The Great American Pig-Out of Eating & Reading
November 25, 2007

Thanksgiving lasted three days for me this year. On Wednesday, I began with a special turkey lunch offering at the college’s cafeteria. On Thursday, I drove down to my parents’ home for a family celebration. On Friday, I had my own celebration that included special friends. And as of this writing (Sunday morning), I am still eating turkey and still loving it. In fact, I anticipate eating it for the next week in various forms—turkey sandwiches with mayonnaise, my homemade cranberry sauce and freshly cracked pepper; turkey soup; and a new recipe, a kind of lasagna that calls for layering the holiday dinner leftovers of chopped turkey, vegetables, gravy and stuffing (bottom to top), then covering with foil and baking at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes. You can also freeze this for up to three months by covering the dish with two layers of plastic wrap and then in foil.

As you no doubt can tell, Thanksgiving is one of my two favorite holidays of the year (Christmas being the other), and I take full advantage of the four days off work to read as much as I can between cooking and the required cleaning. One of my favorite reads over this long weekend is still going—Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. It’s a deliciously trashy story that is very well written. I am thoroughly caught up in Lizzie’s underhanded machinations and the general intrigues of this Victorian-era novel. Today’s brain candy should be this good. 

Poet Matthew Arnold, so the story goes, wrote (or at least had the idea for) his poem Dover Beach while on his honeymoon. Frank X. Roberts was not on his honeymoon, though he was with his wife in the same area, when the idea for his poem, You – Matthew Arnold, came about. He shares it this week in Bibliopinions.

While she was busy with the usual Thanksgiving preparations, Anne Michael took time to pick up a book that she had purchased back in 1976 when her “thankful” holiday didn’t feel like such. Even now, when the holiday is filled with things for which she is grateful, this book continues to give her reasons for thank. Which book, and why? See this week’s Seasoned Lightly.

She likes cooking and food almost as much—maybe as much—as books and reading. This week, in A Reading Life, Nicki Leone chats about a southern cookbook  that is nearly as readable as any good novel and one that has her re-thinking her position on Ambrosia if not mini-marshmallows.

Lisa Guidarini’s essay this week in Reviews & Reflections left me literally choking with laughter when I read it. Garlic, writing, Martha Stewart—it’s all here.

Books that define and sustain the holiday spirit are the subject of Henry Carrigan’s thoughts this week in Readings. Along with the oft-favorite, A Christmas Carol, and for younger readers, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, he looks at one book that “helps us to reflect on the paradoxes of our humanity . . . [that] more helpfully leads us to consider the meaning of faith in our lives and world,” a worthy goal that so often gets lost amidst the consumerism.

Recipes and bookmarks or rather recipes on bookmarks is the subject of Laine Farley’s contribution to this week’s On Marking Books. It began with free bookmarks from the Cancer Society to promote healthy eating by making food fun. But the number of bookmarks with recipes or food preparation hints grew, and the result is a fascinating story.  

BOOK SALES! Can there be anything better? From now until November 28, Chronicle Books is offering 30% off and free ground shipping of any order during their Chronicle Books Friends and Family Holiday Sale. Choose from among anthologies, biographies, fiction, poetry, art and design, food,  children’s, literature, pop culture, travel and much more. When you go to check out, use the promo code FRIENDS and your discount and free shipping will kick in.

Another sale—this one offering up to 90% off—comes from the University of Oklahoma Press. Though they focus on books about the American West and American Indians, they also have an expanding list of books on military history, classical studies, literature, Latin American studies, outlaws and lawmen, political science and natural science. Don’t think of these as scholarly books; while they do publish those, many of these excellent books are of general interest—and importance.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren