Books of 2019

Yes, it's that time of the year again! I was hoping, as always, to add another book to this list, but since that isn't going to happen this year, I may as well post this when the year has still one more day to go. So, I managed to finish 26 books this year, which keeps up my average quite nicely, at a book every 2 weeks. The list is pretty varied, I made some book resolutions a while ago, which I never updated in my books of 2018 post, but of course I didn't think of those as I picked my novels. I discovered some new writers this year, had some big disappointments from writers I love, and overall read more Dutch books than I've done in recent years.

So, without further ado, the complete list:
1 Milkman
2 Conversations with friends
3 Early Riser
4 Taal voor de leuk
5 Alias Grace
6 Friday Black
7 Machines like me
8 There there
9 Warlight
10 Naar de overkant van de nacht
11 Autumn
12 The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
13 Simon vs the Homosapiens agenda
14 Ferrera
15 Winter
16 How to
17 Calypso
18 The Catcher in the Rye
19 The Nickel Boys
20 Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek
21 The Cockroach
22 Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit
23 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
24 De meeste mensen deugen
25 Asymmetry
26 Speeddaten met Plato

Just two rereads this year, the Harry Potter novel and Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek. Only one 'classic' novel, too; I'd never read The Catcher in the Rye before. Only a couple books by what I'd call my 'usual suspect' authors; Atwood, McEwan. I would have liked to read some books by Julian Barnes or Graham Swift, but somehow they didn't make their way into my bookcase this year. But on the other hand, I read lots of novels by new authors, either debut novels or new authors to me, which I mostly loved. I've written about several of these already, but let's put some of them into lists.

Best English novel
1 The Nickel Boys
2 Milkman
3 Autumn
So many great books this year. So, so many. But I think this will have to be the list for this year. Surprisingly, these are all authors I've never read before. I read several 'unheard' American voices this year, and Colson Whitehead's novel was the last. I think it was also the best, but maybe that is because I read it last. The Nickel Boys tells a horrible story in a beautiful way. Of all the novels I read this year, it is the one that is still on my mind some days. In contrast, Milkman was my very first read of 2019, and also the winner of the 2018 Man Booker. A deserved win, in my eyes. I don't think I've ever seen pages this densely packed, while getting through the novel at such speed. It is heavy, both in language and subject matter, but the story flows beautifully. Finally, of course, Autumn, by my big discovery Ali Smith. Less heavy subject matter, but giving the sense of togetherness in the novel, contrasted to the recent Brexit events, it will probably become a classic read at some point in time.
While reading them, I was expecting to put Conversations with friends or There there in my best novel list of this year, but overall it was such a great year, other novels found their way to the top. Honourable mentions to both, then.

Best Dutch novel
1 Kruistocht in spijkerbroek
2 Naar de overkant van de nacht
So most Dutch books I read this year were non-fiction, but I read 3 novels, one of which can be found under 'most disappointing' below. So Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek, or Crusade in Jeans, was the children's book sold cheaply this year (Dutch booksellers pick one childrens's book every year to promote reading). I love this novel when I first read it around age 10, and I love it still. Reading it as an adult makes you see loads of things you never realised when you were a child, but that doesn't make the novel any less good. Apparently someone made a film out of this novel, but I'd never watch that, for fear of ruining the images I have in my head. The second novel, Naar de overkant van de nacht, I started reading somewhere in 2017 or 2018, but I found it a pretty hard novel to get through. It's about a man celebrating carnival and thinking about his life. It felt a bit too heavy, too symbolic for my taste, which may explain why it took me so long to get through a novel less than 120 pages long.

Best classic
1 The Catcher in the Rye
If you're the only classic I read, you're going to end up on top. I liked this novel, but reading it after reading several stories featuring contemporary teenagers, Holden does turn out to be a bit of a whiner.

Best non-fiction
1 How to
2 De meeste mensen deugen
3 Taal voor de leuk
Right, enough has be said about How to in the accompanying blogpost. The second book, De meeste mensen deugen, is by Rutger Bregman, who has been getting some international attention due to his comments on the World Economic Forum in Davos. He's written a couple of books already, some of which have been translated into English. I'm pretty sure this novel will be translated as well. It focusses on human nature, specifically on how Hobbes and Rousseau both had opposing views on the matter. As the title (Most people are good) says, Bregman believes people are innately good, it takes a whole lot of effort or desperation to make someone commit criminal and/or violent acts. Being an optimistic person, I loved his view on things, especially the debunking of psychological studies that have become basic knowledge but now turn out to be based on faulty data or assumptions. Taal voor de leuk is by Paulien Cornelisse and features some of her columns on the Dutch language and the way people talk.

Best autobiographical
1 Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit
2 Calypso
I realise these are technically also non-fiction, but as I read so many non-fiction novels, most of which I didn't write about here, I wanted to put in another short category. Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit is by Bianca Toeps, who describes her life as an autistic person. She explains how certain things work, where certain traits come from, and how best to interact with autistic people. Some of the things she described were very recognisable, sometimes scarily so. I haven't been diagnosed, but I think this is a good read for everyone looking for a bit of recognition or reassurance. Calypso is a collection of columns by David Sedaris; I've never actually read any of his novels, but a friend gave me this book for my birthday. I enjoyed reading about his life, although it got a bit repetitive at times, as columns published months apart were now pushed together.

Best short-story collection
1 Friday Black
The only short-story collection I read, but a great one. Too bad there wasn't more of it.

Best fantasy/scifi
The only novels I read that could be considered scifi are sadly in the most disappointing list.

Best 'new' author
1 Ali Smith
2 Anna Burns
3 Colson Whitehead
So this is the other way around from my 'best English novel' list. Why so? Well, I liked Whitehead's novel best, but his voice maybe a bit less so. I'm looking forward to reading The Underground Railroad, but it isn't at the top of my list (it wasn't even on my 'books to buy' list until five minutes ago). Anna Burns has written two other novels, both of which I'm very curious about, and both of which are pretty hard to find. But if they're anything like Milkman, I'm in. Ali Smith, the most famous of the authors, has published the third instalment in her seasonal series, Spring, but it isn't in the right format yet. Yes, I'm one of those people who wants the whole series to be in the same edition. So I'll have to wait for that one, but luckily she's also written How to be both, and several other novels already. Her voice, the way she tells her stories, makes me very curious for more.

Most disappointing novel
1 Machines like me
2 Early Riser
3 Ferrera
The first two novels in this category can hardly come as a surprise. I wrote extensively about my disappointment with Ian McEwan's novel about living together with a robot. Thankfully he made up for it by The Cockroach, but Machines like me remains the biggest disappointment of the year. Closely followed, second only because McEwan is my favourite author, by Early Riser. We've been waiting for the sequel to Shades of Grey for years now, and Jasper Fforde decides to write a horrible novel like this! Again, I've vented my disappointment in an earlier post, but this also still smarts. The third novel is the long-awaited sequel to Ventoux by Bert Wagendorp. Ventoux, which I read before 2015, if my book lists tell the truth, was a great novel about renewing a boyhood friendship. Ferrera finds these 'boys' now in the middle of mid-life crises, packing up to go to Ferrara Italy. It feels like Wagendorp had a mid-life crisis while writing the novel, and it didn't do him any good. It was uninspiring, with flat characters, meaningless sideplots and a pointlessly dramatic ending. Again, after waiting for so long for a new novel, it was a big disappointment.

