American holiday literature

So we just went on a 2 week holiday to Italy, and during this holiday, I read 3 American novels. I won't call them 'the great American novel', because none of them were, but it had been an long time since I'd read so much American literature in one go.
First I had to finish The Luminaries, which is such a wonderful book that it deserves its own blog post. Also, it's written by a New Zealander (New Zealandess?).
After finishing The Luminaries and knitting my head together again as it was blown to pieces on the sheer brilliance of the novel, I started with Big Brother by Lionel Shriver. Which is different, veeeery different. Also, I'm not sure if it really constitutes as 'literature', but that's just technicalities. It reminded me a lot of We Need to Talk about Kevin, which I was forced to read for a class and still have slight nightmarish thoughts about every once in a while; sad, deflated, somewhat depressed woman describing events to the reader (in the case of Kevin in letters, in the case of Big Brother it never really becomes clear how she is conveying her message to us). The book is about a woman whose brother comes to live with her for a while, and it turns out he's become incredibly fat. Which disrupts her whole life, and her family's life. But really it's about expectations in life, about becoming 'someone', and the American Dream falling apart. The sad thing is that this message is repeated time and again, by the main character, her husband, and everyone else, so that you get incredibly sick of it. The ending was also really really horrible, one of the worst deus ex machinas I've read in a long time, which made me so disappointed with the whole thing that I quickly went on to the next.
Which was The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates. Which definitely is literature. I loved Revolutionary Road, so I bought The Easter Parade on a whim, and also took it with me on a whim. I knew nothing about this novel before I started reading, but it turned out to be pretty close to Big Brother, in that it's also about siblings, and it's also about life not turning out the way you planned, and about the American Dream falling apart. Only it was written 50 years earlier, before people got properly obese, so there's none of that. Otherwise, it's great. Typical Yates, with his descriptions of people and atmospheres and feelings. It's hard to describe, I think everyone should just read Revolutionary Road (it has better character development) and experience it for themselves.
Finally, I read Rabbit, Run, which is the first of John Updike's brilliant Rabbit-series. It describes life in the fifties for the average American guy, which is to say; another American Dream bursting asunder. Harry (Rabbit) leaves his pregnant wife to go on the great American road trip, which reads like the start of a great young-guy adventure story, but as Updike says himself in the afterword 'things fall apart when a young man leaves his young family behind', which is exactly what happens in the novel. And the main character is just so self-absorbed, so stupid (at first you believe what he says and you also think his wife is a dull witted bore, but you quickly find out that he's a narrator you shouldn't be trusting) that you have to love reading about him. And about America in the fifties, with it's nice little details (his mother refuses to buy a washing machine because washing by hand does the job just as well). It was written in 1959, just like all the following Rabbit novels were also written in the last year of the decade the represent, which makes it a probably pretty accurate account of the times.
Now apart from the American Dream falling apart, which seems to be a theme in many American novels, there is one other connecting element to these novels: New Holland. The narrator of Big Brother lives there, Emily Grimes stays there for a year with one of her lovers, and Rabbit drives through it on his great American road trip. Most readers probably wouldn't have noticed, but as someone from the 'actual' Holland, these things tend to stick (I realise that there must be thousands of 'New Hollands' in the US, and I can only be sure of the first one, which is properly set in Ohio, but still, it's a nice detail). Apart from the first novel, which was good in writing and characters but bad in plot, it was a nice trio of American literature. I've ordered the rest of the Rabbit novels, so I'm sure to get back to the US in due time, but for now I'm busy reading the rest of Roald Dahl's short stories, which are a whole different thing all together. Particularly because there is no American Dream; life has failed for most of his protagonists before it even started.

Original films

I've been watching a lot of films lately, because we got this 'unlimited' cinema card for a generous discount, and that has made me visit the cinema more often than I would usually do (and also watch films in the cinema that I generally wouldn't have paid any money for). One of the things that struck me, both in the story lines of the films themselves and in the trailers, is that there are hardly any original stories left. In film, that is.
The films trending in the Netherlands over the past few months have been: The Book Thief (based on a novel), Divergent (same), The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (again), X-men: Days of Future Past (comic), Captain America: Winter Soldier (ditto), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (again), Maleficent (arguably a somewhat original story, but based on Disney's own version of the fairy tale and the fairy tale itself), and the umpteenth Godzilla film. I've also watched The Railway Man (based on true events) and seen trailers for Grace of Monaco, The Fault in our Stars, 22 Jump Street, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and countless other sequels (Transformers, Star Wars, the Hobbit, The Hunger Games, etc).
Why is this? Is it impossible to think of a new, fresh storyline, with new, fresh characters? Also, all the books-made-into-films are based on not-very-literary examples of novels, or generally even popular young adult stuff (not counting The Hobbit, of course). Non-literary, but selling like hot cakes. Must a story prove its worth before a movie can be made out of it? And what's with all the super hero movies? Don't get me wrong, I love watching those, but it's really really hard to come up with any original storyline there (although it was nice to see that someone finally put the Gwen Stacey thing in a Spider-Man film). It's not that I don't like another X-men film, or that I won't go to see them, but I'm lamenting the fact that somehow originality seems to have gone out the window, and only safe, already-proven stories are getting produced.

