Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 314

I’m willing to give up Pluto if we can have a better ninth planet

Have you all heard about this big planet that seems pretty likely to be way out beyond Neptune?

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune

Apparently this putative planet explains a lot of weird observations. I like it. Hopefully someone will spot it soon — people are now looking, I gather.

Planet Nine is a good name, too. I hope it’s out there and I hope they keep the name. It’s evocative of Plan Nine From Outer Space, which is funny, and I like the idea of giving the ninth planet a meta kind of name, and I like that it starts with the same letter as “Pluto,” thus allowing us to complete the familiar mnemonic My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine ….

The Forever War

For those of us who haven’t read or don’t remember The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, which won the Hugo (I will remind you) in 1976, here, by happenstance, is a retrospective post by Jay Allen about that very book over at tor.com.

Sitting on a peak in the desert, watching a fleeting bright spot in the sky become fainter and fainter, until finally it simply vanishes. When I think of William Mandella from The Forever War, it is that moment perhaps more than any other that passes through my mind.

That spot of light was, of course, a spaceship, and it carried away not only Mandella’s lover, but also the last link to his own reality. For the war in this celebrated novel features not only the pain and savagery endemic to any other conflict, but also its own unique torment. Mandella and his comrades must endure the passage of decades, even centuries, between battles, the result of time dilation when traveling at relativistic speeds. Imagine going off to war, with all that entails, but also knowing that when—if—you return, everyone you left behind will be dead, the culture you remember long gone. When that speck of light disappeared, Mandella was alone, utterly and completely alone, trapped in a human culture that was entirely alien to him.

And there you go. That right there is a great description of a book I didn’t read back when and don’t plan to read now. It’s not that I will never ever read a tragedy under any circumstances whatsoever . . . but that sure doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.

Allen says this is one of his favorite books, one he re-reads every few years, and I’m sure it is an admirable work, but I read his essay and think: No. Just no.

I loved Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity, btw. I loved it even though I knew going in it was a tragedy, and I loved it all the time I watched the tragedy unfold. I think one big, big difference is that Haldeman’s book is ultimately about the pointlessness of war and the callousness of the people who perpetuate them. Allen describes the book thus:

It dares to imagine war in the future as something even more dehumanizing than real world conflict, where soldiers are sent on pointless missions that no more than a third of them are expected to survive. The combats in the book do not portray heroic defenses of the homeland or righteous crusades against an evil enemy. Indeed, they all seem fairly pointless and random, with little purpose except to perpetuate the war itself.

That adds a whole deeper layer to the tragedy, doesn’t it? War for no reason, suffering and death for no reason, war the behest of an indifferent totalitarian government, war where nothing is served or saved or protected or defended.

How different that is from the story told in Code Name Verity, where the struggle, tragic though it is, involves good guys triumphing, in the end over bad guys. More than that: where the struggle involves redeeming some of the those who have been forced into service to evil, and offering them a way to turn against a crushing totalitarian government.

I will undoubtedly reread Code Name Verity. But I can’t see any chance that I will ever voluntarily read The Forever War, no matter how brilliant it may be.

Oh no, scientists are breeding giant insects!

A great post at Black Gate, I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island.

What could be better?

John O’Neill writes:

Seriously. Monster Island. Scientists at the Melbourne Zoo have now started breeding these giant insects, because apparently no one at the Melbourne Zoo has ever watched a single monster movie.

These are enormous flightless stick insects, and really, they are kinda scary looking — click through and see for yourself.

These guys were thought to be extinct, victims of the typical disaster that follows the introduction of rats into a fragile island ecosystem. I thoroughly approve of the new breeding program and hope it works beautifully.

My favorite giant arthropod, incidentally, of those I’ve encountered personally, were these wonderful foot-long centipedes in Venezuela. Black and red and yellow, shiny like they’d just been freshly enameled. Poisonous, of course, though not deadly. We were strictly warned against letting ourselves be bitten, though. Of course you should generally be careful of where you put your hands and feet wherever you are in the tropics.

You could actually hear these centipedes coming, a patter of little bitty feet.

I seriously admired these guys, but I can’t find a picture that looks quite right. Sort of like this:

But I remember the centipedes we saw as being absolutely jet black with bright red and yellow legs.

Recent Reading: a miscellany of cookbooks, part two

As I said a few days ago, I have here a stack of eight new-to-me cookbooks which are wildly variable in type. You’ll remember the first four from the previous post: the Taste of Home annual; the Cook’s Illustrated annual; a handsome book by Sophie Grigson called Gourmet Ingredients, which as a James Beard nominee, btw; and Inside the Southeast Asian Kitchen, which offers a small selection of recipes from each of the ten SE Asian countries

Okay, then, here’s the rest of the stack.

