I’ve been reading this book for nearly a year and a half. You know those books, usually fiction or memoir, that you pick up which ring so true in your life that you can’t put it down while at the same time you don’t want to pick it up? It’s just too much. Something about it makes you sad, you cry at every other chapter, there’s some kind of emotional involvement that you can’t avoid. Wild Mind didn’t create such sadness for me; it created frustration. I wanted to get through Goldberg’s writing memoir, I wanted to see what hint towards better writing she’d throw out next, but this book guided me through a year of discovering my purpose in writing, and it wasn’t until I graduated the course that I could finish the last fifty pages or so and move on to whatever’s next.

I recommend all writers find a book like this, one that doesn’t so much tell them why they write, but reminds them in a way they can’t quite explain. One that helps them learn how to embrace the skills they possess and utilize them positively. This book is not just a writer’s prompt book, but it’s not just a writer’s memoir. Goldberg is not mouthing off everything she does to write and telling you to do the exact same; she’s encouraging you to find your own way as she had to, showing you how she found her way and which experiences influenced her, and teaching you to find those guides in your life.

There are prompts every now and again, and you could open the book and go straight to those prompts (they’re in the table of contents), write them, close the book until you need another. But I don’t think you’d quite get the meaning of it; you’d be writing because someone told you to write, not because you needed to for yourself. Goldberg explains the prompt and then has you do it, and it was while reading that explanation that I found I yearned to write on it. I have writer’s prompts books that have words, pictures, sentences, ideas on pages, but I open them and I stare at the prompt for an hour trying to think of anything that could possibly become a story or blog post from it. Maybe my brain doesn’t accept prompts. I wrote on several of the prompts from Wild Mind, however, and I think it’s because they came with writing.

It was so difficult to get through it, so hard to keep picking it up. It was hard to come to terms with my own writing life, but when I finally did, I understood that Wild Mind helped me get there. Now what are my plans? To review a book on this blog at least once a month and find my “reviewing style.” To write a serial adventure novel on my personal domain. To build puzzles in my free time, allowing me to work through ideas that aren’t quite getting out on paper. The biggest speed bump I hope to cross over this year is allowing other people to read my unedited writing.

Perhaps Wild Mind won’t change your life, but if you’re a creative type struggling with the why and the how of your art, I recommend picking it up. Just give it a try.

This book was written either by someone who really loved Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia and found great inspiration from those and other magical books when he decided to write this, someone who really hated Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia and decided to show the world how ridiculously easy it is to write a magical adventure book, or doesn’t really care one way or the other and wanted to make a pretty penny because those books are popular and someone might pick it up and not care that it’s annoyingly similar. No, really, without knowing much background about the author or his motivations for the book (and I’m too lazy to look into it, feel free to do the research for me and comment :P), it’s too similar to not be intentional one way or the other. I just can’t tell if it’s a tribute or mockery.

Working in used books with a strict trade-in policy, I don’t get much exposure to general fiction that comes out in hardcover. We generally only take the already popular authors, the ones that are sworn to sell (Patterson, Hooper, Balogh, whatever), so when I saw this on the shelf I thought it would be a nice change of pace. Me? Read a new hardback book? It’s usually unheard of. Lately I’ve been into magical tales of wonder and adventure, but primarily kids’ magical tales of wonder and adventure; The Magicians appeared to jump out at me as something that might get me back into adult reading. (Not that there’s anything wrong with kids reading, and I plan to do a lot of it presently, but every so often you do miss seeing the word ‘fuck’ in print, I’m not going to lie.)

A socially awkward but extremely intelligent high schooler named Quentin finds himself being examined for magical prowess and gets admitted into a super secret magic institute that is not Hogwarts because it’s in New York and only has an English “feel” to it. All the while, he pines over the world of one of his favorite childhood books, The Chronicles of Fillory, or something like that, and wishes desperately that he’ll one day be able to visit and go on adventures and quests and beat up mean people, and all.

Long (long) story short, he’s sorted–er, grouped with some older kids (being so advanced, as he is), they play a sport that doesn’t seem to have any purpose to the book at all except perhaps to insert a skill into Quentin or one of the other characters that they otherwise couldn’t believably have which helps them defeat some evil later in the book, and, oh, they find a way into Fillory.