Authors I read more than once:
- Ali Smith (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)

Puzzling

A while ago I mentioned my enthusiasm in making logic puzzles; both in creating these puzzles for others to play, and in solving those made by others. But digital and/or logical puzzles are not the only kind of mental diversion I enjoy; there are also the physical sort, in the shape of jigsaw puzzles. Now this used to be something we did around Christmas time: put a big panel of wood on the dining room table (so that we could remove the puzzle if it wasn't finished by dinner time, which is honestly never was), pick a jigsaw puzzle we all liked or hadn't made in a while, and put it together. This was a team effort; someone could abandon the puzzle for a couple of hours to do the cooking or shopping or whatever, but there were longish stretches of time where everyone was at the table, cup of tea at their elbow, solving the puzzle together. My parents own a couple of puzzles, the older and bigger ones showing drawings of birds or rural scenes, the newer ones more colourful, with for example paintings by Van Gogh.
Now as I went away to uni, making a jigsaw wasn't really an option; for one because I didn't have a dinner table. But also; it's really a bit of an old person's hobby, right? So while living on my own, I never really made them. But a couple of years ago I was in a games store in December, and they sold the most beautiful puzzle of a curious bookcase, and I fell in love with the colours and the funny titles and the many beautiful details, so I bought it. And then a friend bought me another one. This was one of those friends who also enjoys making jigsaws, although this was not something you'd go around telling everyone, for fear of being considered dull.

But then this changed. We, the people, millennials most of all, are all too stressed out, working too hard and not being mindful of ourselves. Firstly, there were the colouring books for adults. Followed by yoga for everyone. Then, cuddling with cows. (I may have the order mixed up a bit, but you get the drift.) Somewhere along those lines, making jigsaw puzzles became socially accepted. Encouraged. Something to live in the moment, to take your mind off your busy life and impossible life choices. Suddenly, everyone was making jigsaws. And to make things better: they were doing it competitively.
Now I know this sounds like a proper juxtaposition: we're making jigsaws to forget about our rat race lives, and then we turned into a competition. And that is probably true. But it is a fact that the Dutch National Jigsaw Competition is in its tenth year in 2020. The first couple of years were small events with lots of jokes (puzzling in the dark, or without the example picture), but for the last 3 years it has become a serious business, with dozens of teams from all over the country competing. These teams of four (no more, no less) make the same 1,000 piece puzzle by Jan van Haasteren under the same conditions, trying to finish quickest. The national record is at 57 minutes.

One of my colleagues competed in 2018 and 2019, finishing second both times. Inspired by her stories and together with another colleague and a friend of mine, we tried to get into the 2019 competition as well, but all the qualification rounds were already fully booked. So, we set about practising. We'd all made jigsaw puzzles, lots of them, but trying to make one as fast as you can, without taking the time to go to the bathroom or take a sip of tea or do something else entirely was very strange at first. Hard to take serious, in a way. Also, the strategies to finishing a puzzle as quickly as possible are wildly different from just making one at home for fun. In the latter case, for me, the pieces stay in the box, I start by making the outer edge first and then fill it in gradually. In competitive puzzling, you throw all the pieces out of the box and sort them as quickly as you can, putting all the large colourful areas together first and not even bothering with the outer edge, as that will only get in the way when you're moving pieces around. We became pretty quick, even more so when a fourth member joined our team and we could actually compare our times to the times other teams had on earlier occasions.

This year, we were on time for the qualification round nearest to our home. We went there, full of anticipation, finding ourselves in a room with 39 other teams, mainly women, of all ages. Some teams were of the semi-professional kind, even wearing team shirts, others were clearly mainly there to have a pleasant evening together. Of these 40 teams, only 3 would go on to the finale. After the national anthem (it being a national competition) we counted down together, tore the wrapping paper from the box, and were very happy to see that it was one of the prettiest and easiest puzzles Jan van Haasteren has made. So we were in good spirits, dumped the pieces on the table and got started. After about 30 minutes, the announcer told us that if we wanted to break the national record, we should be halfway by now. And that some teams were more than halfway already. We looked at each other in despair; we were nowhere near halfway. How could they be this quick? After just 44 minutes and 24 seconds the first team was finished. They broke the national record by 13 minutes, setting an impossible time to ever beat. One place for the finale had been filled. We looked over to the only neighbours we could see; they were also nearly finished. There was no way we were going to make this.
Now I've never really competed in anything. I'm not a sports person. I like to win when playing boardgames, but I enjoy the company and the togetherness more than the victory. So I was surprised to notice my own drive, my own ambition to finishing this puzzle as quickly as possible, against all odds of ever taking a place in the finale. And I wasn't the only one. Our faces were red, we were standing up and shoving pieces at each other and into the jigsaw as quickly as we could. At the one hour mark, the announcer said that the numbers 2 and 3 were also close to finishing. We still had to put in about 100 pieces; we were sure we weren't going to make it. At 1:02:38, the table next to us erupted into cheers. We paid no attention, as we just needed to put in about another 10 pieces ourselves. At 1:02:53, we were finished. Third place. We made it into the finale, against all odds, the only newcomer team to make it. Fourth place was at 1:07:18, so we beat them by almost 5 minutes. I still can hardly believe it.
As I said, I've never been a competitive person. But I can now see why people do these things, put in the hours, train together, focus, keep going even when you're sure you're not going to make it. It was a rush of adrenaline, of energy, and most of all of great fun. We reached our goal; getting into the actual finale. Which we'll enter without any hope or expectations, as were the newcomers and there are so many better, faster teams. But it'll be another experience to remember. And... who knows?
These Christmas holidays, I'm back to making jigsaws at a more leisurely pace, together with family and friends, the way I secretly still like it best.

Someone managed to take a picture at our moment of triumph.

NaNo the other half: winner

The wrap up party for NaNoWriMo is called Thank God it's Over. I never really understood that name; sure, it was hard, but I usually finished at least a couple of days before the 30th, with an enormous margin to par from pretty much the first week. Not so this year. This year, it really felt like thanking the universe for this (self-afflicted, I am aware) ordeal to be over.
Which it now is! I just wrote the final of my 50,020 words, wrapping up the story and the storyline, finishing off my character's development and plunging me into one last day of November that is NaNo-free. I don't think I've ever written this many days consecutively, usually I'm so far ahead I can skip a day or two in between. Not so this year, although this year I also wanted to get all the badges, which means writing 21 days in a row. Some days, that meant I just wrote 100 words, or thereabouts. My word count graph per day looks like an interesting roller coaster:

Yup, that really is a low point of 120 words.

Maybe it was a very busy year at work (which would explain the lack of blogging too), but I can't remember it being this hard in other years. Or maybe it was my subject matter, which was a bit more personal and emotional than I'd anticipated. Or maybe my characters just didn't want to be in my story (I can't blame them). Whatever it was, out of the 7 NaNo's I've 'won', this was by far the most difficult. I'm hoping I'll feel the accompanying feeling of 'most accomplished' soon too, for now I mostly feel relieved and intensely tired.
Tomorrow, I can start doing all those other things I do in my spare moments, such as actually finishing the Harry Potter novel I've been reading for three weeks now. NaNo is great for forcing yourself to write, but it's good that it's confined to one month a year. But, inevitably, I'll put myself through this again next year, with fresh enthusiasm, which I'll probably start to feel coming in tomorrow. But for now, sleep.

NaNo Days 10 to 15: holiday sprint

So being on holiday gave me ample chance to write lots of words. Most days, those words actually came to me and it was easy to reach 2,000, but I've had some days where I had to search for topics as well. I'm now in that 'middle bit'; all the characters have been introduced, they have gathered, their backgrounds are known, and now Stuff Needs to Happen. But at the same time I'm also working towards the end, because if there is one thing frustrating about NaNo it is finishing the writing but not the story. Because then I know the story will never be finished, and will always be lacking an ending. Or a middle, in some years I've written the ending of the story but not the middle.
Today is the 15th of November, which means I should be at 25,000 words, as the month is halfway through. As we speak, I am at 28,130 words, putting me two days ahead of par. I'd hoped for a bit more headway, as I have a pretty busy work week waiting for me when I get home, but this will have to do. At least I'm not behind. And at least I'm still liking my characters, my plot, and my writing, even if it is difficult to get and keep going sometimes. Let's hope I'll keep up the writing when I'm back home!

NaNo Days 4 to 9: Ups and downs

So I've been focusing so much on writing NaNo, that I'd forgotten to do the meta-writing part, that is, the blog. The good news is: I'm still writing! I just reached 15k!
It's been a bit of a bumpy road getting there, with my daily word count sweeping up and down like a maniacal roller coaster:

What goes up, must come down?