First, you remember the Goodreads Choice awards a few months ago? I found out about a couple of books via the nominees. One was the first novel featuring Veronica Mars, which was quite good, btw, and definitely had a few plot twists that took me more by surprise than any other murder mystery has for a while. Another was Genius Recipes, a book which arose from a column by the same name on the blog Food52. I hadn’t previously heard of either the book or the blog. Well, the book is absolutely top-notch, handsome and fun to read and featuring interesting recipes. Now I check in on the blog from time to time, too. There’s a good post up right now about Genius Recipes that didn’t garner much interest last year and why commenters should give them another look.

Anyway, I recognize some of the most famous recipes in the Genius Recipes book – Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread is in here, and Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce, and Nigella Lawson’s chocolate loaf cake. I already knew about those, and I do agree they’re worth featuring. Many, many other recipes in Genius Recipes look either interesting or good; often enough both. Like from Kenny Shopsin, we get a technique for turning flour tortillas into fake but apparently persuasive crepes. You sort of treat the tortillas like you were making French toast, dipping them in an egg mixture and then frying them. I must try this, although actually I don’t think ordinary crepes are at all difficult.

From Canal House comes a recipe for chicken thighs with preserved lemon. You lay the skin-on chicken thighs in a barely hot skillet and leave them there without fiddling with them for 15-30 minutes, until the fat has rendered out and the skin is deep golden-brown. Then at last you turn them, stir the minced peel of half a preserved lemon into the rendered fat, and cook them for 15 minutes longer. That’s practically the whole recipe right there in those two sentences. It sounds so peculiar. Who can read about this technique without wanting to try it? Especially since I already have preserved lemons in the fridge.

There’s a recipe in this book for Onion “Carbonara.” You actually use ribbons of onion instead of pasta. That’s *so strange*. I know I keep saying that, but honestly, isn’t it? And yet, if you’re into the low-carb thing, isn’t that an interesting idea? I mean, as long as it’s something that works and is tasty, as I guess it is or it wouldn’t have made it into this book.

So, yeah, snazzy book. If you like to cook, you might want to check out the Food52 blog and/or this book.

Next I have here a book by Simon Hopkinson called The Vegetarian Option. I like Hopkinson’s tone – he isn’t trying to claim the moral high ground for vegetarians, and he *is* trying to celebrate vegetables. I like how his recipes are impressive without sounding like they’d be impossible to make. Warm asparagus custards with tarragon vinaigrette, say, or spinach mousse with Parmesan cream. Or if you don’t want to get quite that fussy, the asparagus frittata with soft cheese looks good, too. And surely you can’t go wrong with the macaroni and cheese with tomatoes.

If you want an impressive showcase dish, there’s one featuring a sort of soup cooked in a pumpkin. You cut the top off a small pumpkin, about four lbs, scoop out the seeds, fill it up with garlic-infused cream (crush a clove of garlic, add to the cream, bring to a low simmer, remove from the heat, and let set ten minutes) and a generous cup of grated Gruyere, and bake it at 400 degrees for 1½ to 2 hours. That’s all there is to it. When the pumpkin is tender, you stir spoonfuls of the flesh into the cream and serve it right out of the pumpkin shell. Hopkinson says the original recipe he is riffing on alternated croutons and Gruyere, then filled the pumpkin up with cream, and I would probably use the croutons, too – Hopkinson says he thinks this makes the cream soup too thick, but thick sounds good to me. If it turned into a kind of bread pudding in the pumpkin, that’d be fine. Anyway, if I see smallish sugar pumpkins around next fall, I hope I remember this.

Next up is Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou, which is a pleasure to peruse, though it certainly doesn’t beat Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food, one of my all-time favorites among my cookbooks. Of course the Mediterranean isn’t the same as the Middle East, so both books are worth having in your cookbook library even though they do overlap.

Helou provides enough comments about each recipe to make the book a pleasure to read, and the author’s personal voice comes through clearly, as in, when describing fried vegetables in Tunis, she comments, “Each [cook] grabs a large handful [of fried vegetables], puts it in a metal tagine dish, and chops the vegetables with a mezzaluna. They work very fast, each with a different rhythm. Listening to the sounds they made reminded me of a contemporary piece of music composed by Giorgio Batistelli, who based a whole work on the sounds made by various artisans at work – knife grinders, cobblers, barrel makers, and so on.”

Here’s a bread recipe from Tripoli which certainly catches my eye, given the Gourmet Ingredients book I referred to in my last cookbook post:

Thursday Bread

½ tsp yeast

2 C flour

½ tsp sea salt

¼ tsp ground mahleb

½ Tbsp olive oil

A little vegetable oil, for brushing

1/8 tsp nigella seeds, to sprinkle over

Stir the yeast into ¼ C tepid water and leave for a few minutes. Combine the flour, salt, and mahleb. Rub in the olive oil with your fingers. Add the yeast and gradually add another ½ C water; knead 5 minutes. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover, and let rest in a warm place for an hour or until doubled in size. Divide dough into four pieces and roll each into a ball. Let rest, I presume covered, for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Put a couple baking sheets or pizza stone in the oven to preheat.