I kept reading, thinking, “okay, something interesting is bound to happen next, right?” and I was rewarded with plot elements that are never tied up, characters that are never seen again or were otherwise unnecessary, and a total repeat of the entire Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia except with different names, lots of cursing, and a bit of Tolkien thrown in.

I don’t read much fantasy, and this is why: There is a moment when most of the loose ends are brought back together, the bigger more demanding questions are answered, and characters are more or less safe or sound. This is not the end of the book. I know why books don’t end here, there’s always one or two other questions, or a character’s unwillingness to just stay put. Personally, if I ever write a fantasy/adventure novel, it’s just going to end there. No quest back home. There won’t be fifty more pages dedicated to healing and displaying how the hero can utilize all the fantastic things he learned on his quest. To me, those parts are the most boring to read (with the exception of Lord of the Rings, where I think it was written quite well, though I admit that sometimes I don’t even watch the end of the movie).

It’s at this point when I think: “When will this adventure end? I’m already done reading it.” I always want to close the book and start something else, and by rights I probably should… but I figure it’s so rare that I read a book like this that I might as well read it to the end.

Was The Magicians a bad book? No, it really wasn’t. Aside from the obvious copycat elements, the main characters were strongly developed, the description was beautifully executed, and I didn’t put it down after the first chapter, thinking: “This book is going to suck, I shouldn’t waste my time.” I wanted to keep reading not out of loyalty to something I’d started, but because it was well-composed. I want to read another of his books just for the writing style.

Do I otherwise recommend it? Probably not, unless you’re into this sort of thing and don’t care that it’s just like those other books… It’s opened for a sequel at the end, and that worries me; either I’ll have to read it, if I remember, or it’s just done open-ended and he did that out of spite for people like me who complain about things that aren’t quite sewn together well enough.

I needed a book that would warm up a hunger for writing. I needed something that would kick-start my juices and keep them flowing as well as they possibly could. It’s possible, maybe, that people write well–better, even–under stress. I can understand that; I wrote all my school papers last minute and turned in the first drafts as finals. I think it was the stress of time that got me going, though, and as a full-time employee with too much work to bring home, I no longer have the possibility of creating writing goals. I’ve never been good at long-term goals, and I’ve certainly never been good at “personal goals;” if other people aren’t counting on me, or if I’m not trudging along with a group of people (think Nanowrimo, which is currently in the back of my mind as well), I find it hard to stick to self-constructed goals and time frames.

My life has been one weird, big, understandably discomforting ball of stress the past few months. I moved out of my apartment and lost all my independence by moving in with my parents. I told everyone and convinced myself it was “just temporary,” only for “a few months;” I needed to “gather myself financially” and “figure things out.” It was all true, and still more or less is, except I didn’t count on my time at my parents’ house being so incredibly stressful. Among other reasons, I have no privacy, which makes it very difficult to read (they have the TV going almost 24/7, and as someone who spent the last year or more without television to even blare on in the background, it’s become a particularly irritating noise). Reading is my escape. Failing that, I like to write. However, I can’t write when I’m stressed, because there’s to much of the “else” on my mind to concentrate on anything specific.

This is also why I haven’t been able to write reviews (not that I’ve been reading much anyway). Or posts in my personal blog. (Plus my Internet has gone above and beyond all expectations in unreliability. It’s quite impressive.)

In any case, it seems to be picking up, maybe because of some things I can’t yet mention (they’re not set in stone), maybe because I’ve realized I need to take more time for me… I’ve been more creative lately, and might even have a redesign for this site soon. Most importantly, though, I’ve been reading. I finished some books I started before the summer began, and others I started and finished within a week. I’m happy it’s coming back to me, and I hope that means I can start writing here again.

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg has been a big help. I haven’t written on every prompt, but I’ve written on enough to make this book one of my Top 5 for any aspiring writers, and I quickly told all my writer friends about it as soon as I’d read just the first few chapters. (Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life is also on that list, as well as [your favorite book here], because it might always be the kind of inspiration you need to get something going.) Even if one of the prompts don’t get me, one of her tales does; I rarely pick up this book, even just to reread, and don’t find something pop into my head, some idea I can hash out. It’s all about sitting down and writing and ignoring that nagging itch that you’re not good at it, or it’s not worth it, or your ideas stink. In the end, they never do. You always feel a little proud, even if you’re afraid to show anyone. Wild Mind helps you conquer those fears and get your words out.

