To Watch or to Barbeque? That is the Question.

Even though I had every intention of finishing and reviewing the book Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar, I have to come clean. I only read half the book and found that it wasn’t as funny as I’d originally thought, so I set it down; I draw the line at the halfway point.

But I found and watched three really good DVDs instead. I definitely give two thumbs up to Out of Sight, an Israeli film about a young blind woman whose best friend since childhood has committed suicide. It’s a smart, suspenseful and engaging movie with a shocking ending.

Another really good movie is called Nymphs in the Mist and it’s the comedic story of two twenty/thirty-something guys who decide to make a movie in the hopes of meeting babes at the auditions. What transpires is very funny and the ending will catch you by surprise.

The third film is called Jellyfish. It starts off with a young woman finding a little girl at the beach all alone. She’s wearing a floaty around her waist, bathing suit bottoms and she doesn’t speak. Since the police don’t have a missing persons report on the girl, the young woman takes her home to her apartment and her haphazard life. In the midst of all this, three women’s paths cross in unusual ways and their stories intertwine, to make for a very interesting and quirky film.

When I wasn’t lazing around watching DVDs I was browsing through barbeque cookbooks. Not because I can get anywhere near my barbeque. But my husband can. I found a really cool book called The Gardener & The Grill: the Bounty of the Garden Meets the Sizzle of the Grill by Karen Adler and Judith Fertig. This was an eye-opener. Who knew you could barbeque romaine lettuce, make plank-roasted pear salad, or grilled radicchio and Brussels sprouts? The prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spears look pretty darn yummy, as do the chard-wrapped goat cheese, to say nothing of
the grilled polenta with stir-grilled garlic greens. And believe it or not, you can even barbeque dessert. Some of the more unique dessert recipes include: skewered strawberry and marshmallow S’mores, planked peaches and blueberries with Amaretto sauce, and grilled persimmons with three-citrus drizzle.

The new Gastro Grilling by Ted Reader also has some think-outside-the-box barbeque recipes. Check out the Margarita chicken lollipops, fire-roasted oysters with crawfish bacon BBQ butter, grilled apricot cheesecake quesadilla with lavender honey, and the avocado cucumber quinoa salad with grilled Haloumi cheese. Stop the insanity and pass the platter!

If burgers are your thing then take a peek at Rachel Ray’s The Book of Burger. She’s even enlisted recipes from some of TV’s greatest chefs, including Masaharu Morimoto, Bobby Flay, Katie Lee, Marc Murphy and lots more. Happy barbequing everyone!

And now for a subliminal suggestion: Sign up for an account at www.yourfuturelibrary.ca and join the online conversation where you can share your thoughts about a future Richmond Library. Start collecting rewards points just for participating! Subtle, huh? For other popular reading suggestions check out Richmond Public Library's Web site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks/.

Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

I’ll make you a deal. If you register on the library’s new website www.yourfuturelibrary.ca  -- which is dedicated to our Public Consultation – and share your ideas, comments and photos about what you’d like to see in a new library, I’ll continue to write book reviews. Let me feel the love. (Get over myself, right?) If not, well……we’ll see what happens. Okay, okay, so I’m making that last bit up, but we REALLY do value your input and want to hear what sorts of services, buildings, locations and uses you see for your future library.

The best part is, not only do you get to share your ideas, vote and comment on other peoples’ ideas, upload photos and other stuff, but you get Rewards Points just for participating!  And you can redeem them for cool prizes. Anyone can look through the site, but to participate in the online conversation (and believe me, there are some neat ideas there) you need to create an account. It’s easy-peasy and if you can’t figure it out on your own, we’d be happy to show you how at any of our branches. You do have to be over 14 years of age to create an account, but younger kids can still have a voice by participating in our weekly informal polls at Brighouse.

Okay, okay, I know – I owe you a book review now. But I’m only doing this because I trust you to sign up for an account.  Honour system and all that. Fast forward to the new book by mother-daughter writing team Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella, called Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim. True to form, it’s funny. Not wet your pants funny, but tickle your funny bone, funny. In it, the two women chronicle their day-to-day relationship, together and apart.

Apparently, their writing style using one-sentence paragraphs has taken off.

Big time.

But don’t quote me.

See for yourself.

In the short narrative called “Doggie Universe” Lisa describes her sleeping arrangement with her dogs. Apparently they get jealous easily, but “Peace is maintained if one dog sleeps on either side, with me in the middle, like a postmenopausal Switzerland.”

The chapter called “Boxers or Briefs” is very funny, and dispels the notion that women are even remotely interested in seeing cellphone photos of men’s “junk”. She says: “Call us…Tell us we’re beautiful. Say that you’re thinking of us. Offer to paint our house. Or if a man is too shy to call, he should text something. I’d be totally turned on by a text that read: SEE YOU TOMORROW TO TAKE OUT YOUR TRASH.”