Roll each ball into a 7-inch disk. Now, Helou says, “Remove the baking sheet from the oven and quickly line it with parchment paper.” I will probably try rolling the dough rounds out directly on parchment paper that’s already been sized to fit the baking sheets so I can just lift them quickly onto the baking sheets. Anyway, bake for ten minutes or until the breads have puffed up and turned golden; that’ll be five to seven minutes if you’re using a stone, Helou notes.

The comments for this recipe note that in Tripoli, this bread would be eaten with cheese or strained, thickened yogurt and olives. That sounds good to me. I’m sure I have enough mahleb seeds to make both this bread and the cookies.

Okay, the last new-to-me cookbook on this stack is by far the oldest. This is a book called At Home on the Range, which was actually written by Margaret Yardley Potter in 1947 and has now been re-packaged with a new forward by her great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Gilbert, in 2012.

The forward is deeply moving. Gilbert writes, “Her kitchen has outlived her: My cousin Alexa has its contents – down to the least serviceable utensil – in her house in Baltimore. Her recipes have outlived her: I grew up eating Gima’s chutney and Gima’s pickles, prepared by my Midwestern mother, who never met the woman, but who fell in love with the cookbook. Her name has outlived her: my Uncle Nick named his daughter Margaret, in honor of his irreplaceable grandmother. . . . What I’m saying is, if you are influential enough and beloved enough, it turns out you can stick around for quite a while after you die.”

Margaret Yardley Potter’s book is then presented exactly as it was originally written, which is to say, as a series of essays with the recipes told off casually, as we see in this basic recipe with an irresistible introduction:

How many little girls today read Louisa M Alcott, I wonder? Compared to comic books and Western movies, her old-fashioned stories must seem lacking in action, yet once the four March sisters were as real to me as Orphan Annie to the present generation.

What I felt was “offensively” good health – I still can’t even look delicate – kept me from following poor Beth’s example and seeking an early grave. The less spiritual ambition of owning a toy cookstove that really worked, such as Daisy had in Little Men, was more easily achieved and from the morning I saw it under the Christmas tree I’ve never regretted the choice I was forced to make. Just as well, too, for health and a cookstove still continue to keep me from a higher plane . . .

My mother, who was no cook but, like every good housewife in those days, knew “how things should be done,” appeared in the nursery as soon as my new toy was set up, announcing that she was going to teach me one worthwhile thing before I started to mess. This turned out to be white sauce and worthwhile it is – and how few cooks still understand its manufacture, as witness the paste that so often masquerades under that name in restaurants or, even sadder, on the home table. Her recipe for white sauce remains the right and only one.

Melt 2 Tbsp of butter over a medium flame and stir in 2 Tbsp of flour. When things start to bubble take the pan from the fire and stir in 1 C of milk. Do this very slowly; let the flour absorb the liquid and not a lump remain. Put the pan back over the heat and just as slowly add 1 C more of milk, never ceasing the constant stirring. Add 1 tsp of salt and 1/8 tsp of black pepper, and keep it over a lower heat for at least 10 minutes longer, stirring occasionally. . . .

I regret to say that the toy stove was wrenched from me shortly after this lesson, for one afternoon alone in its company I was discovered trying to camouflage a badly singed pair of eyebrows with a lead pencil and preferred not to discuss a suspicious scorch on the nursery ceiling. Mother’s recipe was the first I taught my daughter after the young man appeared who turned her thoughts to things culinary, but behind locked lips has lain till this day how I acquired intimate knowledge of the dire results that follow pouring alcohol on a lighted wick.

I’m sure you all already knew how to make white sauce, so there’s nothing special about that, although my mother says she would use only half as much milk for two Tbsp flour and I’m sure my mother’s version is actually definitive. Anyway, not all the recipes are so basic (tripe, anyone?), and the casual anecdotes and comments that surround the recipes are always charming.

I’m sure Margaret Potter would be pleased to know that nearly seventy years after she first saw her book in print, despite the vast quantities of entertainment choices available, plenty of readers still enjoy Alcott’s books. I, also, have fond memories of Daisy’s cookstove, though I never had a toy cookstove of my own. Of course I started the kinds of cooking a child can do in the actual kitchen pretty young. I wonder how old I was when I put a Tbsp of salt into the pancake batter instead of a tsp? I do know that particular incident lingered in family memory for a long, long time.

So that’s the set this year (so far), and I’d be hard pressed to pick out the most useful or the most interesting or the most readable – strong competition in all those categories. I expect to cook out of all of these books in the coming year, probably starting with that beef rendang from the East Asian book, though the idea of using six cans of coconut milk for one recipe is still tough to wrap my head around.

Update: I made the rendang and it was indeed very good. I used only four cans of coconut milk for 2.75 lbs chuck and it was plenty. Toward the end when the beef was coming apart in shreds, I poured off the remaining oil, which was about 3/4 C of clear orange oil. I think I might fry potatoes in it or something.

Top ten wolves in fantasy

Via File 770, at Fantasy Faction, a top ten list of the greatest wolves in fantasy.

