Food Coincidences

Title: Death Dines In

Edited by: Claudia Bishop and Dean James

Genre: Mystery

Description: Sixteen short murder mysteries that all include lethal food/drink.

One of my favorite mysteries in this book was called Lethal Luncheon by Parnell Hall. I've never been a good mystery solver. I usually wait for the other, smarter detectives to lay it all out for me. Then I have a little 'Aha!' moment. But this mystery really taught me how to solve a mystery. The main character explains to an audience, after a murder occurs in their midst, how to find the culprit. The secret, ask your MOM. The murderer must have a Motive, the Opportunity, and the Means. M-O-M. At the end in the story, she asks the audience to point to the murderer. Before the answer was revealed, I went back and used the MOM method to make a guess. I turned out to be right, and was very happy with myself. Of course, I was still anxious the finish the story and didn't quite understand why the murderer was found out, but after a few rereads I was able to understand and pick up all the clues. But I was really impacted by this story when a funny thing happened when I went out to dinner at a restaurant called Sea Salt on a Thursday night. In the story, the main character brings a dish to the luncheon called Cioppino, a fish stew. After waiting in a long line at the restaurant, I finally was able to see the menu board. My eyes lingered on the choice of fish tacos until I saw the specials. There, a few rows down, was Cioppino!! I was instantly interested and ordered it for dinner. It was delicious. The broth was tomato-ey and a bit spicy. The mussels and fish went along with it splendidly. The calamari was interesting, though maybe not my favorite. And along with some ciabatta bread, it was a perfect meal. During the meal, I realized that I was only able to have this taste experience through reading Lethal Luncheon, and without reading it, I would never have paid attention to the Cioppino on the specials menu, and I would still have been ignorant to the texture and flavor of calamari. I also felt connected to the story. I had a literature and culinary experience, which, as I read in the introduction, was the point of this collection. I was so pleased that I came across that story and ordered that dish. It just goes to show how reading relally relates and influences my life.

There are recipes of food eaten in the story at the end of each tale, which is a nice touch and contributes to the literature/culinary experience. I can't wait to make my own tipsy pudding and Cioppino!!

The Amulet of Samarkand

Title: The Amulet of Samarkand

Author: Jonathan Stroud

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, a little Humor

Description: In this story, a very young magician named Nathaniel gets caught in the whirlwind of revenge and summons up an extremely powerful djinni named Bartimaeus. As the story goes on, his act of revenge turns into a much bigger problem and he must thwart a dastardly plot!

Isn't thwart a great word?

The Amulet of Samarkand is a captivating story, and the point of view of the character Bartimaeus is witty and full of life. You first hear of Bartimaeus’ humor when he tells of one of his previous summons: “One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror” (7). Comments like this will have you laughing through the whole book. Scattered through the pages are small footnotes. They are sometimes funny comments, other times pieces of information. He tells you that a Horla is “a power subclass of djinn. To a human, Horlas appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness and disease; to other djinni, they radiate a malicious aura that saps our essence” (246). Bartimaeus is a tricky and unpredictable character, so you never know what will happen next. He makes surprising transformations. He says, “She stretched out a hand. As she did so I opened my mouth very, very slowly. Then she reached for the chain round my neck. In an instant, I was a Nile crocodile with jaws agape” (48). The Amulet of Samarkand will capture you attention with its story, but most of all with its witty character Bartimaeus who will keep you informed and on your toes. Happy reading!

P.S. This was a paragraph I wrote for school. I don't remember what score I got on it though.

Harry Potter--what we have to say about one of the world's most famous books

Title: Harry Potter!!

Author: J.K. Rowling

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, and a bit of Romance

Description: Harry Potter is an extremely famous wizard, but he doesn't know it. He lives with his mean aunt and uncle and his extremely fat cousin. Until he goes away to Hogwarts, a well-known wizarding school. Thus begins the amazing adventure of Harry Potter.

My sister and I have collected most of the Harry Potter books on tape. Jim Dale is an amazing reader. Did you know he does more than 40 different voices in all the books? Anyway, we've listened to the tape so often I wanted to say a few things about characters, favorite parts, and general observations. There are so many things to fidn in the amazing world of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter. The main character. First of all, it's amazing how you can see the character development. We listened to the fourth book, then the second. I really saw a change in how Harry looks at the wizarding world and challenges ahead. At my school last year, there was a Harry vs. Twilight thing. Twilight argued Harry never grew up. I totally disagree. (Harry won, by the way. Twilight died out this year but Harry lives!!) In the first book, he's new to being a wizard and all the characters are being brought into the story. In the fourth, especially after the turning point, characters views really defined and the story really starts to shape up and get more serious. Although my sister and I often say Harry needs some anger management classes in the fifth book. Really Harry, shouting at your best friends isn't going to help.

It always amazing me in series how the author can tie events in the first book right into the last of all. Harry Potter is carefully planned out from beginning to end. In the fourth book. Voldemort explains all about his life for the past 13 years and it matches up exactly with everything that's happened to Harry. I guess that's the way all large series should be, but I really notice it in this one. In the sixth book, Harry hides a book under a bust of a wizard, and puts a tiara on top to make it more distinguishable. In the seventh book, the tiara turns out to be a major piece of the story. When I read the seventh, I instantly made the connection to the sixth.

I've noticed a plot pattern that holds for the first six books at least. The seventh is different. But it goes like this: Harry starts out at Dursleys. He goes away from Dursleys. He goes to school. Something strange happens at school. Suspense builds. Harry begins to figure out why strange things are happening. Climax is at the almost end of the book, where Harry must fight a large battle alone. The beginning of the battle sometimes includes companions to help him. Harry wins. School ends. Harry goes back to the Dursleys. The End. If you look at it like a plot line, there is almost no falling action, but goes straight from Climax to Conclusion, like this. In the seventh book, there seems to be a million climaxes up to a HUGE one at the end.

