“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” - Jon Hammond

I have the eye ooze. As does Terzo. Aren’t you all glad this week’s Show and Tell is eyes?...Just returned from the Strip District where I purchased the following (and then got parked in by a beer truck, dammit): a pound of almond biscotti, because I am too lazy/busy to bake some; a pound of anise biscotti, ditto; five chocolate biscotti for my sugar fiends; two pounds of feta and a pound of ricotta, along with two packages of phyllo, to make these free-form tiropetas my next-door neighbor shared with us last weekend and which I must recreate; a pound of slivered almonds, much cheaper in bulk from Penn-Mac than from the grocery store; a ginormous jar of Nutella, ditto; two tins of oil-packed anchovies, since this household slowly grinds to a halt if there are no anchovies here; and a two-pound bag of the “good” animal crackers, that the grocery store no longer sells. A very successful shopping expedition. The boys got to munch biscotti and see the fish and lobsters, and the train that runs around the ceiling, at the fish market, and the banjo-playing stuffed pigs, and all the other exciting sights for which we really go to the Strip District. It’s grey here, but warm-ish (low 50s) so I felt I should get them the heck outdoors.

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My neighbor is pregnant (#6); the woman on the opposite corner is pregnant (#9); the two women down opposite ends of the alley are pregnant (#3 and #4, respectively, as it were). My friend D, about a mile away, is pregnant (#3). I am forthwith only drinking the *bottled* water on this end of town.

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Svetlana ‘s Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl won the National Book Critics Circle’s non-fiction award. It is easily the most moving and wrenching book I have ever read. Go read it, but be prepared to be devastated.

Laurie King’s latest installment of her Mary Russell books, Locked Rooms comes out in paperback March 28. And Jennifer Chiaverini’s latest, Sugar Camp Quilt is apparently already out in paperback. Ayelet Waldman’s new novel, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was released in January; I’ll read it -- but I admit I am not expecting much. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go comes out in paperback in March. The late Wendy Wasserstein’s first novel, The Elements of Style comes out on my birthday – guess what I am buying myself? Also, David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, released on the 11th of April.

Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption by Laura J. Miller poses the question: why, among all other commodities being bought and sold, do moist people expect that books should be exempt from concerns of profit?

Other new or upcoming releases by authors I have enjoyed:
My Latest Grievance – Elinor Lipman (April)
Savannah Breeze – Mary Kay Andrews (April 11)
The Virgin of Small Plains – Nancy Pickard (April 18)
How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life – Mameve Medwed (March 14)

Authors I wish would hurry up and write another:
Anthony Bourdain
Elizabeth George
Beth Gutcheon
Kate Atkinson
Jennifer Weiner (her real ones, not like the Mommy/Goodnight Nobody one)
Rosamunde Pilcher

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The Orange Prize’s long list for fiction has been announced. Why does it take so freaking long for books already releases in the UK to be released here? Huh? Is it so hard? I am growing old here, people!

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel [I could have sworn I’d read some Mantel – but I can’t for the life of me figure out or remember which, so I guess not.]
Disobedience by Naomi Alderman [“…a lesbian exploration of friendship and morality set in the heart of London's orthodox Jewish community…” Ok, I’ll bite. I have this weirdo fascination – for a Baptist/Episcopalian girl) with all things Judaic anyway.]
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany [I want this to be The Thorn Birds but it’s probably more like Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection.]
Frangipani by Célestine Hitiura Vaite [I want to read this.]
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson [I tried to read Robinson’s Housekeeping, but ultimately it was predictable and not all that compelling. Although its characters were well-drawn. So I am not standing in any lines to check out Gilead, no matter how much Suse likes it.]
Harbor by Lorraine Adams
House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore
Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller [Gina and I both read this in advanced copy, through – was it Random House? – some publisher’s giveaway gimmick. I liked it. A slow but gorgeously written book, with depths like the fine wine one of the main characters creates.]
Minaret by Leila Aboulela [This sounds a lot like Brick Lane - which I would have liked more if it had had a good editor.]
On Beauty by Zadie Smith [Could not get into White Teeth. So…]
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld [I HATED this book. Gina did not.]
Rape A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates [Have yet to like a single thing of Oates’ that I’ve read -- Bellefleur, Black Water, We Were the Mullvaneys…Gah! I can’t STAND her. And she is so freaking prolific. I just don’t trust an author who writes that fast.]
The Accidental by Ali Smith [I tried to read this but couldn’t get into it. Hence my thirty-three dollar library fine. Need I say more?]
The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory [I can’t get past the historical romance aspects of Gregory’s book covers.]
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss [This might be an interesting book but I can’t seem to get past the fact that she’s married to Jonathan Safran Foer. Whether this is good or bad, I can’t rightly say, but it’s a fact and it distracts me.]
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters [I tried to read Fingersmith; I want someone – anyone – to tell me what the big deal is.]
The Position by Meg Wolitzer [Gina likes Meg Wolitzer. I haven’t read her.]
Watch Me Disappear by Jill Dawson [This looks good, put it on my list.]
White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenaway

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Librarians in the UK voted for the book every adult should read before they die. Here’s the list, read it and weep:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien [Number three? C’;mon! Really?]
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon [OK, Andrea, I’ll get over my weird-ass neurosis and read this now.]
Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy [Yawn.]
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell [Beach read! Beach read!]
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold [Ack! Really? Loved Lucky, could NOT get into this.]
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran [Since when do college freshmen count as adults?]
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel [Again – really? My life will be poorer for not having slogged through this. Someone has to convince me.]
Middlemarch by George Eliot [Gina! You may not die now.]
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess [Excellent movie, but am ashamed to admit I never tackled the book.]
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn


This list is totally schizophrenic. To me there’s a huge difference between books people might enjoy, and books everyone should read, whether or not they enjoy them – but in most cases they will – before they die. Was my life changed by Time Traveler’s Wife or Poisonwood Bible? No, but I recommend them both a lot as they were rippingly good reads. However, AS Byatt’s :Possession, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses changed my life. I would not recommend them to everyone, though. This is a fraught question. Maybe I am taking it too seriously. After all, I loved The Kite Runner and recommend or buy it a lot for people, yet I know people who not only hated the book but in my opinion completely misunderstood it. Ah, the subjective world of literature.