Actually, though, I think it was cheating to include werewolves. I also don’t like including Buck from Call of the Wild. Obviously it isn’t correct to say that Buck “turned from a domestic dog into a wild wolf.” That’s like saying that this horse jumped the paddock gate and went from being a domestic horse to being a wild zebra. I mean, what? You do know that you’re talking about different species, right? It’s ridiculous and annoying.

In other words, Fantasy Faction’s list makes me ask: Okay, but what are the top ten best actual wolves in SFF? Only I couldn’t get to ten, so how about five?

1. I actually am not following along with GRRM any more, but I’m willing to grant you Ghost from Fantasy Faction’s list. He sounds like a good character. Anybody actually reading this series who wants to weigh in with whether Ghost is a real wolf or a dog masquerading as a wolf?

2. I’m also not conversant with Robin Hobb’s Nighteyes from the Assassin trilogy, but perhaps eventually I will be, since that is on my TBR pile. Knowing about Nighteyes makes me more likely to move that series up on the pile, in fact.

3. There are the wolves in Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold. They’re not bad.

4. We have the trellwolves in Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. They’re not ordinary wolves, but they’re great and I hereby declare they totally count even if werewolves absolutely do not.

5. Akela in Kipling’s The Jungle Book . Grey Brother and the others were all right, but I always was particularly fond of Akela.

Okay, I can’t think of a lot more wolves in fantasy, so let’s switch gears: who are the top ten eagles in fantasy? Cause eagles appear quite a bit, don’t they, and they are always very snazzy. I’m not sure I can get to ten, but let’s just see:

1. Starting with a series I haven’t read, but I do have on my TBR pile

That looks so cool. I love the intelligent consideration of just how someone could be carried by a giant eagle without interfering with its flight.

2. Of course you can’t forget the eagles in The Lord of the Rings.

3. Continuing the popular theme of giant eagles, how about the rukh from Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts trilogy? I felt really bad for the chained male rukh — worse than about just about anything else that happened in the book. I could not believe the good guys made it into and out of the bad guy’s fortress without finding and freeing the poor thing. Of course enslaving giant eagles is likely to rebound against you eventually no matter how clueless the good guys are.

4. One more giant eagle — have you read Nick O’Donohoe’s great Crossroads trilogy? I despise the new cover of the first book, but here is the much better cover of one of the other books in the trilogy:

Of course this cover is showing the griffins (wonderful griffins!) rather than the giant eagles, who are called The Great. What a wonderful term for giant birds that act almost like the hand of God. They dwarf all other giant eagles ever.

5. Not giant eagles, but I was very struck as a young reader by the battle of the eagles in Joy Chant’s Red Moon Black Mountain. I don’t think the eagles played a huge role in the book, but still.

6. Remember Farsight, the eagle from The Last Battle by CS Lewis?

7. Okay, not an eagle, but one of my favorite birds of prey in fantasy: the Falcon Ter from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

That’s seven! At least, if you allow the falcon, it’s seven. Only three ore to get to ten. What great fantasy eagles am I missing?

8. I’ve been reminded of the gwythaints — I’m not sure where all they appear, but in the Prydain chronicles, the gwythaints were giant eagles enslaved by the dark lord. Man, what is it with dark lords enslaving giant eagles?

Facing off Hugo winners

Okay, how about a different kind of contest, a retrospective contest —

Which would you vote best of these five past winners:

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, winner of the 1960 Hugo

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, winner in 1961

Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein again, winner in 1962

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, winner in 1963

Way Station by Clifford Simak, winner in 1964

I must admit I hardly remember Canticle, though I read it. All I recall is that the author shocked me by killing the main character a third of the way through — the first time I’d ever seen such a thing (this was way before GRRM). I’m pretty sure that was Canticle.

I actually re-read Way Station not that long ago and frankly I wasn’t at all impressed.

I know which of these books I like best, which isn’t the same as the one I think had the greatest impact on the genre. Today, well, I’d have to read Canticle again if I were really going to vote to pick one out of those five.

Here’s the next group:

The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber in 1965

Dune by Frank Herbert in 1966

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein in 1967

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny in 1968

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner in 1969

I never cared much for Leiber and never read The Wanderer.

Once again, though, I have a clear pick for the book I really enjoyed the most versus the book I think was most important (though I liked both).

Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin in 1970

Ringworld by Larry Niven in 1971

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer in 1972

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov in 1973

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clark in 1974

You know, I *really* need to re-read The Left Hand of Darkness, somehow it seems to keep coming up and I just don’t remember it at all. I wonder if it’s possible I never actually read it, considering that I do remember the rest of these, at least enough to have a general impression. I definitely know which one I’d pick to go on to the next round– I mean, which one other than Left Hand.

Okay, next group:

The Dispossessed, LeGuin again, 1975

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1976

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm, 1977

Gateway, Frederick Pohl, 1978

Dreamsnake, Vonda McIntyre 1979

I didn’t remember that Dreamsnake won a Hugo. I really enjoyed the book. I don’t know the others that well. Actually, I’m not sure I read any of the others. First group where I think I only read one of the winners. I wonder if there’s a group of five Hugo winners where I didn’t read any?

