Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins

So in my continuing quest to track down and read the Printz and Printz Honor books, I ran across Repossessed which is the story of Kiriel, the demon. Kirial is not happy with his job in Hell as a low level tormentor and decides to take a vacation by possessing the body of Shaun, a 17 year old of low ambition, at the moment when he was supposed to die. Kiriel then spends the entirety of the book experiencing physical sensation and the complexities of the human condition. In many places Kiriel is almost embarrassingly hedonistic.

Shot through the book is Kiriel's examination of what I've always considered a central inconsistency in the Bible: if God is perfect and all knowing, then the only way for the devil to rebel is if God intended it. Kiriel is tortured by this. As a fallen angel, he's one of the punished, but why is he punished for being what he was created to be. It goes round and round and is an interesting introduction on the paradox for a teen audience.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked up the book, but this wasn't it. On one level, this has a sizable amount of fairly crude imagery. On another, this is a deeply philosophical read. Kirial is almost better at being human than Shaun was and is deeply sympathetic. There are shades of Milton's "Paradise Lost" going on here as well as a healthy dose of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Come to think of it...I should reread both of those.

I sense a themed month of reading coming up. hmmmmm

Words

Sometimes I feel
like I spent so much
of my life talking
that I'm empty of words
like a dry cup

waiting to be full again

Kitchen Matrix by Mark Bittman

Alright, I've been putting this off. What does it mean to "read" a cookbook? Once I've read it, then what? It seems like poor form to write something masquerading as a review without trying some recipes. (The completion gamer in me rather insists that I should try all the recipes, but that is really impractical) I would feel the same about book claiming to teach any skill, and really, that's what a cookbook is. It's a book that teaches combination and techniques of preparing food from base ingredients. It is one of the most common types of how-to manuals.

So, how does one evaluate a how-to manual? I guess the basic criteria is does it teach the skill and how easy is it to read. That's probably over simplistic, but it's the best I have to go with for now.

In the case of Kitchen Matrix, it is a little difficult to figure out the intent here. Bittman has been playing with ways of writing recipes over several of his most recent books. The usual method is a list of ingredients annotated with preparation instructions. Follow that is a step by step procedure for making the dish. Most cookbooks are written in this way. Bittman does write some of the recipes out this way but he also experiments with basic instructions followed by charts of variations. Some whole recipes are really set up like infographics. While he's been playing with these methods for some time, it seems like there is a much higher percentage in this volume.

I think the reason for this non-traditional format comes down to authorial intent. Most cookbooks aim to teaching cooking on some level. Kitchen Matrix assumes that the reader has the basics down. Kitchen Matrix seems to be aimed at teaching improvisation and spontaneity in cooking, which is a pretty difficult thing to teach.

It's a noble goal. I know too many people who collapse and order a pizza when they run into minor hiccoughs in executing the recipe. Most things can be dealt with if a cook is inventive.

So, does Kitchen Matrix teach improvisation and spontaneity in the kitchen. Maybe. It certainly does a good job showing how different prep methods change the way a single ingredient tastes, or given a basic recipe, how different ingredients behave. However the format is also a little confusing at times and runs the risk of being overwhelming to newer cooks.

Time Off For Good Behavior

Sorry that I disappeared but I was at a conference. I thought I would have the time (and mental energy) to keep up the blog while I was there, but predictably I did not. I think we underestimate how exhausting just thinking can be. I have a writing book that says that real focused writing will wring a person out in about two hours. I don't know if that's true, but I will say, sitting at the conference just wrung me out.

It was good though. There were a lot of good ideas and good people. Certainly it provided a different way to think about teaching and presenting information.

Now that I'm back, it's time to get back on top of the blogging. I did manage to keep up with my other writing at least and I'm tempted to back date some posts because I have a ton of half written ones and a lot of books that I've reading the last couple of weeks.

Happy Father's Day

We actually celebrated yesterday. However, I think it is important on days like this to reflect. Parents are so important, even when they mess up. Maybe especially when things go wrong. All our models for managing conflict or dealing with setbacks comes from how we observe our parents managing it.

So yeah, parents are important and I hope that as I move forward as a parent that I do as good a job as mine did.

Explorer: The Lost Islands edited by Kazu Kibuishi

I really like this series. It's not that graphic novels can really do anything that well written prose can do, it's that it is a different delivery method. I'm not very visual as a rule, but I like the mix of illustration and narrative. I think it may be easier to quickly depict a fantasy setting using a visual medium than if it had to be verbally depicted. Mind you, straight writing allows the readers imaginations to fill in the gaps more completely so the world feels more real in my experience. However, it's really just a case of different strengths.

"The Lost Islands" is similar to "Mystery Boxes." Both are collections of seven short stories and in both there is a common theme, in this one it is a mysterious island of some sort. For some reason, in this volume all the stories came out more like fables and have easily discernible morals. This doesn't end up being tedious as it could be.

Specifically, I really enjoyed "The Mask Dance," "Loah," and "Radio Adrift." "The Mask Dance" is about a girl who ditches her work to go to a festival after a spirit in a mask tells her her father is already there. "Loah" is a kind of creation myth about adventurous aquatic critters. "Radio Adrift" is about a young witch on a quest to find a specific sound that will hatch a pixie egg.

All of the stories are about people who think they know better or who are trying to make things easier and who find out that their view of the situation is incomplete. Over all they are well written and there is some excellent artwork.

Over all, worth a read.

Frozen in Time by Mark Kurlansky

There's a lot of buzz among English teachers about finding YA nonfiction. Many struggling readers would prefer to read "something real" over fiction so we are all always on the hunt for good selections. Many lament that there isn't more good YA nonfiction out there. For my part, I really struggle with the concept. What fundamentally is different between a YA and regular nonfiction book intended for a broad audience? Vocabulary maybe, length? Marketing? Most teenagers are capable of reading at an adult level if they are interested in the topic.

Nevertheless, some publishers are starting to package some items as YA nonfiction.  Frozen In Time is one of these although there is nothing about the text that particularly suggests "teen" to me. Frozen In Time is a short (about 150 pages) biography of Clarence Birdseye who developed the process for quick freezing food that we still more or less use today.

Frozen food is so ubiquitous. It's strange to think that someone had to develop that, but apparently early frozen food was just terrible. It took so long to freeze the food that the ice crystals formed very large which broke the cell walls and made the food mushy when it thawed out. In the early days of frozen food, no one even had a freezer so the food would immediately thaw. To sell the frozen food, Birdseye had to figure out both how to freeze the food without destroying the texture and how to make home freezer's cost effective. It's a pretty thorny problem and interesting to think about.

Kurlansky does a good job of presenting Birdseye as an interesting eccentric. The chapters are reasonably short and there's good overviews of the science involved although I would have wished for a little more depth.