As I see it, there are two proper exceptions to this rule, one of which I've already seen, and one which is yet to come out: Edge of Tomorrow and The Philosophers (also known as After the Dark). Edge of Tomorrow, even though it is yet another 'super hero will save the day' film, has a great plot, and great characters, and great acting. It is truly original, borrowing some elements from some other films, but never copying outright, and giving them original twists. I haven't seen The Philosophers yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
So I'm hoping that lots of people go to see these films, and will rate them positively, and that film makers (and mostly those giving film makers the money to make films) will realise that there is an audience out there waiting for original stories, not copies of real life, novels, comics, or other films. As I see it, films are an escape into another world, and if that other world is already known, the escape is less powerful. It can be a friendly immersion into familiar waters, but sometimes you just want to be pulled out of your comfort zone into a whole other world. Which is what Edge of Tomorrow will do for you. Go watch it, and spread the word.

Tiramisu

It's been a while, but it's made such a lasting impression that I still remember it crystal clearly: the day I made tiramisu for 12 people.
We'd rented a holiday home with our sailing group (we usually sleep in the boats but this year wanted to go a bit more, well, grown-up) and after the weekend most of us went home again, but a small group stayed in the home to enjoy the rest of the week. On Wednesday, we had a last-evening-dinner, which featured Pizzarette (baking your own miniature pizzas in a miniature oven with miniature ingredients). The evening before, I offered to make dessert for everyone, probably tiramisu. The response was so excited that I simply had to follow up.

To make tiramisu for 12 people you need:
375 ml whipped cream (unwhipped)
125 g white sugar
6 eggs (you only need the yolks - I froze the egg whites to make meringue at some later date)
750 g mascarpone
8 tbls liqueur (I used Amaretto)
250 ml espresso coffee (cooled)
375 g ladyfingers
cocoa powder

Mix the whipped cream with one tablespoon of the sugar until it is almost firm (this is a difficult decision to make, I stopped just before the 'firm peaks'  stage, but as all the rest of the preparation takes so much time your cream will become less firm again anyway) and set aside. Split the eggs, and in a separate bowl mix the yolks together with the rest of the sugar until it is pale and fluffy (at least 5 minutes). Add the mascarpone bit by bit, mixing well in between so the mixture stays light. Spoon in the whipped cream until you have an even mixture.
Stir the coffee with the liqueur, and dip one side of a ladyfinger into the mixture (it's easiest to use a shallow, rectangular bowl; also, I dipped in the non-sugared side of the biscuits). Then put the ladyfinger in the serving bowl, with the wet side up. Repeat for half the ladyfingers. Pour half of the mascarpone mixture over the ladyfingers. Repeat with the rest of the ladyfingers and mascarpone mixture.
The mixture will be quite wet and liquid at this point, and I thought that it would never set. But after a night in the fridge (prepare at least 4 hours before serving) it was nice and firm! Dust liberally with cocoa powder shortly before serving.

Tiramisus ready to be devoured.

I had to use two bowls, as I didn't have one big enough. Officially it's supposed to be round, but given the shape of the ladyfingers I preferred the rectangular bowl.

I wasn't really expecting much from this, but this tiramisu is seriously good. If you add the mascarpone in very small amounts and whip it long enough it all becomes very smooth and airy. It's about 100000 calories per portion, but it doesn't feel like you're eating something incredibly heavy.
We were with 10 people in total, as it turned out, but both bowls went home empty and scraped clean. And just Sunday we were barbecuing in the park with some people from the sailing group, and they were asking after the tiramisu again. So if you want a dessert to impress, give it a try!

Feathered housemates

So, after a year of waiting, the moment is finally there: we have a little birds' nest in our nest box! The fact that I still get manically excited about these things shows how much of a biologist I still am (Dutchies: you may want to watch the documentary 'MeesTV' that was broadcast a short while ago to understand this). I have spent a summer ploughing through forests and fields to check up on literally hundreds of nest boxes and their inhabitants, so you would think I'd be done with them by now, but nope, it's still great.
We'd put the nest box up on our eastern wall, which is the one facing the garden, as high up as possible. This had two reasons: safer from the cats, but also longer sun time. We put it up quite early last spring, in the hope of catching some late breeders, but nothing happened, apart from some stray twigs being put into the box.

Then this spring, some great tits took an interest in the box (incidentally, a friend of mine who is now teaching proficiency classes in English put a question about a 'great tit' on her examination, which led to the test supervisor having to grab the microphone and inform the sniggering first years (and anybody else in the exam hall at the time) that "a 'great tit' is a kind of bird". Seriously, who doesn't know that?). We held our breath, but the birds disappeared again. The house sparrows have been in a frenzy of breeding for a couple of weeks now, so I'd lost all hope, but then last week I came into the garden from the bike shed, and two great tits left the nest box. Very exciting! But also a bit disturbing: if they were leaving when I entered the garden, how would they ever start to breed in there?
Then it started to rain, and it kept on raining for at least a week. So I was sure nothing was happening, as they couldn't have possibly already started a nest, and now they wouldn't be starting one because of the rain. But then today I came into the garden and heard the unmistakable sound of little birds begging for food. So I stood still for a good minute, and as expected: one of the parent birds went into the nest box carrying food, and came out with a little white parcel of poo. Which makes our box officially inhabited! Woo!