Also: the graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I can always count on him to respark some kind of hope that I’ll be able to sit through a whole book again, because I can never put his down. In the past month, my reading bug has come back (thankfully), and I’ve been reading some of those books about books I’ve collected in my many years of spending money on things I don’t necessarily need. Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg was an unexpected semi-thriller; I didn’t read further on the dust jacket than “Angel was a bookseller.” I do like the ones set in bookstores, despite this book’s claim that literary novels don’t sell. I couldn’t put this down, though the ending seemed quick. I thought a bit about that; the endings seem quick in a lot of the books I’ve been reading lately, and I wonder if that’s because I care about the characters and don’t want it to end, or because I’m actually recognizing a change in pace, a “rush” to get things done in time for the publication date or whatever else may have caused the book to end so abruptly. It seems like most of the books I’ve read have done that (though certainly not all of them). Do you find that most of what you read tends to feel rushed/abruptly end?

Sometime at the beginning of the summer I picked up The Glamorous (Double) Life of Isabella Bookbinder by Holly McQueen which was good to start, interesting as it went along, but annoying in the end. I don’t mean plotwise; it wasn’t like anything I’d read before, had the necessary twist. But I didn’t like the main character. I found her so annoying that I kept hoping that she’d fail in the end. Yes, that’s right; I wanted the heroine of the novel to fall. I wanted the villians to win! They did their job; they were written correctly. I wanted them to suffer as much as they deserved, but they were still plainly less irritating than Isabella Bookbinder, who lied to everyone in her life constantly, cared only about her appearance, and was actually incredibly stupid. All the same, I’ve always thought a book that gets a reaction out of someone must have been pretty well written (unless it was the bad writing which caused the reaction–not so in this case, unless you consider writing a disliked main character ‘bad writing’), so on my end it’s one of those “pick it up and see how you like it, though I didn’t really” recommendations.

Otherwise I’ve been getting rude comments about my reading of Mein Kampf (not a book to read on an airplane, apparently), I started Peter Rushforth’s Pinkerton’s Sister and quickly realized that since I’ve never read Jane Eyre I probably won’t understand it very well, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has finally made an appearance in my house and will likely be devoured soon. All in all, it’s been a terrible summer for my reading habits, but I hope this fall they’ll pick up and I can get back into reviewing again. I finally have a bedside lamp, and I plan to make very good use of it!

I agreed to host Edition 30 of the Bookworms Carnival; the theme I chose was “Books About Books.” I got quite a few post responses, all of which I enjoyed reading and I’m sure you will too!

Fiction

Jackie from Literary Escapism shares her thoughts on the book What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown, which, “had a very simple story that not only worked well, but completely sucked me in.”

Christina from Jackets and Covers “flew through the 324 pages” of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, as did Amanda from The Zen Leaf, as she shares in her review of the same book. Amanda also shares her thoughts on Lost in a Good Book by the same author, and she can’t wait to read the next in the series!

Heather from Age 30+ listened to People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and called it “best recorded book that [she has] listened to in quite some time.”

Cynthia from Catching Days writes a bit about Stories from Shakespeare and The Shadow of the Wind as she shares the path of an old book newly acquired.

Sarah from Puss Reboots shares her thoughts on the book The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay and points out that though there are flaws, the “connection [she] felt with the book was so strong [she didn't] care about any of them.”

I’d also like to share my thoughts on Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. “One moment I felt my heart constrict, the next my mouth was watering for some apricots, then I found myself feeling extremely triumphant as one of the characters defeated her demons and shone brightly.”

Nonfiction/Essays

Rebecca from Lost in Books read and reviewed Good Books Lately by Ellen Moore and Kira Stevens, which “gives greedy readers and book club members a lot to chew on.”

Rebecca from Rebecca Reads “loved the short insights into other’s lives” as she read The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson. Heather from Age 30+ calls this the “the perfect ‘go to’ book” in her review of the same book. She also shares her thoughts on Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky, which she LOVED enough for all-caps, and Being Written by William Conesc, which was “unlike anything [she'd] read before, and in a good way.”

Ana from Things Mean A Lot enjoyed the book Feeling Like a Kid by Jerry Griswold, and the “deep respect the author clearly has for children and the way they experience the world.”

Florinda from The 3 R’s Blog shares her thoughts on the book So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson, a “relatively fast, and very enjoyable, reading experience.”

