Happy (Belated) Birthday, Ginter Park!

Pictured (probably): 

Margaret Williams, Margaret Worsham and Burgess Collins

Did you know that the Ginter Park Branch turned 50 this year? The doors were first opened in May of 1964. If you haven't seen it, check out the image of Ginter Park's grand opening preparations in Wednesday's Times-Dispatch. To celebrate this milestone just as we begin preparing for renovations scheduled to take place next year I'm sharing this list of 50 books published in 1964. Perhaps you would have found a few of these on the new books shelf. Some I've read, many I haven't, but I discovered quite a few to add to my to-read list. Any familiar favorites?

1. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (still creepy and gross after 50 years) by Roald Dahl

3. A Moveable Fest by Ernest Hemingway

4. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and other Pieces by James Thurber

5. Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.

6. Harriett the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

7. Herzog by Saul Bellow

8. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe

9. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe

10. The Penultimate Truth by Phillip K. Dick

11. Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr.

12. Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban (Frances is still adorable after all these years)

13. A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy

14. The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary

15. Flowers for Hitler by Leonard Cohen

16. Apocalypse Postponed by Umberto Eco

17. The Face of Another by Kobo Abe

18. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. LeGuin

19. You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

20. The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

21. The Phantom of Pine Hill (Nancy Drew #42) by Carolyn Keene

22. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

23. Colonialism and Neocolonialism by Jean-Paul Sartre

24. Nerve by Dick Francis

25. Ribsy by Beverly Cleary

26. The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo

27. The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail by Wallace Stegner

28. Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

29. Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein

30. A Little Learning: the first volume of an autobiography by Evelyn Waugh

31. One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis

32. The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras

33. Gantenbein by Max Frisch

34. The Duchess of Jermyn Street by Daphne Feilding

35. My Years at General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan

36. Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (The Strugatsky brothers are a favorite of mine. Roadside Picnic is newly re-translated and highly recommended)

37. My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin

38. Shadow Of A Bull by Maia Wojciechowska

39. I Have a Horse of My Own by Charlotte Zolotow

40. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart

41. The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman

42. The Nova Express by William S. Burroughs

43. Asterix and the Big Fight (Asterix, #7) by René Goscinny

44. May I Bring a Friend by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers

45. Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown

46. Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats

47. The Raw and the Cooked by Claude Levi-Strauss

48. A Cellarful of Noise by Brian Epstein

49. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

50. An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul

Packing Light: 9 lightweight novels that pack a punch

All weighing in at under 300 pages, these slender novels are no less powerful for their diminutive size and they fit perfectly in your carry-on luggage while keeping you pinned to the very edge of your airplane seat. Put up your tray table and put down Capital, Summer's "least read" monster, then grab a handful of these little guys hot off the new books shelf. 

Your Fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? by Dave Eggers

Mr. Eggers brought us the pretty darn long The Circle last year (which was great and you should read it too). This year I guess he just decided to go with a pretty darn long title.  Your Fathers, [etc.], written entirely in dialogue, is the humorous and suspenseful story of a man kidnapping people and holding them hostage on a decommissioned Naval base because he just wants to ask them some questions.  I read it on a weekend hiking trip so I can confidently recommend it as vacation-friendly.

The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar


A Russian woman now living in the United States remembers  the Soviet summer camp of her youth as she embarks on a sudden and unexpected affair, and discovers how unreliable memory can be.

The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland


I had to read this in one sitting, pausing only to recommend it to a friend 2/3 of the way through. Lena, a lone transcriptionist with a large and reputable New York City newspaper, becomes obsessed with a story of a blind woman who apparently committed suicide by climbing into a lion's cage at the zoo. In her quest for the truth about this peculiar story she uncovers much more.   

Chop Chop by Simon Wroe


Sharp, mordantly funny, and sometimes horrifying and gross, this witty story of one man's brief career in restaurants might make you think twice about going out to eat while on vacation.

The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham


I am going to get around to reading you, Snow Queen, I swear! Michael Cunningham, who brought us The Hours,
now brings us this gorgeous story that follows the divergent paths of the Meeks brothers as they each seek their own meaning in life. Highly recommended by a trusted source, and Goodreads, who seldom steers me wrong, described it as "beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic". Sounds pretty good to me.