Snape and Malfoy. I feel so sorry for Malfoy. When you learn about the trouble he's going through in the sixth and seventh book, it makes you feel so sorry for him. Looking back, he's never shown much kindness to Harry Ron and Hermione (HRH), but they were always mean to him every chance they got too. Malfoy doesn't have many friends and his whole family is Dark Wizards. He doesn't have a lot of options for a great future. And he's a bit of a wimp. Snape is the same. Harry and Snape hate each other from the moment they meet, and Harry doesn't realize the truth until the very end. Harry always thinks Snape is behind every Dark thing at Hogwarts (Snape, or Malfoy, or some Death Eater) and he is ALWAYS wrong. You'd think Dumbledore would get impatient with him always jumping to conclusions. I recently read To Kill a Mockingbird, and one of the lessons was, you never truly know someone until you walk around in their skin. Harry never does this. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater might be his motto. Snape is very complex and a really good character.

Sometimes Harry and Ron can be so misunderstanding. It's aggravating. When Harry can't understand Cho's feeling, Hermione explains, but Ron and Harry still don't get it. Again, in the third book they don't think about Hermione at all when they ignore her for a long time.

Why are Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle known by their last names, but almost no other characters are (except the teachers)? That's something thats been bugging me. Even Malfoy calls Crabbe 'Crabbe' and Goyle 'Goyle', even though they are his best friends. Harry doesn't call Hermione, 'Granger' or Ron 'Weasley'. There's too many Weasleys to call him that anyway. You could be calling Ron, Fred, George, Percy, or Ginny.

If you haven't read the seventh book, you may not want to read this part, if you are the kind of person who doesn't like the ending told to you before you read it. I have a friend who got really mad at someone else for telling her who died at the end of the book. It was a week long feud. Anyway.

Why do Ron and Hermione get married? They argue through all the books, and Harry often says he can't stand them bickering at each other all the time. Ron shows no interest in Hermione until she goes out with some other guy and same with Hermione. They aren't really great friends. Hermione seems like an outsider so often. In the third book, Ron and Harry don't talk to her for a long time because something that wasn't her fault. I can't remember his words exactly, but my dad said it was because that's how it was supposed to come out. I mean, who else could Ron and Hermione marry? If they married complete strangers that would be weird, right? They were meant to be a match even though they hate each other through most o f the books. In the end, every one's part of the Weasley family. Harry marries Ginny, and Hermione marries Ron. Hearing of the continued lives of these four people gets me curious. What happened to Fred and George? What about Hagrid? All the characters that were meaningful in the stories seem to have died or disappeared. It's a bit depressing when you think about it. Harry's kids have completely non-original names. Imagine being named Albus Severus Potter. Honestly, as Ron would say.
You may read beyond this point.

So those are our thoughts on the immensely popular, Harry Potter Series. Thank you. The End.

(I just hit spell check and all the character's names have big red underlining under them.)

The Name of the Wind--first impressions

Title: The Name of the Wind

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Genre: Some adventure

Description:

I guess its not fair to criticize this book too much as I haven't finished yet, but it's a big book with small print, so here are my first impressions.

I have some complaints.

First of all, the main story is about a man who is usually described as having red hair and who has had a supposedly amazing past full of great and terrible things he wants to hide. One day a scribe finds him and decides to write his story.
Sounds exciting, doesn't it?
Not really.
They take a long time to get to the story of his terrible past, and pages are wasted where the scribe and the man are trying to find times for the man to tell his story. They do not introduce his "real" character until too late. You first know this man as someone with red hair who runs a bar. He shows up a bit more as the story goes on, but I thought that was just because he runs the only bar in town. I could hardly remember his name. then all of a sudden he seems to be a main character and Iam trying to figure out the importance of this man who-I-can't-remember-the-name-of. I learn he is a powerful character with a dark and mysterious past. But by now I just know him as the random bar-man and even as he tells his story, I wonder, Who the heck is this person?? Why am I reading about him? That's what I don't like about it. You are reading this story about a person you don't even know. His story doesn't seem important, and I haven't gotten to the good bits yet. So why read on? But I'm going to try to plod through because the librarian at school picked it out for me and really wants to know what I think of it. It's probably way overdue by now.

I wasn't too impressed with the writing. That's part of it. An attack happens on the road, a mysterious one that is supposed to inspire fear and excitement, but I found it boring. The event itself would be exciting, but it is too drawn out. You get kind of excited, but want to move on with the story. Everything was drawn out that way. The prologue gives a haunting message, "It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die" (1). [we learned all about citations in school this week. My teachers would be proud of me] Anyway, the sentence hooks you in, but after 2 or 3 pages of gossiping men in a bar, you forget about it and aren't very curious anymore because it doesn't seem to be talked about anytime soon. Not every book starts out with a bang, but it really didn't seem like this one was going anywhere. They talk to much. I like a balanced amount of action and dialogue. This has too much dialogue. Sometimes I have know idea what they are talking about. For instance, what is a mounting board? They talk about it for 2 pages in Chapter 3. I guess I'll have to look it up.

A thing about the names. They are odd names, like Kvothe, Skarpi, and Bast, and I have trouble keeping them in my head and sometimes lose track of who is talking. Kvothe has several names, which complicates things further.

My first impressions weren't great, but isn't there a saying that you can't count on first impressions? I 'm actually looking forward to reading on to see if I can get to any really good bits in this book, then that review will come. I still have to find out what the name of the wind has to do with anything. Ta-ta!