The box has a little window up the side through which you can look inside, but as it is about 4 meters of the ground I think I'm going to pass on that one. I think there must be 4 or 5 chicks in there at the moment, reckoning from the sound, but more may still hatch.
The only downside is that the box is quite close to our (always open) bedroom window, so we may get some sleep disturbance from the begging noises. But I'm guessing they've been out of their eggs for a couple of days now, and just aren't as loud as we thought they would be. And otherwise, they'll be gone in two weeks, so I will enjoy their presence for as long as it lasts!

Shortbread Investigation

So a colleague mentioned that her daughter had made millionaire's shortbread over the weekend, and that reminded me of this thing I've been wondering about (not consciously, but you know) for a while now. How to make the best shortbread? I have 3 cook/baking books all proclaiming that their method is best, and those are only the 3 I'm aware of, so I probably have more.

Shortbread recipe galore!

But to keep things a bit in control I decided to go for these three trusted bakers: Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood, and Lorraine (Baking made Easy). Checking them more closely, it turned out that Paul's recipe and Lorraine's recipe were actually identical in ingredient ratio and mode of preparation, only different in amounts (Paul uses 225 g flour where Lorraine uses 130: I don't know who was there first, but I'm anticipating a fierce shortbread copyright battle in the months to come!). So I could cross one of those off the list, and decided just to make 'The very best shortbread' by Mary Berry and 'Dreamlike shortbread' by Lorraine.

A prickly duel.

Mary's recipe:

225 g flour
100 g semolina
225 g butter
100 g caster sugar
sugar for dusting

 This one is of the 'rub the ingredients together with your fingers' variety, which I really really don't like, but had to try here anyway. You put all the ingredients in a bowl, rub them between your fingers until they become sticky, knead it into a ball and put in the prepared tin (30x23 cm, according to Mary). Prick all over with a fork, then put in the fridge to chill. Preheat your oven to 160, and bake for 35-40 minutes until pale golden brown. Sprinkle the sugar over the top, leave to cool in the tin, then take out and cool further before cutting into fingers.

Mary Berry's shortbread.

Lorraine's recipe:

130 g butter
60 g caster sugar
130 g plain flour
60 g rice flour
pinch of salt

Now I didn't have any rice flour, and to keep things even I used the semolina in Lorraine's recipe as well.
Here, you first mix together the butter and sugar until they are 'pale and fluffy'. Then mix in the rest of the ingredients and mix with your fingers until it becomes a dough. Put into the tin (20x20 cm), prick all over with a fork, chill in the fridge. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, bake for 30-35 minutes, sprinkle some sugar on top, leave to cool, take out and cut into pieces.

Lorraine's shortbread.

So they are both pretty similar, apart from the first bit: do you 'rub together' or do you use the mixer? Also: can you taste the difference?

Strangely enough, you can. Even though the ingredients are similar, and in similar amounts, they do taste different. Lorraine's version is a bit more condensed, less flaky. But it is a bit more caramely, a bit more sticky sweet. Mary Berry's version is lighter, which is strange because it is almost twice as high, and took far longer to bake properly.
Opinions differed as to which tasted the best: personally I liked Lorraine's version, but some co-workers (I took these to work with me, naturally, you don't want to have 300 g of butter biscuits sitting around the house) preferred Mary Berry's, and one colleague disliked them both immensely.

So which one would I recommend? Mary's version gives you far less dishes and hassle, and gives a lighter texture, so I would probably use that one if you're going to do something else with the shortbread, such as pour chocolate on top, or make millionaire's shortbread. But if it's just shortbread you're after, I'd stick with Lorraine, because it's easier to make and to me, tasted just a little bit better.

Garden update

I called this post 'garden update' to give an update on an earlier post I wrote about our garden plans - but it turns out I'd never actually written said post. So I guess it's just a first garden post for this year, following up from the first-ever post about our new garden from April last year. Ahum...


This year we moved around some plants that weren't doing too well in the spot they were in, such as the grape, which was pining away in a dark and wet spot. Then we dug out some plants that had gotten a bit out of control (mint, anyone?). But that is not all. Of course we also have the strawberries, aforementioned grapes, and the artichoke still left over from last year. But now we get to the good part: we also put lots of new vegetables in.
We have created a dedicated vegetable patch, which now sports broccoli, leeks, onions, carrots and potatoes.

Dedicated vegetable patch area

You can't actually see the carrots, onions or potatoes in that picture, but the top ends are poking out a tiny bit. The potatoes were actually less planned than the other things: we had some that were left in the cupboard to long and started sprouting roots, so we decided to put them in the ground and see what happened. What is happening right now is that they're putting little purpley bits through the soil, so I think they are doing good. We're growing the carrots and onions from seed, which is a first, so we'll see how that goes. Obviously, we bought the leeks and broccoli as small plants, otherwise they'd never gotten this big this quickly.

But there's more (and I honestly have no idea where we're going to put these when they start growing properly): we also have several little greenhouses filled with even more veg.