Next Life Might be Kinder by Howard Norman


In Next Life Might be Kinder, Sam Lattimore is a widower recalling his brief marriage to his wife, and her tragic murder and its aftermath, as he visits with her spirit on the beach in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You might want to grab the tissues for this tender and melancholy little romance.

Sleep Donation by Karen Russell


Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, is out with a new novella that promises to be every bit as unsettling and entertaining as those were. Sleep Donation is another novel about sleep deprivation--the other being the terrific Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun--so maybe this is a trend forming. There are about a billion zombie stories out there so the literary market can probably handle a few more insomnia themed tales. This one is on my "to read soon" list, which never seems to get any shorter.

Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole


This one is also on my "to read soon" list. Cole's unnamed narrator returns to visit Lagos after 15 years abroad and rediscovers his hometown, and himself. Originally published in Nigeria in 2007, this novella is now available in the United States and just sounds really lovely.

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld


For once I beat the New York Times review of books and read this before they reviewed it. All the Birds, Singing was originally published in the UK in 2013 and finally released in the US in 2014. Told in reverse, this book is riveting and eerie with a complicated central character. Jake Whyte lives an isolated life as a sheep herder and grapples daily with scars from her difficult past while a threatening predator attacks her flock at night.

It's almost Mother's Day! (Did you make a present for your mom yet?)

It's almost Mother's Day!  Mom loves handmade gifts that come from the heart, right?  You could bake her some fantastic cookies, invent some ridiculous new mimosa to serve at your Mother's Day brunch, sew her a darling new apron from a vintage Hawaiian shirt...yeah, I'm on this.  You know where you can find scads of books, resources, and even classes on everything from container gardening to crafting to crochet to cooking?

I think you know where.

Anyway, there are some scrumptious looking new finds for would-be and committed crafters on the shelves this Spring.  Allow me to introduce you to a few.

Upcycling

by Danny Seo

Mom hates waste.  There are starving children somewhere and finishing your peas matters.  Danny Seo also hates wasting things, including things you may still be using for their intended purpose.  He wants you to make pretty, functional wares and decorations out of "stuff you already have".  For some of the projects, "stuff you already have" only applies if you happen to live in an Ace Hardware, but in a craft book of 200 pages with nearly a craft per page, one can forgive a little stretching of the made-up term "upcycle".  I mean, there has to be some filler, like the crafts that are less "trash to treasure" and more "trip to Lowe's to trash".  I personally LOVE the faux bear skin rug made from another, non bear-shaped, rug (is this just "cycling"?) and the *darling* bird cage chandelier made out of fake birds, a cannibalized IKEA paper lantern and chicken wire. Namely, stuff I definitely do not already have (except a bunch of fake birds--of those I have plenty).  The Starry-Sky Artwork project is a really cool way to make your collection of ugly hotel landscape paintings really *pop* (yes, I'm serious). He even has a 10 second project to use that tangled wad of Christmas lights you swore you'd store neatly this time but didn't. Hoarding mason jars and river rocks?  Mom, I'm looking at you.  Danny Seo has a project for that and you only need strong glue.

Upcycling has a bunch of really cool projects, and a few head-scratchers, but everything is well styled and photographed, and there are some cute crafts for kids to do too.  Definitely worth checking out if you love projects and hate throwing things away.

Eat & Make

by Paul Lowe

Sweet Paul is sweet. And I mean sweet. My mom would love him. This book is just charming! Cover, styling, author, and all.  What is it about those Northern Europeans that they have such photogenic homes?  I am admittedly a sucker for vintage clothing, vintage linens, vintage dishes, etc, but for some reason when I put it together it looks more like Wes Anderson got drunk and went blindfolded to a flea market and then got into a fist fight with Rachel Ashwell (of Shabby Chic--the original upcycler) over the perfect ashtray. *Ahem*  Eat & Make is primarily a cookbook but with complimentary crafts, mostly for table settings, thrown in.  The book is divided by time of day with a slant toward brunch-y foods and lighting, the recipes being a sort of "quick Swedish fusion" that goes well with vintage speckled enamel crocks and quirky "upcycled" aprons. I literally can't get enough of the creamy, yummy photography, the clean and bright white interiors, and just the general, Scandinavian-wooden-wheel barrow-natural-farmer's market-ness of it.   And I can't wait to make his Morning Biscuits, Snug Eggs, and Merry Marys.  I don't even care if his idea of "upcycled" candlesticks are just tapers crammed haphazardly (fire hazardly!) into big metal nuts.  They look so off-beat romantic when photographed in extreme close-up on his rough-hewn barn door table!  Check this book out for the menus and the pictures.  Don't make any of his candles unless you want to burn down your kitchen.  Mom would NOT approve.  She will however approve of the gorgeous grapefruit, red cabbage, and goat cheese salad on the cover.  She thinks you should eat more fruits and veggies.

Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget
Clinton Kelly

This book is a kick.  It provides simple instructions about how to quickly and cheaply transform your boring life into an instant cocktail party. Picture this: Anne Hathaway starring in a romantic comedy about a girl who has to pretend to be the sort of ad executive who throws effortlessly fabulous cocktail parties all the time when in fact she is a temp who can barely afford her communal studio apartment, ramen noodle dinners, and 4 cats. "Sally", played by Ms. Hathaway, frantically dashes around her 200 square foot apartment wearing curlers in a montage of dip-dyeing her grubby white bathmat into a designer ombre masterpiece and whipping up some goat cheese and red pepper mousse (on a budget), wrapping her drab, white lampshades with burlap, and altering her ill-fitting thrift store rags into hot off the runway looks tailored to her perfect body. Hilarity and romance ensues. Roll credits. That's the upcoming film adaptation of Clinton Kelly's Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget.  Don't believe me?  Check it out.  You'll see.  And mom loves to be fabulous.  You know what else mom loves?  Thrift.


What we take away from most craft books now is "NEVER. THROW. ANYTHING. AWAY." What they don't tell you is what to do with the stuff you mustn't ever throw away until you have enough (fill in the blanks) to fashion into a new thing.  To answer this question I propose a pre-craft interior decorating book.  I'll call it "decor-cycle" and it will be nothing but well-styled, super close-up photographs of vintage-modern interiors decorated *tastefully* with old tires painted white and filled with wine corks--wine corks just hanging out *tastefully* until I have enough for a bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens.  And if I never happen to get around to the bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens, I still have a *totally chic and tasteful* arrangement of wine corks in my living room.  I am *not*, however, sitting on my charming vintage sofa (old futon) sipping wine and chucking the corks into an old tire. I will *not* end up on Hoarders. To all the moms out there, including my own mom who taught me to love making stuff out of other stuff and took me to the library every week to check out craft books, Happy Mother's Day!

Greetings and good readings from the Ginter Park branch!

National Library Week (April 13th-19th)  is nearly upon us so now seems like a good time to share my "favorite books I've read in 2014 so far" list (before it gets too long).  

Dissident Gardens (2013) is a multi-generational tale of American communists, Greenwich Village counter-culture, and mothers and daughters. Recommended for readers of that sort of thing. See also: William Faulkner, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, and the movie Inside Llewyn Davis.

On such a full sea (2014) was my "most eagerly anticipated read of 2014" back in January and I am pleased to announce that I didn't self-hype it to death.  Recommended for fans of all things post-apocalyptic, Cormac McCarthy (Think The road), Margaret Atwood (my favorite author--duh.), and Ursula K. LeGuin.

Lowland (2013) I would have called it A heartbreaking work of staggering genius if that name weren't already taken. Just remember: It's healthy to cry.  Just let it all out.  Read it if you loved The magic seeds, Cutting for stone, or just love beauty.  It's worth it.

Dark Places (2009).  Confession: I liked this so much better than Gone Girl.  Am I allowed to say that? It was almost like an alternate version of In cold blood told from the perspective of a survivor if In cold blood had been fiction and anyone had survived (SPOILER ALERT). Readers of Tami Hoag and Joyce Carol Oates will enjoy it too.

Orfeo (2014).  I read this whole book with my mouth hanging open.  (At least one of this year's snow days happened because I wished for it the day I checked this book out: I knew I had to read it all in one sitting. Librarians have super powers. #truestory )  This is a beautifully written novel that weaves Mahler, modern art, technology, and paranoia into a captivating tale of a composer and amateur microbiologist, and his magnum opus. For fans of Godel, Escher, Bach, (non-fiction), Mefisto, and stories inspired by the myth of Orpheus.

The Circle (2013) is the fun and just a little too real story of Meg, a naive young woman working for a powerful Google-meets-Facebook-like mega-corporation.  Recommended for fans of Jennifer Egan and Gary Shteyngart, as well as folks who have a healthy fear of our Google overlords.

