An Anti-Versary to Remember

Try 26 New Foods:

1. Bison
2. Ethiopian Food
3. Oysters Rockefeller
4. Shark
5. Escargot
6. Frog legs
7. Chicken and Waffles
8. Hemp Vodka
9. Uni 

Having a long engagement (22 months) was a controversial decision that we made and continue to be happy about. Since we decided on our wedding date more than a year in advance, we realized we created a date that would be important to us for the rest of our lives but that this year was just another day. So of course we saw the opportunity to invent a new holiday- the "Anti-versary." Also colloquially referred to as the -1 Year Anniversary.

Ronnie made plans on his own and then asked if I wanted them to be a surprise, which of course I did. And for the first time in a very long time (proposal included) I was completely in the dark.

We took the metro into the city (I got one thing right- I guessed that we would get off at Metro Center) and then walked a mildly long and somewhat shady walk to Busboys and Poets. At first I was not happy because I thought Ronnie had signed me up to read some poetry. But once he convinced me we were just going to have some drinks and check out the situation (for perhaps later poetry readings) I was excited.

Their bar menu had my favorite thing- interesting cocktails. First I tried something delicious but not too adventurous- I think it was a blueberry lemonade. Then that first cocktail gave me the courage to try something crazy- hemp vodka.

The hemp vodka tasted similar to a coconut milk- sweet, creamy, and nutty. It added a great depth to the vodka and took some of the edge out of it. Which, I imagine, would be extremely dangerous after more than just one.

If anyone knows of where I can purchase a bottle of it I would be much obliged.

Over drinks I allowed Ronnie to tell me where our next stop was.

It was Graffiato, Top Chef contestant Mike Isabella's DC restaurant. As a Top Chef fan and pseudo-Italian I had been very excited to try this small-plates-style treat. The main problem was deciding what to order.

The waiter recommended three plates each, but we had two plates each (one of which admittedly was a pizza) and that was more than enough. The standout of the night was the gnocchi with pork ragout which still makes our mouths water three weeks later. It is pictured below with a side dish of broccolini and feta. Both of which we were too excited to eat to remember to take a picture of.

The new food of the night was less delicious but definitely unique: uni. Also known as sea urchin. We had it in crostini form, which makes anything accessible. Still it was, as we like to say, "challenging to our palates."

The uni is the orange stuff on top, though some of it is some kind of sauce. Even in such small doses it produces an explosion of brininess unlike any other seafood I have ever tasted. It is soft in texture and somewhat creamy. It wasn't a taste I would find myself going back to. In this particular dish I also detected a faint aftertaste of baby aspirin, though Ronnie did not agree with this assessment.

All in all it was a great night and a great excuse to celebrate- less than a year til the wedding! If this date and the experiences that we love to share are any indication, I think we are in for a lot of fun anniversaries to come.

What I Read this Summer

Ah, summer. The time when I want to do nothing but sit by the pool with a good book and preferably a tropical drink of some kind. The time when my brain gets overheated by any book too intellectual. The time when I take a real page tuner and turn the pages faster than a redhead gets a sunburn.

I love summer reading. So here's what I read this summer.

1. Firestarter

After finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls right after my birthday I was dying for something easy but still dependably decent. So I chose this from our collection of probably 30 Stephen Kings. If you are surprised that I am a Stephen King fan, you probably don't know a lot about Stephen King. I recommend his book On Writing for a little clarity.

Firestarter is about a little girl whose parents participated in an experiment before she was born which then passed down a gene to her that gives her telepathic powers. Specifically she can start fires with her mind. In classic Stephen King fashion, it pushes you right to the edge of what you're willing to believe is possible, while still keeping you engaged. Perfect to start off the summer.

2. World War Z

I wrote a longer article here about the differences between this novel and the 2013 movie. But as far as a summer read goes, this one was pretty good. It is about the part of humanity that has survived the zombie apocalypse, and what they did to get there.

The format is a compilation of short stories, meaning you can read a story, hop in the pool, and come back and read another story. My only complaint would be that the stories are perhaps too short; I like to really get invested in my characters, and that wasn't the point of this novel by a long shot. All in all though it was a great summer read, and a great zombie read if you're in to that kind of thing. Which I am.