It's been a crazy week at work, reflected in the crazy amount of writing I've done on some days, and the very little I've done on others. Luckily for me, I'm spending the next week in a cute little cottage in France, which will give me plenty of time to catch up. My daily goal has been 2,000 words or more, and as you can see I managed to do something very near that on at least 5 days so far. That's more than half of my writing days. Well, when you put it like that, it doesn't sounds so bad...

NaNo Days 2 & 3: 5k!

So, after a first day of writing 1k, I had to write a bit more every day to get back on par. Today's par is 5k, and I have just finished my writing streak of today at 5,011 words. It still feels very much like the beginning of the story, like I'm getting to know the characters and figuring out who they are and what they're going to do.
This year I'd planned ahead and given myself a book of 22 chapters; 1 prologue, 10 flashback chapters interspersed with 10 present-day chapters, and 1 epilogue. Today, I decided to throw all of that out, and just mix the flashbacks in together with the rest of the story, without bothering with chapter starts or finishes. I can't see why I never realised to do this before, maybe I'll run into issues with this later on, but for now it feels like a revelation. It does make the whole thing more stream-of-consciousness, which is in the modernist corner I usually try to avoid, but we'll see how it works out.
Tomorrow I'll be at a write-in, so I hope to get lads more words in before the business of the workweek prevents me from writing for one or two hours every day!

NaNo Day 1: A quick 1k

Today was always going to be busy, with work and swimming and friends coming over, but just after 11 I could actually start my writing for this year's NaNo. I put in 1000 words exactly, which was the point at which I should have stopped, but I continued for another 80 words before deciding that tomorrow was a better time to write. I am not a late night writer, it has been proven yet again. More to follow on the morrow!

The Cockroach

So Ian McEwan's last novel, Machines like me, was not my favourite. In fact, it may have been his worst novel ever. And it left me despairing that he may have lost his touch, something I'd apparently feared before.
I need not have worried, for just six months later I wandered around the bookshop and ran into The Cockroach, a small novella (less than 100 pages) about Jim Sams waking up and "finding himself transformed into a gigantic creature". I've never read The Metamorphosis, but even I know enough to recognise that reference. In this story, it is the cockroach that is transformed into the human, into the PM of the United Kingdom, to be exact. The UK is undergoing political upheaval as the Reversalist Conservatives want to push through a big economic change, which the Clockwise Labour party wants to forestall. Sounds familiar? What if I tell you the Labour leader is actually a Reversalist himself? Or what about the American president Tupper, busy communicating by Twitter and spending time on his many golf courses?
Yup, this is a political satire, and a good one at that. Brexit is never mentioned, the whole story is purely fictional, and "resemblance to any cockroach, living or dead, is purely coincidental". But between the lines there is of course the absurd reality that the UK is now living through. I don't know that Ian McEwan has written a satire before, but this one is really well done. And it combines his dry, witty humour with his beautiful, flowing language, even when he is verbally slaughtering political opponents.
I raced through the book in about two hours and it left me both good for having read a great McEwan story and sad because the craziness it describes is actually taking place across the pond. But in the end, it is more words by my favourite author, and I'm always happy to have those.

The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys was one of those novels I read a review about and then immediately wanted to buy, so when I saw it at the local bookshop I did just that. However, the blurb on the back mentions stuff like "the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back"." That doesn't sound like a very pleasant read. It sounds like a horrible read, actually.
So I put the novel aside for a while. Do I admit I was a bit scared to read it? Yes, like with A Little Life, the looming thread of violence put me off. But then I read a double interview with Colson Whitehead, the author, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the author of Friday Black. And the interview mentioned that such stories, of the suffering of black people in the US, have not been told in this way for a long time. And also that both books are based on facts. Which made me realise that the horrors told in The Nickel Boys may be a horrible read, they must have been far worse for the boys that actually endured them.
So I started on the novel, which was every way as 'understated' as the article mentioned. We follow Elwood Curtis as he makes his way up in the world; doing good in school, working in a store, and finally landing a place at a local college on a scholarship. But then he is put in Nickel Academy for hitching a ride with a car thief. Putting someone away for several years for something he hasn't done sounds outrageous, but the things that happen next are far worse. In his first couple of days Elwood steps out of line, again without intentionally doing something wrong, and is taken to The White House for his punishment. The actual abuse and mistreatment are described in short, distant paragraphs, the main focus is the connection Elwood makes with fellow Nickel students Desmond, Turner and Jaimie. How he finds joy in life, even though he is basically scared all the time.
The story taking place at Nickel is interspersed with events happening later in time, when the illegal graveyard with all the boys that have presumably 'escaped' is discovered. The afterword mentions that this really happened; remains were discovered near a school in Florida. The actual White House boys that lived through their ordeals there are now heard for the first time.
So was I right to fear this read? Absolutely not. It is a haunting picture, of course, but the story is beautifully written, the characters are deep and honest, the language is intelligent and full of meaning. The final chapter, to top things off, is one of the best I've ever read. The final paragraph brings such a flood of realisation, tying the whole novel together and completing the story so that you can only marvel that Whitehead can write about such horrors in such a beautiful way.
I realised today that these past months have been one of a lot of American authors, and a lot of minority groups. Interesting. I know The Nickel Boys is pretty big in the media, especially in the US, but I don't feel like I've been pushed by the media towards these novels. I've found most of them through reviews in Dutch papers. So maybe it is true that these are voices that are just now beginning to be heard properly, or by a broader audience. Or maybe I just started paying attention.
Whichever way, I wouldn't have wanted to miss this novel; it is one that will probably stay on my mind for quite some time.

NaNoWriMo 2019

It isn't even October yet, but my mind is already drifting to November, also known as National Novel Writing Month. (I am really early this year, usually I write this in the middle of October, as I found out last year.) Of course, I will be participating once again. I've just created my new 'project', which was a bit more of a fuss than usual, because the entire nanowrimo.org website has had a major do-over. I'm not sure if I like this new design better, some things are pretty fancy, but especially the forums seem to have become a lot more difficult. Will have to spend some time figuring that out.

Anyhow, NaNo is not about the website, it's about the writing. And the community. And rewarding yourself with sugary treats every 1,000 words you write. And... Let's stick with the writing first.
After my brief departure into 'romance' last year, I'm firmly back onto 'realism' territory. Who was I kidding? I, who love the basic prose of Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift. I shouldn't wander off the path of down-to-earth conversations and everyday occurrences that gain hidden depths through unified themes. Or at least I shouldn't stray from attempting to write such a story, as those are the novels I love to read, so those are the stories I love to write.
So, I will be stealing some characters and perhaps plot lines from an earlier NaNo and putting those in a new story that I've been thinking about for a while. I've given myself a very contained time span and location, to avoid going off on various tangents and never finishing. I've even got a basic 'book' structure laid out, all 22 chapters. The chapters will be alternating 'group' chapters and more personal chapters focusing on one of the characters each time around. If that sounds like NaNo 2019 will be a breeze, think again. My characters will probably revolt and break down the entire plot house I've built for them in the first 5,000 words. But that's okay. That's what NaNo is about; just writing and see where it will get you.
As always, I'll be keeping you up to date on my progress here, but since November is still 32 days away, it will be some time. Somehow, being this early doesn't make me feel any more prepared...