The Luminaries (2013) is a gorgeous novel told from multiple viewpoints and set during the New Zealand gold rush in the 1860s. Recommended for lovers of really good books and fans of If on a winter's night a traveler, Cloud atlas, and Life after life (Kate Atkinson's). 

Black Moon (2014) creeped me out!  Imagine a world in which people can't fall asleep anymore except for a fortunate--or unfortunate--few "sleepers".  Imagine insomniacs being scarier than zombies.  Recommended for lovers of  Zone one, The dog stars, The age of miracles, World War Z, and sleeping in.

Kafka on the Shore (2006). Love. This. Book.  Existential and surreal, fans of Saramago and A tale for the time being by Ruth Ozeki will enjoy this.

Why are you so sad? (2014) is a "Laugh your face off or else you'll cry because it's just so true" kind of story about your average clinically depressed guy working as an artist who designs the pictorial instruction manuals for an IKEA-like company, and amateur mental-health surveys in his spare time.  Read if you liked Even cowgirls get the blues or Breakfast of champions, or you just think that something can be so sad it's funny. 

The shining girls (2013) "The girl who wouldn't die hunts the killer who shouldn't exist".  This is your classic serial killer meets girl story with a sci-fi time-traveling twist.  Yeah, it is a lot of fun--and pretty darn gory.  Read if you enjoyed Nowhere by Christopher Shane, and even Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.  

Celebrate National Library Week 2014 (April 13-19, 2014) @ your library!

All week long (April 14-19) you can drop in to Ginter Park to make a bookmark!  All ages welcome!

Do not miss the inaugural Teen Book Club for Girls event!  Author Meg Medina, recently named one of CNN's "Ten Visionary Women", will be joining us to discuss her book Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass.  

April 16th @ 3 pm in the Main Library Teen Space.

Check out a whole bunch of great movies playing @ North Avenue all week at 2 pm!

And more!

Make your own website for free (or really cheap)!

"But how?  I didn't go to one of your fancy internet schools!  I don't know my elbow from my html!"  
Fear not, blog reader--that is why there's WordPress.com! (And other similar dotcoms but for the sake of space I'll just talk about WordPress.)

Read about it here or come to my class!

DIY Websites with WordPress at the Ginter Park Branch Library

Wednesday, December 18th @ 5:30

Can't make it today but wish you could?

Give us a call and I'll try to schedule another class in the future: 646-1236.

Creating your own website to promote a small brick-and-mortar business or a web store in an online marketplace, or to share your art, music, or words with the world is well within your reach.  You don't need to know any code or shell out a ton of money to have a professional, attractive, functional website that can grow with your needs, skill level, and your business.  WordPress, simply put, is a blog (sort of like the one you are reading now).  Blogs are basically just websites designed to display the most recent content first in the form of "posts". Static "pages" can be added and set as the homepage, moving the blog off the the side.  Pages can even be nested creating sub-menus if your template allows it. Go to any website you can think of and navigate the menus.  You can do that on your own site.  Here is an  example of a well done WordPress.com website for a small business:

The Pink Rose Bakery

These blogazines (I may have just made that word up) definitely weren't free but are worth showing here as an example of what is possible:

The Holborn

Flavorwire

So, how to get started?  Go to Wordpress.com.  Click "get started".  Do this:

Create your account log-in, and don't worry about the blog address because you can change it later. You're almost there! Once you're in you can pick out a theme.  There are 120 free themes to choose from. The theme is the pretty part; it determines the look and feel of your site. Consider your audience and your content.  If you feature a lot of photos and very little text, look for a theme that emphasizes photos like this one.

If you are promoting an auto repair shop you will probably want a static homepage that prominently displays your phone number, a list of services, and a map of your location. Think about what information your customer is looking for and make it easy to find. The above theme might confuse someone in search of a reliable mechanic.

So, what's next? Get to know your dashboard. That's the control room for your whole website. There you'll be able to create pages, add content, change your theme, write and edit blog posts (basically just do all of the things) there. I set up a "sandbox" to demo changes for the purposes of the class so it will look different all the time: http://nataliedlibrarian.wordpress.com/

The theme I have chosen is pretty well suited to my content, what little of it there is, but I'm not wild about the background color so I think I'll change it.  It's nice to know that the theme can be changed easily at any time without sacrificing my content.

