Average Jane

Average Jane Has A Party

I'm in a book club. Well, several actually, but the one that met yesterday at my house is known for being more about drinking wine than deep book discussions. We hadn't met for a while, so I decided to invite everyone over for a meetup that skipped the book altogether this time and instead focused on doing a book and clothing exchange. As an added incentive, I offered to drop off any leftover books or garments at Goodwill.

Before my six guests arrived, I made a batch of hummus and a dozen summer rolls with fresh herbs and melon, accompanied by a tamarind dipping sauce. Thank you, Pinterest!

The story about tracking down the ingredients for the dipping sauce could be its own blog post. In short, I never did find the tamarind paste the recipe called for, but I ended up substituting tamarind sauce from a box of Trader Joe's pakora and it seemed to turn out fine. Next time I'll order tamarind paste online in advance and make it the right way.

My guests brought summery white wines and margaritas, some sweet and savory treats and a few miscellaneous tradeable items in addition to the books and clothing that kept things interesting.

Of course we played with the foster kittens. It's good for them to be exposed to a variety of people, so I was glad to see them calm down after their initial trepidation when a crowd of women invaded their space and insisted on snuggling them...twice.

This group does a round-robin method with the offered clothing items. Each person holds up a garment or two, announces the size, makes a few comments about fit and why they're giving it away, and the first person to express an interest gets it. From time to time, the attendees break away to try things on, which sometimes frees up an item for someone else to claim. Certain items are modeled for the group to help the chooser decide. I'm pretty sure I recall Spyder telling me my ass looked great in a particular pair of capris. It's that kind of crowd!

We've all done enough clothing exchanges together that some items come back through again after a wearing or two. We gain weight, we lose weight, and it's nice to be able to pass things along to friends so everyone gets a refreshed wardrobe without spending a dime. 

Everything about the evening was delightful. We all ended up with some nice "new" articles of clothing and passed along garments we no longer wanted. Of the table full of books, only about a dozen went unclaimed. It was really lovely to see everyone and it underscored that I need to plan social events at my house more often.

I think Susan summed it up nicely:

What a fun night!

Average Jane Reads

The Kindle app is one of my favorite things about having an iPad. I spend so much time reading stuff online that I don't mind the appearance of the black words on the white screen at all. In my pre-iPad days I borrowed my sister's actual Kindle and read several books, but I just couldn't get used to its interface at all.

I have the Kindle app on my iPhone 5 as well, which is incredibly convenient. The two devices will sync back and forth so you can always catch up when you switch from one to another.

I've turned into a rather rabid series completist. To be honest, I've probably always been like that, but it seems more noticeable when I start reading a series that already has lots of books in it and then I am driven to read them all. Right away!

My participation in my various book clubs has dropped off a lot. I'm still nominally in three of them, but I've started to turn into the person who didn't read the book by the time the meeting date arrives. I usually read (or finish) the books eventually, but of course that doesn't matter much when the discussion has already taken place.

I'm still reading a lot of actual paper books, despite the convenience of ebooks. However, these days most of my Amazon packages are filled with dog treats and other miscellaneous items rather than books.

Just for fun, here's a list of all of the things I've read on the Kindle app so far. The ones with a single asterisk were book club selections; the ones with two asterisks were book club selections that I absolutely hated:

• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• The Magician King by Lev Grossman
• Scarp Stonebreaker: Hammer of the South by Andrew Lyon
• The Hidden Hand and Capitola's Peril by E.D.E.N. Southworth (Whoo! Forgot how racist these were until I read them again!)
• The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger
• Thanks for Killing Me by Bill Barol
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles* (didn't ever finish this one)
• A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg*
• Speed Shrinking by Susan Shapiro** (we all hated this one)
• A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (I had the rest of the series in paperback form)
• Emma by Jane Austen* (this almost deserves two asterisks because it was such a slog, but I'll give it the "Clueless" pass)
• Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps by Robert Rodi
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James**
• Crazy Enough: A Memoir by Storm Large*
• Crossroads Road: A Novel by Jeff Kay
• Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher*
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
• Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
• A Howl in the Night by J.K. Brandon
• Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher*
• Shut Up and Give Me the Mic by Dee Snider
• Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim*
• Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul*
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling*
• Sharp Objects: A Novel by Gillian Flynn*
• How To Live Safely in A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu* (This was my selection. I liked it; everyone else hated it.)
• Dresden Files books (all except the first six, which I have in paperback) by Jim Butcher
• The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
• Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story by Evan I. Schwartz
• Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
• Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn*

See? That's not very many in less than two years.

Here's the scant handful of ebooks I've bought but not yet read:

• Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer
• Oh Myyy! (There Goes The Internet) by George Takei (just started it last night)
• The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch and Lee Chadeayne
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

My physical to-be-read pile, which usually sits on the coffee table in my living room, is considerably beefier.