How to

I've been a fan of xkcd for as long as I can remember. Apparently Randall Munroe started the website in September 2005, when I must have been on the Internet for a couple of years already, but I simply can't remember being online and not checking the website for new comics every so often (the publishing schedule has varied throughout time).
So what is xkcd, you may wonder. It's a webcomic. A nerdy, scientific, but also very funny webcomic, written by a very nerdy (ex-NASA) guy. I've seen one of Randall's TED talks, and it is almost impossible to believe that someone that dry and nerdy can write such funny comics. For one, the name of the website isn't an acronym, it's simply 'a word with no phonetic pronunciation'. I can't really get all of the jokes, to be honest, but thankfully there is even a website explaining the jokes (and science) in the comics.
Randall has created a couple of side projects, one of which is What if? in which he answers scientific questions (usually of the ridiculous kind). This has sparked a book, which contains even more questions about what would happen if you'd do something pretty crazy. He's also written a Thing Explainer, in which complicated things such as rockets are explained using only the thousand most common words.
His latest book is How To, which tells you how to do a couple of things: how to dig a hole, how to decorate a tree, or how to see if you're a nineties kid. The answers are never as straightforward as you may think. I love these kinds of books. You learn about something pretty complicated, like quantum physics or crowd psychology, while reading absurd stories of how Serena Williams takes down a drone by hitting it with a tennis ball. Randall tries to explain things in the easiest ways possible, sometimes showing how off the cuff estimations can get you pretty close to the real answer without having to do a lot of difficult calculations. If you understand the logic behind something, the way things work and affect each other, you can get pretty far without crunching the numbers.
The trademark comics are interspersed with the text, so you don't feel like you're reading a physics book. Rather, it feels like reading a comic book with some chunks of text in the middle. It feels like learning without studying, and that physics isn't as scary as you might think.

Summer reading

Summer reading had me a blast, summer reading happened so fast...
Right, I can't fathom that just two days from now September starts, it feels as if summer has just begun. But the nights are getting longer, putting an end to long summer evenings spend outside reading (I tried to make do with candles and/or the light from my mobile phone, but it just isn't the same as the long evenings of June and July). Sad as it is that summer is nearly gone, I look back on several great summer reads.
Firstly, I read The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson. It is her debut novel, based on her experiences teaching a high school near San Fransisco (much is made of the specific valley the school/town is set in, but I can't actually remember it). I picked this novel because it had a great review but also because I happened to be travelling the west coast this summer. The day I read the first chapter, in which a character bikes all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, parks his bike, walks for some time on the sidewalk and then jumps off the bridge was the day after I myself rode to that same bridge, albeit from the other side, biked across it, and past several points the novel mentions. This was pretty surreal.
The novel focuses on a specific group of students as they make their way from eighth grade to senior year. The chapters written from a specific student's point of view are interspersed with the point of view from their English teacher, Miss Nicholl, Through the course of the novel we get to know most of the kids in the group, leading to surprising discoveries. They are all entitled, rich, snobbish and quite brutal in their behaviour and opinions of each other. But reading each chapter you get to know the actual person behind the image, usually leading to a better understanding and more sympathy for the way they are. Stereotypes turn out to be a mask to hide behind. Lessons are learnt. Paths are chosen. Towards the end I feared a sugar coated happy ending, but to my surprise and relief the ending was very human, very real, and slightly painful. All in all a great read, made even more special by being in the places it was set.
After that my travel book supply had run dry, so we went to a Barnes&Nobles and I bought Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. Another debut by a female author, another novel about high school life, but this one has already been made into a film called Love, Simon. I'd seen the film but was curious about the novel, especially because the film had an un-American feel to it. The story is written from Simon's point of view as he meets a fellow closeted gay student through an online message board (Tumblr, which dates the novel quite a bit). One of his fellow classmates discovers their secret emails and blackmails Simon into setting him up with one of his friends. This leads to all sorts of teenage drama, but the tone of voice of the novel is surprisingly mature and undramatic. Simon is very analytical, balanced and humorous. Several things are different from the film, not always to the best, although the characters in the novel felt more realistic and sympathetic. In contrast to The Most Dangerous..., this is an actual YA high school read. Added to that, the novel deals in a respectful and normal way with pretty sensitive issues, making it even more suitable for the target audience.
Finally, I read a Dutch novel, Ferrera by Bert Wagendorp. This is the sequel to his famous (in the Netherlands) novel Ventoux. It focusses on a group of four friends who are now in their early fifties. In the first novel they hadn't seen each other for more than 20 years following the death of their fifth friend on the mountain of Ventoux. In this novel, they travel to Ferrera in Italy as one of them has found an old building to turn into a design hotel. The novel focuses on them coming to terms with their ageing and death, or basically with human mortality in general. In a way, it is a 'coming of age' story for the baby boom generation. This is one of the few novels I've ever read in which I actively disliked the main character (not even his tone of voice, his whole personality). He is whiny and self-obsessed and overly dramatic. Also, way too many references to obscure Italian historians/poets/philosophers, and extensive descriptions of the town of Ferrera. Where in The Most Dangerous... the subtle references to real locations gave the story some depth, here it felt like showing off. The plot twist at the end felt forced and as I had no sympathy for any of the characters, the (unsurprisingly) bleak ending left me feeling pretty indifferent.
So maybe not the best of novels to end the summer on, but it was a typical summer read in that it was not a difficult 'literary' read but an easy, summery story set in a warm and sunny location. But after all these snack size stories I feel ready to tackle something with a bit more substance. Time for cold, rainy, autumny nights spend curled up with a cup of tea and a good book. Reading is a feast for every season.

Autumn

I am on a really good book streak so far this year. And most of those books were written by women. I remembered my 'books to go' post of 2 years back stating that I was going to read more great novels by female writers, but that must have been the pro-feminist atmosphere colouring my thoughts, because the only thing I actually say is that I want to read more books by potential to-love authors. Well, Ali Smith is one to put on that list.
I'd seen her novels in the book shop, the ones with the seasonal names and the colourful covers. Somehow they looked kind of boring, or serious, or in any case not as a novel I would enjoy. But then I read a review on the third novel in the series she's doing, Spring, and that sounded pretty good. So next time I was in the book shop, I picked up Autumn and read the blurb, and that sounded pretty good, so I bought it together with Winter. I didn't buy Spring at the time because it hadn't come out in the right edition/size (still hasn't) but that will at some point in the future follow.
Now Autumn. A great novel. One for the streak. Ali Smith writes in the wandering, meditative, musing style that Sally Rooney has, also without putting quotation marks around her dialogue (the proper thing would be to say that Sally Rooney writes like Ali Smith, since Ali Smith had been writing for at least a decade before Sally Rooney was even born, but I read them in the 'wrong' order so my associations are backwards). I love this style. It is amazing to have found three female writers, all from the Celtic homelands (Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland) who write in a way that feels at once completely familiar and also very exciting. If only I were still doing an MA in English Lit, I would have a thesis topic to fill thousands of words with.
Anyway, Autumn. I read somewhere that this is the first novel 'about the Brexit', since it describes the vote and the aftermath and it is somewhat of a plotpoint, especially in the bits were Elisabeth tries to renew her passport. But I do hope that is not the only thing the novel will be known for. This is also not what it is 'about'. The blurb tells us the novel is about Daniel, more than 100 years old, and Elisabeth, in her early thirties. They were neighbours once, and struck up a friendship. Somehow they have grown apart, but now Daniel is in a care home and Elisabeth goes to visit him every day. Interspersed with these scenes, which flow with the seasons, are flashbacks to earlier periods in their lives, which are or aren't connected (although in the end, everything is connected, as in most great stories).
So what is it 'about'? It's about love, love for each other and love for a country and the togetherness of people and how easily this can rupture. About a sense of belonging. About art. It is a clever book, there are lots of references to other books and plays and films and historic events, I'm sure I haven't even discovered half of them, but they gave the book extra layers of meaning. It is a funny novel, philosophical, meaningful. The writing is beautiful. I will give you a snippet, just to enjoy:
A minute ago it was June. Now the weather is September. The crops are high, about to be cut, bright golden.
November? unimaginable. Just a month away.
The days are still warm, the air in the shadows sharper. The nights are sooner, chillier, the light a little less each time.
Dark at half past seven. Dark at quarter past seven, dark at seven.
The greens of the trees have been duller since August, since July really.
I don't know whether Winter follows the same characters, but even if it doesn't I will read it, together with many more books by Ali Smith. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker a couple of times already (including for Autumn) so there must be many more beautiful reads by her out there.
Next time I see a dull looking novel on a pile in a book shop, I will think twice about just walking past it!