Baby vegetables-to-be

From left to right you can see rocket, radishes, and peas. They have all been sown from seed, and kept nicely snug and warm in their greenhouses. The peas are a little bit less enthusiastic, but they are coming. Somehow, somewhere, these will be put into the ground once the weather gets a bit warmer and they get a bit bigger. We planted out some rocket last year, which came up but then disappeared under a massive courgette that was groping its way through the garden. We had radishes in the garden at our other house but the snails ate them all, and tried peas before but they never really did anything. So, this is sort of our 'second chance' box.

I'm very curious to see what will grow and what will wither in our new garden, and I fully intend to keep you (more) up to date!

One Hundred Years of Solitude

After finishing Netherland, I decided it was time for another one of those classic novels I still have to read (on a sidenote: I think that in 50 years time Netherland itself will be considered one of those 'must read' classic novels, but that may be my prejudice as a New York-loving Dutch person). Since Gabriel García Márquez has just passed away, and One Hundred Years of Solitude has been living in my bookcase for a couple of years now, ever since my boyfriend got the novel for his birthday from a Mexican exchange student, I decided to go for that one. My boyfriend isn't going to read it even if he somehow finds himself in 100 years of solitude, and a lot of good things have been said about it.

This wasn't my first Márquez novel, because for Spanish class in secondary school I'd read No One Writes to the Colonel. In Spanish. This was, to put it mildly, a challenge. Week after week we'd wrestle through the paragraphs, each having to read and then explain a page in turn. You got to prepare at home, so I always had lots of translated words scribbled in the margins, but still I couldn't make any sense of it. And I wasn't the only one, after finally making it to the final word in the novel, mierda, our teacher triumphantly slammed his copy of the book shut, threw it on his desk, and said; "Si! Mierda!" We stared back at him, expecting some kind of explanation. When he just stood there waiting for an equally enthusiastic response from our side, one of the students ventured: "Mierda? Shit? What does that even mean?" He took a big dramatic Spanish sigh and said: "If you don't understand why that is a great ending, you don't understand literature." Which I thought a bit rich, even then.

Anyway, I would not let that experience put me off of reading
One Hundred Years of Solitude, only this time, I would be reading in English. The front, consisting of a naked lady staring vacantly in the viewers eyes, somewhat baffled me, especially in connection with the blurb, which informed me that the novel was about a little village, and especially about seven generations of a family who had lived in that little village for one hundred years already.
I'm now more than a quarter of the way through, and I don't know much more about the naked lady, or about the seven generations. What I do know is that this book is brilliant. 
I love magical realism, which is why I love Neil Gaiman's work, but this is a whole different thing altogether. You just have to let your suspension of disbelief stretch into impossible lengths, and just go with whatever is happening, even though all your instincts are telling you that a minute ago everything was just as it is in the real world. Also, the style is great, with some characters drawn out over the pages, while others are put down in a few brushstrokes, but then they all turn out to be completely different then you'd originally thought. Big, important events (death, war) can be condensed into a single line, which you will then miss and have to reread to get, whereas small, uneventful things can be drawn out across the pages, with some paragraphs stretching multiple pages.
It took me a while to get into, to get the dense, layered writing style, the somewhat-recognisable-but-still-strangely-different setting and the many references and figurative elements, but now that I'm into it, I want it to last as long as possible. This isn't a novel to read quickly or glancingly, but also, I don't want it to end.
So once again, the label 'classic' has proven to be correct. I feel like I am repeating myself with every classic novel I read, but again, this will be one of those novels that will stay with me for years to come.

Craziness is all around

The Saturday edition of the newspaper always comes with a themed magazine, and this week the theme is 'we're all crazy', about how nobody is really 'normal', when you look closely. This includes an article about crazy writers, or more generally crazy artists. Traumatising childhoods, bipolar disorder, autism, depression, narcissism, addictions, the list is almost endless. The list of famous artists suffering from these diseases is even longer, stretching from Mozart and Dickens via Woolf and Hemingway to Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.
Those suffering from depression, the article goes, are good at keeping faith through difficult times, because that's what they're doing a lot. Churchill and his black dog are the stock example. Those who are narcissistic are best found on stage, where they will entertain people. Cue Lady Gaga. And then there are those who use all their negative experiences and/or depressed and/or manic periods to create great art. Because they see the world differently, because they can put themselves to one side and live inside the story, or just because they don't really give a damn what anybody else thinks about them.
Long story short: mental diseases or problems are great if you want to be an artist. It's also great for the rest of us, because a) these people are turning their attention to art and not self-destruction (although in the case of Kurt Cobain or Van Gogh that may not be strictly speaking true) and b) we get brilliant new art to boot.

But does this mean you have to be a little bit crazy to be a good artist? Can't normal people write/paint/compose nice things?
Jane Austen didn't have any particular mental illness, as far as we know, and she wrote pretty good novels. Same goes for Shakespeare's plays, or Rembrandt's paintings, or Bach's music. I know many popular musicians who may be a bit more expressive than the rest of us, but that doesn't make them raving narcissists. Then another part of the paper included an interview with Eleanor Catton, the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize (The Luminaries, which has been living in my bookcase for far too long without being read) and she came across as pretty normal, maybe a bit tired, but nothing too funny. Of course, the article about the 'crazy artists' doesn't mention these people at all.

