Ramble: Books and E-Books

I own seventeen e-books. (And how do you spell and punctuate that word?!)

On principle, I disapprove of e-books. The fact that my copy of the book will go away when the technology goes away, the fact that I can't bring them to the used bookstore, the fact that I can't lend them or only lend them so many times, the fact that some books could go to a pure e-book publication and that when those books go out of copyright they could be flat-out lost forever. All that is bad.

But I downloaded the Kindle reader for Mac and for my phone, and bought a cheap out-of-copyright e-book to play with them with. And then I bought another e-book at a moderately discounted price. And then I bought one at the ridiculous (given the extremely low per-unit cost for e-books) full price.

And now, a few months later, I have seventeen of the things. Three technical, two how-to, one self-help, one reference, five novels, three biographical nonfiction, two "other nonfiction."

So I disapprove of them, but I have seventeen, and I'm reading more than I was before, and reading relatively new books (which I rarely did before), and authors are making more money from me than before, because I used to mostly buy used books. So, well, maybe it's not such a bad thing. Except financially, for me. Well, and for my local bookstore. Eep.

My original plan, as much as it could be detected mixed in with my denial that I was buying e-books at all, was to restrict my electronic buying only to those books that I don't want to own permanently in paper form anyway. There are a lot of these. The shelves are full, and while I never actually want to get rid of any book, most books must go, promptly after I've read them. Or if they stay, something else must go. Turning my head left and right, I see two stacks, representing about fifteen books, that are destined for the used bookstore. And that's just what hasn't been boxed yet.

Come to think of it, fifteen is almost the count of what I've read for the 100+ Reading Challenge. So given that some of my 100+ books were electronic, and assuming that I actually drag myself to the used bookstore, I'm more than keeping up with one book in, one book out. Yay me!

Um. Where was I? Oh, yes. The e-book versus paper judgement has failed three times, which is a rather high rate. I bought Betsy Lerner's Forest For The Trees (one of the "other nonfiction", about writing, though there's plenty of biographical stuff in there too) in e-book form, and I liked it so much that now I want it permanently.

I should have learned my lesson, but, no, I just downloaded and finished her Food and Loathing, and while I'm letting my impressions settle out before I rush to spend more money, I think I'll want a paper copy of that one, too. I think that my recent post about writing while grumpy/cranky/angry reminded me of Betsy Lerner and sent me looking for her latest book--while Forest For The Trees wasn't all that grumpy, her blog often is, and so is Food and Loathing, and I love her writing, grumpy or non. It makes me wonder if, like it or not, I should grab a keyboard when I'm gnashing my teeth and see what comes out.

And I'm in the middle of Dominique Browning's Slow Love, and judging from my fondness for two of her other books (Paths of Desire and Around the House and in the Garden) I'm also going to want that in paper form. (As a side note, I find myself wondering if I should email to the author that her website makes it impossible to link to a single specific book. Would she care?)

So, really, I have no grounds for claiming surprise in the last two cases. Frankly, I just wanted the books and I wanted them now, so I downloaded them.  I tell myself that I'm supporting the author. And the publisher--I have no problem supporting publishers either, I'm just more excited about supporting the authors. And by buying the things a second time on paper, I can even ease my guilt about the local bookstore, because I can order them there. So, really, everybody but my pocket wins. That'll have to be good enough.

Roundup: Kindle review from All I Am - A Redhead.

Image: By Andreas Praefcke. Wikimedia Commons.

100+ Books: This year's strategy

This year, on the 100+ Book Challenge, I'm going to cheat.

OK, not so much cheat as, well, um... cheat. That is, I will read 100+ books, but, see, there are a lot of children's books that I love and want to read again. Harriet the Spy, Ramona the Pest, everything by Robert McClosky, Goldie the Dollmaker, all of the Rumer Godden children's books, and so on and so on. So I've decided that in any week that I don't read my quota of two books, I'll fill in with a children's book that I've been wanting to re-read anyway, or one that I've always wanted to read. And, yes, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel counts.

I don't even consider children's chapter books to be cheating--much. There are many adult books that are as quick and easy to chew as many children's books. But the picture books, yeah, that's cheating, and I'll be counting them anyway.

Onward!

Image: By Nevit Dimen. Wikimedia Commons.

