Florence in Print

The Jane Austen Cookbook

florence — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:15:07 +0000

I was perusing the food section of a bookstore the other day, looking for another cookbook to add to my ever growing collection, when I came across The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black & Deirdre Le Faye.
Naturally, I picked it up right away. The cover is exactly what I hoped it would be.

The authors are a food historian and an Austenian scholar, so you just know the book is going to be good. And it is.
Aside from recipes like Lady Williams’s Muffins and something called Forcemeat Balls (which involves anchovies and pigeons’ livers), The Jane Austen Cookbook also has a great introduction that goes into the social conventions of shopping, eating and entertaining in Austen’s time.

As much as I love Jane Austen, I have no real desire to make a Pigeon Pie or Venison Cake, so I can’t say I really want to attempt any of the recipes in this book. That’s why I was happy to find the site Austenacious. Here’s how the lovely ladies of Austenacious describe their site:

Austenacious began as an excuse to cook, eat, and watch BBC period dramas on Friday nights, and grew into an excuse to cook, eat, and talk about Jane Austen every day of the week.

What’s not to love, right? They have posts with recipes from the book including Apple Puffs and Martha’s Gingerbread Cakes.
Their other posts are worth reading, too.

Have you tried a recipe from this book? I’d love to hear how it turned out.
But if you made the Chicken with Tongues, you can omit the gory details.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Darcy.

florence — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:02:04 +0000

If you’re anything like me and the people who answered this survey of the most romantic characters in literature, you have a thing for a certain Mr. Darcy.
Shocking as it may be, Fitzwilliam Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was not number one on that list. It turns out that more people swoon over Mr. Rochester of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. But since I prefer Darcy and since I was looking for any excuse to bake something, I decided to whip up a batch of cookies in honour of Valentine’s Day and my favourite romantic hero.

(I used the Williams-Sonoma Message-in-a-Cookie Cutters to make these.)

Book vs Film: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

florence — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:27:38 +0000

The title of this post is a bit misleading since I haven’t actually seen the movie version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Yet.

There was something about the book that really moved me. I held off reading it for so long, and I had read plenty of negative reviews (Like this one. Yikes.). But when I finally got around to reading it, I couldn’t help but love it just a little.
And even trying to explain what it was that I loved about it doesn’t seem right because the reasons why I did were all so personal. That’s why I completely understand when people say that they hated the book. It demands that type of emotional reaction. No matter what you think of Foer’s book, the movie stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, so a few important Hollywood people obviously loved it.

But I’m hesitant to see the movie.

On top of the fact that it was the worst reviewed movie of the past ten years to receive a best picture nomination (Yikes again), I can tell from the trailer that it will have a different feel than the book had. And since I felt such a strong connection to the novel, I don’t know that I want to ruin that with a (potentially awful) movie adaptation.

Sometimes it’s good for a book to just stay a book in my mind.
Does that even make sense?
It doesn’t really have to, I suppose.

Judge the book cover: Cannery Row

florence — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:44:08 +0000

I recently visited the California coast for the first time, and while the entire trip was pretty incredible (amazing beaches, annoyingly perfect weather, great food), one of my favourite stops had to be Monterey.
I was very excited to check out the street in Monterey that John Steinbeck’s classic Cannery Row was based on. Strolling that beautiful street inspired me to buy myself a copy of Steinbeck’s famous novel and finally commit to reading it.
Now I just need to decide which cover I like best…

10 reasons why I love my Kindle

florence — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:27:29 +0000

10. It’s tiny and weighs next to nothing, making it ideal for travel. No more lugging heavy books around in my suitcase.
9. It wasn’t very expensive and buying ebooks isn’t either.
8. If I feel like reading a book, I can buy it and start reading in just a couple of minutes. It couldn’t be more convenient.
7. It’s a conversation starter. While it may seem like everyone has some kind of eReader these days, for a big part of the population they are still very new. And people are curious.
6. The E Ink display makes it so easy to read. No glare and no eye strain = more hours reading.a

5. I don’t have to worry about people judging me for what I’m reading because no one can tell with a Kindle. So should I feel like reading Twilight (again), no one will have to know.
4. Being able to read a sample before buying is like being able to flip through a book in the store. It’s great and leads to more book purchases, for sure.
3. I’ll never run out of things to read. Ever.
2. Because there are so many classic titles available for free, I no longer have an excuse not to read them.
1. It’s not a replacement for actual books. It never will be. But if you don’t view it as an either or, a Kindle (or any eReader) is just a new way to read books. And that’s good enough for me.

Kindle

Book

Why joining a book club can help your writing

florence — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 01:25:30 +0000

I’ve always wanted to be part of a book club and 2011 was the year I finally did it.

Joining the Matchbook Book Club has not only given me the opportunity to meet some great people but I think it has also helped me as a writer.

Here’s how:

Joining a book club forces you to read. And, as Stephen King so perfectly puts it, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Reading books I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for myself lets me experience new genres and styles of writing that I may have ignored otherwise. So while I might not be a huge fan of romance and fantasy novels, as a writer there are many things I can learn from those genres.

Getting together to discuss books is a great way to see how others felt about characters and plot and to perhaps get some insight into what they thought worked and didn’t, which is all pretty invaluable to a writer.

Writing can be pretty solitary work. Joining a book club means taking a break to have some fun and talk about books. Walking away from your computer every now and again is good for those creative juices.