So what is this thing about mental illnesses combined with artistic genius? Clearly, it's not as if the former is a strict prerequisite for the latter. Even more, there are many mentally ill people who never produce any art worth speaking of in their lifetimes. So is it just the connection that makes us wonder? 'Hey, I thought they were crazy, but look at what they can do!' Or is there really something special to their works, something that we can't quite grasp, but that makes us wonder? Or maybe even makes us slightly jealous, that someone can see the world and create these things while we will never be able to?

But then again, as the rest of the magazine goes, none of us are completely 'normal', we all carry our own special kind of strangeness or madness inside. Maybe some show it more than others, and find it easier to express themselves to channels that others don't generally use.
Anyway, I don't really see the big deal here. And taking stock of my favourite authors and painters, most of them don't show that many cracks and shadows, so maybe I myself am too 'normal' to appreciate the true genius of the others. Maybe that's why I wonder at the article, because I don't really see the connection all that strongly. Or maybe it's because I still dream of becoming a writer some day, and I don't want to be put off by the idea that there has to be something 'wrong' with you to be able to succeed...

House of Cards

There was an article in the newspaper on Saturday trying to explain why all of a sudden people like to watch series that revolve mostly around 'bad guys'. It somehow went from the black-and-white villain world of Lord of the Rings, via the Cold War, to the current 'everyone's a shade of grey' thinking. Which to me still doesn't explain why people like to watch stuff like the Red Wedding scene; there is nothing grey or 'in the middle' about that one. Bad guys are generally still bad guys, the good guys are the good guys. Combined with an article I read today about how Captain America is the only moral beacon left in an otherwise corrupted and confused world, I had to conclude that we still tend to over-analyse things. If people want to watch series like Dexter or Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, let them. There are also loads of people still watching Friends reruns or sobbing about the HIMYM finale, so it's not really like the world has changed that much. (The one thing they did get right was that paid networks like HBO or Netflix do not have to cater to the taste of lots of people because they don't rely on advertisers, so they can experiment more and therefore make more daring series. But that doesn't really say anything about the 'spirit of the times' except that it's still all about money.)

Anyway, one of the series mentioned was House of Cards, which we have been watching for quite a while (no, we don't have Netflix, yes, downloading was legal until 2 days ago, yes, we downloaded all of it before it became illegal). I've visited Washington, even took a tour of the Capitol, which makes me go 'been there!' every other minute, which is always nice (it also made me notice the horrible inconsistency in the opening scenes of Captain America: Winter Soldier, but that's a whole other thing). Other than that, there isn't much I can relate to. I'm not that much into politics, or lobbying, or fund raising, or journalism, and even less into playing games and manipulating people. Still, it's a great series to watch. And the article I mentioned got me thinking: why do I like to watch this?
Firstly, of course, because everybody is watching it. I've been getting Postcrossing cards for months with people saying "I watched House of Cards today - it's great!" from Canada, India, Latvia, and everywhere in between. Most of my colleagues are also watching, with whispered information and reactions passed on during the breaks (whispered not because we're ashamed, but because some people will shout "No spoilers!" if you talk too loud). It's a group thing, because everybody is talking about it.
But it's more than that. Also... the acting is great. I am really starting to loathe Kevin Spacey, which means he must be doing something right. But the plot is great too: I'm curious as to what crazy thing he's going to do next - he must be satisfied with what he's got at some point, right? But no, he's off again, aiming higher, going further, manipulating more.
And then there is that nagging feeling of 'Could this be real?', generally immediately followed by 'No, it can't be real! Right?'. Is this the hidden world of politics? Is this how things really work? Is this what politicians really think of 'the common man'?
Funnily enough, they don't really do cliffhangers. The end of season one was as un-cliffhangeresque as you'll ever see. Nothing was really happening, no 'who killed JR' moment, just people jogging in the park. Most episodes also wrap up nicely; the main problem or problems have been resolved, most people have gotten one step closer to their goals, some people have been diverted or confused a bit more, and everybody is happy. But still, you want to see the next one. You want to know what happens next. Amazing, when you think about the lack of suspense at the end of an episode.

So I'll have to conclude that it's great writing, great acting, and a slightly voyeuristic 'behind the scenes' feel that make me hooked. And that will be my stint of over-analysis for the day, time to watch another episode!

Netherland

During my English studies, there were several courses aimed at 'contemporary literature'. In my view, 'contemporary literature' was often translated to 'literature written by people not born in the UK, US, or Australia' or 'post-9/11 literature' (or combinations of the two, such as The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which I'll suggest to anyone who will listen). Somehow, post-9/11 novels attract other post-9/11 novels, which means my book collection has a relatively large amount of them. Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill, has been among them for a while, and after finishing Bridget I wanted to get on with something that was actually literature, and contained more emotions than 'will he ever tweet me back?'-angst.

