The General Situation

Hey, Mr. B! I Want to Buy One of These! Contact Me!

Read Any Good Books Lately?

If The Pursuit of Love was a sillier "Downtown Abbey," then A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is a far more serious take—it, too, covers the era before World War I, and it's just as concerned with matters of class, but it's more epic (with at least 20 characters you need to keep track of). The beginning started promisingly, then I complained as nothing happened in the next 250 pages; there was more about English geography and history tha I cared to think about. By page 675, however, I was devastated.

You Instead

Tonight You're Mine was sort of dumb and at the same time ridiculously charming, even if it made Adam and me feel old. I want to buy several songs from the soundtrack, but they're not available in the U.S. This song was the opener—it was a shock when the non-acoustic version played later sounded like Depeche Mode.

They're Famous in My House

If Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers are sold in New York City, I don't want to know. We buy them at the Stop & Shop in Connecticut. They're like Oreos without the filling, and they're so good with ice cream. Or on their own (perhaps for elevenses—I'm British when it comes to adopting new mealtimes). I like them so much that when I take three four five out of the package to eat, I quickly gobble one down so if Adam walks in at least he'll think the total amount was one fewer.

Read Any Good Books Lately?

The folks who own the house we're renting in Connecticut have somewhat stodgy literary tastes—lots of coffee-table books about gardening and interiors, and plenty of history. (Recent houseguests of ours spent a half hour after dinner looking for blacks and Jews in the Social Register.) The owners' fiction choices, however, are much more mass-market, so when I came across Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, written in 1945, I was surprised. What a frothy little treat! If I were the BBC, I'd get an adaptation rolling immediately: Mostly the story of Linda Alconleigh's love life, as told by her cousin Fanny, Pursuit is like Downtown Abbey without all the servants glumly milling about. The writing is breezy but insightful, and studded with zingy bits. Here's a wonderful example:

Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other's company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pinpricks. Nannies, cooks, and endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one's very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, Alfred's not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honeydew, and that is an incomparable diet.

Read Any Good Books Lately?

Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is the most heartful—I don't care if that's not a word—book I've read in a long time.

I Thought This Was Funny

And I don't find most comedies funny, and I hated Knocked Up, and I'm not a huge fan of Paul Rudd.

Jaw-Droppingly Good

Thoroughly Fixated

The New York Times review of the Georges Hugnet show at Ubu Gallery had me at hello: "The main attraction is 'The Love Life of the Spumifers,' a series of small works produced in 1947-48 that is based on black-and-white postcards from the Belle Époque picturing pretty young women posing in breast- and buttock-exposing garments. To each of these racy images Hugnet added, in gouache with a fine-tipped brush, a colorful, comical monster: a goggle-eyed chimera composed of avian, reptilian and mammalian elements. These randy, diminutive gargoyles cling to, fondle, mount and otherwise consort with their objects of desire. The women respond either with dreamy indifference or by beaming back at the camera."

There's no way I can justify spending $350 on the book, right?

Love x 8

It's been a while since I did a round-up of things I'm loving....

1. Black pepper. I know you're shrugging. But a couple months ago, I ordered two fried eggs on a roll with American cheese, and I remembered to ask for salt and pepper. The guy peppered the living daylights out of the sandwich—it was almost black—and it was amazing. Rich + bland + pepper = delicious (just like in cacio e pepe). Although I was just at a pizzeria in Chelsea called Donatella's, and when you ask for black pepper they bring it to you in a dish, with a little coke spoon. Who eats pepper like that? Bring on Le Grind!

2. Popcorn salt. I promise we'll get out of the spice aisle after this. Whenever we have corn on the cob, Adam's grandmother always points out how it's better with popcorn salt. So I finally started looking for it at supermarkets—in Litchfield and Tribeca—to no avail. (You have to look where the salt is, and then find the popcorn, just in case, even though if that aisle has salt it tends to be flavored with fake cheese.) I gave up and ordered it online (just $2.50—plus $8 in shipping). It's only superfine salt, but it really is great on corn and nuts.

3. Nat King Cole. Growing up, I only knew Nat King Cole as the man who sang the schmaltzy "Unforgettable," made schmaltzier when his daughter Natalie did a posthumous duet. One day, on the public jazz station, I heard a Nat King Cole song that wasn't all gooey strings, but instead a tight, light, jazzy combo. I bought After Midnight: The Complete Sessions, and I adore it. Check out You're Looking At Me.

4. A plastic lid for pet-food cans. We started feeding Howard wet food, which is gross, but even worse was having to deal with a piece of aluminum foil to cover the rest of the can. I knew plastic lids existed, but I couldn't find one—then my mom gave me one of hers. If you squint it could be a pug. (I discovered afterward that our local Unleashed by Petco has unembellished ones, but this is cuter—and the ears make the lid easier to get off. Or should I say "Gett Off"?

5. SodaStream. I bought the machine for Adam for his birthday not so that we could make soda but for enviromental reasons—those cans of seltzer we buy have to travel a lot just to get to our supermarket (and then I have to haul them from the store, which isn't near our apartment).

6. The Hawk Relaxes. My favorite jazz album in a long time. It's not recent—it came out in 1961—but it was new to me. Everything I want in jazz.

7. Celery. Laugh all you want, but if you come across celery at your farmer's market, give it a try—it has a deep green color and an herbaceous, almost spicy, flavor; you can see why chefs put it in stock and soups. But you rarely see that kind of celery even in restaurants.

8. Clouds.