Nicole from Linus’s Blanket was prepared to throw How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom “across the room a few times, but that’s what made this book so much fun for me. It was like having a spirited conversation with someone who’s really knowledgeable about the topic at hand.”

Ali from Worducopia shares some delicious looking cook books, including Read It and Eat It: A month-by-month guide to scintillating book club selections and mouthwatering menus by Sarah Gardner.

I’d also like to share my thoughts (however old :P) about Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s Ruined By Reading and How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard.

Next Edition

The next edition of the carnival is on Paranormal Fiction, which I’m also looking forward to. I don’t review a lot of it, but I do read some of it (in fact, I’m updating my books read list with J.R. Ward’s recent hardback, Lover Avenged, as I type this post :P). The deadline for submission is June 12, and is hosted by the Bookworms Carnival website. If you have anything to submit, the contact email is bookwormscarnival[@]gmail.com.

Hey kids! Phew, it’s been since January that I’ve said anything here, and for that I apologize. I’ve been reading, but I haven’t been catching up on any of my reviews, as I’ve been sort of taking an unannounced hiatus from blogging to focus on my offline life/work. I’m coming back, though, with many things to say about the books I’ve been reading and what I’ve been doing!

In the mean time, I’d like to take this opportunity to annouce that I’ll be hosting the 30th edition of the Bookworms Carnival, and my theme is Books About Books! So if you have anything to submit along those lines, please email me at admin [@] inthelouvre.org (take out the brackets, of course).

This includes (but is not limited to) memoirs on reading experiences, literary criticism, those “50 books you should read before you die” sort of guides, fiction works involving literary themes (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, as an example), etc. I’d even be interested in including links to your short stories involving booklovers or influential literature.

The deadline for submissions is May 22, and I’m looking forward to including your reviews, articles, thoughts, and ideas!

In other news, if you’re linking In the Louvre as a book blog, I’ve moved all the bookish entries over here and am using that domain as an experiment in fiction… sort of. :P In any case, change your links to Biblio.me if you want to keep up with my book thoughts!

Examples of Books About Books
I’ve had a few people email me asking exactly what I mean when I say “books about books,” so I’m providing a few examples. Read the descriptions to get a better idea of what I mean, and of course feel free to interpret this in your own way as well. :)

Nonfiction/Essay Types of Books

• A Passion for Books: A Book Lover’s Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Love & Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books by Harold Rabinowitz (Amazon.com)
• Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (Amazon.com)
• A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas A. Basbanes (Amazon.com)
• Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (Amazon.com)
• Only in Books: Writers, Readers & Bibliophiles on Their Passion by J. Kevin Graffagnino (Amazon.com)
• A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel (Amazon.com)

Some Fiction

• The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel by Diane Setterfield (Amazon.com)
• Firmin by Sam Savage (Amazon.com)
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (Amazon.com)
• The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl (Amazon.com)
• Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth (Amazon.com)

I’ve been meaning to write this review for about a month now, but then I started with Nanowrimo and decided that, hey, there’s love in my story, I might as well put this book to its fullest potential. So I did. And it was great.

Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant is a wonderful resource for first-time romance writers. As a writer of usually morbid fiction (I have a fascination with death, what can I say?), I find it extremely difficult to write romantic scenes or thread romantic storylines throughout my stories. This book not only helped me see those scenes from beginning to end, but it helped me work on the character sheets behind those romantic moments.

Who can do a book like this justice except by actually using it? I read it once through and considered reviewing it based on its “self help value” : That is, whether or not it seemed like it would be helpful to writers of romance, whether experienced or not. But then I thought of how much better it would be, and certainly how much more believable, if I told you about all the cool features from experience.

Before I go on about how this book saved my life (or at least, it saved my characters’ love lives), I want to address the “romance novel issue.” Yes, this is a guide for writing romance so, yes, most of the examples are taken from romance novels. These are the very same novels that my mom reads, and all my aunts, and I’m sure one day I’ll be reading them too even though right now I don’t find much interest in an entire story dedicated to the love between two people who, in any reality, would never have fallen in love. However, that doesn’t mean that these aren’t good examples for teaching someone to write a love scene. These are the masters, so whether you are writing your very first romance novel or your very first romance in a novel, this book can be applied.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way… As I mentioned, Grant uses excerpts from real, published, heard-of romance novels as examples, as well as quotes, tips, and advice from those authors. These bits are sprinkled throughout the book to illustrate examples of the issues Grant addresses when writing romance.

