Category: not a book

not a book, Surviving the 'Rona

Calming cooking

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It’s been ten really quite stressful days hasn’t it? I mean I’ve been working in newsrooms for more than a decade at this point and I don’t really remember anything quite like it – even 2011 which had the Arab Spring, the Fukushima nuclear disaster and Utoya didn’t feel quite like this. I’ve spoken before about the fact that over the course of the pandemic I’ve retreated into rereading old favourites and sticking mostly to romance and mystery for new books, but away from reading, the other thing that I do to calm down is cooking. I put on an audiobook or a podcast and zone out while I make something nice to eat for dinner.

The picture today is of the oven cooked paella from Roasting Tin Around the World, which is one of our regular Saturday night meals (and the leftovers are then the Monday night meal). Our pattern is to cool something fancy/complicated on Saturday and Sunday which will give leftover vets for Monday and Tuesday and then we have a bunch of recipes we rotate through on weeknights, depending on what the butcher has at the weekend, which veg the supermarket has and what is in the freezer.

The pandemic has meant that I’ve been at home to cook in the evenings an awful lot more than I used to be and that means my repertoire of recipes has increased somewhat. I keep meaning to write a post about my favourite recipe books but never really getting that far with it! That’s probably because most of my favourites come from the same author – Rukmini Iyer and her Roasting Tin series – because I like the process of chopping things up but I’m not as big a fan of having to stand over the stove the whole time and stir! I have a page in my journal each month where I keep track of what we’ve eaten in the evening – and the list is starting to get a little repetitive. So as I find it quite hard to pick recipe books without flicking through them, I think a trip to a bookstore is going to be in order soon!

If you have any recommendations for books – or even your favourite (simple) week night dinner recipes – please put them in the comments. I’m on a few cookery email lists but find them a little bit and miss so I’d you have a really good one to recommend, I’m very interested!

Stay safe everyone.

not a book, Uncategorized

Not a Book: LulaRich

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Oh we’re back in the weird American stuff corner of my world this week. I’m on a big documentary kick at the moment by the way and it’s taking some effort on my part to spread out the posts about all of them!

LuLaRich is about the rapid rise and the somewhat fall of Lularoe, a multilevel marketing firm based out of Utah. In case you’ve never heard of them, they rose to fame for their “buttery soft” leggings and the collapse came when they had some…quality issues. If you haven’t already, there are a lot of articles about it – Stephanie McNeal (then of Buzzfeed) wrote this one and it won’t spoil your enjoyment of the documentary if you read it first.

And I know that might sound strange, but that’s because the big selling point about this doc (or at least it was for me) is that it has interviews with the founders DeeAnn Brady and her husband Mark Stidham so you can see what they have to say about it all. And it’s also got plenty of people who were involved in selling Lularoe too. It’s really quite something.

MLMs are such a peculiarly American thing too – I mean I remember my mum going to Tupperware and weekenders parties and buying stuff from Avon when I was little, but its by no means the same thing as in the states – I’ve seen people talking about having to run a gauntlet of MLM vendors at church, there are several reality TV stars who seem to make their main income from selling MLM products online (like Meri Brown from Sister Wives who is a Lularoe seller – and one of the top tier) so stuff like this fascinates and horrifies me in equal measure. I watched all four parts of this in one sitting with my sister the other week and it sort of blew my mind.

Anyway, if you’ve got any more good documentary series suggestions for me, please put them in the comments. I don’t want gore or sexual violence, I want more stuff like this or like the Man Who Stole Cricket about Alan Stanford. Thanking you!

children's books, not a book

Not a Book: Matilda the Musical

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Another post from my trip to London the other week. As well as the Elizabeth and Mary exhibition and a wander around the national gallery, we went to see Matilda, the musical based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book of the same name.

So I want to say that this isn’t the first time that I’d seen Matilda – I actually saw it in its original incarnation at the RSC in Stratford a decade ago, but it was the first time I’ve seen it in the West End. I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories of it – especially as I’ve got the CD (yes I know, it’s that long ago) and have sung along to it in the car a lot, but actually it really did. There are a few bits of staging that have definitely changed since that Christmas run, but that’s probably not a surprise given that the stage at Stratford was much more of a thrust stage than the Cambridge theatre is. We bought our tickets on the day (from the theatre) and were sat in the middle of the Dress Circle, which was really good value and a really good view. There is some running around in the aisles in the stalls that you can’t see, but for me it wasn’t worth paying an extra £50+ for.

In terms of the book vs the show, Matilda’s own story is fairly similar, but there’s a secondary plot strand added to tie in (that really works, don’t worry!) and you see less of the telekinises than you get in the book – but given that you have to try and make that work on stage, it’s not a surprise. I’ve always thought that picking Tim Minchen to do the music was inspired – he’s funny and clever and a little bit dark and sly. And like the book it’s funny but funny and suitable for children – there aren’t any jokes here that parents are going to get awkward questions about. And I know it’s a children’s show so you’d think that there wouldn’t be, but actually you’d be surprised!