When creating a page or a post you may notice a tab labeled "visual" and next to it a tab labeled "text".
The text tab is where you can edit (some of) the HTML--that's the language that tells a browser how to display content.  The great thing about WordPress?  You don't have to know it at all. You can learn just a little and make some changes in there if you like or you can leave it alone and trust WP's code.

WordPress can be ALL free, "pretty cheap", or "reasonably priced" depending on how much space you need and how much control you want. You can purchase upgrades à la carte or as part of a plan. 60$/year gets you video—the free version does not support video. 99$/year gets you a custom domain, more space for photos and video (about 13 GB), and more control over site appearance. Even more money will get you even more, if you can imagine that.  Want a custom theme?  It'll cost you but it's an option.

Want even more control? Teach yourself a new language! The folks at codeacademy.com and W3Schools.com have just about all you need to learn code like CSS or HTML in your spare time. It might even be fun.

Final advice: Put a cat on it. (People love cats.) (The internet has lots of funny cats.)

Short stories for a long weekend

Hurry up and get your supplies today for the long weekend!  The library will be closed on Monday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day.

Inspired by this postage stamp story, I thought I would suggest some of my favorite short reads for the long weekend ahead.

Though it appears to be entirely apocryphal, I still love the tale of how Hemingway allegedly won a bet by producing a story in 6 words: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.  (Or something to that effect.  That’s the beauty of urban legends: they are so mutable.)  

Heckuva way to win a bar tab, sir.

Also along those lines is another favorite of mine, this time attributed to science fiction writer Frederic Brown:  The last man on earth sat alone in a room.  There was a knock on the door...

Always gives me chills, that one does.

That is the beauty of short stories, no?  They pull no punches.  They can leave the reader gasping in so few words. So here's a heap of some that have moved me in one way or another, in no particular order:

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

A Good Man is Hard to Find 

by Flannery O’Connor

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

The Heart of Happy Hollow
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Welcome to the Monkeyhouse

by Kurt Vonnegut

The Works of Edgar Allen Poe

Glamping this summer? Let RPL and Mango help!

Just sitting there at your computer, wishing this winter would stop already, endlessly scrolling through dream vacations you can’t afford to take? Or are you just staring at cat pictures on Buzzfeed?  It’s ok.  RPL wants to help.  I’m going to let you in on a couple of secrets that just might save Spring, Summer, and your sanity. Ready?

Glamping:  A word combining “glamour” and “camping” is apparently a thing that people do according to this article in the New York Times.  Reportedly a more luxurious way of “roughing it”, it can range from a $10/night stay in a VW minibus in Charlottesville, to a $1726/night stay at the “Four Seasons Tented Camp at Golden Triangle” in Thailand and, as you may have guessed, there are plenty of websites to get you on your way.  Fear not, I’m going to stay closer to the $10 side of things for this post. This all started when I stumbled upon the glamping wishlist on Airbnb.com and with some further Googling discovered some really affordable places to stay all over Europe.  I found a $27 a night Tipi in Huetor de Santillan, Spain, a $20 a night stay on a campsite farmhouse in Perugia, Italy, and my own personal favorite, A “Summer Home for Hobbits” just outside of Helsinki, Finland, for $54 a night.  In addition to brushing up on my Russian and learning a little Korean, I may have to add Finnish to the list so that I can chat over fresh donuts with Maija, the allegedly quirky owner of the little café about a 10km walk through the woods from the Hobbit house.  

Armed with little more than some pluck, a sense of adventure, and your library card to access Mango, you could go anywhere and feel right at home under the stars or in slightly more plush digs.  Just visit Richmondpubliclibrary.org and under the Find Information menu, click “online library” and scroll down to Mango Langues.  You can learn a whole bunch of languages, fast, fun and completely free!

Not in the mood to glamp but feel like charging a bunch of globetrotting strangers 15 bucks to sleep in your backyard this summer?  Check out Backyard Structures and How to Build Them by Monte Burch or How to Build Treehouses, Huts & Forts by David Stiles, both freshly shelved at Ginter Park!

Just want to travel through the pages of a book?  These are a few that have transported me: Earlier this year Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk took me to Istanbul in the 70s (I could learn Turkish too!); Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt is one of my all-time favorite reads; A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson took me on the Appalachian Trail (without actually having to go there and for that I am grateful); West of Here by Jonathan Evison looks promising so I’ll add it to my wishlist (I’ve been meaning to get back out West).  