First, we are taken through the “ingredients” of a romance novel: The book shows us how to create a believable heroine and a flawed hero whom she loves nonetheless. We are introduced to the necessity of conflict in the plot, and it isn’t always going to be someone’s misplaced prejudice. Next, we start the story, with tips on ideas and where to get them. I think one of the most commonly asked question of a writer is: Where do you get your ideas/inspiration? If you’ve ever wanted to be a writer of romance, this book might be just the thing to help you get there.

Much of the book is then dedicated to character development and conflict. As someone with experience in writing, I was impressed with the huge chunk given to this topic; it’s quite important, actually. First-time writers don’t quite grasp the necessity of good character development until they’ve climbed into their novel and realized that, wait, they know nothing about the people they’re trying to bring to life… And they usually have to take a few steps back to get into it. From personality and development to character journals and interviews, and all the way through conflict and character territory, this helpful guide covers it all.

And you’re thinking: What about setting? Plot!? Yes, well, they’re important also, I have to admit, but the emphasis on character development is immense because your characters are really the elements driving the story. Writing Romance illustrates that very well.

As if that weren’t enough, the book teaches its reader a bit about computers and what programs are best for writing, how to research a novel (most novels require research, believe it or not), writer’s block, developing your voice, and other writing tips. I said before (and I’m sure I’ll say it again before I’m done) that this is an invaluable resource for writers of romance. However, I might also add that this is equally necessary for writers of fiction in general; you need not be writing romance for some well-earned tips on how to conquer blank moments. It happens a lot that I find myself sitting in front of the computer screen, words from yesterday staring at me, badgering me, yet I’m completely incapable of pulling any more out of mind and onto the page.

On top of the romance tips, writing tips, genre and publishing tips, the book also comes with a CD! I admit I didn’t use it all, but what I found useful was quite so. Included on the CD are MP3 files of Vanessa Grant’s seminars “Writing Romance” and “A Writer’s Creativity,” templates for backstory ideas, book events, book formatting, book notes, character worksheets, links to helpful websites, and more. I know I’m starting to sound like a cheesey ad, but you must understand that my personality type dictates that I get excited about things like this. I have had trouble with writing guides before, but this is so well organized and down-to-earth that I can’t help but get just a little ecstatic about the benefits.

So, while I’m still very awkward with the love-writing, Writing Romance has definitely improved my comfort with it. This is a resource I’m not going to get rid of any time soon, and I’m sure as I continue to work in this area of my writing, Grant’s book will only help me produce better, more-believable love scenes.

Once again I find myself asking… myself… why I hadn’t already read a book. This happens a lot in my life, especially for books that I’ve had for quite some time but never seemed to get around to reading. I grew up watching the movie and enjoying it, loving every minute in fact, even those gross kissing parts. So why hadn’t I ever read the book? Maybe I was afraid it would be disappointing compared to the childhood love and attachment to The Movie. And, yes, it was somewhat different from The Movie, but somehow it was improved.

I’m going to admit this right here and now: I have a problem with autobiographical novels. I don’t know if that’s the right word for it, but I’m talking authors who use themselves as characters but describe things that haven’t ever really happened in their lives in such a way that it makes the reader believe these things did, actually, happen. I read a graphic novel recently that did the same thing (It’s A Good Life if you Don’t Weaken by Seth) and it wasn’t until I came home and looked it up on Wikipedia that I realized it was entirely fiction. Yet Seth is the main character and narrator, telling the story as if it really happened. This happens in The Princess Bride also, and for a time I had difficulty discerning what was fiction, and what was not.

I love them. They are a fantastic art form and I only hope that I can one day glamorize my life to the point of making it very interesting and yet believable. Until then, I’ll read others’ autobiographical novels and believe them to be truth.

In the back of my mind, I knew that S. Morgenstern didn’t exist, really, because wouldn’t everyone have known about him by now? I mean, with this book being out for as long as it has, and the popularity of the movie, surely the original work would have surfaced and become exceedingly popular. Yet Goldman put himself in there so believably that I had to stop and wonder. (When he started talking about Stephen King writing Buttercup’s Baby, I rolled my eyes and laughed at my own stupidity. However, interesting to note, the depiction of King as a character in this novel didn’t differ very much from his character in Who’s Killing All the Great Writers of America? by Robert Kaplow.)