I also notice that 1979 is the first year CJ Cherryh was a nominee, with The Faded Sun: Kesrith. She’d written a couple of the Morgaine books by then, and Brothers of Earth and Hunter of Worlds. I do prefer the Faded Sun trilogy to those, I think.

Moving on:

The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C Clark, 1980

The Snow Queen, Joan D Vinge, 1981

Downbelow Station, CJ Cherryh, 1982

Foundations Edge, Asimov, 1983

Startide Rising, David Brin, 1984

For the first time, we’re passing over a lot of books I just loved that were nominated but didn’t win. McKillip’s Harpist in the Wind, Wizard by John Varley, Pride of Chanur, which I greatly preferred to Downbelow Station. I see Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury was up in 1983 — I think it should have won. Well, I was never a big Asimov fan, really. MacAvoy’s Tea with the Black Dragon — I adored that book.

Oh, I just realized, this was the period where I really discovered SFF. And I was a teenager, so this was the formative period for my literary tastes. No wonder so many of the titles from these years leap out at me.

Anyway, I do know which of the five winners I’d put forward — and it wasn’t Downbelow Station, never one of my favorites of Cherryh’s.

Okay, let’s see —

Neuromancer, William Gibson, 1985

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, 1986

Speaker for the Dead, ditto, 1987

The Uplift War, Brin, 1988

Cyteen, Cherryh, 1989

Oh, major pain making this choice! For the first time two books I know well and love go head to head. Oooh. Really tough.

Next group:

Hyperion, Dan Simmons, 1990

The Vor Game, Bujold, 1991

Barrayar, ditto, 1992

A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge, 1993, and

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis, also 1993 (they tied, I guess)

Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson, 1994

Sorry, six choices, I’d rather keep the years even than the number of contenders. Difficult choices here, too. I never read Hyperion. I heard it was really really really impressive, but also a tragedy. I didn’t really care for Red Mars, but actually Green Mars was my favorite of the trilogy. And I totally admired the Tines from Vinge’s book. And Bujold! Yep, another tough group.

Mirror Dance, Bujold, 1995

The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, 1996

Blue Mars, KSR, 1997

Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman, 1998

To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis, 1999

Well, another chance to pick Bujold. I admired The Diamond Age, and I suspect I would admire it more today, but I don’t think I really liked it. I might pick it, though. On the other hand, I could say exactly the same of Willis’s book. Not sure what I’d go for here.

Next:

A Deepness in the Sky, Vinge, 2000

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2001

American Gods, Neil Gaiman, 2002

Hominids, Robert J Sawyer, 2003

Paladin of Souls, Bujold, 2004

I have Vinge’s book, but I must admit I’ve never actually read it. Wow, that’s kind of embarrassing. 15 years on my TBR pile may be a record. I kinda hope it’s a record. That’s terrible.

I disliked American Gods. Never read Hominids. Pretty sure this would be an easy win for Bujold given that.

Okay:

Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, Suzanna Clarke, 2005

Spin, Robert Charles Wilson, 2006

Rainbow’s End, Vernor Vinge again, 2007

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon, 2008

The Graveyard Book, Gaiman, 2009

Okay, I liked this one by Gaiman way, way better. Never read the three in the middle. I was so, so impressed by Clarke’s book. Wow, it was amazing. Not something I can see myself re-reading, though.

And at last! Here we are, caught up to the present:

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi, 2010

The City and the City, China Miéville, also 2010

Blackout/ All Clear, Connie Willis, 2011

Among Others, Jo Walton, 2012

Redshirts, Scalzi, 2013

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie, 2014

Six contenders again, sorry. I’ve read all these except The Windup Girl. It’s another hard choice for me , though I can narrow it down to two pretty easily. Okay, down to three. I guess. Fine, okay, so I really loved one of these, deeply admired one, liked and admired one, and liked both the others quite a bit. Shoot, it’s actually pretty hard to choose.

Okay, vote, please. Which books would you all pick from each groups? Are there any choices you find particularly easy or difficult?

Famous novels face off

Via File 770, a series of contests apparently ran through 2015 (I missed all of this), in which one well known and much loved book went head-to-head against another.

Novels on her community-sourced lists would be paired against each other — how did the dice know which pairings could produce the maximum angst, forcing fans to pick between two favorites? The winners advanced through the brackets, the results of each heat delivered with Kyra’s humorous commentary, until we knew which work had been crowned The Best by File 770 commenters.

Or, as is noted later in the post:

And there you have it. Once again, a double digit number of people on the internet has registered its clearly immutable judgment!

Here are some of the results:

For 20th century SF:

◾WINNER: Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness – 31 votes

◾Mary Shelley: Frankenstein – 15 votes

I’m pretty sure I’d agree with that, though actually it’s been a VERY long time since I read either work, so I can’t guarantee it. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have picked Frankenstein to head off against Left Hand, though. Why not Dune? Or Cyteen?