3. Where Men Win Glory

This is the true (though undoubtedly embellished) story of Pat Tillman, the famous Arizona Cardinals player who left a multi-million dollar career behind to enlist in the military after 9/11.

Ah, politics. This was perhaps not a great summer read for the sheer amount of frustration and anger that it caused me as I read about the government's reaction to 9/11 and the beginnings of the long war in Afghanistan. And not just in indignant leftist anger; I was also angry that Krakauer takes Tillman's story so far to support his own politics that I had to take the story with a grain of salt. However, there were a lot of good points made, and Tillman is definitely an interesting and admirable character.

4. Red Hook Road

I'm pretty sure Ayelet Waldman just thought of the most tragic situation she could think of and made a book about it. It is about a bride and groom who are killed in a car accident driving from their wedding ceremony and their reception, and how their newly joined families cope with their deaths.

This is the kind of read that I really want to criticize the writing of, but first I have to admit that I couldn't put it down. You know what I mean? I read it in probably two days, but I'm not sure if I would necessarily call it good writing. There were some good moments, but a lot of it seemed contrived to try and pull tears out of you. Several of the characters were one-dimensional and the ending was just too far-fetched. But something about it kept me reading. And I think it did provide some interesting perspectives on grieving that you don't usually see, and over a longer period of time than is usually covered. Good enough for a summer read.

5. A Wolf at the Table

I have always like Augusten Burroughs because I can relate to both his style and his material. He took a less-than-ideal childhood and made a career out of it. He is a memoir writer, and though his novels overlap they always have a very specific focus that makes them unique. This one was about his father.

If you've never read anything by Burroughs you might start with Running with Scissors. A Wolf at the Table is very brief, and told primarily from a child's perspective, and makes many mentions to things more fully described in Running. But if you already enjoy this author, you'll most likely enjoy this book.   

6. The Fault in Our Stars

Was I a glutton for punishment this summer, or is sadness the crutch of the pop-fiction writer? This was another tear-jerker, about a teenage girl with thyroid cancer and her teenage boyfriend with bone cancer. You're sad already, aren't you?

Again, this was no literary masterpiece, and yet my summer-melted brain found it engrossing. Since it is the story of two teenagers (and therefore admittedly geared towards teenagers) I gave it some leeway. But there were definitely cringe-worthy moments. Maybe it was because I was going through some grieving of my own at the time, but I did feel like this book taught me something about what it means to be dying, and for dying to take over your life. "Pain demands to be felt, " for example. That stuck with me.

So I would definitely recommend it, though perhaps for a less discerning (or younger) reader than myself.

7. Open House

This one made it in just under the wire as a book that would be too easy for me to enjoy any time but summer. Basically it is about a woman whose husband leaves her, and her figuring out how to live on her own.

I think it must have bought it at one of our libraries $5/bag book sales because I'm not sure why I owned it. I was happy to read it just to get it off my shelf. So no I wouldn't particularly recommend this one. But it was a nice easy read to finish off the summer.

It was a good summer full of good books, good weather and good times. Now onto the changing leaves, cups of hot cocoa, and some books I can really sink my brain into.

The Death Bell Tolls for Us All, and Other Morbid Musings

(#2) Read 25 books

Done!

1. Room by Emma Donohue

2. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

4. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

5. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

6. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

7. A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

8. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

9. The Shack by William Young

10.The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

11. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

12. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

13. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

14. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

15. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

16. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

17. Bossypants by Tina Fey

18. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

19. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

20. Watership Down by Richard Adams

21. The Alchemist by Paul Coelho

22. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

23. Eats, Shoots, & Leaves by Lynne Truss
24. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
25. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

I chose to challenge myself for my final book of the year. Unfortunately I forgot about a little phenomenon called "summer brain" in which I just want to read books that I can breeze through while sitting poolside. So this was more of a challenge than I originally anticipated. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls is the story of Robert Jordan, an American dynamiter serving during the Spanish Civil War. The entire novel surrounds one mission of Jordan's- to blow up a key bridge near the town of Segovia. Jordan waits near the bridge in the mountains with a group of guerrilla fighters. A majority of the story details their time waiting for the mission, and sharing the harrowing experiences they have all had in the war and in life. 

