a new year

Perhaps this blog is just a list of what I am reading and perhaps you will write about what you are reading, too. Boring? Like making public my small leisure time activities? We'll see . . .

I have decided that the kind of bread I enjoy is too pricey, so I'm baking bread twice a week for my family and my reading is tending toward "foodie" books. I feel like I have company in the kitchen, if only in my mind. Julie and Julia, My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell is a funny, quick read full of swearing, praise, and a rare honest take on New York living. It just won the Blooker literary prize. The other foodie book is Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, one of the most poignant essayists living today. It was interesting reading Moon before reading Julia because Moon takes place before September 11, mostly in Paris but also referencing New York and other cities where Gopnik has lived. Whereas Julia takes place afterwards, in New York, while Powell is working in an office next to Ground Zero (when she isn't at the butcher or fighting mayonaise in her hot kitchen), and also overseas through excerpted letters and papers by/about Julia Child.