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First Monday Book Day

How Not to Read a Book

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In bullet points:

  • notice Redeployment by Phil Klay has won the National Book Award and decide it’s really something you should read even though you tell yourself you’re not someone who likes books about war
  • request it from library only to have it ready for pickup months later when you’re already in the middle of another book
  • not to mention it's the busiest time of the year at work and you’re trying to do at least a little work most evenings
  • don’t start reading until the day before it’s due
  • find out that this is one of those books that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go
  • keep reading
  • receive overdue notice from the library
  • check library website; see that there are 57 copies and 31 requests, so if you returned it you could probably get it again pretty soon
  • fear loss of momentum; keep reading
  • find this Q&A and become even more obsessed with finishing the book
  • pull out the book while standing on a crowded bus (because this is your only chance to read all day); a guy notices you, stands up, and gestures for you to take his seat; wonder if he is a vet
  • feel grateful because it really is much easier to read while not trying to avoid falling over every time the bus makes a turn; finish a story about a guy who really wants to find a whore; wonder if the guy would have still given you his seat if he knew it was for that

So what are you reading?

Games

Getting Dicey

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This post is taking the place of Pixel Perfect Memories.  Because I want to incorporate board games into this feature, I want to come up with a better name.  So far, "Getting Dicey" is all I got.  If anyone has a suggestion, please share.

I plan on using this feature to share about new board games I've played and heard of, and to speak about the board game hobby in general.  Video games are still welcome, though I will probably not share much in that department

There's a gaming group that gets together here in Bloomington Normal every Wednesday.  I'm lucky to get there about once a month (because I'm busy with kid's activities).  This Wednesday, kids' activities were cancelled, so I took advantage.

First game was played was Russian Railroads.  Despite the name, this is nothing like Ticket to Ride or Railways of the World or other such train type games.  It's a medium-heavy Euro worker-placement game.  You start with 5-6 workers and place them on areas of the main board in order to advance your own board, which represents your personal railways.  You have three rails you are trying to develop, along with an industry track.  Each one can produce points in different ways, and it's up to you to maximize the value among the tracks.  It's somewhat difficult to explain, and the themeing is not intuitive, but I love this game.  I've been playing this for a while online, and I really want to get the home version, but unfortunately I don't see myself getting this to the table very often.

Second game we played was Betrayal at House on the Hill.  In this game, you're a character in a B-type horror movie, checking out an old abandoned house... on a hill.  The twist is that halfway through the game, the "haunt" is revealed, and one of your characters turns into the villain.  From then on, it's the traitor vs. the rest of the players in a battle of good vs. supernatural evil.  The game has several different scenarios, which gives it great replayability.

Finally, we played Formula De which has since been redone as Formula D.  In this game, you play a race car driver, pretty simple.  It's a fairly straight forward roll-and-move game, but each turn, you have the choice to shift up or down, which changes what die you roll, and with it, how far you can go.  There are turns which you'll have to stop with one of your die rolls, or suffer consequences.  We played a much simpler rule set, and I would like to play it again with the real rules.

Next time, I'm going to preview my trip to Geekway to the West in St. Louis May 14-17.

What have you been playing?

The Nation Has An Appetite

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies

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I have just one problem with these cookies—I can’t stop eating them.

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened (1 stick)
1/4 cup (2.375 oz.) natural peanut butter, room temperature
1/2 cup (4 oz.) brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup (1.75 oz.) granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups (5.625 oz.) all-purpose flour [OR 2.5 oz. white whole wheat and the remainder all-purpose]
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
generous 1/4 teaspoon salt [OR scant 1/2 teaspoon, depending on your preference]
1 generous cup mini pretzel twists
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Using a stand mixer (or sturdy electric hand mixer and a large bowl), cream butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar, beating on medium speed for approximately 3 minutes, until light and fluffy. Scrape down sides of bowl. Add egg and vanilla and beat for 1 minute.

Add flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt while mixer is off. Start beating on slowest speed and gradually increase to medium. Beat until just combined and no more flour is visible, about 1 minute.

Add pretzels and chocolate chips, beating on low speed until combined. (This step will crush the pretzels.)

Slap some plastic wrap over the mixing bowl (or transfer to a smaller container with a lid) and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.

When your chosen interval of time has passed, preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Use a cookie scoop, spoon, or your hands to form dough into 1.5-inch mounds. Place about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets.

ready to bake

Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating sheets on top and bottom racks halfway through. When done, the tops of the cookies should be barely set. Not to worry—they’ll bake a bit more as they cool. The finished cookies will be fairly soft.

Let sit on cookie sheet for 5-10 minutes (these are too fragile to transfer just out of the oven), then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Store in an airtight plastic container or ziplock bag for up to 1 week.

NOTES: If you’re using peanut butter with salt, I’d probably go with the lower amount of salt. I had only light brown sugar on hand, but I definitely want to try to these cookies with dark brown sugar—this one in particular. The recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies, but it can be easily doubled. Recipe adapted from here.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day

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A few thoughts.

Nebula Award nominees are out.  One pet peeve I have with SF/F awards is that so much is series-oriented.  This year 5 of the 6 nominees in the novel category are part of a series and one of them is book 7 in its series.  (To be fair, 2 of the nominees are the first book in the series) and so require an awful lot of someone who uses these awards as reading list fodder.  All that aside, I'm excited that The Three Body Problem was nominated.  I definitely plan to pick that one up at some point in the future, and I was always going to read Ancillary Sword given how much I liked the first book.

I read Player Piano as part of my ongoing passage through Kurt Vonnegut's novels.  It was pretty much as I remembered, not exactly what you think of when you think of Vonnegut, but so many of his consistent themes are right there from the very beginning.

I read some other stuff, but I'll save that for the comments.

Some good things that I found on the internet this month:

"Some Desperado" by Joe Abercrombie.  A short story title that should be read sarcastically.  It's a Western setting with a young woman trying to get away with the spoils of a robbery.

"Weary" by P.E. Garcia.  A quiet, but strong short story.  I'm not sure I can put my finger on why I liked this.  But I did.

"Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov.  The short story that became the first chapter of the novel by the same name.  I actually read this a few years ago and loved it.  But then I came across this reading of it by Alexsander Hemon and I got to listen to it again.  I love the initial description of the title character and his situation.

Parentgood

Father Knows Best: Mr. Moming It

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I’ve been playing the role of Mr. Mom for the past six months. Without a job, we can’t justify paying to send the kids to daycare, so when Philosofette goes to work, I stay home. Holy. Buckets. It is a lot of work.

I think the hardest part isn’t the work itself, it’s the self-sacrifice that goes with it. I cannot both be an attentive parent and try to accomplish my own agenda. This makes applying for jobs very difficult. It makes cleaning difficult. It makes preparing dinner challenging. The kids require attention. Part of this has to do with the demographics. We’re at 5 (he’s easy!), 3 (she’s potty training!), and 9 months (he’s eating everything on the floor and getting into places he shouldn’t be and pulling things off of shelves and crying and pooping and etc.!). Without the baby, the other two are pretty simple. Without the other two, the baby is easy too. But throw all three of them together… wow.

So these past six months for me have really hammered in the respect I have for stay-at-home parents. They do a lot of work. But even more essentially, they give up themselves. And that’s impressive.
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A couple of other quick hits, parenting-related ideas that have been bouncing around my head recently…

My daughter was born with a tethered spinal cord. She had surgery at 3 months, and basically we’ll have to watch her for the rest of her life to make sure it doesn’t re-tether. We recently thought we were picking up some signs that it maybe had, including potty-training problems. We were feeling terribly guilty for not scheduling her to see a specialist a long time ago, since these signs were there for a while. When we took her into the specialist though, he couldn’t have been more reassuring. It’s a strange thing though, having to keep a constant vigil against a specific condition. If we miss it, if we delay, we could fail to prevent some pretty awful effects. It really ramps up the possible parenting guilt.

I recently taught my 5-year-old how to play war. He pretty much plays it constantly now. But even he’s gotten bored, because he’s started to introduce “powers” where cards freeze other cards or blow them up, etc. The thing is, all of the powers are similar to things he sees in games I play on the iPad… which clearly means I need to play less when the kids are awake (I gave up iPad games for Lent).

Alright, I’ve rambled for a while. Time for others to chime in.

WGOM Fitness

Will it ever end?

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We've gotten nailed by blizzards the last four Mondays (min 5, max 12").  So even though my half-marathon training has been impacted - not doing early week runs (hate running on a treadmill), we've still been able to get in the Saturday morning long-runs.

Today was our taper (only 5 miles) before next weekend's Half -  a cold run at 8F - but no wind.  I'm really sore from all of the snow-blowing and shovelling.  And we're forecasting to get 8 more inches this evening.

The folks at Hyannis hosting the Half Marathon sent out a notice that it might be cancelled/rescheduled as they already have a bunch of snow on the ground, are getting more today, and are forecasting to get more next weekend - no place for parking, streets difficult to run, safety concerns for volunteers/runners...

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Biography x3

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This year, I decided I was going to re-read (or read for the first time) all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. With that in mind, I looked around for some books that get into the background of both the books and the author. This month I read three biographies of various types.  I'll admit that by the end of the third, I was feeling a little like I was going over the same material, but each was different enough.  Listed below are the books that I read all or part of this month.

THE MAN:

SoItGoes

And So it Goes - Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields

The word that comes to mind is "workman-like".  It's about as straightforward as a biography can be.  Point to point without much editorializing or analysis in between.  Still, this filled in a lot of details about Vonnegut's life that I was not familiar with (the kids, the wives, the agents, etc.) and gave me a pretty good framework for the other biographical books that I read.

Letters

Letters by Kurt Vonnegut (edited by Dan Wakefield)

Reading this directly after the Shields biography was about perfect.  A lot of the details that were only mentioned in passing in this book I was already familiar with from my previous reading.  I enjoyed Vonnegut's writing even in this non-narrative format.

PalmSunday

Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut

One of many "autobiographical collages" that Vonnegut published that collects some of his lectures and writings and attempts to connect them together. This is perhaps a little redundant with respect to the collection of letters above, but it was interesting to see how Vonnegut connects things as opposed to an editor or biographer.  This added some depth to some life events, but as noted in the intro, I did start to feel like I was reading some of the same material.

THE NOVELS:  (Analysis - I've only started these two, so any thoughts are preliminary)

VonnegutEffect

The Vonnegut Effect by Jerome Klinkowitz

Klinkowitz has written a lot of analysis of Vonnegut's work.  This book breaks things down by novel.  Depending on how much I like this book, I might seek out some other Klinkowitz offerings (there are quite a few, here's his author's page on Goodreads, see if you can spot the theme).

UnstuckInTime

Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels by Gregory D. Sumner

Lest you think that I am some kind of truly original visionary with the re-reading Vonnegut idea, here's someone who already thought of it and wrote a book about it.  This might be the book I'm most excited to read in this post.  I've only gotten through the prologue (an abbreviated biography - Argh!) and the section on Player Piano so far.

So, fair citizens.  What are you reading?