Save the Males:A Kitchen Survival Cookbook

I have posted about this book on my personal Facebook page a couple of times, but I have not yet included it on my Reading List blog. Full Disclosure: Chef Gordon is a long time friend of ours and we have known him since the very early 80's when he first began talking and joking about his Save the Males campaign. He explains this bit of fun in the opening pages.

Save the Males is decidedly geared toward the single male audience, but there is no doubt that many married men who would like to do a bit more of the food prep than throwing burgers on the grill would find this guide highly readable and tremendously informative. It is a nicely designed, no nonsense cookbook with a good balance of basic information, recipes, and advice. Most of the advice is technical and food related, but Chef Gordon sees the culinary arts as closely related to the art of romance, so there is a bit of advice along that line as well.

There are several charts and graphs and tables contained in this cookbook that a cooking novice, as well as seasoned cooks will find useful. Young men are, for the most part, much more likely than their baby boomer fathers to participate in food preparation in a very meaningful way. This would be a great read for any of them, no matter how far along they are in developing their chef skills, and who can't use a little advice about romance?

The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You can also search for "Save the Males Cookbook" on Facebook and you will get a page that allows you to buy the book, as well as see a few cooking videos and recipes. It's important to add "kitchen" or "cookbook" to your search because there is also another Save the Males book out there, and I can't vouch for that one.

FEAR by Bob Woodward

As soon as this book was released, I put my name on the library queue because, well, he's Bob Woodward. I admit that I have not read everything he has written, but I admire him immensely. He is the dictionary definition of thoughtful and intelligent with quite a bit of courage thrown in for good measure. This is not a tell-all book with salacious details designed to create sales. It is much more serious in it's content and format than several others that attempt to accomplish a similar purpose, namely: to explain our current politics.

It is fascinating to get a more complete and behind the scenes look at events that have been headlines for months or even years. This bit of realism will ring true to even the most seasoned skeptic. But the main draw of the book for me is that it delves into the most basic tenets of complicated foreign policy and economic theory in a way that is highly educational. These two areas are not my strong suits, but I am much more well informed than before I read this book. The reason that these things are explained in such plain language and simple ideas is that Woodward is chronicling the efforts of advisors and White House staff to explain these things to our current president in clear and basic outlines. I hope they are somewhat heartened by the fact that I learned something, because they have had their share of frustration.

I have never seen Woodward as a partisan fellow; he is much too wedded to journalistic integrity to veer in any particular direction. He is the embodiment of what journalists used to be before our dial-a-slant news atmosphere.

I don't imagine that a staunch supporter of this administration would enjoy the book too much, because Woodward does not bend over backward to sanitize the narrative. I do think the information is one of the most truthful and objective sources of information that can be found. It is highly readable and for some of us, highly informative. If you want it right away, you will need to buy it. On the other hand, there is one less person in line for it at the library now!

Deborah Tannen

The Tannen Books

It would be fair to say that some of us read authors rather than books. This applies to both fiction and nonfiction. Deborah Tannen is one of my favorite authors in the latter category. The first Tannen book that I read was You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation. I was fascinated by her insights into conversation and her understanding of how tension is created between people who approach conversation differently. I happily found that she had written a previous book called That’s Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Make or Breaks Relationships. It proved to be equally riveting; it focused on style differences between people from different cultural backgrounds. She highlights cultural trends and values that are so embedded in everyday life that we cease to see them, but they influence our feelings and behavior, nonetheless.

Tannen’s next book was Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men in the Workplace; Language Sex, and Power. Everyone who has ever had a job, interviewed for a job or wanted a job would do well to read this one. Tannen points out both glaring examples and barely noticeable nuances in conversation that we all recognize immediately once we hear them described. Her understanding of hierarchy and other relationship structures provides a very complete sociological and psychological look at both homes and workplaces.

The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue is about public discourse and how it can be improved. We may not be able to change what’s in the media, but we can change what we consume. As with her books about conversation in the more personal realms, Tannen helps us to identify and understand the language that we hear, and to communicate more effectively because we listen more carefully and with more insight.

Tannen’s books are well researched and could certainly be considered scholarly, but she is an entertaining and compassionate writer, and readers are propelled along by the numerous “Aha!” moments as they recognize themselves and their circumstances in her stories and explanations. If you are interested in improving communication and conversation in any arena of your life or just appreciate the importance of language in our lives, Tannen is a worthwhile read.

Additional titles:  I Only Say This Because I Love You: How the Way We Talk Can Make or Break Family Relationships Throughout Our Lives (2001) is a treatment of family relationships in general. She also has two others about more specific family associations:

You’re Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, and

You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives

Not Cookbooks

Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden
French Country Cooking by Mimi Thorisson
Gather by Gill Meller

It is not entirely true to say these are not cookbooks, but they could be also be considered inspirational reading and viewing for cooks or diners. What I like most in any cookbook is photographs, and these three are spectacular. The subtitle of Joshua McFadden's book is: A New Way with Vegetables, and "new way" is the essence of all three of these. Sometimes, a cook is looking for a different way of seeing the same produce.

Generally speaking, the meat, vegetables, spices and condiments, and staples that we use vary only slightly. Because of clever packaging and marketing, it sometimes seems as though there is an infinite list of foodstuffs, but mostly the same things are prepared, packaged, and marketed in myriad ways. Because these three books all focus on the artistic aspects of food, the beauty of a food on its own rather than as an ingredient is an eye opener.