Before we go any further, I would like to say that the category 'post-9/11 novels' does not contain any novel ever written after the 11th of September 2001. It indicates novels that were written in response to the 9/11 attacks, or that have been influenced by them. Some are very clearly in this category, such as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, some less obviously so, including Ian McEwan's Saturday. Some take place in New York City and deal with the obvious aftermaths of the events, some are set in the countries that the US invaded after the attacks (I've read We are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek, which is set in Afghanistan and Iraq) and some take place in a fictional future also influenced by the events. What they all, or most of them, have in common is an atmosphere filled with heaviness ("Something oppressive... like thunder" as Fiver tells us in Watership Down). People going through the motions, without actually thinking about it, mostly just to stay alive. Or on the other hand, people desperately trying to get out of the oppressed feelings, only to find themselves thrown back time and again. It's not that I particularly like reading about people who find themselves in such situations, but I am very impressed by the way writers can put these emotions through in their works, and they make me see why Literature is Literature, and what it can do.

So, back to Netherland, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while now. I had been advised to read it by many fellow students, some of whom had to read the novel for a class, so it has to be particularly good if they recommend it after having been forced to read it themselves. I had no idea what or who this novel was going to be about before picking it up, only that it was on the post-9/11 category. I didn't know, for example, that the main character is a Dutchman. And that there would be several Dutch words and sentences interwoven in the text, without translation or context, which I'm guessing makes them pretty hard to understand for non-Dutch people. Also, it gives an extra layer to the title, which is nice.
As if a Dutch protagonist isn't enough, the novel is also about cricket. There are few things I consider less American than cricket, but there you are. I don't know anything about cricket, either (which made a certain chapter in The Go-Between very difficult to read), but the author does a good job of not making that an issue. Otherwise, it's about New York City, and relationships between people, and how those relationships were stressed to the point of breaking in the aftermaths of the events.

Now I've been to NYC, I've seen the gaping hole and visited the church that the rescue workers slept in while they were searching the wreckage and read the memorials and I still don't feel like I've come even a little bit closer to understanding what happened and why it made such an impact. (I can see the national and global impact, but I'm talking about the man on the street, the 'normal' New Yorkers who didn't lose any loved ones but had to go on living in a scarred city, in a world that would never really be the same again.) But this novel can show me, if even only a little bit. It makes you understand the events, and try to accept them, or at least give them a place. I haven't finished the novel yet, so I don't know which way it's going to go, but I can already see it will make a lasting impression on my understanding of life, the universe and everything, which is what you need, once in a while.

Bridget's Third

You know I've read and love Bridget Jones's Diary, because I wrote about it before. You probably also know that a third novel came out quite some time ago, and that it was completely burned down by reviewers. I found this quite disappointing, as I had been looking forward to the new book ever since it was announced a long while ago. But I decided not to read it, to keep the idea of Bridget and Mark living happily ever after in my mind.
Then I read an interview with Helen Fielding, who was not at all concerned about all the bad reviews, saying that it's the readers who decide, in the end. And the book has been selling really well, which must partly be long-time readers wanting to know what happened next, and partly word-of-mouth advertising. But she did persuade me a bit, and also, she made me curious. What would Bridget be like at 50? And also: could it really be as bad as the reviewers made it out to be?
So last Saturday, I was standing in a bookshop with a friend, when she casually asked me whether I had already read it. When I said no but I did want to, she pushed it into my hands, and I bought it.

Now this is one of those books you can't have laying around for ages, moving it around to get to another book and thinking 'ow, yeah, I should read that one day' (as with Crime & Punishment, or Oliver Twist, to name a few examples). This is one of those books you dive into immediately. Which means that after 3 days, I'm about half-way through now.
I won't be giving too many spoilers, apart from what you've probably already read online, but if you really really don't want to know anything about this book, stop reading here.

At first, it was great. More Bridget! More craziness! More counting of alcohol units and weird self-help books. The writing style and wittiness were all there, just as if there hadn't been a 15 year gap.
After the first few elating paragraphs, I started to see what the reviewers meant. It wasn't the same Bridget. She had gotten older, and sadder, and at the same time stayed the same. This doesn't really work. Bridget was always kind of goofy, but you could see that she was quite smart and had Common Knowledge. Somehow, this has disappeared. No more literary remarks between the lines, no more small comments on events taking place 'in the outside world'. Also, she has managed to raise two kids to school-going age, but can't figure out how Twitter works? She can dress them, feed them, get them to school, get them back home, feed them again, bathe them, put them to bed, and not clear up the kitchen? Not very realistic.
And then there's the 'no Mark' thing. I can see how Helen Fielding wanted to get Mark out of the way so Bridget can have another love interest, but then really put him out of the way. Not have him lingering about with Bridget crying over him all the time, and the kids asking about him all the time (seriously, the younger was 4 months old when he died, how much will she be asking after daddy?). Also, it's been what, 5 years? It's like Helen Fielding couldn't really forgive herself for killing off Mark (a lot of fans would agree with her there) and therefore kept him in a bit.
And then there's the whining. It's all so horrible, being over fifty, being fat, having kids, having to do a job, being on Twitter, having a guy not call you back, on and on and on... In the earlier books, Bridget would be slightly unorganised and sometimes sad, but she wouldn't really whine about it. She would keep a bright face and move on, or try to move on, and if there was any obsessing over men, it was positive.
Finally, the whole structure of the book. It isn't called Bridget Jones's Diary anymore, for a good reason, because it isn't really a diary. It starts in the 'now', and then goes back through Bridget's older diary from the year before, with her adding fore-shadowing or 'back-shadowing' comments in between. This is Bridget Jones commenting on Bridget Jones. And it doesn't work, it takes away from the self-absorbed Bridget and turns her into a very self-conscious Bridget, trying to censor her past self.