For 20th century fantasy:

The Lord of the Rings defeated everything, but sometimes by a tiny margin:

◾WINNER: The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien – 38

◾The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin – 36

◾WINNER: The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien – 36

◾Small Gods, Terry Pratchett – 35

◾WINNER: The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien – 37

◾The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle – 34

◾WINNER: The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien – 44

◾Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny – 27

Wow, some tough choices there. I mean, I personally didn’t care much for Small Gods, but I’d have had a tough time with The Last Unicornpairing. And Tombs is my favorite by LeGuin. Nine Princes was fun, but I can’t see it winning this kind of contest.

21st century fantasy:

◾WINNER: The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison – 28 votes

◾Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold – 23 votes

Wow, what a tough choice! Though am I alone in preferring The Curse of Chalion to Paladin? Despite a) the fact that Bujold cheated a bit with her prophecy in Curse, and b) the understanding that there is a truly sublime moment in Paladin.

21st century SF

◾WINNER: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie – 32 votes

◾Anathem, Neal Stephenson – 8 votes

◾Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold – 3 votes

I would never have picked Diplomatic Immunity to pair against anything. Not that I disliked it, but why not A Civil Campaign? Or which Vorkosigan book do you all think is actually the best?

When Ancillary Justice was removed, btw, the other two swapped places. I’ve never read Anathem, so I can’t really comment, but Stephenson has in the past not really worked for me as a reader.

I’m not sure what I would have headed against Ancillary Justice, but I feel there are better choices — I mean of course choices that would make this head-to-head contest more difficult for me personally. I’ll have to think about it. Possibilities that occur to me right off include A Darkling Sea by Cambias and 2313 by Kim Stanley Robinson — even though I believe I would go, in the end, for Ancillary Justice before either of those.

Anyway, fun set of contests, and I see from File 770’s post that various other people have done similar head-to-head cage matches between SF and fantasy movies, too, which I gather will be appearing in File 770 posts shortly.

Recent Reading: a miscellany of cookbooks, part one

Every year for Christmas my mother gives me one or two cookbooks, and every year around Christmas time I buy a handful of cookbooks that have been on my radar for one reason or another. What can I say? I like cookbooks: the ones that are so specialized they offer only a handful of recipes in a sea of text, and the ordinary ones that feature contemporary American cooking, and perhaps most of all the ones that help the reader build an image – and by “image” I really mean an impression that includes taste and scent – of a time or place very distinct from contemporary America.

Also, cookbooks are perfect for times when I am working on my own writing, because obviously you can pick them up and put them down easily. That’s so useful, I’m sure that’s a big reason I pick up several at the beginning of every year.

This January I have a stack of eight new cookbooks, wildly variable in type. Let me mention four of them here, which will be a post that’s quite long enough.

First, I’ve got the Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2016 collection, which of course is as perfect a snapshot of ordinary American home cooking as you can get. These are useful collections, with plenty of approachable, inviting recipes, though the organization is always a bit of a pain. It’s not like all the desserts wind up in one section. No, some are in various different dessert sections and some in the “family favorites” section and some in the “potluck pleasers” section and some in the “holiday and seasonal” section and so on. This is the kind of book where you really *need* the index, if you’re to have any hope of finding a recipe you vaguely remember is in there somewhere. Still, the books are more convenient than the year’s worth of magazines.

I’ve marked about a dozen must-try recipes in this particular book – most, alas, are desserts, and with my caution with carbohydrates, it’ll take a while to find an opportunity to make most of them. But let me share one I really, really want to try. Just calling it a filled angel food cake doesn’t do it justice, so I will call it:

Tunnel of Lemon Strawberry Angel Food Cake

1 vanilla angel food cake, completely cooled

½ C heavy cream

½ C mascarpone cheese

2 Tbsp powdered sugar

10 oz jar lemon curd (or I would make my own), divided

1 C sliced fresh strawberries, patted dry

2 C powdered sugar

1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest

3-4 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

The book offers a promising recipe for angel food cake that I will probably use, but surely you all have a recipe, so I won’t type it in here. Their recipe uses a ten-inch tube pan, so that’s the size of cake that is meant to accommodate this filling.

I recently gave a recipe for lemon curd here, and it was excellent, though granted I used a Meyer lemon rather than two ordinary lemons.

Now, here’s how to assemble this beautiful dessert:

Beat the cream until it starts to thicken. Beat in the mascarpone and 2 Tbsp powdered sugar. Beat until soft peaks form. Fold in 1/3 of the lemon curd.

Combine the 2 C powdered sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice to make a glaze.

Slice an inch off the cake. The contributor suggests using toothpicks inserted all around the cake as a guide for slicing off an even inch, which sounds like a good idea.

Remove some of the interior crumb of the cake, leaving an inch shell on each side. I expect the discarded cake would make a nice treat for the baker, though in my house the dogs would surely get a share.

Layer the strawberries along the bottom of the tunnel, spoon the mascarpone cream over the strawberries, and then spoon the rest of the lemon curd over that. Replace the top of the cake. Glaze. Chill at least four hours. You can cover the cake once the glaze sets.