Gardening: Leaves and Sun Denial

There's an area toward the back and side of the house that we've designated the vegetable garden. It's convenient to the back door, nestled into the fence, with a nice newish crazypaved path. We even added a light to enable evening herb-snipping. There's just one problem: It doesn't get full sun. Vegetables are supposed to have full sun. I know this. I believe this. But I continue to try to grow edibles in this space. They don't all fail - raspberries and herbs grow there, we had a couple of decent crops of snap beans, and rainbow chard put out a few leaves. And the shade is deciduous, so there will be a lot more sun from late fall to early spring.

So I thought, greens. Cold-weather greens while it's cold and sunny, and lettuce and other heat-sensitive greens while it's hot and shaded. This could give me a chance to use some of the information in various garden books that make me hungry. Joy Larkcom's The Salad Garden, for example, and her even more interesting Oriental Vegetables. And The Harrowsmith Salad Garden, by Turid Forsyth and Marilyn Simonds Mohr, always makes me feel as if I'm already tasting garlic and vineger and olive oil. And Rosalind Creasy's Edible Landscaping books - I have a battered old original, I believe from before they were broken up into many smaller books, and the pictures of the French and German gardens in particular always make me want to plant something.

The problem is that even greens tend to fail for me, a fact that I find inexplicable given the success of the bush beans, which I could have sworn were more sun-demanding than lettuce. So I plan to take a proper geek experimental approach, choosing several, or maybe more like a dozen, different leafy plants and planting examples of each in all of the different sunny or shady areas of the vegetable garden, plus perhaps a few more spots around the yard. I'll plant them at an inappropriately close spacing, because the goal of this experiment is to see if the plants thrive at all - if a plant crowds out of its four-inch spacing, it's already doing better than the average lettuce plant that I put in.

So. That's the plan. There will be updates.

Image: By Forest & Kim Starr. Wikimedia Commons.

Books: The unexpectedly feminist Mousewife

The Mousewife was written in 1967. It's a children's book, a fraction longer than a picture book, that took me eight minutes to read. I'm counting it toward my 100+ books anyway, because it's the first book in several weeks that's driven me to actually post any thoughts.

I was startled by it, because I expected something from this period to be cute and cuddly and describe the happy mousewife piling up corn for her mousebabies, and probably worrying about a cat or a ferret or something. But I know Rumer Godden; I should have known to expect more than that.

Because that's not the plot. That is, the mousebabies and the food are there, but this mousewife longs for something more than her usual existence, where "there are so many children and crumbs and bits of fluff to think of." Her husband disapproves; he tells her, "I think about cheese. Why don't you think about cheese?" He bites her on the ear for venturing too far from the mouse hole, but she ventures all the same.

If I tell you any more, I'll have told you the whole plot - it is, after all, a picture book. It's a lovely little book, with a more ambitious, less cuddly, message than I expected.

Image: By Madhur d'Silva. Wikimedia Commons.

Books: Children's Books Continued

I love children's books. In the past few days, I've been collecting them like squirrel nuts. In addition to those listed in my recent post, I've added:

• The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor. This is written the "true story" of Alice and her exile from Wonderland.
• Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, by R.L. LaFevers. The adventures of an eleven year old that one summary describes as a combination of Nancy Drew and Indiana Jones. It was on the "staff picks" shelf at my local bookstore.

Anyone have any others to suggest?

Image: By John McIntosh. Wikimedia Commons.

Reading: Children's Books

Late in my 100+ Reading Challenge post, I speculated about cheating on the challenge by reading children's books. I've decided that that's a dandy strategy.

So I'll shortly have my hands on:

• Missing Melinda, by Jacqueline Jackson. I loved this book, about a pair of twins that were named Cordelia and Ophelia through no fault of their own, investigating the strangeness around a stolen doll named Melinda.
• The Changeling, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. About two girls, outcasts in different ways, and the fictional world that they create. I associate this book with an essay-writing contest that I participated in in junior high or possibly high school. In the timed limits of the contest, I couldn't come up with anything to say about a book likely to impress the judges - The Scarlet Letter, say - so I wrote about The Changeling instead. It was a losing strategy, of course. But I rather wish that I had the essay.
• The Velvet Room, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I remember loving this book, but I can't remember a thing about it. I'll report back when I read it again.
• The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield. I've never touched this one, but so many of the other books in the New York Review Children's collection are wonderful that it seems worthwhile to try them all.
• The Mousewife, by Rumer Godden. Rumer Godden may be my favorite author, and I don't recall ever reading this one. So it's about time.