That doesn't sound too good, does it?

But then I got thinking: the earlier 2 Bridget novels were written in the 90s, a time of optimism, of forward-going, of new-found freedoms. This novel is very much a post-financial crisis novel: everything is darker, people whine more, people are more self-absorbed and less focused on the world around them. Also, less interest in culture and literature, as expressed through Bridget's inability to write the screenplay for her Hedda Gabler adaptation (the only truly feminist/literary bit in the whole novel so far). Somehow, positive, bubbly, outgoing Bridget finds herself in darker times. And she has had to adapt, big time.
Which made me see the novel in another light, and as I came to this insight already half-way through the novel, I may have to read it again pretty quickly to see if my theory holds any ground.
But for now, I will have to get through it first. And even with the above stuck firmly in the back of my mind, the whining is still pretty tough to get through. I hope she falls in love again pretty soon...

Films galore

There are times, when you really really want to go to the cinema to watch a movie, but there is really nothing good on, so you end up going to a film you didn't really want to see just to be inside a cinema.
And then there are times when there are so many (potentially) good films about that you can't find the time to watch them all.
In the last two weeks, we flipped from situation 1 to situation 2, the quickest positive trend in film on offer for a long time.
Firstly, there was The Grand Budapest Hotel, which we saw in the art cinema last Sunday. Great film, quite strange, but in a good way. In the previews we saw the trailer of August: Osage County, which I have been meaning to watch since the Oscar nominations came through, and I want to watch even more after reading a very positive review on it. There was also a preview of The Book Thief, based on a young adult novel that is quite popular (writing this sentence made me realise that English is lacking a term for 'boekverfilming', the Dutch word used to describe films based on books. In the past, most Dutch films were based on books as funding is hard to come by otherwise, but the English-speaking world is quickly catching up, with most films now based on books or 'true stories'...). The film got some pretty bad reviews but still looks good anyway. The same is true for A Long Way Down, based on my favourite Nick Hornby novel. Most reviews say the film has done anything possible to wreck the great atmosphere of the novel, but still, I love the story and I will have to see it for myself.
So that made for 4 films, only 1 of which I have already seen.
But then yesterday's paper had even more film reviews, and they were quite positive about The Invisible Woman, which is a portrayal of one of the darker parts of Charles Dickens's life. Another literature film! I will have to see it. On the next page over was a review of Kill Your Darlings, the film starring Daniel Radcliffe and dealing with Alan Ginsberg's younger years. I am not a fan of the Beat generation, partly because I gave a horrible presentation on them once, and partly because I think the stuff they wrote is just too far-fetched, but this also looks like quite a nice film.
So, 5 films I need to watch, 4 of them literature-related. What more can a person ask for, apart from better cinema-going weather. It's going to be sunny and warm for the next few days, so I will have to put my film-cravings on hold for a little while, as great weather is even harder to come by than great films!

I made something

You can often see Internet memes captioned 'I made dis', showing proud (to our anthropomorphic minds) cats, dogs, or other animals and their offspring. I think the best example by far is this one, also because of the other word-joke included:

Anyway, as of yesterday, I have been walking around with the same feeling. Not that I have been making offspring, but I have been making books.
Now I've made stuff before: paintings, cakes, cookies, hand-crafted presents, and the like (this is apart from all the study-related stuff I've made, such as essays and endlessly transcribed editions of obscure medieval texts). I have even made books before, that is to say, I completed NaNoWriMo and other writing endeavours, and sometimes I've printed them out and handed them around.
But I've never really made a true book, with a cover and a title page and an opening and an ending and useful stuff in between. But as of yesterday, there are books in existence that I have made.
Not technically, of course, I haven't done any of the printing or putting-together. I'm not even that responsible for the content, as I haven't actually written a word that can be found in them. But I have managed the project that brought these books into being, from creating the concept, thinking up the graphic design, writing the texts, revising the texts, thinking up ideas for the pictures, then handing it over to the editors who made people draw the pictures and put it through to the typesetter who made it into a book file, which was then sent to the printer to be printed.
All these things were done by other people. But I am the only person who was involved in every step, and had influence on every step, and it is regarded by everyone as 'my' project, and hence when the books came in from the printer's yesterday they were brought to me and declared to be 'my' books.
This is not true at all, they were a team effort, a very nice effort at that, and I am very happy with the result. But still, I do have to agree that deep down, they do feel like 'my' books. Truly a 'I made dis'  moment, which I hope I will experience many times more, maybe one day even with human offspring involved.

