit that I had a hard time making it through the first book, Ship of Magic .  I thought the first 1/3-1/2 of the book got really long.  It made it more difficult that you knew how it was going to end, but you just didn’t know how it was going to get there.  This gets a lot better in the last half because you see that the pieces are in place and you ride on the edge of your seat until the very end.

You sit on the edge of your seat through the next two books — Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny . I’ve heard that it is said that, in a fantasy trilogy, the second book is the weakest one.  But in the trilogy I think that it’s the best one.  Hobb introduces more characters and all of them are interested. We see tons of action and character development.  The third book is also very, very good.

Do I recommend it?  Yes, wholeheartedly to any Fantasy fan.  Once you make it through the first book, the rest is easy.  It’s a great series — 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Follow-up Review: Kenmore Elite Dishwasher

I closed my review our Kenmore Dishwasher saying that you can’t judge a dishwasher after a few days, but wait a year. Well, it’s been 10 months but I will say a few more words. Both good and bad, but mostly good.

The Kenmore Dishwasher will washes extremely well. Our friends look at us in disbelief when we tell them not to rinse the dishes off. We just load it up and it cleans well. I’ve tested out the TurboJet mode a few times. It works well, but it has a hard time in the corners of our large casserole dishes.

Here’s the bad: sometimes we make Leah a smoothie for breakfast and if we put her smoothie cup on the front of the top rack it doesn’t get clean. If we put it towards the back it’s just fine. Maybe it’s how we load it, but it seems that not as much water gets there. We’ve also had quite a few drinking glasses broken in the dishwasher. They aren’t the most high-quality glasses and (again) we probably don’t load it well, but it seems the pressure from the jets is really high.

So do we like our dishwasher? Oh my, yes. It was a great purchase — even 10 months later.