Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

In 1931, in the British colony of Malaya, an aging British physician asks Ren, his 11-year-old houseboy to fulfill his dying wish. Find his missing finger within 49 days of his death and bury it with the rest of his body. The doctor dies and Ren begins his search, only the finger, blackened with age and preserved in a glass vial in a rural Malayan hospital is desired by several people at once. The finger might or might not contain supernatural powers, not so far-fetched in 1931, in Asia, where superstitions seem as reliable as modern science for explaining random acts of life. Night tigers attack night wanderers without warning. Philanderers and adulterers, as if deserving of punishment, are struck down by mysterious illnesses. Fortune and misfortune fall upon native Malayans and British ex-pats whose lives intertwine in hospitals, rubber plantations, storefronts, dance halls, trains, and secret rendezvous spots. While the voices of characters don't feel distinct, the characters...

On my last trip to the Whole Foods Coop in Erie, I picked up 18 ounces of something called "7-Grain and Seed Mix:" cracked wheat, cracked rye, cracked barley, corn grits, steel cut oats, millet, and flax. I cooked a couple of cups in the microwave and then added some to my Cripple Creek whole wheat starter.  A cup of water plus the moisture in the cooked cereals meant I had to add a lot of flour before it would become bread dough: Swany white organic white flour, spelt flour, and then some freshly milled hard red winter wheat and hard white spring wheat. I also added about a quarter cup of molasses. The crust was crisp, the crumb tender, and the molasses gave the final loaf a faintly sweet finish.

The first in a mystery series for detective Jackson Brodie. Kate Atkinson's account of a series of women done criminally wrong is delivered with such tartness you can't help but snigger all the way through. Take for example, Sylvia, an ugly duckling of an adolescent, whose mother rationalizes Sylvia's personal conversations with God this way. "And at least conversations with God were free, whereas the upkeep of a pony would have cost a fortune." Or this example. An unsympathetic physician visited by an overweight Theo, a client of Jackson Brodie's, describes his GP as, "a young woman with a very short haircut and a gym bag thrown carelessly in the corner of the doctor's office." The GP calls Theo obese condemning him, "to skim milk and chaff." Theo thinks of himself as a rotund Santa Claus.  Even descriptions of children who disappear and unfortunate souls whose throats are unceremoniously slit come off rather jauntily. The action ...

For the last three years my brother-in-law Marty has ordered Shissel Rye from Russ and Daughters as part of the Christmas to New Year's cook-athon we call Marty-week. Shissel rye is exceptionally good with whitefish spreads, but then again it is good with most any kind of overstuffed sandwich. The secret is the combination of caraway seeds and nigella seeds. Food Republic says Nigella seeds have an oregano-like quality with herbaceous notes, a slight bitterness and a warm, toasted-onion flavor.  My first attempt to reproduce Russ and Daughters' rye did not rise as high as I would have hoped. I maybe should have added some yeast, but, oh my (sigh) the flavor was incredible. The crumb was moist and airy, the combination of caraway and nigella was gracefully balanced, and the crust was crunchy.

For far too many centuries mainstream Judaism mired in ritual and stagnant orthodoxy. Just as the darkness of the Middle Ages was brightening, a new group of rabbis anxious to revive a moribund religion infused joy, song, dance, and the mystical into daily services. The irony is that Hasidic practice then lithified in the 18th and 19th centuries becoming so restrictive and formulaic that sects of Hasidim today are in many ways indistinguishable from religious fundamentalists of any stripe. The Seret-Vishnitzer rebbe, center. Hasids must adhere to ultra-strict, not just Kosher, dietary rules. Men are separated from women as neither sex may look upon the other outside of marriage. Sexual relations are prescribed with regard time of day, frequency and purpose: procreation. Dress codes may not change from what they were in 1800 eastern Europe. Even English is frowned upon in favor of Yiddish, Hasidism's lingua franca. Schooling for boys is restricted to Torah study. Women are r...

This series of stories is largely about David Sedaris's family and getting older. Beyond being laugh aloud funny -- in an opening line, Sedaris decries aging, suggesting his penis has lost a washer causing a steady drip -- his tales are deeply moving. His mother, whom David misses terribly, has been dead for more than 20 years. His father, with whom he has never really gotten along, is into his 90s and worthy of both sympathy and scorn. His sister, one of six siblings, has recently committed suicide. Still, Sedaris manages to get together with his longtime boyfriend, Hugh, his dad, and his four remaining siblings at a beach house in the Carolinas called the Sea Section (get it?). Families make us laugh, cry, and scream. They see, and don't hesitate to point out our flaws, and they can be compassionate as together we harumph through late middle age. Sedaris is more than comedian. He is a philosopher. 

James Lee is an Asian-American who grew up in rural, 1940s and 1950s America ostracized and bullied for being the only Chinese person any schoolmate had ever seen. Marilyn grew up in the south, daughter of a teacher of Home Economics. Marilyn's mother wanted Marilyn to be a proper southern belle, but Marilyn wanted to be a doctor. Only it's the 1950s and Marilyn is derided by teachers and professors who believe science is too hard for girls. The two outcasts find one another at Harvard, where else?, marry and move to Ohio when James' promising career at Harvard is derailed because he is the "wrong kind of person." Marilyn is pregnant and does not graduate. Their dreams crushed, they raise four children in a small town in Ohio As the book opens, the children are as isolated, friendless, and lonely as their parents; the 16-year old daughter is dragged from the bottom of the town's lake, the victim of an apparent suicide. Marilyn, James, and the children are ...