How writing is like baking cookies
Yoga for writers

Book Photography: Melanie Caskey

florence — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:52:27 +0000

When I hear people say that they have a hard time coming up with gift ideas for family and friends, I assume that they’ve never browsed through online shops on Etsy. I can easily find creative and original gifts for everyone on my list on Etsy, and I don’t have to spend all day in a crowded mall to do it.
If you’re searching for a gift for the literary type on your list, book photography might be a good option for you. I really like these ones by photographer Melanie Caskey.

Literary Board Games

florence — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:05:28 +0000

Now that the long, cold winter is starting up again I find myself planning nights in with friends. And while watching movies and eating yummy things are both fantastic ways to spend some time indoors, sometimes it’s good to switch things up a bit. My suggestion? Game Night!
And of course, my favourite kind of game night doesn’t involve just regular old board games. No, my kinda game night includes literary board games like these:

Scrabble: Book Lovers Edition
It’s basically Scrabble but you get bonus points for spelling an author name, book title, or literary character. Amazing.

1000 Piece Famous Writers Puzzle
I’m awful at puzzles, but I like the idea of a puzzle where the pieces come together to form writers like Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, and Mark Twain.

Literati Challenge
From what I gather, this game involves writing a story using the five words that are given to you on a card. You only have a minute to do it, then you read the stories out loud. Hilarity ensues.

Where the Wild Things Are
I don’t even care how you play this. It looks awesome.

Liebrary
This is kind of like a literary Balderdash. After hearing the synopsis of an actual book, players write down what its first line could be. You earn points when others believe yours is the real first line. What’s weird about this one is that the actress Daryl Hannah came up with it. Who knew?

By the way, these are all available online at Chapters.Indigo.Ca, so I basically just did your holiday shopping for you. You’re welcome.

Related posts:
Literary Recipes
Playing With Books

Ed Wood, I hardly knew you.

florence — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:28:41 +0000

Everything I know about Ed Wood I’ve learned from watching the Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp. (Here’s the trailer if you have no idea what I’m talking about.)
I know he was a legendary film director who made incredibly bad movies and liked to dress up in women’s clothes. Perhaps you know this, too.
But something I didn’t know that I recently learned from Flavorwire is that Ed Wood was also a writer. He wrote really sleazy fiction using various pseudonyms, and today the collection of his books is extremely rare. The Boo-Hooray exhibition space in New York is hosting Ed Wood’s Sleaze Paperbacks until December 4th. The exhibit features about 70 of Ed Wood’s books.

The Boo-Hooray website says this about Mr. Wood’s writing:
Ed Wood’s sleaze fiction is also as strange, idiosyncratic and out of step with his times and mores as his infamous movies. Wood would write porn inter-spliced with lengthy philosophical, sociological and psychological discourse, he’d write first person narratives of life as a transvestite in the buttoned up America of the 1950’s. He’d riff on psychosexual themes, and unleash his id, his ego and his superego in turn, sometimes in the same chapter. He’d write about sex and the human condition without veneer or filters, offering up the damaged and anguished voice of a desperately soul-searching drunk with a sense of self-worth that would stand in dichotomy to his self-pity.

Sounds interesting, right?

If you make it to the exhibit, please let me know how it was. In the meantime I think I’ll pick up the Ed Wood bio Nightmare of Ecstasy. I feel like his entire life would make for an interesting read.

Blog Tour: Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

florence — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:48:43 +0000

I was pretty excited when I received my review copy of Helen Oyeyemi’s new book Mr. Fox in the mail (thank you Penguin Canada!). There was something about the synopsis that intrigued me…

What makes a marriage? Does marriage mean the end of fairy-tale romance? It might if your husband is the writer Mr. Fox, who does devilish things to the heroines of his stories. His wife, Daphne, is unable to change his ways, but when his imaginary muse—the gorgeously offbeat Mary Foxe—conjures herself one sunny afternoon and confronts him about his dark denouements, things take an unexpected turn.

Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising, and their romances put our villainous writer through his paces, exploring every facet of love. Full of delicious period detail, this is a love story like no other, and it reaches a new pitch when Daphne becomes suspicious that her husband is having an affair.

Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

Having never read anything by Helen Oyeyemi before I wasn’t really sure what to expect. This book was definitely original and incredibly inventive. I admit to feeling slightly lost at times. There were moments where it felt like I had no idea what was going on. The narration changes, the time period changes, and the chapters are more like short stories. In other words, you really have to pay attention while reading Mr. Fox.
In the end, I don’t think I responded to this book the way that I thought I would. It happens.
But while I may not have loved this book, it did make it pretty clear to me what a gifted writer Helen Oyeyemi really is. And it made me curious to read her other books, especially The Icarus Girl, which she completed before her 19th birthday.

You can read an excerpt of Mr. Fox here. To read what NPR had to say about this book you can check out their review here, and for more Mr. Fox reviews be sure to visit the other blogs taking part in this tour:

Tales of a Ranting Ginger – Oct 24
Snowdrop Dreams of Books - Oct 25
Just a Lil’ Lost - Oct 26
In the Next Room - Oct 27
Evie Bookish - Oct 28
A Bookworm’s World - Nov 1
Krystal’s Stellar Book Blog - Nov 2
The Indextrious Reader - Nov 3
Hands and Home - Nov 4