How are you reading these days? Ebooks, real books, library books?

Introducing "The Obvious Game" (Average Jane Approved!)

My friend Rita Arens is one of those people who decides what she wants and makes it happen. Her first published book was Sleep Is For the Weak, which I still buy to give as a baby shower gift.

Now she's written a young adult novel called The Obvious Game and today is the official cover reveal date.

I'm so excited and happy for Rita as she finds more and more success as a writer and author.

There's a Rafflecopter giveaway for a copy of the book open to US, UK and Canada residents. Good luck!

And congratulations, Rita!

Average Jane Reads

My husband tried his best to sync his schedule with mine before we left for Nashville, but that just meant that I woke up four hours earlier than he did instead of the usual eight. Fortunately, travel in the age of the Kindle (or in my case, the iPad Kindle app) means that there's no real limit to the number of books that you can take with you on vacation.

Thus, I had a wonderful amount of leisure time to read on our trip and I took full advantage of it.

First on the list was Bitch in a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps (Volume 1) by Robert Rodi. It's an e-publication from the author of a blog by the same name. The entertainment value it provided far exceeded the 99¢ it cost to download, so I recommend it or its pricer trade paperback version without reservation. The book examines and snarks on Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park in such a highly entertaining manner that it didn't even matter to me that I'd only read two of the three source books.

His blog is temporarily on hiatus, right near the beginning of Emma, which is a big disappointment. So buy the book because Emma is really long and it's going to take a while.

After that I read The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut because someone had mentioned it on a blog right before I left. It's definitely a science fiction classic and it seemed familiar enough that it's possible that I'd read it as a youth and then forgotten the majority of it.

Last but certainly not least was Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson, a.k.a. The Bloggess. If you're reading this, you probably already know all about the book and have it in your possession now, but if that's not the case, seriously, go buy it. I'll wait.

I laughed so much while I was reading this book that I cried off all my mascara before I got past the first few chapters.

As I read how Jenny felt that being around strangers made her do awkward and embarrassing things, it reminded me that the one time I met her at BlogHer, it wasn't five minutes before I dropped an entire iced latte on the floor of the hotel lobby right in front of the entire group of bloggers she was with. I may have splashed some of them. So who's awkward and embarrassing now, Jenny?

Apparently I'd blocked that from my mind until the book made me remember. Luckily I'm fairly immune to embarrassment anyway.

Now that I'm back home, I've moved on to Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, an upcoming book club selection. I like it so far. The writing reminds me a little of Louise Penny, although I suspect this book is not going to be a mystery novel.

I also read Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher for another book club. It's really short, so it only took me a couple of hours. It was sassy and gossipy, but tinged with a lot of weight from the problems she's had.

What are you reading these days?

Disclaimer: Links are provided only for your convenience. Exhortations to purchase the books merely reflect my enthusiasm and purchases will not benefit me in any way unless you want to have a conversation about them afterward.

The Books That Ate Average Jane's Blog

Right at the beginning of the year, before I even went back to work after the holiday break, I got together with one of my book clubs for our monthly discussion and annual gift exchange.

When it was my turn to choose a gift, I got these:

Since then, my every spare moment has been spent reading and reading and reading. Each book is at least 1,000 pages long. These five are the only ones in the series that have been released so far. 

They. Are. Awesome. Complicated, nuanced characters in a vast and varied world. Bloody feudal statecraft. Little touches of the supernatural. 

Reading them isn't exactly easy - I would often start a new chapter (each chapter is about a different character) and think, "Now, who is this again?" It's completely worth it, though.

On Saturday morning, a little 4:00 a.m. insomnia led me to read the last 200 pages of the final book in the middle of the night. So now I am free to resume my life as it was before. At least until the DVDs of the TV series come out...

Average Jane Reads

One of the main reasons I wanted an iPad was so I could get the Kindle app. I'd read several books on my sister's actual Kindle, but I wasn't a big fan of the interface. I couldn't get used to pressing the buttons to turn the pages and I didn't like that the device relied on outside illumination.

The Kindle app on the iPad feels much more intuitive to me: to turn the page, you swipe your finger from right to left. Because I'm used to reading a glowing screen when I'm online, I don't have any problems reading books that way as well.

In some ways, downloadable literature is a little too convenient. On September 13th, A Librarian mentioned on Facebook that Soulless by Gail Carriger was the Amazon deal of the day for only $1.99. I downloaded it immediately and started reading it as soon as I got home from work that evening.

A mere 10 days later, I have made my way through the entire series and just finished reading the fourth book, Heartless, this morning while I waited for the hardwood floor guy to nail down our new shoe molding. (Incidentally, I've had this song stuck in my head ever since I borrowed the paperback from A Librarian yesterday).

