23...24...

Been too busy reading to write about the reading. But it's time to catch up, and then get back to cooking. I promised baguettes, and breakfast pizza, and report on a recent donut waddle crawl. Had some amazingly bad donuts (didn't think there could be such a thing, did you?) and have decided that there are some very overrated donuts in this city. Give me Dunkin' any day.

But first, the latest reads:

#23: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Dear Sugar is the advice column found on The Rumpus, an online literary magazine. Cheryl Strayed, the author of the bestselling memoir Wild and the novel Torch is Dear Sugar and the book is a collection of her columns. It's certainly not your mom's Dear Abby. Strayed creates an entirely new genre by combining literary confessional, memoir, and advice-giving to create what is a deeply moving read. There's the usual mix of cheating spouses, money problems, career issues, young people having trouble growing up, older people having trouble getting it up, and one incredibly powerful letter from a father who has lost a child. Some letter-writers are asking for specific advice, some need a place to rant, some just want to make a connection. Strayed answers every appeal with respect and empathy. I've always loved advice columns--the "Social Qs" column is the first thing I read in the Sunday Times--so I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of these Tiny Beautiful Things, even the ones that made me cry.

#24: The Host. My figlio maggiore often tells me I have the musical taste of a tween girl. I like Maroon 5 and Katy Perry and, excuse me but you'd have to be dead not to bop to them, One Direction. And sometimes my tweeny tastes extend into reading as well. I speed-page-turned my way through all three Twilight books. Loved Hunger Games long before the movie. And so I turned with great expectations (not a book I loved) to The Host, by Twilight author Stephanie Meyer. Can't say I enjoyed it as much as the first Twilight novel, which was un-put-downable, but it was a fun, fast read. It tells the familiar invasion of the body snatchers story, but this time from the POV of the snatcher. It's a moderately interesting twist and a moderately interesting read.

Stay tuned. More to come soon...