There, now, doesn’t that sound like a wonderful dessert for, say, Easter? The book also offers recipes for a chocolate-filled version and a version you fill with sherbet and freeze. Those sound good, too, but I have to admit, for once, it’s the non-chocolate lemon-and-strawberry cake that strikes me as most irresistible.

Okay, second, I have the Cook’s Illustrated 2015 book. These are fun to read, with their detailed exploration of what happens if you change this or that. I do indeed tend to turn to Cook’s Illustrated for, say, the best possible Boston Cream Pie recipe.

The strength of Cook’s Illustrated, imo, is their contemporary American recipes. I think they sometimes strive to unnecessarily Americanize recipes from Thailand and China and so on. These days, what with the internet and global grocery stores, surely it isn’t necessarily to try so hard to find alternatives for, say, yakisoba noodles. I mean, it’s fine to suggest alternatives, but I don’t think it’s necessary to assume that your readers won’t be able to lay their hands on the genuine article. Though I think this tendency to Americanize recipes isn’t quite as strong as it used to be; for example, I notice that in the recipe for Mu Shu Pork, the contributor actually does give instructions for making Mandarin pancakes and warns that flour tortillas are not an adequate substitute.

In this particular volume, honestly, it’s their chocolate caramel cake that is having a practically hypnotic effect on me. It looks wonderful. Maybe my dad would like that for his birthday? That’s coming up reasonably soon. The recipe is really too long and detailed to give here, though if I make it, I will probably change it up a bit and then post my version.

Third, here’s Gourmet Ingredients by Sophie Grigson, a lovely coffee table sort of book that offers a delightful paean to a whimsical selection of ingredients, some more out-of-the-way than others. It was published back in 1991, I see, and now seems to be available only used, but with some copies available at very inviting prices. Let me see, the sections include: herbs and spices; oils; vinegars and bottled sauces; pickles, preserves, and candies; mushrooms; vegetables; fruit and nuts; grains, legumes, and pastries; and dairy products.

Every section explores the world of somewhat unusual ingredients, whatever Grigson felt like including, like angelica and lovage and sweet cicely among the herbs; amchur (powdered green mango) and nigella and mastic among the spices. I love an Indian recipe I have for potatoes with amchur. I also have this great recipe for crackers with nigella seeds in some Indian cookbook, I think one of Julie Sahne’s. Now I really want to pull that out and make the crackers.

Grigson offers a small selection of recipes after each section of ingredients. For example, she includes a recipe for shortbread cookies flavored with mahleb, which are the seeds of a type of wild cherry, used as a spice in parts of the Middle East. As it happens, I have some mahleb seeds in my spice cabinet. I have never yet used any, so I guess it’s pretty likely I will try these cookies in the fairly near future:

Mahleb Shortbread

6 Tbsp butter (Grigson says “slightly salted,” which seems awfully vague)

1 C flour

2 tsp freshly ground mahleb

¼ C vanilla-scented sugar (Probably Grigson explains this somewhere in the book, but anyway, you scent sugar by slicing a vanilla bean in half and burying it in the sugar canister. It doesn’t take long to scent the sugar, but probably several days in advance would be best).

Melt the butter; cool till tepid. Mix the flour with the mahleb and sugar. Add butter. Roll tsp of the dough into balls and place on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Cool a few minutes on the baking sheets, then cool completely on racks. Coat with powdered sugar, optional.

Those sound good. I usually like shortbread types of cookies.

Okay, the fourth cookbook on my stack is Inside the Southeast Asian Kitchen, which turns out to be one of the books that has an editor (Tan Su-Lyn) rather than an author. I don’t in general find those books quite as appealing, since they generally lack the personal feel an author will (or should) bring to a book.

On the other hand, each country’s section in Inside the Southeast Asian Kitchen was written by a particular author, which does allow for that personal flavor to come through, more in some chapters than in others, though I’m still working my way slowly through the book. Each chapter features a different country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ten in all, and begins with a brief description of the food customs and cooking techniques of that country. I wouldn’t have minded a bit if these sections had been more extensive.

There are about eight or so recipes per country, so probably about 80 recipes altogether, so this is not meant to be a definitive treatment of the area. There’s something of an emphasis, the editor notes, on special occasion dishes, but those that are cooked in the home rather than restaurant dishes. As I said, I’m still working my way through the book, but it does seem to me that many of the recipes are fairly approachable for an American home cook. Let me share one here by way of example:

The version of Indonesian rendang given in this book – long-cooked beef in coconut milk – looks good and really quite easy, as long as you can cope with the idea of using 2.3 L of coconut milk for one recipe, which, wow, that is a lot of coconut milk. Granted, the recipe also calls for 1. 35 kg of beef (or buffalo), which is quite a chunk. But still.