Image: By Ivana Halabalova. Wikimedia Commons.

BOTD: The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart (And a ramble about children's books as books.)

Yep, The Mysterious Benedict Society is a children's book. But a fat one, so I feel no guilt about counting it as one of my 100+.

Summary: Four gifted children experience alarmingly special opportunities.

Rapid Fire: Emergency. Black pawn. Trick questions. Green plaid. Hair remover. New school. Kaleidoscope. Narcolepsy. Cafeteria food. Personal hygiene. Poison apples, poison worms. Fly straight and right. Snakes and dogs.

First Paragraph Score: 3.5/5. I should be giving it a low score - it has many of the flaws that I criticize. But it made me hurry to turn the page to read the end of the paragraph, so it's a success, even if I don't understand why.

Overall Score: 3.5/5 for a children's book, 2.5/5 for books in general.

Recommendation: Worth reading. Worth buying. I'm buying the sequels and reading them, too.

The split score above made me think of books that transcend "children's bookness", becoming unarguably great books no matter what the reader's age. In my own lists, this includes Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Harriet the Spy and Ramona the Pest and much of Roald Dah's work and much of Rumer Godden's work, including The Doll's House, and plenty of others. Harry Potter probably qualifies, too, but I need a little more time to make up my mind.

This book, while very good, isn't in that category - it's still primarily a children's book. I think that its author might be able to achieve that transcendence, but he hasn't yet in this one.

I think that this is largely because the book lapses, too often, into an adult point of view. It's the viewpoint of someone who loves and admires the child characters, but who is, all the same, separate from them.

Just one example:

Part of Kate believed this - a very important part, for Kate's sense of invincibility was the main thing that had sustained her all her young life alone. But another part did not believe this - and it, too, was an important part, for unless you know about this part it is impossible to understand how brave a thing Kate was about to do.

The speaker loves and admires Kate, but he's still putting himself in a position outside of her, a position where it's appropriate for him to analyze and evaluate her. He's not inside. In Ramona The Pest, I don't need an explanation of why Ramona feels the way that she does about, for example, that red ribbon. I feel it, in my gut. I'm inside.

The book is also a little too protective. The best children's books often have a mercilessness about them or, to be overblown about it, a savagery. Alice in Wonderland has this, and Roald Dahl's books do. The Oz books don't, and the Oz books, to me, also don't "transcend". This book seems to worry about frightening or upsetting the child reader, about maintaining some reliably decent touchstones in the world. And I think that that protectiveness is a flaw.

Also, it appears that the author wants to teach us things. That's not inherently wrong, but when it's true, I think that the original outline of the lesson needs to be very carefully and thoroughly erased. Here, I can see traces of the original checklist through the story. Demonstrate the character flaws, and how they have value in the right situation. Check. Demonstrate how very different people can form friendships. Check. Demonstrate that people often have reasons for their poor behavior. Check.

It's protective. It's loving. It tries to teach. I suppose that's why I chose that illustration up there for this post, given that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the book itself. And while all of that is admirable, it's not what makes the greatest children's books. This book is very good, but it's firmly within its niche.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.

BOTD: Death of an Old Goat, by Robert Barnard

Summary: An elderly Oxford professor's visit to an Australian university ends very badly.

Rapid Fire: Sydney-Brisbane Express. Tea and buns. Obliging housewives. Five-fingered discount. Spaghetti Neapolitan. Dusky Maiden. Two-wheelers. Wine and cheese.

First Paragraph Score: 3/5

Overall Score: 3.5/5

Recommendation: Every Robert Barnard book is worth reading. However, some of his books draw you into the characters and make you care, and some just draw you into his very good writing and satire, and leave you cold to the characters. This is one of the second group, so while I would recommend it, it's not one that I'd suggest starting with.

Photo: By Cfitzart. Wikimedia Commons.

Books: 100+ Reading Challenge

J. Kaye's Book Blog runs a "100+ Reading Challenge", a challenge to read one hundred (or more) books during the year. Reviews are optional.

I'm going to give it a try. I'll log the books in this post, and if I review them, I'll link to the review. (And the badge, linked to this post, is down at the bottom left of the blog.)

Onward!

