Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement by Kathryn Joyce (2009)

This book took me a long time to get through — not because I didn’t like it or wasn’t interested in the topic, but because it kept making me so angry I’d have to look up from it and seethe silently to myself, or else risk throwing it across the room.

As an atheist and a feminist, I picked this book up precisely because I knew it would piss me off. (I can’t be the only person who sometimes reads things masochistically?) I didn’t realize I’d end up actually feeling sorry for some of these poor brainwashed women in the so-called Quiverfull movement, on top of being upset at the men (and other women!) who kept them subjugated.

The idea behind Quiverfull is that families (ahem, women) are meant to raise a “quiver full of arrows” to fight a holy war against all non-fundamentalist Christians, i.e. to squeeze out as many babies as humanly (bovinely?) possible — see, for example, the infamous Duggars — to prepare for some sort of white jihad. The other main idea is that men are the head of anything and everything that could ever possibly exist or happen… for example:

• women can’t speak in church,
• women can’t hold jobs outside the home,
• women can’t question anything their husband does (or anything any man does, really),
• women must homeschool their broods (but not once their sons get too old, because no way can any female have authority over a male, even if it’s her own damn child),
• figure out what your problem is if your husband is abusing you, because since he’s the embodiment of Jesus on earth he can’t possibly be doing anything wrong and you must be doing something to goad him into it (like not bringing him his slippers),
• join ranks with the other church ladies to shame any woman whose husband is abusing her, because she’s obviously not churchy enough to be good enough for him, even if he’s clearly an arsehole,
• women should get permission from their husbands before deciding what to wear, if they should wear makeup, what chores they’ll do today, what books they’re allowed to read,…

This is a good book (assuming you don’t need to get someone else’s permission first — barf) if you need some kind of mental image before your kickboxing class, or if you want to see exactly how you should NOT run a marriage and a family.

Hors d’Oeuvres: More than 200 Recipes, Step-by-Step Sequences: Crostini, Tartlets, Skewers, Wraps by Victoria Blashford-Snell & Eric Treuille (2012)

Step-by-Step Filo tartlets (I always thought it was Phyllo?) pgs. 166-167. Photo credit: Kathryn Walsh

This book is not kidding when it comes to their step-by-step claims. Lots of pictures showing how to put pretty little hors d’oeuvres together and how to build the bases for them, as with the phyllo cups pictured.

The authors seem very realistic about what’s practical and actually doable for normal non-chef humans. They offer lots of tips for party planning and scheduling, and have convenient little notes for the quickest and easiest recipes, but they’ve also got a number of big fancy recipes for when you want to impress someone (or just show off your skills).

This is exactly the kind of nibbly food I could imagine serving when I’m grown-up enough and rich enough to have cocktail parties.

Still kind of on-topic: my mama refers to hors d’oeuvres as “whore’s drawers”, which always makes me giggle.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

You might have noticed by now that I seem to read more non-fiction than fiction… and then I read a book like Middlesex and wonder why that’s the case. I read the whole thing (500+ pages) straight through over the weekend. And the weather was lovely here! But no swimming for me, just reading.

The story is told by Calliope Stephanides, the grandchild of Greek immigrants, and it leads you through the stories and relationships within her family over three generations. She also leads you through her own life story and her relationships as she realizes she’s not the girl she thought she was, both figuratively (the usual coming-of-ages tropes) and literally (that is to say, genetically — which freshens up the tropes considerably!).

5-alpha reductase deficiency is the name of the condition that Callie, later Cal, is discovered to have. Upon this discovery, things start to go haywire for Callie. I really wish the story had carried on through Cal’s life, up to the present where Cal is narrating this history instead of cutting off when Cal is a teenager. I was pretty invested in this story, all the characters and how they overlapped and intertwined and cheated each other. I could have kept reading for another thousand pages.

The Greek names and history reminded me, when I was reading, of the great philosophies and plays. A book tackling sex and gender and sexuality and big philosophical questions seems an odd choice for a beachy weekend, but I like my fiction heavy, apparently.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (2005)

I actually came across this book in the bibliography of another book I read a while back, about cholera and how it spread through the water supply in England in the 1850s. This book is sort of a trip through civilization, with each of six drinks (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) setting up the narrative through time. Water will be the seventh drink; the drink of the future, according to Standage. Will third-world countries have access to clean, safe water? Will World War III break out over water supplies, rather than oil? Will we find signs of water (and life) on Mars?

Of course, these are questions for the future when “6 Glasses” is focused on the past. I’m not usually a big history fan, since retrospectively it all seems so general (“and then there was a war, and some people died, and then there were some boats, and then they planted some trees, and then there was another war,” etc. ad nauseum). But this book had loads of little factoids, and that’s right up my alley. (I pretty much own trivia nights.)

Things I learned include:

Teacups and teapots and tins of Twinings tea. Photo credit: Wikipedia

• Twinings tea has what is thought to be the oldest commercial logo in continuous use in the world;
• Coca-Cola is apparently the second most commonly understood phrase in the world, after “okay”;
• beer and bread are essentially liquid and solid forms of the same thing;
• Sir Isaac Newton wrote Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica and published it in 1687 after a conversation with Edmond Halley (as in the comet!) at a coffee-house… I sometimes forget that all these famous scientists knew each other and worked together. It boggles the mind, truly;
• Lloyd’s of London and the London Stock Exchange also grew out of organizations originally based in coffee-houses;
• New Coke sucked. Jokes! I already knew that.

Beer (by the pitcher) and trivia (in teams is good, because then you can share the pitchers) go well together, incidentally.

Make It Tonight: 150 Quick & Delicious Weeknight Recipes by the eds. of Fine Cooking Magazine (2012)

Yes, two cookbook posts in a row… I like food. Not even sorry!

Not only are these last two books put together by the editors of Fine Cooking magazine, they’re also from The Taunton Press publishing company, which does all kinds of other stuff that I love. Every book I’ve seen from them (and I’ve seen many!) is beautiful, nicely laid out, and informative. I’ve read several of their sports training books, as well as a stack of home improvement/wood-working/decorating books.

On top of being beautiful, nicely laid out, and informative, everything in this book does look delicious. So far I’ve only made the chicken parm (pg. 26) — my first time ever attempting it! And I’ve only even eaten it once! — turned out really well. (I forgot to take a picture… oops. Good thing this is a book blog and not a food blog!) It was indeed quick and delicious.

I’ve got a whole list of other recipes in this book that I want to try, and they all look like the sort of thing you can throw together when you get home from work, but they still turn out looking and tasting like you slaved away on them. I can definitely see this being the sort of cookbook I’d keep coming back to — classic suppers and family favourites in the making.

I say supper. Do you say supper? Apparently some people think the word “supper” is weird. I like it.

Chocolate: 150 Delicious and Decadent Recipes by the eds. of Fine Cooking Magazine (2013)

This book is glorious, and I want to eat pretty much everything in it. Examples:

• caramel-pecan brownies (pg. 10)
• flourless chocolate cake with chocolate glaze (pg. 102)
• chocolate truffle tart with whipped vanilla mascarpone topping (pg. 147)
• brownie cream cheese bites (pg. 70)
• always a classic, thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies (pg. 16)

And just about every recipe is accompanied by a lovely picture, all of which I’m drooling over now. Yum!