Anyway, we had a blast, five out of five, would recommend, just maybe don’t go on a Saturday (or in the school holidays) if chatting children during the show are going to annoy you!

book round-ups, not a book

Super Bowl Sunday

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Yes today is the day when people will be talking about Superb Owls and the Super Bowl. I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, and although my team won’t be playing tonight, I’m still likely to be staying awake to see at least some of the match – hopefully I’ll last all the way to the halftime show.

American football and the NFL have their problems. We’ve all seen about them – whether it’s CTE injuries to players, or race scoring retired players to determine their compensation, or Washington Commanders’ old name, or Tom Brady, but there is something I find hypnotic about the game. And not just because you can watch it whilst reading a book and not miss much action. I should have gone to the Dolphins at Jaguars in London before Christmas, but in the end, it didn’t happen. But as soon as the Cowboys come over, I will try again. I’m also currently (well at least before the Olympics started) working my way through Amazon’s All or Nothing seasons that deal with NFL franchises – I’ve just hit the Carolina Panthers’ season.

Why the Cowboys? Well I have family who live in Dallas, so that was what started it – back when I was in France on my year abroad and learning how American football worked from August in the Irish bar in Tours and had to pick a team to support. And by happy coincidence, the Cowboys organisation is also responsible for one of my great guilty pleasure TV shows: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Making the Team. If you’re in the UK you can find it on ITVBe every few months I early in the mornings, if you’re in the US it’s on CMT. And you too can watch women try out to wear unforgiving uniforms to dance on the touch line at the AT&T stadium for what presumably is not very much money at all, especially given the hours of training they have to do.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering why this isn’t a Not a Book post – that’s because I’m going to recommend some football books to finish! I personally am marking the Super Bowl by finally getting around to reading Paper Lion by George Plimpton. But as I haven’t read it yet, I can’t write about is, so let’s head off to my usual wheelhouse: romance!

Firstly Alexa Martin – Intercepted was a BotW and she writes fun football romances that feel like they are more grounded in reality than many of the others, which might be because her husband was a player! She’s been an NFL wife and although her books obviously feature shiny romance versions of what life in the NFL is like, they do also feature some of the worries and risks which adds an extra something to it all.

I wrote about several Susan Elizabeth Philips books in my Enemies to Lovers post last month, but her Chicago Stars series basically work their way through key members of a fictional football team. The first one is 20 years old now, which probably qualifies it for Old School Romance status, but the latest one When Stars Collide came out just last year – and I really need to get around to reading it! Alisha Rai’s The Right Swipe features a retired football player as the hero, and the other novels in that sequence have football connections in patches.

And finally, because my love of Girls Own books is well known, I have to mention Grid Iron Grit, which is American Boys’ Own from the mid 1930s and is about a spoilt teenager who is removed from his small but exclusive school for rich kids and sent to a much bigger school with a better academic record. There he learns the error of his snobbish and lazy ways and to become a proper gentleman through the medium of American football. Lots of fun, even if some of the descriptions of the football got a bit too technical for me!

Enjoy the game if you’re watching – if not, enjoy whatever you’re reading!

not a book

Not a Book: Elizabeth and Mary

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I had a day out! And there are bookish things ton talk about after it. And so, voila!

The British Library has got an exhibition on at the moment about Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. The two women never met, but their lives were intertwined from the moment that Mary was born. If you’ve never studied the Tudors (hi non-Brits!), both women were descended from Henry VII. Elizabeth’s father was Henry VIII, of six wives fame (Elizabeth’s mother Anne was a beheaded if you know the rhyme) and because of his complicated marriage situation and because she was a woman, her place in the order of succession was always in doubt. Mary was descended from Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, who married James IV of Scotland and thus had a claim of her own on the throne. Mary was queen of Scotland in her own right and married the heir to the French throne, so had a lot of power in her own right. And of course when Elizabeth I didn’t marry, the succession was always an issue.

Anyway with all that background sorted, this being an exhibition at the British library it’s based around documents written by, for or about the two women. So if a lot of 500 year old documents appeal to you then this will be exactly your jam. It was absolutely mine. Check out Elizabeth’s very distinctive signature! Check out Mary’s and her sixteenth century French! There is also old school coded letters. And letters with fancy paper locks to keep letters secure. And old books and proclamations.

It was delightful, I had a blast – and I remembered a lot more detail from my Tudor history classes than I was expecting! I particularly liked the maps and aerial drawings and trying to work out what everyone had written. I was in there for more than 90 minutes – and it was only the knowledge that I was going to have to carry everything around with me all day that stopped me buying a lot of stuff in the shop!

