An Immersion Blender Tale of Woe

 Beware, denizens of the kitchen. Your immersion blender, as fine a tool as it may be, cannot do everything. I learned this the hard way.

I wasn't really keen on the thing in the first place. My husband bought it. Guys like gadgets. Yes, perhaps that's an unfair stereotype. But we are talking about a man who has a digital thermometer for his smoker that lets him monitor the temperature from inside the house. Moreover, storage space is limited in our kitchen and anything we add really has to earn the space it occupies. So I started out as an immersion blender skeptic.

It took a while to win me over to Team Immersion. But the first time I used it to make a ginger/garlic/Panko paste, it was almost a religious experience. Something that could take 10 minutes of chopping and then mushing with a mortar and pestle was done in under a minute. And unlike using a regular food processor, it was exactly the consistency I wanted. And it was far easier to clean than a food processor. After that, the sky seemed the limit. Creamy soup? You bet. Cauliflower rice? A snap.

After such a great start, what went wrong? Mashed potatoes, that's what. It's a simple food to make with a hand mixer, but the immersion blender was already out on the counter. So I decided to experiment.

No experiment is a failure if it yields useful data. The data I gleaned from this effort was that the immersion blender doesn't incorporate air into the mashed potatoes. They were so gluey that I could have used them to spackle holes in the wall. The potatoes were edible, barely. But it's embarrassing to screw up something so simple, when you've been cooking for decade. Readers, learn from my mistake. Unless you really need some spackle...

The Leftovers a novel by Tom Perrotta

In The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta uses a startling premise to produce a realist portrait of the fault lines that fracture modern society.  The story is set in a small suburban town somewhere on the east coast.  It is a few years after the Sudden Departure, when millions of people, instantly and without explanation, vanished from the Earth.  Was it the Rapture spoken of in the Bible?  But then, many who vanished were not Christians.  Mr. Perrotta leaves that question to hang, while he explores the effects of the traumatic event on a town full of ordinary people. 

This isn't a book with a lot of plot twists.  People move through their lives. Some try to keep things normal while others form cult movements.  A messianic figure may have a genuine gift or he may be a charlatan; his unborn child may or may not be the savior of mankind.  Some funny stuff happens in between the darker moments.  One memorable character  is the woman who lost her husband and two kids. She watches Sponge Bob Squarepants because it was the show her vanished children liked. She is obsessive, but organized about it. At first, she goes through a marathon of cartoon watching, but soon begins to ration the number of daily episodes to keep them fresh. Her attempts to rebuild a social life are the ungainly efforts of any recently divorced person, writ large. It is safer to retreat but hard to be alone, even if all you can do is have a guy watch cartoons with you.

Perrotta has been called the Balzac of the suburbs, a Cheever for our times, and a lot of other heavy titles that reviewers like to hang on authors, as if to see whether they can bear the weight.  I haven't read his other books, though I gather The Leftovers is something of a departure for him.  But the book conveys humor and affection for people, even while it shows them as deeply flawed. The author gives us the common threads that we share with his characters, which is what makes the book so readable.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This book was originally marketed for teens, but it is now wildly popular among adults and adult reading groups. It is a fast-paced and imaginative view of a dystopian society. America is now a country called Panem, derived of a capital city and 12 (once 13) districts. After district 13 attempted an uprising against the powerful capital, the rebels were wiped out and the capital instilled “The Hunger Games” to remind the districts of the devastation that resulted from the unsuccessful campaign. For 70 + years now, each district must enter their children, ages 12-18 into a lottery. Two are chosen, one male and one female, to enter into the Hunger Games, a televised to-the-death battle which changes yearly. Twenty four tributes enter the games, not knowing what challenges or terrain they will face, but only one can survive to be crowned the winner. This first book in the Hunger Games trilogy introduces readers to Katniss Everdeen’s epic journey of self-discovery.

This book is extraordinarily written, with deep characters that become very real to the reader. We are caught up in the struggle to understand the Hunger Games, as well as the children who are sent there to be warriors. Publishers Weekly hit the nail on the head: “It's a credit to Collins's skill at characterization that Katniss, like a new Theseus, is cold, calculating and still likable.” In contrast to Katniss, we also get to know her District 12 counterpart, Peeta, whose sweetness of temper and own personal agenda make him a dangerous competitor.

The Hunger Games is rich with political intrigue, a touch of romance, and a bird’s eye view at what horrors people can inflict on one another for “entertainment.” I personally read the trilogy so quickly that I felt I must have missed things and had to reread sections until I was satisfied. Collins successfully hooks the reader and we struggle along with Katniss to grasp the multifaceted strategies of the games. This book is fascinating and honestly, a little scary due to the fact that it’s not terribly difficult to believe that the human race can sink to this level. A must-read, especially since the movie will be released in early 2012. Try The Hunger Games, surely you’ll be wanting to read Catching Fire and Mockingjay too.

The Map of Time a novel by Felix J. Palma

I picked up this book because it had great cover art and an interesting title.  These seemed to promise a grand adventure of some kind, perhaps fantasy or science fiction, with a strong dash of steam punk and some interesting characters.  Does selecting a book this way make the reader shallow and unthinking?  When the book becomes something completely unexpected, does the reader have reason to be angry or disgusted?  In truth, friends, when was the last time that you read something that induced so much introspection and self-doubt?  If you knew that the subject was time-travel and the book’s characters included H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker and Joseph Merrick, wouldn’t you expect a bit of a romp?  A quick glance at the readers’ comments on Amazon show that some folks hated this book for the very reasons I have mentioned here: it wasn’t exactly what they expected.