Since I tend to read multiple books at once, I'm going to have three lists here: What I'm thinking of reading, what I'm reading, and what I've read. And just to make it more interesting to me, I'm going to enter start and finish dates.

Under Consideration:
(So I don't forget what I'm thinking of reading.)
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and the other three.
One Man's Garden, and Henry Mitchell's other two books. It's been a few years since I read them all the way through.
The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor.
The Crazy School, by Cornelia Read.
Missing Melinda, by Jacqueline Jackson.
The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield.
The Changeling, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.


Pending or In Progress:

American Tales, by Calvin Trillin. Started 4/3

Complete:

• 1: Death of an Old Goat, by Robert Barnard (Started ??, Finished 1/17)
• 2: The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart (Started 1/15, finished 1/21)
• 3: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, by Robert C. O'Brien (Started 1/17, finished 1/23)
• (I know, but I like children's books.)
• 4: The Killings on Jubilee Terrace, by Robert Barnard (Started 1/17, finished 1/29)
• 5: The Remains of The Dead, by Wendy Roberts. (Started 1/30, finished 1/31)
• 6: Miss Manners' Guide To A Surprisingly Dignified Wedding, by Judith Martin and Jacobina Martin (Started 2/5, finished 2/9)
• 7: Something Missing, by Matthew Dicks. Started ??, finished 3/5.
• 8: A New Leash On Death, by Susan Conant. Started 3/9, finished 3/12.
• 9. Dead and Doggone, by Susan Conant. Started 3/13, finished 3/13.
• 10. A Bite of Death, by Susan Conant. Started ??, finished 3/19.
• 11. Paws Before Dying, by Susan Conant. Not a clue when.
• 12. The Mirror Crack'd, by Agatha Christie. Stared ~4/1, finished 4/3
• 13. Elephants Can Remember, by Agatha Christie. Started 4/3, finished ??.
• 14. There Is A Tide..., by Agatha Christie.
• 15. Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers.
• 16. The Masters of the House, by Robert Barnard. Started 4/24, finished 5/1.
• 17. Hallowe'en Party, by Agatha Christie. Started 4/30, finished 5/2.
• 18. The Mousewife, by Rumer Godden. Started 5/3 at 1:00 pm, finished 5/3 at 1:08 pm. I declare that it counts, anyway.
• 19. Spence at Marlby Manor, by Michael Allen. Finished 5/6.
• 20. Meet the Austins by Madeline L'Engle. Started 5/3ish, finished 5/9.
• 21. Shattered Silk, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 5/12.
• 22. The Murder At The Vicarage, by Agatha Christie. Finished 5/15.
• 23. The Thoughtful Dresser, by Linda Grant. Started 5/14, finished 5/15.
• 24. Funerals are Fatal, by Agatha Christie. Started 5/15.
• 25. The Language of Bees, by Laurie R. King. Finished 5/29.
• 26. Postern of Fate, by Agatha Christie. Finished 5/29 or so.
• 27. The Terrible Tide, by Alisa Craig. Finished 5/30 or so.
• 28. Suddenly, In Her Sorbet, by Joyce Christmas. Finished 5/31.
• 29. Vanish With The Rose, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 6/5.
• 30. Simply to Die For, by Joyce Christmas. Finished 6/6.
• 31. A Fete Worse Than Death, by Joyce Christmas. Finished 6/9.
• 32. Wait For What Will Come, by Barbara Michaels. Finished ~ 6/16.
• 33. Friend or Faux, by Joyce Christmas. Finished 6/21.
• 34. Blanche On The Lam, by Barbara Neely. Started and finished 6/26.
• 35. Dust, by Martha Grimes. Finished 6/27.
• 36. Smoke and Mirrors, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 7/5.
• 37. The Winds Of Change, by Martha Grimes. Finished 7/5.
• 38. Search the Shadows, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 7/6.
• 39: The Love Talker, by Elizabeth Peters. Finished 7/7.
• 40. House of Many Shadows, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 7/8.
• 41. Prince of Darkness, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 7/10.
• 42. Witch, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 7/10.
• 43. The Skeleton In The Grass, by Robert Barnard. Finished 7/11.
• 44. Stuff, by Frost and Steketee.
• 45. The Time Travelers, by Linda Buckley-Archer
• 46. The Time Thief, by Linda Buckley-Archer.
• 47. Green Trigger Fingers, by John Sherwood.
• 48. The Pavilion, by Hilda Lawrence. Finished 7/30.
• 49. The Mantrap Garden, by John Sherwood. Finished 8/6.
• 50. Women Who Eat, edited by Leslie Miller. Finished 8/7.
• 51. Street of the Five Moons, by Elizabeth Peters. Finished 8/9.
• 52. Menacing Groves, by John Sherwood. Finished 8/15.
• 53. A Bouquet of Thorns, by John Sherwood.
• 54. Flowers of Evil, by John Sherwood.
• 55. The Greengage Summer, by Rumer Godden. Finished Labor Day weekend.
• 56. Jumper, by Steven Gould. Finished Labor Day weekend.
• 57. Storm Front, by Jim Butcher. Finished Labor Day weekend.
• 58. The Dancing Floor, by Barbara Michaels. Finished Labor Day weekend.
• 59. The Velvet Room, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. 
• 60. Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher.
• 61. Black Rainbow, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 9/19.
• 62. The Wizard's Daughter, by Barbara Michaels.
• 63. Wildside, by Steven Gould. Finished 9/26.
• 64. Patriot's Dream, by Barbara Michaels. Finished 9/28.
• 65. Add A Pinch of Cyanide, by Emma Page. Finished 10/5.
• 66. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. Finished 10/6.
• 67. Death Calls The Tune, by M. D. Lake. Finished around 10/13.
• 68. The Forest For The Trees, by Betsy Lerner. Finished around 10/18.
• 69. Death Masks, by Jim Butcher. Finished 11/19.
• 70. A Stranger In The Family, by Robert Barnard. Finished 11/19.
• 71. Shattered Silk, by Barbara Michaels. I know I already read it this year, but I re-read it from beginning to end, so I'm counting it again. So there.
• 72. Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy Sayers.
• 73. The Monster In The Box, by Ruth Rendell.
• 74. On Writing, by Stephen King.
• 75. The Skull Beneath The Skin, by P.D. James. Finished 12/18.
• 76. A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore. Finished 12/22.
• 77. Not In The Flesh, by Ruth Rendell. Finished 12/26.