And finally a question for you: how much time did Mary have on her hands when she was being held prisoner by Elizabeth?

Answer: a three metre by two metre tapestry amount of time! This was made by her and Bess of Hardwick across the span of 15 years. It’s big. And complicated.

book adjacent, not a book

Not a Book: Murder Among the Mormons

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I’m on a bit of a documentary jag on my TV viewing at the moment – and no I’m not counting Selling Sunset and Selling Tampa as documentaries – they’re definitely “constructed reality” or whatever they’re calling it now. Anyway this week I watched all three episodes of Murder Among the Mormons across two nights and it was really good.

Murder Among the Mormons looks at three bombings that took place in Salt Lake City in Utah in 1985. It soon becomes apparent that the bombings are linked to the trade in historical documents – and particularly to a series of documents related to the history of the Latter Day Saint movement. It’s got interviews with most of the key figures in the story and looks at the run up to the bombings, the bombings themselves and then the investigation looking to find the perpetrators.

Regular readers of the blog will know that the weirder corners of American religion and religious history and this fitted right into that niche for me. It’s not actually even a new release – it came out almost a year ago but despite all the murder mysteries I read, I’m not usually a big true crime murder mystery person because there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a resolution the way you are in a book that’s sticking to genre conventions. So I probably wouldn’t have watched this if it wasn’t for this tweet from Julie Cohen:

I mean how can you resist trying to find out about the magic salamander. And there actually not a lot more I want to say about the actual contents of the documentary. Because if you go into this not knowing any more than I’ve told you at the top: car bombs linked to the trade in historical documents then this will be a really wild ride. I can’t speak to how it works for you if you already know the story – but the makers of the documentary have put this together incredibly cleverly. So, it’s only three hours of your life – go, go, go.

And if this is your first toe in the corner of the various of Mormonism, then do go have a look at my posts about Under the Banner of Heaven, the season of Unfinished about Short Creek and also relatively recent BotW Educated.

Have a great Sunday!

not a book

Bookshelfie: Romance and cozy crime

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In the last Bookshelfie post we were in the front of the house, with books in my fanciest set of shelves. Today, we’re at the back of the house and a much more crammed full shelf, where you will spot some old friends of mine – including a stack you may recognise from yesterday’s Series I Love post! And you can also see a couple of problems I have here too. Last time out, I mentioned my shelving issues with the Viragos, well here we have the shelving issue with the Gail Carriger. No, I don’t know why my Heartless is a different size to the rest of the set. Yes, I do know why the Custard Protocol changed size – the publishing deal changed and they have a different cover model to the US version as well as the difference in sizes.

Then there is the historical romance collection. And the eagle eyed will spot that I have a UK edition of Brazen and the Beast and a US one. The UK one is because I wanted Sarah MacLean to sign it when I went to her tea party. The US one is because I couldn’t bear the non matching set. Behind the front row of Sarah Macleans are the Eloisa James’s – mostly in US mass markets, but a few in UK paperback. Also hiding in the back row are my Julia Quinn books – which are a mix of my favourite Bridgertons and then a selection from the Bevelstoke and Smythe-Smith series.

Also hidden in the back row are a couple of old favourites – there are three Melissa Nathan novels (how is it fifteen years since she died?) and my favourite Sarah Mason Playing James (I hope she’s still writing somewhere out there under a different name that I don’t know about), an aged Carole Matthews, Welcome to the Real World which is both the first book of hers I read and still my enduring favourite – it’s about an aspiring singer who gets her big break on a tv singing competition the same week she lands a job as PA to an opera singer who, unbeknown to her is the newest judge on the very talent show she’s about to be a contestant on. To the far sides of the front we have crime – historical crime on the left with Frances Brody and cozy crime on the right with Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series (as discussed yesterday). Further back are some of her library lovers books as well as some odds and ends of other cozy crime series. And finally, there’s also the baseball I caught at Nationals Park when I was in D.C. – although I still deny that I elbowed anyone out of the way to get to it though and credit my success to catching practice with my dad back in primary school cricket days!

It’s not the most obvious of stuff to put on a shelf together at first glance, but I promise there is reason there: it’s favourite authors and books at my eyeline in fairly logical order. They’re all books that I might want to lay my hands on in a hurry for a reread. Case in point I took the photo for this post after I’d already written half of the post and wrote the whole thing on the sofa, only going to the shelf right at the end to check that it was the Nathan, Matthews and Mason in the back row – the only book I had forgotten was there was Bridget Jones! I definitely can’t claim the same level of familiarity with the other shelves in this bookcase. But that’s a story for another day…

not a book

Not a Book: Some Like It Hot

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A couple of years ago, when Doris Day died, I wrote a whole post about my love for the Hollywood icon. In it, I mentioned that my top five films of all time are Pillow Talk, Some Like It Hot, The Philadelphia Story, Mary Poppins and the Hayley Mills Parent Trap. I stand by that list, although I will say that leaving the Sound of Music out makes me anxious, so today, I thought I’d write about why I love Some Like It Hot.