There there

There there. What a beautiful novel. Everyone should read it.
I read a review about this debut novel and immediately wanted to buy it. It is by Tommy Orange, a Native American who followed a writing programme at the Institute of American Indian Arts. I don't know how well he could write before the programme, but he can certainly write now.
The novel's title refers to a sentence by Gertrude Stein: "There is no there there", in which she commemorates that the home, the surroundings, the area she grew up in are no longer there. Stein was writing about Oakland, and the novel also takes place in Oakland. It involves several characters of Native or part-Native descent as they prepare for the Big Oakland powwow (I didn't know what a powwow is, but thankfully the novel opens with an essay by Tommy Orange explaining this, and explaining why these remaining shreds of Native culture are so important to keep and to treasure and to broadcast to a wider audience). Some of the characters organise the powwow, others plan to dance at it, visit it, or rob it. This also shows the various states of destruction these characters' lives are in; some are recovering alcoholics, some are drug dealers or users, many come from broken or mixed families. But at no point does their tone of voice turn dramatic or sad; this is just the way their lives are.
All character's lives are somehow interconnected, but in each chapter one character is the main focus point. These chapters are written in the first, second or third person, which gives the novel a very diverse structure. It also made me feel I got to know some of the characters better than the others. The earlier chapters are quite long, with detailed background knowledge of most of them, while the later chapters taking place at the powwow are sometimes only a couple of sentences long. The only downside to this structure was the amount of characters, several of which are named a variety of Charles or Carlos, which made for a confusing read sometimes. I think some of them could have been left out.
Apart from the plot (which is gripping) and the characters (which are deep and engaging) there is the language of the novel. Wow, this guy can write. He has the capability to mix very down to earth, easy descriptions with deeply meaningful messages and words. "Calvin sits down next to the big guy and gives him a slight, general whatsup-type head nod. The guy lifts his hand and waves, then seems to immediately regret the wave because he puts his hand back down as fast as it went up and gets out his phone like everyone does now when they want to leave without leaving." You can see this happening. You can also feel the emotional layer of people blocking other people out by focussing completely on their phone. "Now I don't have any dreams, or if I dream, I dream of dark geometric shapes drifting noiselessly across a pink, black and purple pixelated colorscape. Screen-saver dreams." Beautiful.
So this novel is at once very now, very current, but also filled with history. It is about people separately, trying to live their lives the best they can, and it is about Native people as a whole, as a group, a community trying to survive, trying to do honour to their forefathers. It gave me an insight into a culture and a people and a history I basically hadn't read about before, and it opened my mind in ways I didn't expect nor would ever wanted to have missed. So yes, read this novel. Especially if you know nothing about Native Americans. Or maybe especially if you think you do know.

Machines like me

Hurray, a new novel by Ian McEwan! And one that I read a review of in the paper on Saturday, and then the next Saturday actually came across in the bookstore, so I could throw down the novel I was planning to read (sorry, John Williams) to dive into the magnificence that is a fresh new story by Ian McEwan. Literary bliss. Or so one would hope. But the review I read wasn't entirely positive, and the subject matter didn't feel very McEwanesque, so I started with some caution. Not enough caution, as it turned out.

The novel centres around Charlie and Miranda, two neighbours. Charlie comes into some money when his mom dies, and decides to invest in one of the new robots that have just been released to the market; Adam. There are only 25 of these robots (12 Adams and 13 Eves), so how he manages to get his hands on one, while otherwise being one of the most indecisive, incompetent and inactive characters I've ever read is not explained.
But wait a minute, robots? Is this science fiction?
Well, yes and no. The story takes place the 80s, but in an alternative reality. Alan Turing is a prominent figure, and his research into computers and robotics has brought the world great things. There are other differences (the Brits lose the Falkland war) but otherwise things look a lot like our universe. By which I mean; our time. The Internet has been created, there are electric cars, a lot of the developments we went through in the past 40 years have taken place earlier here. So what is the point of setting this story in the 80s, if you're going to keep things basically the same otherwise? If you needed a big British defeat, you could have invented a war. It is science fiction after all. So was it just for the small references and puns that pop up every now and then?
Anyway, back to the story; Charlie buys Adam, together they program his personality, and then he 'comes to life' and becomes part of their lives. Charlie and Miranda also start a relationship, while Adam claims to be in love with Miranda as well. This would have been a nice time to go in depth into the whole 'can consciousness be created' debate, but Charlie sometimes mentions that they talk about it, without them actually talking about it. The whole novel spans several months, the only McEwan novel I know to span more than a couple of days apart from Solar (his attempt at a comical novel which I also didn't like) and Sweet Tooth (another one I didn't like).
I say 'Charlie mentions' because the novel is written in the first person, from Charlie's point of view. This is the second McEwan novel I can think of to use first-person narration, the other one being Nutshell in which it all works out really well. Here, not so much. Miranda is practically a flat character despite having a violently interesting back story, so is Adam, while both Charlie's personality as his feelings are ambiguous at best. What is supposed to be the 'big reveal' at the end, something to do with morals and consciousness, feels forced and at the same time unsurprising.

Oh, sure, there are some really great parts in this novel. Not plotwise (the plot is predictable and uneventful) or characterwise (see above, there is zero character development), but languagewise there are some very nice McEwanesque phrases. Some bits flow really nicely, even though the grand subjects of ethics and interpersonal relationships are not gotten into. The ending, predictable and forced as it is, is beautifully written, almost heartbreaking in its style. It felt like a cheap ripoff of a McEwan novel, in which someone took his writing style but not his brilliance at crafting stories or characters, and threw them together in a strange and pointless universe. It is almost as if McEwan wants to show that science fiction can never be literary (although Philip K. Dick proved different quite some time ago), not even by him.
All in all, this novel made me sad. Why not stick to what you do best; small novels, centred on a couple of characters, spanning a couple of days, focusing on emotions, philosophies, thoughts, and character development? Why go out of your way to create something this big and bombastic if that is not your style at all? I can only hope that there was some kind of hidden purpose, and that it isn't because he is losing his writing touch...

PS: I've written something about Sweet Tooth earlier (7 years! How time flies!) and there I am afraid McEwan is losing his touch. After The Children Act and Nutshell, I'm pretty sure he can still write beautiful novels, he just sometimes goes off to do something completely bizarre...

Friday Black

Short stories. You don't come across them that often any more, which is a shame. A good short story will give you the immersion in the life or personality of a character, a nice story arch and a good ending in less than thirty pages. I love reading short stories, especially after finishing a long and difficult novel.
I read a review of Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah a while ago and decided this was a short story collection I had to read. Then I came across a hardcover version in the local bookstore that had such a beautiful cover image I absolutely had to buy it (I could add something witty about judging books by their cover here). I don't usually buy hardcovers anymore, but I gladly made an exception here.
The review said this was a great new voice in the world of short stories, focussing on the experiences of black Americans, but also very forward in his ideas. Now I'm not sure if all of that is true. The stories are beautifully written, they read quickly and easily, you get into the mind of the main character (most stories are written in the first person) pretty quickly. There are no great messages or grand resolutions; people live their lives in no particular way, but in that way he somewhat reminded me of Roald Dahl's stories.
Several of  the stories revolve around people working in retail, including the title story Friday Black. These were nice, but not all that special; they even got a bit repetitive at some point. Then there were the more 'black lives matter' inspired stories, such as the opening story of Finkelstein 5; a white man murders 5 innocent black teenagers, gets aquitted in court, and in response black activists start murdering white people. This reads like a gruesome story (and it was), but the main character, whose loyalties are devided between joining his friends and 'fitting in' in society (he dials his 'Blackness' up and down on a scale of 1 to 10 depending on how he wants people to perceive him) gives it some much-needed depth and focus. Finally, there are a couple of science fictiony stories, usually taking place in an altered, somewhat dystopian, future. This may be a world in which people genetically perfect their children before they are born, or a world in which people relive the same day of nuclear warfare over and over again. These I thought were the best; inventive in plot, with fleshed-out characters while at the same time also containing a social warning; this is what our world might become.
But the scifi were also the best because they weren't too niched on promoting the black experience. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but those stories somehow felt narrower, lacking in creativity and depth of character. As if those characters were defined only by the fact that they were black. Whereas in the more futuristic stories (although also in Finkelstein 5) the protagonists shared more universal experiences, they were a person more than they were a black person. It didn't matter what colour skin they had, as it should be.
In short, this was one of the better short story collections I've read in a while. I hope Adjei-Brenyah continues to write short stories, or perhaps a novel, although in my opinion writing a good short story is more difficult than writing a good novel!