Observation Log:

Sometime: Speaking of children's books, I'm thinking of tacking on a personal challenge of some kind. I love children's books, but haven't read most of the really good ones published since I was a child. I could, of course, just include a bunch in the 100+, but given that even a children's chapter book can generally be knocked off in a couple of hours, making my list too children's-book-heavy feels a little bit like cheating. But I'm not quite ready to read 100+ adult books plus 100+ children's books.

I'll have to think that over.

3/5: Seven books by 3/5? That's ten books behind! Could I possibly have read that little, or am I failing to log things?

I suspect that this is a reflection of my habit of re-reading a few chapters of a book and then putting it down. In the past few days alone, I've read a good chunk of two Elizabeth Peters books, two Charlotte Macleods, one Robert Barnard, one Calvin Trillin, one Judith Martin (in addition to the full book listed above) and one Henry Mitchell. But I didn't start at the beginning or read all the way through to the end, so they don't count.

3/6: A post puzzling over why I'm not reading more.

4/1: Why read all those Susan Conants? I don't even like dogs. I suspect that it's just to read something thoroughly unchallenging.

But I may have found a better re-entry into reading: Agatha Christie. I just picked up The Mirror Cracked, and I was smiling from the first paragraph. I'd forgotten how tightly plotted her mysteries are - they're worth repeated re-reading, if only to see how all threads lead to the end.

So the new theory is to return and re-read my favorites of the classics. Agatha Christie - the Miss Marple and Mrs. Oliver mysteries; Poirot and I never got along. Dorothy Sayers - almost the only writer whose short stories I really like; I usually only read people's novels. Ngaio Marsh. I'll see what comes after that.

Onward.

4/18: Fourteen percent of the year's books read, almost thirty percent of the year gone. Must Read Faster!

I'm tempted to pick up enough old favorite children's books to get myself where I should be right now in terms of book count, which is... um... well, yeah, thirty books, or sixteen more books than I've read so far

Rumer Godden's The Doll's House and The Fairy Doll and Impunity Jane and The Story of Holly and Ivy and Home Is The Sailor and Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and Little Plum.