It is often said that we eat with our eyes first. These are books that show us that we should perhaps be taking a little longer to eat with our eyes and focus less on the fast food, 3o minute, quick, and instant approaches to eating. One way to monitor our intake of food is to slow down and really appreciate the things we eat. (If you missed Slow Food and Why French Women Don't Get Fat, it's not too late. they are both still in print!)

Cooks who savor the appearance and quality of food enjoy cooking more. If we want mechanization that can churn out formulaic foodstuffs in 30 minutes or less, we have that in abundance. The problems associated with that approach is well documented, but once we recognize the flaws in the factory food world, we need a place to turn in order to start over.

Even if you are not a cook, browsing these volumes will help you to eat with new eyes, and your tastebuds won't complain either!

A Pretty Fair Explanation

I cannot say that Win Bigly was the one of most satisfying books I've read, but I do think it might be one of the most important. Many people have struggled to explain or understand the results of the 2016 presidential election, including PJ O'Rourke in How the Hell Did This Happen? 

The complete title, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, is a very telling indicator of the underpinning of Scott Adams' analysis. Many people know and love Scott Adams from his Dilbert cartoons. He is a true libertarian and his personal views are what I would call socially liberal, but economically brutal. He favors the "bootstraps" approach to economic problems, whether or not people have boots.

Nevertheless, he is able to talk about the persuasive ability of our current president with a clarity that is convincing, if not especially palatable. Scott Adams paints a pretty good picture of what the scene looked like from the angle of someone who did not have a very strong allegiance to either outcome. He seems a trifle too invested in what I would have called a false narrative about Hillary Clinton, but as his title points out, facts don't matter. If the narrative grew legs, the origins were not going to be questioned by a sizeable majority - or if not a majority, a big enough contingent to make a difference.

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt shares an overarching discussion about why and how people draw conclusions and make political and moral decisions. It is most certainly germane to our current politics, but Adams' book is much more specific to the personality of Donald J Trump.

If you are liberal, you might not like what this book has to say, but you will not be able to dismiss it. And you may find that it brings a little bit of the peace of mind that comes with at least knowing the answer to to PJ O'Rourke's big question. If you are a fan of our current president, you might find that Adams has articulated something that you knew intuitively, but might not have known how to explain.

Whether or not you like the current White House leadership, nearly everyone would have to agree that something important happened with the recent rise of nationalism and the triumph of celebrity politics. Looking at the situation from as many angles as possible is probably the only way to get enough of a handle on what happened to make a difference in the future.

The Righteous Mind

I have read this book twice already and I will read it again. It was written in 2012 and it seems to be more relevant every day. I have also heard Jonathan Haidt interviewed on a couple of occasions. He has been able to see and evaluate current affairs from a fairly wide and long perspective and it is a useful tool for saving one's sanity.

If you find yourself perplexed or even enraged over current events, this philosophical look at people and how they think will, at least, explain how we can seem so different from each other. In a nutshell, we all arrive at our conclusions by means of emotional cues, and then try to come up with reasons for why we think and feel the way we do. We like to think of ourselves as rational, fact based creatures, so we go out and search for evidence that we are correct about the things that we have already concluded to be true. In so doing, of course, we skip over a great deal of information that doesn't square with our already formed conclusions.

The biggest question is whether there is hope for us getting along better, and the answer is: Some. In the meantime, if we understand that our neighbors, our family and our friends are not so different from us, we feel a bit more sanguine about our differences.

Sometimes it seems like current events move along so quickly that any political theory has an extremely short shelf life. By Friday, a show aired on Tuesday is hopelessly irrelevant. The ideas in this now five year old book have become more rather than less relevant. It is definitely worth a look, or even a second look.

Zero Hour is Approaching

For those of us who have been following Sue Grafton since A is for Alibi, the approaching end of the alphabet is a little bit sad. If you have not read anything in her series, I envy you. You have 26 marvelous stories and many hours of relaxation ahead of you. I think of the protagonist in these books (Kinsey Millhone)  as a kind of girlish Clint Eastwood. She does not, however, take herself very seriously, so she is a little more palatable than her male counterparts.

Happily, the stories are set in a fictionalized Santa Barbara, California.  Reading the novels is a clever and inexpensive way to live in Santa Barbara for a few hours, creating a kind of delightful flashback for anyone who has been lucky enough to spend time there in real life.

A is for Alibi was published in 1982, and all of the novels are set in the eighties. Grafton's own story is satisfying in a mildly vengeful way. She has been turning the straw of a bitter loss into gold for decades. Ms. Grafton once told an interviewer that after her divorce, she spent so many hours and sleepless nights plotting ways to kill her ex-husband and his new love interest that she decided to turn these fantasies into books. I have no way of knowing just how true this story is, but it has a nice Happy Ending ring to it. Whatever the actual facts are, she is a talented writer and a great contributor to one of literature's most popular genres.

She has stated publicly that the last book in the series will be Z is for Zero. I can't wait. Or maybe I can. Maybe she will do something with numbers, and then I won't have to worry about running out of her books. Is that last title a hint?

Post Script: Sue Grafton died in December of 2017 and Z is for Zero exists only in our imaginations.