It's a fun series set in a version of Victorian England that includes vampires, werewolves and a good-sized helping of steampunk. It's also quite funny. I enjoyed them a great deal and burned through the existing books in the series so quickly that I'm chafing a bit at the thought that I'll have to wait until next spring to see what happens next.

By the way, since the first book isn't on sale anymore, if you want to read the series I'd recommend buying the first three books as a bundle for $19.99, which will save you money. And just so you know, the Amazon links are merely for your convenience--I have never bothered to set myself up as an affiliate, so I have nothing to gain if you click through and buy something.

Now that my busy summer is over, I'm looking forward to jumping back into my many and varied book clubs. The Kindle app will make it much more convenient to get my hands on the books and get them read in plenty of time.

I just need to keep an eye on how much I'm spending with Amazon. When you combine one-click Kindle purchases with the frequent streaming video purchases that facilitate most of our cable TV show viewing, it can really add up.

Average Jane Fails at Book Club

Right now I'm in three different book clubs, but I don't always attend all of the meetings. However, I saw last week that one was coming up on Sunday the 7th, so I glanced at the e-mail thread, procured the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and blocked off my weekend calendar so I could quickly read it before the meeting.

I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon reading the entire book. I really, really liked it and couldn't wait to have a discussion about it with the book club.

Caramel cake was mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, so I decided to track down a recipe and make one to bring with me. I choose this one from Cooking Light. I'd never made a caramel cake before (nor even heard of one, to be honest), but I followed the directions to the letter (except that I made a sheet cake instead of a layer cake due to lack of proper baking pans) and it turned out absolutely wonderfully.

I was a little early to the meeting, so the hostess and I had a few minutes to talk in the kitchen before everyone else arrived. One of the first things I said to her was, "I really enjoyed the book!"

She'd chosen this month's book, so she excitedly started telling me how different it was to read it now compared to when she was in her twenties. A little alarm bell went off in my head because I was pretty sure that "The Help" had only recently been published.

Then she began naming her favorite characters and scenes and I had absolutely NO idea what she was talking about. The other book club members arrived just as it was sinking in that I'd read the wrong book.

I grabbed my phone and looked up the e-mail chain again. It turned out that I'd read the book that had been selected for May. Not March, not April, but May. It would be two months before I could have my much-anticipated discussion of the book I'd just finished.

The book I should have read was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. You'd think with my English degree I'd have read it at some point in the past, but somehow I missed that one. So, yes, I sat through an entire discussion of a book I knew absolutely nothing about.

Needless to say, everyone in the club was initially a bit confused about how I'd been inspired to bake a caramel cake based on the book under discussion. However, it turned out that there actually was a mention of a caramel cake in one scene. It seems like a very random coincidence, but since both books are set in the South, the odds were in my favor.

So that's the story of how I discovered a delicious new dessert, revealed myself to one of my book clubs as a complete dingbat, and listened in on a very confusing discussion. It could happen to anyone, right?

Among Average Jane's Role Models

My grandmother was friends with author Alberta Wilson Constant, all of whose books seem to be out of print now, unfortunately. I have autographed copies of her "Miller Girls" series, and my niece is just around the right age to borrow them now, I think.

Mrs. Constant counts among my role models because of a story my grandmother once told me about her. It seems she had a beloved pet rat that she treated as a member of the family. One day she had some ladies over to visit and one of them suddenly exclaimed, "I simply cannot come over here if that rat is going to be around."

Her hostess smiled sweetly and replied, "We'll miss you, dear."

An Average Jane Book Review

Breast cancer. It's something I didn't think a lot about for much of my life. Then one day when I was working at a small interactive firm, the creative director came up to my desk and said, "How do you feel about breast cancer survivors?"

My response: "I'm in favor of them."

That conversation led to an assignment to interview more than a half-dozen breast cancer survivors so that we could share their stories on the Lee National Denim Day website.

The experience was eye-opening. The stories had some similarities, but not as many as you would think for a group of women in the same metropolitan area. One common thread: they were all fighters who wanted to do whatever they could to prevent other women from going through what they had.

At the last Chicago BlogHer conference in 2007, I had the good fortune to meet Laurie Kingston. I'm not sure where our paths first crossed, but I remember having a meal with her and Susan Getgood (and someone else, too. Suebob? Jane?).

I knew that her blog was called "Not Just About Cancer" and that her supportive friends and family had gotten her the BlogHer trip in the midst of her cancer treatments.

I started reading her blog as soon as I got home. It's a wonderful personal journal that really is about her entire life, not just about the breast cancer that she continues to fight.

I was excited when she announced that she was having a book published. It's called "Not Done Yet: Living Through Breast Cancer" and what impresses me most is that it really is about living. Yes, there's a disease and treatments that get in the way, but that doesn't mean she's stopped doing fun things with her family and friends, knitting, playing online Scrabble (sometimes with me!) and otherwise carrying on with her life.

She readily admits that not every day is a good one, but she's capable of letting that go and moving on. She respects her own limits and takes care of herself to ensure that she can also take care of her family.

The book was a quick but absorbing read. The one time I did put it down, I came back to find that Velvet and Velcro (herself a breast cancer survivor), had taken an interest.

Toward the end of the book there were a few paragraphs that I remembered fondly from her blog because I'd posted them to my blog before as a wonderful example of an attitude toward life to strive for:

One morning, as I was making school lunches, I dropped a piece of cheese on my dog's head. I had been slicing it onto sandwiches and had turned to talk to my older son. Multitasking before sufficient caffeine intake has never been my strong suit.

Now, whenever I am making lunches, the dog dances with excitement, his eyes sparkling with hope and joyful anticipation.

I want to live my life like that. Life is good, and you never know when cheese might fall from the sky.

That's how I want to live my life, too, Laurie!

Average Jane and Books

I've loved reading from the moment I learned how to read.

I was the kid who strained her eyes trying to read by the dim light of the nightlight when I was supposed to be going to sleep.

I would sit off to the side of the playground at recess and read my book until the teachers expressed their dismay that I wasn't playing. Then I'd sit on the teeter-totter with someone and continue reading as we went up and down.

In the summer, I'd climb up my favorite tree with my current book in hand and then prop myself among the branches to read.

Thanks to Twitter, I've met a lot of librarians lately and it's inspired me to want to start reading more books again. Oh, and since @BonnieGlick (former librarian) showed me her Kindle, I may not be able to resist getting one.

Which brings me to yet another book meme. This one came from Florinda, who says she stole it from The Boston Bibliophile. Feel free to steal it yet again!

1. Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback? I like trade paperbacks. They're substantial but not as heavy as hardbacks.

2. Barnes & Noble or Borders? They're pretty much indistinguishable to me. I'll go to whichever one is convenient.

3. Bookmark or dog-ear? I used to dog-ear, but now I'm a pretty faithful bookmarker. If I'm reading a hardback, I'll tuck one of the dust jacket flaps in as a bookmark.

4. Amazon or brick and mortar? Mostly Amazon.

5. Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random? Stack in huge piles until they begin falling over, then move to any shelf or surface that will hold them.

6. Keep, throw away, or sell? I don't do much selling anymore. Mostly I give them away (or BookCross them), except for the occasional keepers.

7. Keep dust jacket or toss it? Keep it.

8. Read with dust jacket or remove it? I leave it on.

9. Short story or novel? I prefer novels.

10. Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Harry Potter. I tried to like Lemony Snicket, but there's something about the books that I just don't dig.

11. Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Unless I'm reading right before bed, I'll stop at chapter breaks.

12. "It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"? Once upon a time. I'm a sucker for fairy tales and fantasy.

13. Buy or borrow? I mostly buy, but I'm trying to get back into the library habit.

14. New or used? I once was a used book junkie, but these days I buy all new.

15. Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse? The top reasons I'll buy a specific book these days: 1) It's for a book club, 2) Someone I know (or whose blog I read) wrote it, or 3) I saw it recommended online somewhere.

16. Tidy ending or cliffhanger? I don't have a preference.

17. Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading? I like to spend entire weekend days reading. I also keep a book or two on my bedside table to read before I fall asleep.

18. Stand-alone or series? Either one is fine with me.

19. Favorite series? Harry Potter

20. Favorite children's book? Any of the L. Frank Baum "Oz" books.

21. Favorite YA book? The "His Dark Materials" series is YA, right?

22. Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? "Sock" by Penn Jillette. Here's my blog post about recommending it to a new book club where everyone HATED it.

23. Favorite books read last year? "Water for Elephants," "The Little Book," "Blindness," "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," "Waiter Rant." I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

24. Favorite books of all time? The "Lord of the Rings" series; the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series, the "Harry Potter" series and "Gone With the Wind" (as un-PC as it is). If I weren't so lazy, I'd go down to my bookcase and just look to see what my keeper list consists of.

25. What are you reading right now? My bedside book right now is "Stuff White People Like," which I picked up at BlogHer last year.

26. What are you reading next? "Not Done Yet" by Laurie Kingston. I'm setting aside this Saturday just to read it.

27. Favorite book to recommend to an eleven-year-old? Probably the Nancy Drew books.

28. Favorite book to reread? I like to revisit the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series periodically. No matter how many times I read them, they still make me laugh out loud.

29. Do you ever smell books? I can't help it, my sense of smell is very acute.

30. Do you ever read primary source documents, like diaries or letters? Yes. They're quite the phenomenon these days. I believe they're called "blogs."