Oh, sorry, you might not know what I’m talking about. Even though I can now point my finger, laugh, and say, “You haven’t read The Princess Bride yet? What kind of 80’s child are you?” I realize that I’ve only been able to say that for a month, which isn’t very long. The book is presented as the abridged “good parts” version of S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure, etc, and so on. Goldman talks a bit about why he decided that a “good parts” version needed to be made (the unabridged version was, apparently, boring, for the most part), then launches into the book. Every so often he’ll break into the story with italicized text, explaining bits and pieces about S. Morgenstern’s motivations, Goldman’s thoughts, why he cut out certain parts, and otherwise interesting things. The story ends, and Goldman continues to talk about what life was like after his abridgement of the famous book. Then, depending on when your copy was published, he might include an explanation of Buttercup’s Baby and the first abridged chapter. (I didn’t get through it, because I found it boring.)

As I said, it’s believable. Remember that part in the movie where Westly and Buttercup reunite, in a ravine, shortly before entering the Fire Swamp? Well, Goldman claims that he wrote a “better” reunion scene there, as S. Morgenstern didn’t include one. There were some issues with his editor, and they decided to leave his version out. He mentions this so he can then invite his readers to write to a certain address to obtain the reunion scene at their expense. It’s all very elaborate. Apparently a slew of people wrote in, and, in return, received a formal letter from the publisher explaining that at that time it wasn’t possible. I suppose they’re still receiving similar letters. (I wrote in to see what would happen, but my letter came back to me.)

All in all, the book was good, and I heartily recommend it, even to people who don’t think they like fantasy, and especially to people who didn’t like the movie (you may find something you enjoy better in the book).

I picked up Soup for Every Body by Joanna Pruess and Lauren Braun because I’m a big fan of soup. Okay, I admit, I’d never actually made soup myself before, and I didn’t order it every time I went to a restaurant, but I was determined to learn some basic soup-making techniques. I tried two of the recipes, and made the final test my ability to make a tasty soup on my own.

I’m pretty inept when it comes to cooking. I am an awesome baker, and some people have told me I make the best brownies. I have a lot of fun making cookie cutters and I always find an excuse to make something, whether it be cookies (like dinosaur cookies for Michael Crichton’s death, leaf-shaped colored cookies for a fall birthday, and star and moon cookies for a Paper Moon party) or mini pies for March 14 (Pi Day). I have no problems with that. Cooking? Stove top? Meat loaf? I’m lost.

Soup for Every Body was appealing because it includes low carb soups, high protein soups, vegetarian soups, and more. I was really looking forward to both healthy soups and not-so-healthy ones, quick ones, fun ones, and ones that would fill me up and keep me full. This book was not disappointing in that respect. There are tons of attractive soups in here. When I’m in better soup-making moods, I’ll probably try the Avocado Guacamole Soup, Triple Mushroom, Creamy Pumpkin, Curried Chicken & Spinach Soup, or even some of the surprising fruit soups, like Cantaloupe Soup or Minted Watermelon Soup. With full color photographs artfully displaying each soup, this book has a wide variety of possiblities for fun soup-time in the kitchen.

The only problem? I’m a first time soup maker. I didn’t know what a saucepan was when I started out, and I’m still not sure that the pot I’m using is a “deep casserole dish.” What I have in front of me is a soup cookbook for experienced cooks; it doesn’t quite explain the materials, doesn’t go into much detail about how you’re supposed to do things, and keeps you completely in the dark when it comes to variations that would taste divine. I’m beginning to realize that these are qualities I like in a cookbook. For this one, I had to look online to figure out how to do everything. If I ever wrote a cookbook, I think I’d have a chapter in the beginning for starters, explaining basic processes (like skinning potatoes) and having cute cartoon images of supplies mentioned. We aren’t all veteran cookers, and I hate to have to pick up a kids cookbook just to learn.

That said, the two soups I did make were absolutely delicious. We had tons of sausages (still do), donated to us from a friend whose freezer decided to die. It made sense, then, to try the Sausage, Kale & Potato Soup. We’re not big fans of kale, Richard and I; he hates anything green and I associate it with rabbit food (it’s our bunny’s favorite). That said, it blended perfectly well with this soup, giving an otherwise bland flavor and color a springy touch. You cook your sausage, kale, and garlic, then add them to chicken stock, waiting patiently for the oncoming potatoes. Those potatoes, which you’ve skinned and boiled, are lumpy and scrumptious, and plop right into your mix. The best part and all the flavor comes from the tablespoon of balsamic vinegar that you add near the end, which changes the color of the whole soup and leaves a resonating smell.