Cat cards

I like cats. You might even go as far as to say that I am a 'cat person'. However, I don't consider myself very extreme in my cat love. Okay, I am wearing a shirt with a cat on it at the moment, but it's one of only 2 I have (the other one says "Are you kittin' me?") and it's very cool, and not something like 'Jesus was a cat'  or a pastel-coloured pencil drawing of a kitten in a basket of flowers or something.
Which exactly exemplifies the two groups of 'cat people' that you can find in the world, in my opinion: the ones that focus on the cats independence and coolness, and the ones that focus on the cat's prettiness and fluffiness.
Now this is not something I think about on most days (ah, what a quiet life I would have if I could...) but today I received two cat postcards that got me thinking about this. Let me present them to you:

Exhibit A:

HK-221737 received 13 March 2014

And exhibit B:

DE-2903757 received 13 March 2014

Do you get what I mean?
When I ask for 'cat postcards'  on Postcrossing, I'm talking about type A: pictures that show off a cat's independence, stubbornness, innate relaxedness, just how they are as solitary creatures. Picture B to me shows a scared, fluffed-up, cuted-up baby that can't really think for itself.

And that has nothing to do with me not liking long-haired cats, because you can have the 'majestic independence' in those types of cats too:

FI-1853936 received 15 September 2013

It's mainly the 'deer in the headlights' look, or the combination of cats with other cute things, such as roses (as in this card, and here too), bunnies (here, although this cat does look like it has a mind of its own, and the bunny knows it) fishbowls (here) and vacant expressions (here).
So somehow, it is pretty rare to get a cat-card that shows the cat the way I think they are. Maybe that proves my cat-worldview is faulty, or maybe it proves that cats do not photograph easily (which I can attest to personally), or don't really want to show themselves on camera. Whatever the reason, but when I do get one like the first card above, it makes it extra special, which is nice in a way too.

Brownies by Paul

I've made brownies before, I've even made cheesecake brownies at some point, but they've never really been my favourite thing to make. It may be my fear of pouring hot things (melted chocolate) into egg mixtures, which can result in dramatic curdling. It may also be the fact that somewhere deep down, I think brownies should be a thing you can just get, without having to do the work yourself. Also, technically it's 'a brownie', until you cut them into squares and they become 'brownies', and somehow 'a brownie' reminds me of the girl scouts (actually; of Gilmore Girls, when Rory pretends to be a girl scout so she can talk to Dean's sister some more, and ends up running down the street completely embarrassed).

Whatever it is, a few weeks ago, I decided to make brownies the Paul Hollywood style. You may know Paul from The Great British Bake Off, where he is co-judge of Mary Berry. In fact, that is the only way I know Paul Hollywood exists, but he seems to be some kind of famous bread-person in the UK. Paul's book, How to Bake, had been sitting on my cookbook shelf for a while now, after an initial enthusiastic beginning of bread rolls. Luckily for Paul, he's also included some more bake-y recipes, otherwise it may have been a long time before I tried one of his recipes again.
Anyway, I made the brownies, and they were a disaster. Not taste-wise, but rise-wise. Paul tells you to use a 20 cm square baking tin, which I don't have, but I do have a 35 x 15 tin, which should be plenty. Unfortunately, it wasn't. The mixture poured over the top of the tin, gently coating the bottom of our oven, where it quickly turned into carcinogenic black lumps. Also, after 25-30 minutes, the brownies should be 'nicely crusted but still soft in the middle', whereas mine were 'brownie soup'. I stuck them back in the oven, after gently pushing in all the bits dangling over the side, for another 30 minutes. The mixture was still quite fluid, but now with a semi-hardened top. To let some air out, I pre-cut the brownies in the tin before sticking them back into the oven for another 30 minutes. Finally, they were done, nicely chewy in the middle with a firm crust. Despite the oven disasters, they tasted very very good.

Crappy picture, but I think you get the gist

But I can't have this recipe beat me, so today I decided to give it another go, only halving all the quantities. This made for quite a sad little puddle of brownie mixture in the bottom of my baking tin, but will hopefully prevent a repeat of the brownie waterfalls.

The recipe I used today is as follows:

50 g butter
100 g chocolate
2 eggs
125 g sugar
50 g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
15 g cocoa powder
60 g walnuts (actually 50, but they sell it per 60 g here)

You can also add 50 g dried cranberries, but I'm not really a fan of fruit in my brownies, so I skipped those.

Preheat your oven to 180 C and line a 20 cm square (or whatever size you have) baking tin with baking parchment.
Melt the butter and chocolate together au-bain-Marie, stirring occasionally until the mixture is smooth and well-combined. Set aside to cool.
Using an electric mixer, mix the eggs and sugar together "until the mixture is pale and thick enough to hold a trail when the beaters are lifted". Let me help you out here: this is going to take a while. About 5 minutes, in my case. You should get past the famous 'ribbon' stage into a more thickly, almost custard-like mixture, with lots of air bubbles.
Now for the crazy part: fold the chocolate mixture into the egg-and-sugar mixture, stirring gently so you don't loose to much of the air you just worked so hard to get in.
Add the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and fold in as well. Finally, add the chopped walnuts and whatever other filling you like.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or whatever time it takes for the mixture to become firm and not soup-like.

Looking much better!

In this case, it (they?) came out okay after 30 minutes, not as nicely crusted as the last time, but that may come with the cooling. We won't eat it until tomorrow, so I can't report on the taste yet, but as that was the only thing that actually went well the last time, I'm thinking it should be okay this time around too.