And The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. And Harriet The Spy. And A Wrinkle In Time and the sequels. And The Borrowers. And A Cricket In Times Square. And The Changeling, and there are a lot of other Zilpha Keatley Snyder books that I've never read.

And Abel's Island and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and everything else by Roald Dahl. And The Light Princess. And Rabbit Hill. And The Saracen Lamp and Candle In Her Room and After Candlemas and Portrait of Margarita and everything else by Ruth M. Arthur.

Sounds like I wouldn't have any trouble finding sixteen. Cheating? Yes. But I'd enjoy it.

5/31: Well, this is encouraging - three books in three days. That's how it's supposed to go.

And also disconcerting - I almost forgot to log two out of three. Is my count low?

Ah, well. Send more books!

9/26: Wow. I really seem to like Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters. She represents thirteen entries so far, and I still have two more to read.

10/17: Puzzlement. I can't believe that I read only one book between 10/6 and 10/13, but I can't recall reading any more. I wonder how many books might be missing from the year's list?

11/19: Well, I'm less puzzled, but my book count isn't going up as a result. For the last month and a half, I've gone back to my old book-grazing habits, reading bits and pieces of all sorts of books, most of them books I've already read. So I'm reading constantly, but adding nothing to my tally. That may or may not improve - on the one hand, I'm off for Thanksgiving week. On the other hand, we're in NaNoWriMo. So we'll just see.

12/6: So, I'm at 73. On December 6. So to get to 100+, I'd have to read more than a book a day. I rather doubt that that's going to happen. But I'll keep reading, to give me a score to beat next year.

Food: Frances Grilled Cheese (Too Simple To Be A Recipe recipe)

When the bell rang for lunch Frances sat down next to her friend Albert.  "What do you have today? said Frances.  "I have a cream cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread," said Albert.  "And a pickle to go with it.  And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that.  And a thermos bottle of milk.  And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine.  And a cup custard with a spoon to eat it with. What do you have?"
Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell and Lillian Hoban

One of my favorite books when I was small was Bread and Jam for Frances. Frances is a little-girl badger who declines to eat anything but bread and jam. Her mother provides lovely meals; Frances wants her bread and jam. Her friend Albert brings elaborate lunches to school, and offers to share. Frances still wants her bread and jam. Eventually, Frances comes to appreciate her own grand school lunch, complete with a vase of flowers. I loved the ending, and went on refusing to eat anything but peanut butter and jelly. (And fried chicken.)

So what does this have to do with grilled cheese? Well, when I make this sandwich, I like to add a number of added touches to the plate - a peeled tangerine for each person, and a few cucumber spears, and a few okra pickles, and a few marinated artichoke hearts, and some olives and grapes if we have them, or even a hard-boiled egg - and call the whole thing "Frances lunch".

So, on to the sandwich. I could just say "make normal grilled cheese, but use seedy bread and add chives to the cheese and sesame oil and salt to the butter". But, as I recently mentioned, I'm not concise. So:

Ingredients, per sandwich:

• Two slices of white bread, preferably one with a nice seedy crust. My preference is Beckman's Three Seed Sourdough.
• Cheddar cheese, preferably a good one that's a bit sharp, sliced barely thicker than those prewrapped cheese slices, enough for two slices thickness per sandwich.
• Lots of butter.
• Sesame oil.
• Chives, dried or fresh thin-sliced.

Cooking:

• Assemble the sandwiches, with bread, cheese, and a sprinkling of chives on the cheese.
• Melt a nice generous base of butter in the bottom of a frying pan, on medium-low heat, high enough to make the butter very gently foam. Mix in a modest amount of sesame oil - somewhere between a couple of drops and a teaspoon, depending on taste. Sprinkle some salt into the foaming oil/butter.
• Drop the sandwiches on the oil and butter and fry slowly until the bottom goes from butter-soaked to a gently crisp crust. The slow frying is essential for a proper break-through crust and for getting the cheese thoroughly melted all the way through.
• Flip the sandwich and fry the other side, adding more butter if necessary. You need a nice generous pool to get that evil crisp crust. 
• Flip the sandwich out and quarter it into triangles or cut it into fingers. Yes, you can just leave it in plain halves, but that reduces the silly.
• Put it on a nice plate with whatever sour or bitter or salty or fresh or fruity bites you can find in the kitchen. And a cloth napkin. And maybe an itty bitty vase of flowers. And if you have any of those tiny individual salt and pepper shakers, that would make the whole thing complete.
• Eat, keeping a napkin handy for buttery fingers.