The recipe went well, though I had to learn a few things just to make it; I’m thankful, though, because I learned a few tricks that’ll help me with future cooking (such as skinning potatoes really quickly and without much mess). Though, again, I have the Internet to thank, not the cookbook. The only difficulty I had with it in the end was the fact that they had you soak the kale in the sausage fat (gross, no thanks!) and the way the recipe is written, it’s not very soupy at all. I ended up having to add about 4 cups extra of potato water just to make the kale float. It was excellent, however, and extremely full of flavor. I’ll probably make it again sometime, but with spinach instead of kale.

Next, I went for a Sweet Potato, Caramelized Onion & Apple Cider Soup. Yes, it was just as delicious as it sounds! However, from it, I obtained a new sweet potato recipe rather than a new soup recipe. It couldn’t have been my fault; I followed the directions exactly this time. Yet, again, the soup came out unsoupy. It was as thick as mashed potatoes. I had to add 8 extra cups of chicken stock this time to get it to a point where it was remotely soupy, and even then, it turned more into mush if you let it sit for five minutes. Richard didn’t like this one at all, as apparently he dislikes sweet potatos (even though he’s the one who requested this one!), but I found it fantastic. I will definitely be using it in the future as a sweet potato recipe, and might even make it for Thanksgiving this year!

The potatoes (or yams, if you prefer) are baked while you saute the onions with butter. The onions, sweet potatoes (once they’re done) and apple cider blend together to make a rich, fluffy orange substance that smells amazing. Then you add molasses which, again, just as the balsamic vinegar did, changes the color a bit, yet makes the soup all that much better. Add your stock, 8 cups extra if you want it to resemble a soup, and serve. As the photo shows, I also sprinkled almonds on the top with a bit of sage leaves for effect, but it’s not necessary and doesn’t really add anything to the taste.

Right now, as I write this entry, I am enjoying what I call Improvisation Soup, AKA I Hope This Isn’t Totally Disgusting, a title which can be applied to any experiment in the kitchen. It’s actually not that bad, though it lacks in flavor a bit. I added a chicken sauteed in lemon and garlic, seasoned with cinnamon (because I’m weird and I love chicken seasoned with cinnamon) to five boiled and cut potatoes, then sprinkled some lightly cooked spinach in. At the moment, the chicken stock carries all of the flavor, and I think if I might have added some balsamic vinegar it would punch me in the gut and make me smile, but I didn’t have any left. (It’s basically the same recipe as the kale one, except with spinach and chicken instead of kale and sausage. But I made it from scratch without a recipe book, which was the point, so it works out.) It’s clear that I have a long way to go before I can truly start making up my own delicious recipes, but until then I hope that my Improvisation Soups will come out edible.

All in all, Soup for Every Body was a satisfactory cookbook, though it’s clearly written for experienced cookers. While I will be making more soups from it (probably), it’s not a permanent part of my collection now. I’m disappointed in the inconsistency of the soups—how they come out un-soupy—but a veteran soup-maker might find the cookbook wonderful.

Like most non-believers, I don’t think of the Bible as anything particularly spectacular. To me, it’s a literary work, mostly character-driven, that says a lot about the culture and history of people a long time ago. I read it in the same way I read history books in school; though those were supposedly driven by “fact,” I knew they were biased and portrayed historical characters in whatever way they thought necessary for American high school students. Likewise, the Bible defines history through the eyes of religious people, who believed that God told them to write down the words so many people hold true.

When I got the sneak-peek of Bible Illuminated, The Book: New Testament, I talked a little bit about young adults and how glorious the Bible market is being to them. You can find a Bible in pretty much any shape or size, depending on your interest, and to boot you’ll probably find some helpful tips for reading the thing, along with study questions and fun facts. I had a few bibles like that growing up, as my parents are Methodist, but they never really spoke to me. I didn’t get my literary viewpoint until college, while studying chapters of the Bible as if they were mythology.