 The title refers to a John Donne poem which basically explains the whole point of the book.  

"Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

In a word, the book is about death. As I understand it, the bells referred to in the title are bells that ring at a church for someone who has died. The bells eventually toll for all of us. And as guerrilla soldiers on basically a suicide mission, the bells are tolling every day for all of the main characters of this novel. The result is basically a novel dedicated to the musings of men and women from different walks of life as they face their almost certain death.

The thing about Hemingway is sometimes he drones on and on and can get boring. But you can't stop reading because every once in a while he slips in something like this:

“How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.”
If that doesn't hit you right in the soul, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you're willing to work for a little profundity, then give it a try.

A Farewell to Arms is still my favorite Hemingway so far, though. So start with that one.

World War Z- Movie vs Book

Considering my intense aversion to gore, I have no idea how I came to love all things zombie. But I do. So of course I had to see World War Z when it came out this summer. And then after hearing how different (and how superior) the book was, I had to add it to my list for this year.

The stories you have heard are true- the movie bears absolutely no resemblance to the book. Okay maybe one resemblance- they both contain zombies.

World War Z, the novel, is narrated by an agent of the “United Nations Postwar Commission” ten years after the global war against the living dead known as World War Z. The narrator travels the globe interviewing survivors of various importance in many different countries, from China to Russia to Cuba and even to the International Space Station. Their stories combined create a global picture of the outbreak, the ensuing “Great Panic,” and then the war to take back the Earth.

I knew that this was the format, and I think it was an effective way to get a global sense of the story. My only complaint would be that the stories were perhaps too short. I had a hard time relating to/remembering any of the characters because as soon as I got into the story it was over.

While the book is in many ways like every other zombie story, it is obvious that Brooks put a lot of thought into creating a post-zombie world that was (and I use this term loosely) realistic. He really considered a lot of different angles of the apocalypse, such as the brash use of nuclear weapons, the ineffectiveness of modern weapons against this new kind of enemy, and the various ways different countries and different types of people would respond to their situations. A common “solution” in a zombie movie or book is often to get on a boat and flee to an island. Brooks addresses the complications of this solution in a way I’ve never seen done before.

I loved the unique global perspective of this book. One of my criticisms of The Walking Dead (which I am hesitant to criticize at all because it is excellent) is that I’m always dying to know what is going on in the rest of the world, to get the big picture of life-after-zombie. Where is the government, and why aren’t they fighting? What is going on in the rest of the world? Is anywhere still safe? Tiny groups of people like the main characters of the show can’t be the only survivors. World War Z addresses these questions very satisfactorily.

As for the movie, it was also very interesting in its own right. The images of the zombie attacks are chilling. I loved that the main character was a scientist and uses observation and smarts over muscle. I am not one to criticize a movie for straying from its book- a movie is a totally different medium and should be treated as its own work of art. However, I literally don’t know why this movie had the same name as the book. Here are some of the main differences:

1) The timing is different- the book takes place ten years after the outbreak while the movie is over within a week of the first infection. Which of course means that nothing that happens after this week (aka the main elements of the book) is even mentioned.

2) The zombies are different: the movie creates a very interesting kind of zombie that is super fast and strong and therefore even more terrifying. The book contains your typical slow moving, moaning undead.

3) The narrator in the movie is also the main character. The narrator in the book is present in the stories only as an interviewer and we don’t ever learn his back-story.  I don’t think he has anything to do with Brad Pitt’s character in the movie.

4) I literally don’t think there is one character who appears in both the movie and the book. Correct me if I’m wrong.

5) The feel of the both are drastically different. The movie focuses more on the “Great Panic” time and how quickly things can get out of our control. The book focuses on how all the characters are haunted by what they saw and did during the war, but also how they managed to survive and keep hope alive.

Basically nothing but the titles are the same. However I thoroughly enjoyed both and would recommend both to any other zombie-lovers out there. I might recommend seeing the movie first so you can judge it more kindly.