The author of this section, Sri Owen, says, “My recipe is the recipe that was dictated to my mother by my paternal grandmother, who used to cook buffalo rendang for large family gatherings.” Owen adds, “Rendang is traditionally eaten with glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk,” which I have to say certainly would take this recipe just over the top when it comes to coconut milk. Here’s the recipe, if you’re into coconut milk and want to try it. I’m too lazy to go get my phone and convert the metric measurement, though I’m sure you all know that 2.5 cm is about an inch, a kg is about 2.2 lbs, and a L is pretty close to a quart.

Rendang

6 shallots, peeled and sliced

4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

6-10 red chilies, seeded and coarsely chopped

2.5 cm piece ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

2.5 cm piece turmeric, peeled and coarsely chopped, or 1 tsp ground dried turmeric (I got some fresh turmeric once, and let me warn you, it’ll stain your fingers.)

2.3 L coconut milk

1.35 kg buffalo meat or beef brisket or chuck, cut into 2 cm cubes

1 tsp chopped galangal or ½ tsp galangal powder (this is ginger-like, but I don’t have any)

1 salam leaf or bay leaf (I’m not familiar with salam leaves)

1 fresh turmeric leaf or one stalk lemongrass

2 tsp salt

Put the shallots, garlic, chilies, ginger and turmeric in a blender (or wet-dry spice grinder like my Preethi, which I love) along with 4 Tbsp coconut milk and blend until smooth. Put into a large pan along with the rest of the coconut milk. Add the meat and the rest of the ingredients. The coconut milk should cover the meat. Bring to a boil and simmer 90 minutes to 2 hours, stirring from time to time.

At this point, the author suggests transferring everything to a wok to continue cooking, but I’m not sure why except that the shape of the wok might help keep the meat submerged in the by now much reduced liquid. I suppose I might transfer everything to a smaller saucepan instead. Anyway, cook for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The coconut milk will be practically all reduced to oil and the meat will start frying instead of boiling, it says, which is interesting and not a technique I’ve ever used in cooking. Stir frequently from this point. When the coconut oil becomes thick and brown – I bet you are caramelizing the sugars from the coconut milk, and the meat is probably browning at last as well – anyway, stir continuously for 15 minutes, until the oil has been more or less absorbed by the meat.

Discard the turmeric leaf or lemongrass stalk. Serve with lots of rice.

I don’t know about you, but that really does sound interesting and different and good and I think I must try it.

Okay, back to revision! With a break to make up a shopping list that includes lots and lots of coconut milk and a big chunk of beef chuck.

Novels eligible for the 2016 Hugo

Well, novels eligible for the 2016 Hugo as well as other 2016 awards obviously. But this Goodreads list is tagged as Hugo eligible It’s a useful resource, I suppose, although already up above a hundred titles.

The ones I’ve read that I would consider nominating:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

The ones I haven’t read yet, but really really want to:

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

Updraft by Fran Wilde

Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr

Archivist Wasp by by Nicole Kornher-Stace

The ones I haven’t read yet, but would like to if possible:

The Just City by Jo Walton

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Silver on the Road by by Laura Anne Gilman

Court of Fives by Kate Elliot

Persona by Genevieve Valentine

The ones I’m intrigued by, but also a little wary of:

The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

The Traitor Baru Cormarant by Seth Dickinson

The one I’m considering nominating that isn’t yet on this list:

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

The 2015 title that I most want to read that isn’t yet on this list:

Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

Doing Tolkien Wrong

Here’s a re-post of an article by Sarah Monette that you all may find interesting:

…Tolkien is an affliction and a curse to fantasy writers. This is a horribly ungrateful thing to say, when it’s largely thanks to Tolkien that fantasy writers can exist as a sub-species today at all. … The reason for this is that, while Tolkien was a genius and a godsend to readers prepared to love secondary-world fantasy, he is a terrible model for writers. And that for a number of reasons, ranging from, on the macro level, his use of the quest plot to, on the micro level, the nature of his prose style. Imitating Tolkien – in and of itself, not a bad idea – has become mired down in slavish adherence to his product, rather than careful attention to his process.

Now, I don’t think I would go so far as to declare that Tolkien is a curse and an affliction to anybody, but still, this is an arguable position. I mean, it’s quite true that we can’t all be geniuses, or philologists, and that trying to imitate Tolkien too closely is perhaps not the best way to write your own story. But I don’t think it’s quite as true, as Monette asserts, that the quest-plot has been done to death. It is so broad; I’m not sure it’s possible to overdo it. And I say this as a reader who enjoys quiet slice-of-life stories as well as quest stories. And of course it’s quite true that Monette’s THE GOBLIN EMPEROR is not a quest story, and I can see how the feeling that all fantasy novels should involve a central quest might have slowed down her ability to conceptualize that story.

I must add: if THE GOBLIN EMPEROR goes on to inspire new writers to try that kind of story instead then great!

What one word would you choose to describe a story like THE GOBLIN EMPEROR? Not a quest story but a ???? Self-discovery novel? That sounds dreadfully literary and boring. But then, what? Any ideas?

Anyway, the whole post is worth a read if you have a minute.