If you’ve never seen the film, you can get a pretty good idea from the trailer, but basically, after two jobbing musicians witness a mob shooting in Prohibition Chicago they try to escape retribution from the gangsters by posing as women called Daphne and Geraldine and joining all-girl band. They promptly both fall in love with the band’s singer (and ukulele player) Sugar. High jinx ensue, especially when a millionaire falls in love with Daphne and the mob turn up for the “Friends of Italian Opera” meeting. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are Daphne and Geraldine, and Marilyn Monroe is Sugar. If I haven’t sold it to you by now, I should add that the director and writer is Billy Wilder, who was also behind Sunset Boulevard and the Apartment.

I honestly can’t remember when I first watched it, but I do know that I’ve had the DVD in my collection for about 20 years now, and I have it recorded on both the upstairs and downstairs TiVo – because you never know when you might be poorly and need to watch a film in bed to cheer you up. Especially in Covid times. It will reliably cheer me up and is also probably the only film with Al Capone-style mobsters that I will watch! It’s just funny and so fun that you manage to forget that two men pretending to be women and using the knowledge they gain in disguise to help them get a girl is a bit of a problem. But it seems in films it’s one of my favourite things – see also Pillow Talk and You’ve Got Mail, and also Lover Come Back and Sleepless in Seattle.

I know I said this is not a post about books, but there are a couple of books on my favourites list with cross dressing main characters – on the historical romance front there’s Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades and The Masqueraders, but there’s also Terry Pratchett’s A Monstrous Regiment. There’s a bunch more that I’ve read, but those three are the one’s I’ve come back to over and over. I think it’s easier to pull off in print because you don’t have to worry about needing to make the illusion convincing – the reason that Some Like It Hot is in black and white is because the amount of makeup needed for Lemmon and Curtis made their faces look green (Drag Race shows that beard/stubble coverage make up has moved on a long way in the last sixty years) and you can leave it all to the reader’s imagination – going the other way, I’ve never thought that Imogen Stubbs makes that convincing a boy in the film of Twelfth Night, for all that I love that movie (and not just because it has Toby Stevens in a bath at one point) and in fact the play.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a Sunday afternoon film to watch, why not watch this today – not only is it hilarious, but it’s also right up there on most of the greatest film lists, which given how serious a lot of the others on those lists are, surely makes it worth your time. And of course it has one of the greatest last lines ever. If you don’t know what it is, I’m not going to spoil it for you though!

not a book

Not a Book: Houseplants

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I think I’m getting old. Well I know I’m getting old, but one of the more startling things across the course of the pandemic has been my growing house plant collection. This is a particular surprise to me because I have always considered myself as having whatever the opposite of green fingers is – because I have reliably killed any plant I have owned*. At the old house, really the only window with a window sill was the kitchen and I regularly killed basil plants there, to the point where Him Indoors told me I wasn’t allowed to buy any more of them. The only house plants we had were a Valthemia – which my mum gave me, and is a bulb so very, very hard to kill – and a Mother-in-law’s tongue, also reputed to be hard to kill.

When we moved to the new house, they came with us and were soon joined by Cecil the spider plant. Then mum and dad gave us a peace lily – which lived in Him Indoors’s office and seemed to be flourishing. When I changed jobs last year, one of my leaving gifts was an orchid and although I have a history of killing orchids, I thought I would give it a go. And lo! The orchid is surviving, in the bathroom near Cecil. Suddenly, I’ve got a little collection of plants and I’m starting to get a little bit confident.

I bought myself some nice pots to put them in. And when I took Cecil to mum and dad’s to repot, I also took one of Cecil’s babies, that I had managed to develop roots on. And I came back with two other plants on top. And I took a little side shoot off the aloe vera plant that Him Indoors’s parents gave us as well. Now I’ve got a little shelf of plants in the utility room and I’m starting to think that I might have a green thumb after all.

We’ve had a few minor setbacks – when the peace lily needed repotting, mum and dad gave us another one. Which I killed within weeks. And now I think I’ve killed the Mother-in-law’s tongue too. It still has one green leave sticking up, but all the rest are brown and withered. So I’ll admit I’ve put the plans to buy more plants on hold, until I can be sure that I can cope with the ones that I’ve got. But I do still want a plant for my office. And if the Mother-in-Law’s tongue really is dead, then there’s a space on my hearth that will need filling with something…

*when I was a child I had a spider plant in my room and sometimes geraniums too, and they survived. But I wasn’t responsible for watering them so they don’t count!