Veggie burgers: Sweet potato and goat's cheese burger

So I thought it was time for me to let go of Mark Bittman's burger advice, and strike out on my own. I had a couple of burgers in mind, and then the recipe guide of the Albert Heijn also made some suggestions for spring burgers, but in the end I stuck with the first thing that came to mind when I thought about making my own burgers from scratch: sweet potato burgers. With some kind of cheese, preferably goat's cheese.
I Googled a couple of recipes and checked out my own previous work, and all of this combined I came to the following recipe:

Ingredients
400 g sweet potato, peeled and rasped
100 g goat's cheese, in small pieces
1 onion
2 toes garlic
2 eggs
3 tablespoons oats
chives
parsley
pepper

Chop the onion and garlic and combine with the sweet potato. Add all the other ingredients and combine to a mixture with your hands (this will turn your hands a nice bright orange, which was just in time for King's Day today). Leave to rest for about 10 minutes.
Then shape 4-6 burgers out of the mixture. Heat sunflower oil (or any other kind) in a frying pan and bake for 5-8 minutes on both sides. Serve any way you like.

Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, a couple of things didn't really go as planned.

Pre-burger mixture. Looks like I was making a carrot cake burger.

At first, I added only the one egg, but this didn't really work. The mixture was a) too wet and b) not in any way coming together as burgers. So I added another egg (which made two in total, as stated above) to help with the combining issues, and then I added more oats to help with the moisture. This all helped somewhat to get a proper burger mixture.

Carrot cake burgers a-baking.

Then for the burgers: I made four, as I was joined by my trusty burger tester, but they were way to thick. This meant that both sides were baking nicely, but the middle part was still pretty wet. Also, it made turning them pretty impossible. If I'd made six (or even eight) burgers out of the mixture, it would have worked out easier. The amounts were okay for two people, although maybe you could tone it down to 300 g sweet potatoes for two people (I only add a salad, nothing like chips or potatoes or anything). They were pretty unsteady to begin with, and their size didn't help, so these were the least consistent burgers I've made so far.

Sweet potato burger mess.

So they looked pretty messy. But what about the taste? Well, they tasted really really good. The overall taste was sweet (what can you expect, with sweet potato?), but not too sweet. The sweet potato came through nicely, as did the goat's cheese. The herbs were not that prominent, but they added something.  The texture was also really nice: crispy on the outside and quite moist on the inside. Very, very far removed from any meat burger you'll ever eat, but that's the whole point of vegetarian burgers!

I'd call this a burger success, although as with all my previous burgers, there are some points of improvement. But that's why we call it an experiment! Can't wait to try some of my other ideas.

Alias Grace

So, Margaret Atwood. I may have mentioned before that she is a great author. Recently series producers have also discovered this, so The Handmaid's Tale is now a famous thing. Which is good. I loved that novel, and I like the series too, now that it's drifted away from the plot of the novel a bit. It is a universe that can stand on its own. Also, she is apparently publishing a sequel, The Testaments, later this year.
Another of her novels that made it to the screen is Alias Grace. Now I haven't seen the series, but the novel has been on my bookshelf for quite a while, and I decided this was the time to read it. I knew nothing about it beforehand, except that it was about a murder case from the 1840, in which Grace Marks was convicted for killing her employer and fellow maid at the age of 15. She was not executed, but remained imprisoned for most of her life.
Without going into too much detail about the plot; I loved this novel. It is typical Atwood; we have a smart, independent female protagonist who finds her way in the world. She talks about herself and her history in such a way that you can never be fully sure that she is telling the truth, or even that she knows what the truth actually is. She has her flaws, but that makes her human.
The other characters in the novel are not as fleshed-out. I thought Simon Jones would become another conflicted, complex character he turned out to be quite conventional and predictable. But the novel is about Grace, and she is engaging, the story is engaging, nothing much happens and still you keep on wanting to read more. Everything that annoyed me about The Heart goes Last was done right here. Also, the novel contains poems, witness accounts, all kinds of other materials that give it substance and context.
In the end, Atwood let's us decide for ourselves whether Grace actually committed the murders. The historical accounts don't fully convince either way, and I feel she fictionalised them very neutrally. At 500+ pages it is a pretty heavy tome, which is one of the few downsides. It took me a while to get through this novel, not because it was difficult, but because it was a lot to take in.
Next up in Atwood land are more of her earlier novels, since I somehow seem to be working backwards through her works. I hope they are just as good, and maybe a little bit thinner!

Veggie burgers: Nut burger

As promised in my spring veg burger post, the next type of veggie burger I've attempted was the nut burger. Again, I tried the easiest type in The Fat Vegetarian first, figuring that I have to crawl before I can run (or something like that). The most basic nut burger recipe is called 'Quick nut burgers', and that is what they were; done in a breeze.

Nut burgers are made with nuts, obviously, which gives them the protein richness lacking from the spring veg burger. But are they better in other ways as well?

Ingredients

1 onion

150 g nuts, raw (can be walnuts, pecan nuts, almonds, cashew nuts or any other kind)

80 g oats (not instant)

2 tablespoons ketchup, miso, tomato puree or nut paste (I used curry sauce)

1 tablespoon chili powder or other spice mix

salt and pepper

1 egg

peanut oil (Mark specifically states to use peanut oil or any other kind of flavourless oil, as otherwise the burgers will simply taste of oil)

Like with the bean burger, you need a food processor. Chop up the onion until fine. Add the nuts and oats and pulse to combine. Add the ketchup, spices, pepper, salt and egg. Pulse until the mixture combines, but it is good to leave some bigger chunks in there. Add some more moisture (water, wine, soy sauce) if the mixture is too dry.

Leave the mixture to settle for a couple of minutes and then shape four burgers (it is probably a good idea to do this with 'wet hands', although the recipe doesn't state this specifically, as my hands were covered in oats and bits of nut afterwards). 

Heat the peanut oil in a frying pan, bake the burgers for about 5 minutes on each side, and serve any way you like.

Sounds pretty familiar, right? The recipe is pretty much like the bean burgers recipe of my first attempt and like those consisted mostly of beans, these burgers are basically made of nothing but nuts. The mixture looks pretty similar too.

 

Pre-processing mixture. It felt like I was making a very healthy breakfast.

Post-processing mixture. Doesn't look too appealing.

Right, this might be good time to mention that I have two cats in the house, but they had nothing to do with making this burger mixture...

The mixture was a bit dry. I added the right amount of moisture at the right moments, but somehow it didn't feel the way the bean mixture felt, so I was pretty convinced these burgers were going to fall apart upon baking. Anyway, after shaping the mixture into four burgers, I was determined not to flunk on the baking aspect again. I was gently reminded of this by my meat eater fellow burger tester, so I heated the oil for a bit longer to properly sear the burgers. 

Too much searing going on...

Yes, well, I may have overdone that a little bit. Also, two of the burgers did actually fall apart into crumbly pieces, but the other two turned out fine (if a bit black).

Pretty burger end result.

Right, so what were they like? Surprisingly not-dry! For something that fell apart in the pan, the burgers were pretty moist. Also, very very tasty. Nutty, a little bit spicy, probably what flavour experts would call 'umami'. My meat eater burger companion thought these the best burgers so far. And they were stomach filling! It took a while to finish them off.

I would add some more spices next time, and probably add a bit more moisture to keep the burgers from falling apart, but otherwise this was probably the most successful attempt so far.