Photo: By Garitzko. Wikimedia Commons.

Gardening: Ennui, and Books to Cure It

It's been a long time since I was in the throes of full-fledged garden obsession.

During catalog season, I used to carry around stacks of gardening catalogs fat enough to fall over.  I'd write and rewrite lists of seeds and bulbs and plants, perfecting my orders to minimize shipping. ("If Seeds of Change has rainbow chard and floating row cover, I can eliminate my Burpee order altogether!")

I'd drive to the Grange and come home with so many plants that they overflowed the trunk and the car floor. I'd guiltily put six-packs of seedlings on the passenger seat, hoping that the dirt would brush off later.

It's been a long time since I experienced that happy garden obsession. I've theorized about why, but I know the most likely answer. I think that it's because the garden is full.

Filling the garden is the goal - perhaps more for me than for some gardeners who follow a sparser style. I like every last inch of space to be covered in plants. Ideally, I'd use every layer - trees, then shrubs, then subshrubs, then perennials, then ground covers, then those little flocked-wallpaper-height groundcovers like creeping thyme and Irish moss. Oh, and bulbs, blooming in late winter and early spring and late spring and so on.

And the garden is fairly successfully fulfilling that goal. I don't get the credit for this - it's mostly the work of Gardener Artist/Miss Mosaic, who hasn't gotten much mention in my blogging, because of the whole reduced gardening obsession thing. In between creating wonderful things in the Artist part of her career, she keeps our garden in a condition that we couldn't possibly achieve ourselves.

But, of course, the downside of the garden being lushly, beautifully, fragrantly full is that the garden is full. We're rapidly running out of empty space.

There is nothing more exciting in a garden than empty space. I can stare at it endlessly, sitting in a lawn chair with a notebook and a garden book in hand, moving the chair to different viewing angles. I can prance around placing pots in the mud, deciding exactly where the hydrangea should go in relation to viburnum, for hours. And then come back the next day and change it all, having decided that, no, it's sunny enough for roses after all.

Blank space is the ultimate garden wealth. The jealousy that one feels over a new car or a freshly-built mansion is nothing to the jealousy that one feels observing a friend's newly dug sixty square feet of dirt.

We have no more of those big glorious spaces. But we do have some spaces. Little spaces. There's a spot about six feet by three feet next to the neighbor's fence on one side. There's room for three roses by the garage, though we'll have to chop through the ivy first. There's a bed slightly larger than a sofa cushion in the kitchen garden. There's a nice little terraced area, quite possibly even that sixty square feet, where nothing but trees grow because everything else dies in the shade of the trees. There are several square feet of sparsely-filled dirt by the front fence.

That should be enough to generate excitement. But I just glance blankly at those spaces when I walk by and vaguely plan to make a plan to think about doing something.

The only cure that I can think of is garden books. They're what got me started on this obsession, so they ought to be able to pull me out of this slump, even without a big blank patch of fluffy dirt to motivate me.

So, which books?

Henry Mitchell, of course, is the most likely cure. That is, his books On Gardening, One Man's Garden, and The Essential Earthman. His garden was full, too. He struggled with the desire to have everything on a modest city lot. But he took endless pleasure in the garden and the puttering and the plants. Come to think of it, perhaps some of the pleasure was in the writing - his books came from his newspaper columns. Maybe just blogging could be the cure.

Cheryl Merser, in A Starter Garden, takes a similar pleasure in all the puttering details, though she's more focused on filling the empty garden than on entertaining oneself in the full one. But she enjoys it so much that I'll read it again.

Anne Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School is the book to read when I want to get more play value out of apparently fully-planted spaces. Her "sandwich gardening", a method of stuffing a plant in every possible layer and season, might tell me how I can buy still more plants, and after bare dirt, nothing sparks gardening enthusiasm more than piling plants into the cart at the nursery.

There are many more. Elizabeth Lawrence, Christopher Lloyd, Allen Lacy, Patricia Thorpe. Wait, Growing Pains and The American Weekend Garden were both written by Patricia Thorpe? I've really been away from my garden shelves for too long.

Reading will commence. I'll return with an update.

Photos: Mine

Past Posts: Books (Link)

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Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.