 At first, the pace of this novel is so slow that one is tempted to abandon the book.  A young man contemplating suicide on the opening page is still alive and still suicidal on page 75.  The book is 600 pages; you may begin to question your stamina.   Suddenly, the perspective changes, the pace quickens, the story focuses on new characters, and the narrator steps out of third person voice to make sly jokes.  What is the author doing?  Well, dear reader, he is toying with you.

All authors manipulate their audiences.  This is why we come to fiction.  We allow someone else to temporarily direct the narrative, to bend our perceptions in a particular direction and perhaps even to subtly affect our values.  Mr. Palma insists on underlining that fact, yanking back the curtain that ordinarily conceals the writer to show you the man behind it, pulling levers and turning gears.  Why does he risk alienating the reader?  He is showing us the very heart of his novel: the complex relationship between what we experience, what is real and where our imaginations take us.

If you are patient and willing to take the journey the author proposes, you will be rewarded.  There is adventure, true love and yes, time travel.  Mild-mannered and unassuming, H.G. Wells emerges a hero.  Palma has said of his book:

Apart from entertainment, I would like to leave the reader with the idea that the imagination can make our lives more beautiful.

The more I read, the more riveted I became.  Will The Map of Time have the same effect on you?  As it says on page one:  “Your emotion and astonishment are guaranteed.”

The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan

It’s clear how self-aware Glen Duncan was of the tradition he attempts to navigate in The Last Werewolf, focused on the final months of the moribund race of lycanthropes. He negotiates a genre of horror we’ve become accustomed to, a vogue of monstrosity that’s returned from the depths of our imaginations after several decades of hibernation in which werewolves were merely fodder for satire, a campy terror that no longer haunted the nightmares of our subconscious. Not unlike Anne Rice’s Vampire series, Duncan invites the readership to reexamine lycanthropes, both to understand aspects of their humanity—or rather the crisis of being physically ripped from it each full moon—and view them within a narrative that’s persisted in folklore for hundreds of years. Jacob Marlowe’s narration is possessed of a certain eloquence, his speech fragmented with astute literary allusions, so off-handedly quipped that we come to understand him as a man very much in love with words and the importance of recognizing those storytellers that matter, just as Duncan does not presume to ignore the multitude of literary renderings the werewolf has undergone. Marlowe’s tendency to wax poetic is construed as his medium to wrestle with notions of morality while so Cursed. Duncan parses lyrical sentences with oblique references to Blake or Tennyson to give the reader a sense of the vital importance words have for Marlowe, a meta-commentary on his own risk to reimagine lycanthropy. However, this eloquence breaks down further into the narrative as the tempo increases.

Apart from establishing Marlowe’s verbosity, the first chapter immediately sets the pacing of the novel. The reader must scramble through the first several chapters to become orientated to the narration, to make sense of the sudden deluge of information. Just as Jake is suddenly in the throes of a desperate battle for survival, the reader must quickly adjust to the lack of quiet or stillness in the prose. Everything is told with a foreboding immediacy, the plot given a sense of movement. Unlike Rice’s Vampire novels –which include chase scenes but focus primarily on the morality struggles of blood kin, heavy and sometimes opulent cogitation—Duncan’s werewolf is one uncomfortable in the stasis of contemplation. Marlowe is clearly a creature of kinetic energy, constantly prowling about the world to escape the hunters and prey—he has the same vagabond temperament as the wolf that lurks within him. With the quick pacing of The Last Werewolf, it reads more like a thriller than an epic exploration of the boundary between the bestial and human. Duncan invites the reader to understand the life of rapid travel Marlowe leads, the sense that remaining in a single place is antithetical to the nature of the werewolf, one that seethes with the single mantra Fuckkilleat. The speed is instinctual, quickened by chapters that are merely several sentences, forcing the reader to flip immediately to the next page.

Despite Duncan’s modern take on lycanthropy, discussing were-viruses as our contemporary world continues to whip up vaccines that no longer stave off violent disease, and his metanarrative recognition of the difficulty of writing something new and exciting and visceral about werewolves, I don’t feel as though the foundations of the genre have been at all shaken. Duncan straddles suspense and elegance, though remains unsure of his footing. As we are increasingly accelerated to the climax of the novel, one finds oneself wishing to read more spoken from the mouth of the intellectual, brooding Jacob Marlowe, less the animal that finds satisfaction in pure action.

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Matter by William Derediewicz

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Or, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

Basically, this is a book about cognitive dissonance, which is defined as:
an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

In other words, most people, when confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to overcome self-justification.

Chapters focus on prejudices and blind spots, psychology, politics, law, and personal relationships. By far, the most fascinating sections for me were those dealing with politics, law, and the relationship between cognitive dissonance and self-esteem.

If you've ever wondered how politicians justify taking large kickbacks and bribes, the authors explain it: corruption happens with one small, innocent step (having lunch with a constituent) and, through cognitive dissonance, snowballs into accepting an all-expenses paid golfing trip to St. Andrews from a lobbyist. As the authors state, "Politicians are the most visible of self-justifiers, which is why they provide such juicy examples. They have the refined art of speaking in the passive voice; when their backs are to the wall they will reluctantly acknowledge error, but not responsibility."

The law section includes the complicated issues of eyewitness and expert testimony, the problems with current interrogation methods, and the controversy of repressed memory syndrome and its use as legal evidence.

Regarding dissonance and esteem, interestingly enough those with more humility (and/or lower self-esteem), because they tend to allow for divergent opinions and don't stick to their guns as often as people with high self-esteem (or downright arrogance), have far fewer problems with cognitive dissonance. Special mention also needs to be made of the pithy (and humorous) anecdote on page 41 relating a visit to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

The science in the book is well-documented yet very accessible to a wide range of readers. Someone in my book group chose this as a selection, and it made for a lively and engaging discussion. I would definitely recommend it!