Now with Bible Illuminated in my hands, however, I wonder if my view on the Bible wouldn’t have been different. I’m not saying it would have converted me, but it presents the words inside as if they were living, breathing text, by associating them with vivid, provocative photographs. This book has brought the Bible to life in a way that no one has been able to before, to my knowledge; I doubt that a series of movies dedicated to each book would have the effect that some of these photographs do.

When I first opened the package, I was a little put off by it. I’d known that the book contained full-color, glossy, magazine-like pages, but I didn’t realize just how much it would actually resemble a magazine. At first, I just shrugged it off, but as I flipped past photos of Bono, Al Gore, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and children with sad eyes, I realized the effect of it. This isn’t a huge, thick book that glowers over a room, demanding to be read. This isn’t something to shy away from. It’s open, welcoming, and by presenting itself in the form of a magazine, you want to pick it up and flip through it. And while you’re doing that, highlighted text jumps out at you, causing you to stop and read. Given the option of a full-color magazine and a black-and-white hardcover book, which would you rather pick up, with only a few moments to spare?

Of course, there is some danger in it. It’s great for showing off, for looking through when you have some time to kill, maybe even reading for bits of time. But magazines aren’t designed to devour in one sitting, and thus this book isn’t formatted in such a way where you would curl up with it on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Perhaps, though, that adds to the appeal. It encourages you to set it aside so that you can pick it up later, making your experience of this bible last over time; you don’t engulf it all at once, but you find yourself coming back to it every so often.

If the goal was to make a Bible that grabbed the attention of browsers, forcing them to curiously flip through the pages time and again, I believe that the goal was accomplished. Though comparably the size of most coffee-table books, I predict that this is not one that will find itself covered by mountains of magazines, bills, and coffee stains.

I admit I was excited to read my sneak-peek copy of Bible Illuminated, The Book: New Testament. The modern, illustrated bible contains provocative, contemporary photographs alongside the Good News Translation of the New Testament. According to the book description, Bible Illuminated is “set in running text with no verses, inviting readers to step into the Bible and experience it in a whole new way.”

As a bookseller in the used book market, I see more old books than I do new ones, but what always strikes me as interesting is the way bibles are packaged throughout the years. A student bible from fifteen years ago might have had a hip, snazzy cover attuned to the time, but it’s rare that I see the options young people are given today. A young adult could walk into a chain bookstore today and find bibles that are bound impressively, from pink leather pocket books to larger blue-jean dust jackets with pockets actually built into them. What’s inside, however, is always the same (saving, of course, different translations and the study questions that sometimes come with them).

Bible Illuminated is going to change that. Though it is not marketed directly towards young adults, the cover might appeal more to a younger person. It’s dark, showing a pale creature with black eyeshadow. The logo vaguely resembles an eyebrow piercing in its position. I’m willing to bet that this cover wasn’t a mistake; perhaps this new take on presenting the Bible did have younger adults in mind. It’s assumed, however, that this particular interpretation of the Bible has been created for both believers and nonbelievers in an attempt to share the words in a new, inventive way.

Inside, the book is designed like a magazine with full-color glossy photos and skinny blocks of text. The difference in presentation is in the quotes and yellow highlighted phrases, set off to draw attention to them. These aren’t the red words of Jesus, they’re merely bits and pieces that say something particularly important or moving. The photographs, however, are what make the book. In Matthew, one finds a photograph of a man standing behind a bullet-holed window following the fatal shooting of two African American students at Jackson State College in 1970. He appears to be looking down, his eyes in shadow on top of an unsmiling face. Riddled with the shattered glass around the bullet holes, a quote:

“But now I tell you, do not take revenge
on someone who wrongs you.
if anyone slaps you on the right cheek,
let him slap your left cheek too.”

These are not the same sorts of illuminations we are used to; when I think of an illuminated Bible, I think of bright, vivid colors, gold, silver, and all drawn carefully by the hand of someone long ago. Instead, Bible Illuminated gives us pictures from our memory and associates those with the words of the Bible, clearing any doubt that the words are out of date and cannot be applied to life as it is today. The vivid detail still exists, but it enlightens us in a new way.

“It does not matter! I am happy about it-just so Christ is preached in every way possible, whether from wrong or right motives.”

Althought not all the images are as touching or emotional as the first described, they’re all worthy of the well-known phrase that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Look, he is coming on the clouds! Everyone will see him, including those who pierced him. All peoples on earth will mourn over him. So shall it be!”