Life is Meals - James and Kay Salter

Did you know that the Aztec word for testicle was ahuacatle?? That's where the name of the avocado came from and it was believed to be an aphrodisiac. And that the word for chocolate came from the Mayan word tchocolatl. Anyway, after I got used to the format of "Life is Meals", it seemed to improve. Originally I had thought the book would contain actual chapters and perhaps short stories. But it is organized as a calendar with 365 entries, one for every day. It was interesting to read but not amazing in any way. Some of the information seemed old and lifted out of a book of quotations or birthdays of famous people. Some entries are actual little anecdotes from dinner parties that the husband and wife authors have held and recipes and menus are included. My rating would be 5 (out of 10 possible). Obviously, I did come across a bunch of interesting facts such as the bergamot in my Earl grey tea is oil from an inedible but fragrant citrus fruit from Calabria. And this cracks me up... the writing on a sign that could be found in bars in France in the '40s and '50s:

La vie moyenne d'un buveur d'eau: cinquante-six annees.
La vie moyenne d'un buveur de vin: soixante-dix-sept annees.
Choisissez-vous.
(Average life of a water drinker: 56 year. Average life of a wine drinker: 76 years. You choose.) Brilliant! :-)

Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris

I had heard that “Then it Came to the End” is a funny book about people in an ad agency during a period of layoffs. How interesting can that really be?? It seemed more like the premise of a sitcom. The book actually turned out to be better than I first had anticipated, maybe a 7. It took a while to get into because of the little information that is given about the characters. I found it hard to care for them or about them for the longest while. Ferris writes the book in a first person plural perspective (we), which is an important tool for the feel of the story and definitely for how the book ends. However, partway through the book, he switches to first person singular to relate the story of the nebulous boss Lynn and her illness. From then on the characters seem to have more clarity. They—Tom who writes deranged emails, Genevieve who is stunningly beautiful, Benny who is liked by all, Karen Woo who is disliked by all, Old Brizz who is the old smoker pitied by all, and many more—are all crazy in some way but normal at the same time just like most of us. It is as if they are all stereotypes rather than real people, and maybe that is exactly why I found it difficult to care for them at first. They are all stuck in their jobs needing the paycheck but probably wanting to leave. Whenever somebody actually leaves their job, one guy always remarks while toasting, “So good luck, and fuck you for leaving, you prick!“

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

This book happened to be the first one for no particular reason. It was just on the pile of my books to read. It was one of the ones I recently received an email from the library about impending due date. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give this book a 6. It's well-written by a proven author. However, the topic, the true story of her coping with grief after the loss of her husband of 40 years (John Gregory Dunne--also a writer) and her daughter's illness, is too up close and personal. Although it is a universal topic, it is too intimate for me at this point in time. I may return to this book at a later time in my life. Didion quotes lines of poetry dealing with grief and death and these stayed with me:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

They are the "Funeral Blue"s lines from The Ascent of F6 by W.H. Auden.