What's Cooking at Ginter Park?

My mother is a marvelous cook, the sort of cook who seems to have this preternatural sense of when something is “just right”, be it dough, broth, or batter.  I, on the other hand, need detailed directions with pictures or my mother a frantic phone call away talking me through her gravy recipe again.  I've been so envious of what has always seemed to be completely natural culinary instinct, which I did not inherit, but have realized it is actually the result of years of patient trial and error using cookbooks.  She still pulls out a Martha Stewart Living, or Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day, or a well-worn 3x5 card penned in her neat script (something else I did not inherit) for a recipe she has been preparing for decades.  I can picture her cooking library lined up neatly on top of the pie safe.  I loved browsing their flour-dusted spines, pulling them off the shelf to look at the sumptuous images and reading the cryptic instructions to mince, temper, proof, etc. The thought came to me recently while I was shelving, as thoughts have a way of doing then, (trade secret: shelving can be a very meditative experience) that I should test-drive a handful of our wonderful collection of cookbooks available at Ginter Park to find my own flavor and to start compiling my own library of trusted recipes.  

Classic Spanish Cooking: Recipes for Mastering the Spanish Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard

This book presents traditional Spanish recipes to perhaps more confident cooks than me.  The directions are minimal and seem to assume a lot of prior experience with the ingredients, such as the time and temperature requirements for  short grain rice. Still undaunted, (no, slightly daunted) I opted to try out the arroz a la cubana, or Cuban rice, recipe because I love fried plantains and I already had the tomatoes pureed. Ultimately it was simple enough and fortunately I’ve prepared risotto before, which operates similarly, so I could make educated guesses as to the missing directions.  The result was great!  It was rated quite highly by Peter, my taste tester, and seemed pretty healthy at least in keeping with the Mediterranean diet I have been reading so much about, so I would definitely incorporate this into my culinary repertoire and I will definitely try another recipe from this book.

The Best American Recipes 2003-2004, ed. by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens

This series compiles the most highly reviewed recipes each year from sources such as The New York Times and House Beautiful. I love the little “cook’s notes” the editors add which are special caveats included with certain recipes.  I made a simple "escarole and little meatball soup" (minestra) because I love miniature things and "little meatballs" sounded a-dor-able. It was very easy and inexpensive, using ingredients I had on hand already, but it was a little spare in flavor, so perhaps it would be a good canvas for experimenting with seasonings. I liked it for the potential; Peter thought it was just OK. Alas, I am aware of my limitations and overall these cookbooks are great.

Richmond Receipts: Past & Present by Jan Carlton

I am new in town from Cincinnati so I wanted to try something local and this certainly fit the bill. Intimidated by all the ways to prepare ham, I got cook-shy and ended up choosing a recipe for rice croquettes, sometimes called arancini, that looked like a simple way to use up leftover rice.  I opted to use some leftover risotto rather than the long-grain rice the recipe calls for, so I basically ignored the recipe completely but the result was every bit as good as I had hoped and the book itself is an informative collection of local culinary history and customs so it is well worth a read.  And anyway, the rice croquettes provided a nice side dish for the recipe I tried from the next book.

The Breakaway Cook by Eric Gower features beautifully photographed results of recipes with gorgeous, exotic, and sometimes difficult to find, ingredients.  I selected a recipe with a short ingredient list: the baked peas with tarragon, yogurt, and pistachios.  I found it to be fabulous and Peter agreed. With such fresh, light, and flavorful ingredients, (yogurt, tarragon, peas, pistachios, scallions and olive oil) it brought summer to mind, and then it snowed.  Spring is finally springing though and I am so ready to dine  outdoors again!  I will definitely be making this dish again.

Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by the Moosewood Collective

My mother has a Moosewood cookbook, so this was sort of a nostalgia checkout for me; I can't walk past this book on the shelf without thinking of her.  Nobody does vegetarian cooking better than these guys, seriously.  Fare that can often be sad, bland veggies with under-heated grains is transformed into food so flavorful you won’t miss the meat.  I made the curried quinoa because it used up all the leftover peas from the recipe above.  It paired well with a leftover chorizo soup and some homemade bread. Hungry yet?  

Just think how extra great a home-cooked meal using your homegrown herbs this summer would be!  Maybe you should go sign up for the container gardening program at the Ginter Park branch, March 30th, to find out?