Now I feel like I've had the main three categories of burgers: bean burgers, nut burgers and potato burgers. You can always make burgers out of tofu or seitan, but I hardly ever eat that normally, so I don't really plan on turning those into burgers. So with the three main burger food groups under my belt, I feel ready to experiment with some more combinations, flavours and textures. I'd love to replicate the sweet potato burger I had in a restaurant recently, and I also want to attempt a black bean burger steal from another restaurant. Also, I'd like to add some cheese to some of my burgers, just to see how that turns out. And maybe some vegetables, apart from the peas. The possibilities are almost endless... I will keep you posted on my culinary experiments!

Logic puzzles galore

First of all; happy pi day!
So what I thought was a while ago, but looking back turns out to be 2.5 years ago, I wrote about Sporcle. Sporcle is a trivia and quizzing website that is sure to keep you occupied for longer than you planned. I've been on it for almost 3 years now (44 days to go, as the website tells me) and after being a passive user for most of that time, I decided I wanted to actually contribute my own quizzes to the website. Partly because I wanted to 'give something back', but mostly because designing quizzes is almost more fun than making them.
(Warning: the rest of this post will contain shameless self-quiz-promotion.)
My personal favourite category (apart from some random great quizzes like TripAdvisor reviews of Middle Earth or Llama or duck (check out the URL on that one)) are logic puzzles. So I decided to make one of those, and to my great surprise there wasn't a quiz version of one of my favourite games, Werewolves (or Mafia, as it is also known). So I decided to make that; I created a field of 5x5 squares, gave the boxes a name, made some of them into werewolves, and designed a path through the quiz so it could be solved. And then I tried whether it worked, and I published it. Fun fact: people do not all think the way you think. As a result, they will not interpret the clues the way you want them to. Also, they don't know things unless you tell them. So, apart from the technical creation part (which is pretty easy, really) this first quiz was also a lesson in quiz construction. I got a lot of helpful feedback, I improved the quiz based on that, and it works pretty well now.
Now with the werewolves quiz, a player doesn't know all the answers before they start to play. There could be 5 werewolves, or 8, or 10. This makes the quiz more difficult and also harder to create. So next I decided to make a more 'closed' logic puzzle, in which all answer options are given beforehand. Picking a topic close to my own interests, I made a farm animal quiz in which each square contains a chicken, horse, pig, or sheep. I thought keeping it down to four animals would make it pretty easy, but as it turns out, the fewer options you have, the harder it is to design the quiz. But I got there in the end. Also, I like to put in a couple of jokes to keep things light, which you can more easily do when players will not interpret them as possible clues. And then I did some beta-testing. I asked a friend to try out the puzzle for me, to see how she would solve it, and where she would get stuck, and which clues she would find ambiguous. And it was a revelation. Hints that seemed blatantly obvious turned out not to be so, and squares I thought would be solved second-to-last were suddenly solved much sooner because I'd overlooked a shortcut. So I improved the quiz based on that feedback, and after I published it I got zero commentary on the workings and a 5.00 out of 5.00 perfect user feedback score. Nice!
These first two puzzles being done, I decided to scout around for other topics of my interest, to see what subjects hadn't been made into puzzles yet. Sporcle doesn't mind multiple quizzes on the same subject (there are loads of Harry Potter and ISoIaF puzzles) as long as they aren't exactly the same, but I wanted to do something original. As it turned out, both Gilmore Girls characters and Disney animated films hadn't been made into logic puzzles, so I quickly created those two. I also started making walkthroughs, to show the players how they could solve my puzzles when they got stuck. Not surprisingly, they have been the most played puzzles I've created.
At a loss for new 'open' subjects, I created three more 'closed' puzzles based on my own interests; a cheesy logic puzzle (filled with cheesy puns), a school subject puzzle (my only 5x6 puzzle), and another farm animal puzzle (with cows, donkeys, goats, and turkeys). And then I was kind of stuck for subjects, until someone mentioned Shakespeare. There were some logic puzzles about Shakespearean characters, and some logic puzzles which featured his plays, but none that actually asked about only his plays (can you believe it?). So I made a Shakespeare's plays logic puzzle, and it got picked up by the Shakespeare curator, and after a couple of tweaks (and some more tweaks as the comments started to pour in) I actually got picked by that curator to feature on the Shakespeare page! Wooh!
Yes, it is a small and weird world, the world of Sporcle, and small things can make you happy.
What really does make me happy is seeing the number of people that play my quizzes. The number of plays per day varies wildly, as you can see below. The spike on March 5th was 200 plays of the What subject? quiz on the same day, no idea why that happened.

Number of plays March 1 to March 14.

But the total number of plays is well over 5,000, and rising steadily.
The popularity of my quizzes varies wildly, with the Gilmore Girls quiz being the absolute front runner at 2,300 plays. The Shakespeare quiz, despite the curator pick, remains the least played.

Total plays as of March 14th.

I love the user feedback; some users will leave an appreciative comment about the quiz or the topic or the in-quiz jokes. Others will score the quiz on a scale from 1.00 to 5.00. I don't really know why my Disney quiz scores lower than the others, but I'm really happy with the 3 scores of 5.00 on the quizzes that took me quite some time and effort to create.
I've been hunting for new subjects for a while, but I haven't written anything since the Shakespeare quiz, which in itself took me almost 3 weeks to make. It feels as if the first outpouring of creativity has dried up, and I'm looking for new ways to make these quizzes. I'm sure I will make some more in the future, but this is not something you can rush, as with all things that require inspiration.
End of the shameless self promotion. If you try out one or more of my quizzes, I hope you enjoy it!

Veggie burgers: Spring veg burger

After my first attempt at a home-made veggie burger, I was in the mood for more. In The Fat Vegetarian (I'll stick with that name for now), Mark Bittman lists a one per season of the year. Officially it is still winter, but with the balmy 16 degrees we've had last week, it felt more like spring to me. So I decided to skip the 'robust winter veg' burger in favour of the 'spring burger with fresh veg' (again; I'm translating back from Dutch so the actual title in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is probably different). The actual recipe calls for green asparagus, which I thought was a bit too early, so I replaced those with green beans.

Ingredients:
450 g potatoes, in small cubes
salt
3-4 tablespoons of butter (tablespoons is a weird quantity to use for butter)
100 g green asparagus/green beans/snow peas/etc
150 g peas (can be frozen, defrost before use)
30 g mixed herbs (parsley, mint, chives, etc)
pepper

Right, so I forgot to buy fresh herbs. I had some very sad parsley that survived the winter, so I used that, but it was closer to 3 g than 30. You can do without, but I do think the burgers are probably a lot better with the actual amount of fresh herbs.

Boil the potatoes with a little salt for 20 minutes.
Melt one tablespoon of butter in a pan and bake the asparagus/green beans/what have you for a couple of minutes. Add the peas and herbs (if you have them), sprinkle in some salt and bake until hot. Put into a big bowl.
Add the potatoes and mash together. You can leave in some bigger chunks but make sure everything is well combined (this sounds to me like the 'fine breadcrumbs' stage of pastry making; something that works on the page but you can never be sure is actually happening in real life). Sprinkle in some pepper and salt. Leave to set for a couple of minutes.
Shape 4-6 burgers out of the mixture (you don't need wet hands for these, shaping went pretty easy). Melt two tablespoons of butter in a pan, add the burgers and bake for about 5 minutes on each side. They should be browned and stick together properly. Serve any way you like.

So this recipe basically lets you make mashed potato with herbs, and then makes burgers out of that. Sounds a bit weird, but works surprisingly well.

Veg baking and potato boiling in process.

Baking the mashed potato lumps.

 Okay, so this looks pretty weird. It is literally mashed potato, beans and peas baking. Also, I set the fire too low again, which meant two of the burgers were nice and brown but the other two were sad and soggy and kept falling apart. I should really keep in mind to keep the fire burning higher when I bake burgers. In this case, they could hardly dry out as the potato mixture kept everything pretty moist.

The end result.

