Popping my cherry.

So maybe that got your attention. Hopefully this will hold mine. Several things have happened recently to push me into facing the harsh pressure of choosing a friggin' blogspot URL. (It just seems like such a commitment! This is the same sort of reason I could never get a tattoo. This seems just slightly less ouch-y so here goes.)

I've been sort of a freakish reader since I was five and now that I have my very own freakish five-year-old reader (see photo above) the timing seems appropriate to begin keeping some sort of record of just what I am actually reading. I absolutely hoard books and have many many I've read and quite a few I haven't yet. I can browse my own library and see what's there but somehow it's just not the same. I started noting dates on the flyleaves and I find it interesting to know where I was, when I was and who I was when I read something. It is extremely cool to see the three sets of dates in my very attractively beat up copy of Windup Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) Why do I read it every other summer over the fourth of July holiday? And why can't I ever get all the way through Underworld (Don DeLillo) when I love it so so much? (I'd mention Proust here but I don't think that particular problem is very unique. And god help you if you're still trying to get through Ulysses.) I'm hoping this blog may help me answer some of my own such questions.

I just read Julie & Julia (Julie Powell) and am completely inspired by her. However, I will forgo Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Julia Child, et al) and stick with Alice Waters and her new The Art of Simple Food. Seriously, just go ahead and toss pretty much every other cookbook you have and get this. I've found myself carrying it around the house. It's near me at all times. I love it. Passionately. I've been a fairly decent cook for some time but I think of this book as a sort of master class...the basics, yet she's given me these tiny details that change everything. My god you should taste my vinaigrette! And I have a whole new relationship with my once-feared cast iron pan.

Okay, I can see already that this blog will be veering wildly from subject to subject. Well, at least from books to food and back again. And I suspect there may be some travel bits that show up as well since reading, eating, and travel are my main life pursuits. Again, there has never been a time in my life I haven't been reading regularly so that, as always, is the thread through it all.

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