Another good book is Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar by Canadian writer Kelly Oxford. It’s hilarious. I read it in one hour. Okay I lied. I’m only on page 91. But so far it’s funny. I’ll tell more next week. IF you register on our new website www.yourfuturelibrary.ca. There, it’s a deal!

DIY Style, Zipper Accidents, and Victoria

 After oohing and ahhing over all the fabulous fashions in Rome, I realized that some of it is eminently doable myself.  Enter I Spy DIY Style: Find Fashion You Love and Do it Yourself by Jenni Radosevich. From brooches and bows, shoe bling and purse accents, to sparkly dress accents, decorated hats and painted sunglasses, this book is a treasure chest of ideas for the creative among us. Ribbonizing a tank top, stringing safety pins to make a necklace, and using a silver thin-tip Sharpie to decorate black ballet flats are just some of the cute ideas.

Each idea comes with a rating for the skill level required, the supplies and equipment you’ll need, step-by-step instructions, and pictures of the final product. The ideas are very unique and utilize all kinds of unusual materials, including copper tubing, rope, chopsticks, and straws, just to name a few. If you have even a shred of creativity and love fashion, this will help you look great and save money.

On my search for light reading I found Zipper Accidents and Other Cringe-Worthy Events by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute (seriously!). This is one of those browseable books that fascinate you so much that you end up reading it cover to cover instead of just in bits and pieces. Take for example the section on weird (and real) cell-phone insurance claims, one of which involves a woman from Bristol, England who filed a claim to have the cost of a new Blackberry Bold 9900 reimbursed because she had worn out the phone’s vibrator function. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

Or the case of the bad .com names like the one used by the Speed of Art design firm, not a swimsuit flatulence company: Speedofart.com. Or the statistic that approximately 450 Americans die annually after falling out of bed. Most are very young, very old, or very drunk.  Then there’s the ultra-weird one about the couple who were visiting a cemetery and…well…one thing led to another and while they were engaging in “extracurricular activities” the headstone fell on the woman’s leg and broke it. Needless to say, there are lots more bizarre accounts in this very entertaining little book.

When I finished with the trivia book I discovered a lovely little book called Hometown: Out and About in Victoria’s Neighbourhoods by Anny Scoones and illustrated by Robert Amos. If you visit Victoria regularly or it’s your first time going there, this book will give you the laid back lowdown on our province’s capital. With homey watercolor illustrations accenting the text, you’ll learn a bit about the history and flavour of various neighbourhoods, including James Bay, Fairfield, Cook Street, Oak Bay, Lower Government Street, Fernwood, Quadra, the Gorge, Vic West, Esquimalt, Cadboro Bay, the Saanich Peninsula and Sidney.  For other popular reading suggestions check out Richmond Public Library's Web site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks/.

 

 

 

 



Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Reality is top of my agenda again as I ease back into work after a month away in Italy and Holland. As far as reading goes, my intentions were entirely honorable. I had downloaded six books to my iPad in preparation for the trip, but what do you know – I didn’t read a single one! I was too busy staring in awe at Michelangelo’s David and the Sistine Chapel. Instead, I read a hardcopy book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson, and found someone’s leftover copy of Bared to You by Sylvia Day. Not exactly highbrow reading, but hey, it was a vacation after all!

To say that Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is humorous would be a gross understatement. This book can see humorous in the rear-view mirror. It’s laugh out loud, wet-your-pants funny, but be warned, it’s quite off color and more than a little irreverent. Let’s just say that Lawson elevates inappropriateness to an art form, and writes the kind of hilariously rude things that mere mortals would never dare say out loud.
 
The book is the true-life story of Jenny the misfit and her over-the-top, dysfunctional family. Once again, a huge understatement. Lawson’s writing style is wickedly witty, wildly inappropriate, and as the book jacket claims “adorably offensive.” She’s about as eccentric a writer as I’ve come across and I absolutely loved her book!

From her father’s extensive collection of dead animals, to her own off-the-charts neuroses, Lawson has written a memoir that’s hard to put down. And even harder to believe. But then, who am I to evaluate sanity and dysfunction? This book definitely tops my best-books-of-the-year chart so far. And it’s only May! I give this one two thumbs up.

Bereft of other books, I found Sylvia Day’s Bared to You in our little hotel library and decided that a month without romance and mainstream erotica is like a month without…..well…I’m not sure what.  Anyway, this first book in the Crossfire Trilogy can only be described as HOT! Similar in some ways to Fifty Shades of Grey but much better written, it’s classified as fiction about “man-woman relationships.” That’s putting it delicately.

In short, it’s about the lightning fast, white-hot relationship between multimillionaire Gideon Cross and Eva Tramwell. The story exposes their sexual desires, their emotional demons and their unspoken needs. And you might need a note from your mother to read this. Just kidding. This first in the series is followed by book two Reflected in You, and the third in the series, Entwined With You, is coming out sometime in June. So if you want some sizzle with your summer, check these out. For other popular reading suggestions check out Richmond Public Library's Web
site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks/.