So, weird as they may look, they actually tasted really really good. The beans were probably not the best addition, as they didn't add anything taste-wise and were still a bit hard, but the potato/pea mixture was great. My meat eater fellow diner agreed; these were a lot better than the first attempt, but also better than some of the burgers you find in restaurants (although I ate a sweet potato burger the next day that was divine). Also, they are actually pretty healthy. If you leave out the sauces (you don't actually need to add any sauce) you're basically eating your two veg a day. Not a lot of protein though, which is kind of the thing vegetarians need to get from burgers. In that respect the bean burger was the better choice.
I do wonder what these taste like when you actually add the proper amount of herbs, so I will be making these again to find out. Probably without the green beans, as they don't really add anything, but then again you could make these with loads of different kinds of veg and still come out with a pretty decent burger.

Next up (unless I change my mind): nut burgers!

Early Riser

I am a big Jasper Fforde fan. The man has great wit, great imagination, and has written worlds I literally could only dream of. Also, he made the great move to publish a book called Shades of Grey just before 50 Shades of Grey became a thing, throwing lots of ladies off course. He hadn't written anything for a while, especially not the sequel to the aforementioned Shades of Grey, but then finally his newest novel came out: Early Riser. The plot, about a guy being awake in a world filled with sleeping people, and becoming tangled up in events out of his reach, sounded good. Also, it was Jasper Fforde. So I ordered it.
After reading 20 pages, I actually went online to check whether this wasn't the Shades of Grey sequel after all, but in a very weird way. The book reads exactly the same; first person protagonist, a guy, not too smart, takes a journey by train to some remote sector/city to do just one little job, but somehow becomes mixed up in local events. People disappear, hints are strewn around, smart girls try to help the dimwitted protagonist, 'megafauna' roam the land, all kinds of old technology are still relevant and all of this set in a world like ours, but different in slight ways. In Shades of Grey, people can only see one colour. In Early Riser, people go inside Dormatoria to sleep through the winter because it becomes too cold. Also in the latter, more people die. Otherwise, it is exactly the same story. Only this one actually has a closing chapter.
On the positive side, the novel also includes the funny side characters, word jokes, weird names and plot twists I love about his work. Also, the story is pretty imaginative, even if a bit exposition-heavy (it even includes footnotes to explain things about the world). I just felt sad that Mr Fforde would rather go off creating this new world, keeping practically the same protagonist, while he could have written the sequel to Shades of Grey instead. On top of that, Thursday Next of his The Eyre Affair and other novels is pretty smart. She is resourceful. She can figure things out. This protagonist, Charlie Worthing, somehow turns into Thursday Next in the final chapters, figuring out how to save the day at the last moment. It just felt wrong. Even though the twists at the end made the story itself better, more complex, the change in Charlie's personality was just so abrupt that I still didn't buy it.
Most Fforde novels take me a couple of days to get through. This one took almost a month. According to my own rules I should have put it aside at some point, but I couldn't, because it is still Jasper Fforde. But I really hope his next novel will be better, or the day may come that I actually not finish one of his stories. And a sad day it would be.

Veggie burgers: A first attempt

So I'm a vegetarian. Have been for all my life. Also, I like to eat burgers. Not hamburgers, obviously, but veggie burgers. These come in all shapes and sizes: travelling through the USA I was surprised at how inventive and tasty some of these burgers can be; sweet potato burgers, bean burgers, but also soy burgers with nice spice or texture mixes added. In The Netherlands, the amount of veggie burgers on offer is growing steadily; if you're lucky, you'll get one from the 'Vegetarian Butcher', a big meat-replacement producer. If you're even luckier, you'll get a homemade burger.
Now I don't really eat shop-bought veggie burgers at home, because burgers aren't really healthy and the few evenings I spend at home during a week I actually want to eat something that's good for me. Lots of veggies. Lots of protein. Not a lot of fat or carbs.
But wait a minute. Doesn't the term 'veggie burger' actually tell you these are made of vegetables? And if you leave out the fries and the fatty sauces, add in a salade, isn't that actually a pretty decent meal? Am I now just deluding myself because I smell a new project coming and want to dive straight into it? All true!

So I've decided I'm going to try and make some veggie burgers myself. From scratch. I'll get a meat eater to join me every time I make one for dinner, just so I can get the opinion of someone who hasn't been that used to eating veggie burgers. I'll make a little project out of this, no idea how long this will be, but we'll see.
I made my first burgers yesterday evening. I have a cookbook called The Fat Vegetarian in Dutch, not because you get fat (at least I hope so) but because it has over 2,000 vegetarian recipes. It's by American food journalist Mark Bittman, the English title is a pretty boring How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (you probably don't sell many books in the USA if you put the word 'fat' on the cover). Mark covers all kinds vegetarian burgers and burger-like recipes; meatballs, meatloaves, schnitzels, whatever you want (also a ton of other recipes, as you probably wouldn't fill a cookbook with 2,000 veggie burger recipes). The only downside to this cookbook is that it has hardly any pictures. Also, it's pretty heavy. On the upside, it has a reading ribbon, which is one of my favourite things in the world.

Anyway, I decided to start simple, with the 'simplest pulse burger' (I'm translating back from Dutch here, so it may well be called differently in English). The recipe is supposed to cover 4 people, but we were hungry so we had two burgers each. I'll share the recipe with you here, for anyone crazy enough to follow me on my veggie burger journey.

Ingredients:
- 250 cooked beans, or a 400 g can, drained. Can be any type of bean: black, red, kidney, or even chickpeas, lentils, whatever you want. I used a can of kidney beans.
- 1 onion, quartered
- 40 g oats (not instant)
- spices: I used pepper, chili pepper, ground garlic and paprika
- 1 egg
Mark tells us to add extra liquid if we need it, but I didn't.

You need a food processor to make this. Basically dump all the ingredients in the food processor and pulse a couple of times until you have some sort of a mixture. Don't make it too smooth, Mark tells us. I probably made it a bit too smooth. Leave to settle for a while.
With wet hands, shape 4 - 6 burgers out of the mixture. Leave to settle again.
Pour some oil in a frying pan and let it heat for about 1 minute. Put the burgers into the pan and heat for about 5 minutes on each side. Serve any way you like.

Now, doesn't that sound simple? Easy breezy!
Just a couple of things:
- oats? What am I, a horse? Also; oats are corse and grainy, what are they going to make my burger taste like?
- why can't my mixture be smooth? What's it going to do?
- wet hands? Really?
- how is this wet mess of things ever going to resemble a burger?
- how is letting things settle going to change anything?
- how is this wet mess of things with chunks of onion and egg ever going to be tasty?

But lo and behold. It actually worked out fine.

The mixture pre-settlement. Do I spot an oat?

So it does look a bit like a weird mess at first. But if you let it settle for a while, the oats seem to soak up some of the moisture, and also the egg does some sort of binding magic. No idea what happens, but the mixture felt pretty nice and consistent. Almost like how I imagine minced meat to feel (not that I'd ever thought about that before).
The 'shape with wet hands' works like a charm, too. The burgers don't stick to your hands but do stick to themselves. Neat!

The burgers a-baking.

Then when you bake them, you should actually turn the heat up pretty high, and add lots of oil. To someone used to baking burgers this probably sounds pretty logical, but for me it was one of the first times, so my burgers became a bit dry as I had to fry them for longer to get them to brown. Also, a couple fell apart upon turning, probably because they hadn't browned/bonded enough on the bottom. But they came out pretty well.

I like big burgers and I cannot lie...

Okay, so the taste was not super. It was fine, but somewhat lacking in taste. You couldn't taste the onion that much, nor the oats at all (luckily). Will have to add higher amount of spices next time to get some flavour. Because they were pretty dry, we added a pretty big amount of chili sauce to get some sort of taste out of them, and also add some moisture. Funnily enough, the meat eater enjoyed the taste of the plain burger more than I did. The texture was good, again a bit dry, but not unpleasant. All in all, a pretty good first attempt, I would say!

So this was my first try; it's also one of the easiest burgers in the book. I may have another go with a different type of pulse, or I may upgrade to a whole other kind of burger altogether. Mark lists loads more options, and beside him there must be loads of other veggie burger recipes out there. I'll keep you posted!