Archive for Barnes & Noble

a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, abundance, and death year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2024 by xi'an

Read The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty within a few weeks, after I started the first book in a NE Seattle Barnes & Noble on a bookstore long stop between two Airbnb‘s. A suitable choice to read out the sleepless bouts induced by the jetlag. Some original ideas around a Middle East djinn kingdom, a compelling enough central character, and a page-turning scenario, but also too much info-dumps, a syncretic mismash of religions, and a terrible tendency to find excuses for mass-murderers…

Made heaps of fig preserve and jam (with honey, lemon, maybe too much lemon, and chia seeds) as our fig tree delivered an outstanding harvest, at the end of a particularly wet summer (even the tomatoes more than survived our three week absence!). And radish leave pesto (while waiting for my own radish harvest to come out). Also cooked an octopus for the first time, which proved much easier than I feared (no freezing, no beating, just a long enough boil) and delivering! And zucchini spaghetti every other day or so, since large late season zucchinis have now appeared in the local markets.

Watched the entire True Detective Season Four, featuring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as the detective duo (and mostly women as the leading characters). It widely differs from earlier seasons for so many reasons… It is set in coastal Alaska (if shot in Iceland), during the long night (as in Prudhoe Bay where it lasts close to two months). It seems to involve supernatural events, connected with First Nations myths and traditions. Possibly overdoing it.  It does involve First Nations, quite forcibly, as Foster’s character’s step-daughter is a Native Iñupiat woman, searching for her roots. And many other characters are from that community. A major environmental pollution by the local mine leading to still-births (ghastly moment when Foster visits the storage with coffins waiting for thaw to be buried). Scientific MacGuffin very weak and further scenario impossibilities. (Also an orange wool hat turning green. Or blue.)  The end is not that satisfactory, from the resolution of the scientists disappearance to the duo escaping consequences of their actions. But this is a great show, almost par with Season One.

a journal of the Pacific and Northwest tƿēnight

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2024 by xi'an

Read both the first (1605) and the second (1615) books of Don Quixote along with the (William) Marx commentary (Un été avec Don Quichotte) over the PNW vacations, a delight in discovering how modern it is! Even modern enough to write a follow-up (II) and to initiate the meme that sequels are not as good as the original, although the parts where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza debate of their own characters in tome I are hilarious and the prologue of tome II made me discover a certain Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda had written a (poor) sequel of his own, published in 1614. As well as the detective novel The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney, set in Glasgow in 1975, which I enjoyed a lot (except for the lazy, easy, hurried ending), presumably due in part of the references to places near the U of G that sounded so familiar. The political aspects are more stringent than in the earlier book. (And those of his uncle.) And Gab’s Road to Freedom, of course! Also came back from a Sunday aft at Barnes & Noble, in NE Seattle, with a pile of books that threatened to overflow my luggage allowance!

Made frijoles negros over a rainy day in Mount Hood Village. As it takes a while to soften the black beans and then further simmer them to turn them into a yummy paste, this was the perfect opportunity! And I made enough to recook the dish several days in a row, improving each time! I also learned there how to cook with an iron skillet (found in the first airbnb cabin we rented), after rescuing (overcleaning?) the skillet from its greasy state and starting the fire alarm a few times (only frightening the nearby bear, I presume). Mount Hood Village where I bought some outanding smoked salmon from a local First Nations fisherman, with a long discussion on running (as I was wearing my Huckleberry 10k tee-shirt) As I had not time at all for cooking while at JSM in Portland, I gave into the opportunity to get great lunches at Hat Hei Belmont (advertising Thai levels of spicy that remained rather mild) and Kiboshi (red) Ramen (that fuelled a great training session the next morning). While near Mount Baker (with no true bakery on the radar!, as many “bakeries” I came across neither bake nor sell bread…), I baked our daily (whole wheat if not rye) bread with a spelt substitute I had brought from France and on the same bake made a first attempt at whole wheat plain bagels, which ended up eatable if on the hard side. (Blame the oven!)

And watched no Netflix or any other video during the entire PNW trip, mostly due to early sleep – early run schedules, followed by long hikes on most days, and  on top of frequently checking the Olympics events in the (PNW) mornings. And of course due to meeting with (no enough) friends during JSM! (Leaving Paris during the Olympics was presumably a wise move in this respect as I would have otherwise spent most of my days there watching events!)

Monsieur Hul’olympics

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2024 by xi'an

a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2022 by xi'an

Read two successive books about seeking lost sisters, The Last House on Needless Street and Second Sister, after finishing the third book in a row involving a dead god, aptly named Three parts dead. This third one was rather enjoyable, thanks to the world construction, except for a blah ending. The first one, by Catriona Ward, is perplexing, complex and frankly a bit stretched in its gradual exposition of a multiple personality (disorder) patient. The “horror” side never really set for me, which is fine as it never does. Furthermore, this is the very first book I ever read where I saw a few words (correctly) written in Breton, as well as a thread with the Breton myth of ar Ankou, the local Death personification. Kudos for that! The second one, a physical book that I picked rather instinctively / hurriedly in a Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia is a thriller set in Hong Kong. Despite a bit too much of infodump on internet (in)security and hacking, and some caricaturesque sides, incl. the final coup de théâtre!, I enjoyed it as a page-turner. (But I now wonder if I am not getting prejudiced against Kindle books..!) Except for the anti-protest paragraph. Also read a nice BD, Les Animaux Dénaturés, borrowed from Andrew, which is an adaptation the 1952 book by Vercors, that I saw eons ago as a theatre play. The interrogation on what constitutes humanity (vs. simianity) is the driving force of the story, but it is somewhat marred by the killing of a newborn child that seems to negate the whole fight of the main characters.

Thanks to a short (train) visit to Coventry, I stayed overnight in the center of the city and enjoyed a fabulous dinner with friends at Jinseon Korean BBQ Restaurant, recently reviewed by Jay Rayner in The Guardian. Marinated thin slices of beef, pork, and lamb almost immediately cooked on the white hot (ring) coals, along rice and plenty of kimchi and hot sauce. And a sip of soju. Not an everyday fare, for sure, but quite delightful (and even more as my single true meal over two days!)

Watched a fraction of Swedish Black Crab, with Naomi Rapace playing the central character, but despite potential connections with the current survival war of Ukraine against the Russian terror, I quickly lost interest in the very shallow plot and in the accumulation of unrealistic scenes and heavily programmed eliminations of the characters (sorry for the spoiler!). For one thing, expert skaters skating 100km should not take days to cover the distance. For another, a military commando operating in the far North should wear appropriate clothes, not a sweater and a loose scarf!  Luckily enough, I have had no screen nearby [me] to distract me on my round trip flight to NYC from reviewing Biometrika submissions. (The flight back to Paris amazingly took less than 6 hours, thanks to extremely strong tail winds.)