Kitchen Confidential

I finished this book early in the TBR Double Dare because I was waiting for the book club discussion.  Then the book club, toward the end of January, was so wonderful that I didn't think I could do it justice.  I am also afraid of getting any publicity for the book group or raising interest to a level that it becomes unmanageable.  (That won't be a problem this month since the actual meeting date and the one printed on the book store flyers don't match up for some reason.)

There's not much to say about the book.  It's been out a while, made Bourdain's reputation as the bad boy, rock and roll food lover he's known as today and catapulted him into various cable travel/food loving shows.  You either like him or you don't.  I don't know anything in particular about good food and I especially dont' know much about fine restaurants, so I learned a lot and didn't know who he was dishing about when he discusses different well-known restaurant owners, chefs, etc.

First thing is, it's very funny and very profane.  Second thing is, he loves the food.  Curt Cobain might have been a messed up individual but he obviously loved the music.  Bourdain can be messed up but doesn't claim to be anything he's not.  He even goes on at length about how exactly to run a kitchen and the absolute do's and don't you must follow as a chef.  Then, in my favorite section, shadows another chef near the end of the book whose work he adores and proceeds to see all of his rules not being followed.  This by a chef and kitchen he considers leagues better than anything he could do.  So while he's a loudmouth, he's a self-aware and, believe it or not, a sometimes humble loudmouth.

Some of the guys in the book club like food quite a bit and so this book was chosen to coincide with our first meeting in a members home.  We all signed up to bring some food and/or beverages and let me tell you, it was one of the best meals of my life.  Bourdain either inspired them to new heights or we secretly have some chefs in the group.

There was one ringer.  The homeowner brought a friend who had done the brisket.  It was divine.  I might cry a little to myself now just thinking about it.  I also brought a friend who had thrown four punds of pork shoulder into a pot and brewed up a Brunswick stew that had been bubbling away for 14 hours.  It was like honey, I tell you.  The homeowner has one of those big green egg-like ceramic oval cooker things (like this) on a specially built teak table on his deck that had been stuffed with pork.  It melted in our fingers.  We were pulling it off in chunks as he was carving it.

I know; a meat-induced coma, right?  There was plenty of food for the vegetarians as well.  Delightful appetizers.  A gorgeous and simple fresh salad.  A perfectly cooked potato side.  More veggies. Home made desserts that were delicious and not overwhelming.

And the wine!  My goodness, this guy had racks of it all over the place.  I asked him how he could possibly have this much of a backlog?  I'd have drunk it as it came in.  He smiled and said simply, "I like to entertain."  No kidding.  He even has a dartboard up in the living room!

I'm no cook, so I made sure to bring good beer.  There was also some after-dinner whiskey.  All of it was perfection.  Especially the company.

Since Bourdain makes frequent references to music in his book, so will I. It was the day Etta James died so we played some of her music during the time we were gathering, noshing and preparing.  Then the musicologist of the group stuck in his especially-prepared mix of food-related music.  Great stuff indeed, but after we could bring ourselves to push our chairs back I felt it important to play some punk rock, in honor of Mr. Bourdain's preferences.  With that fun "Genius" feature on Apple products now, I simply picked a Stooges tune and clicked on the "Genius" magic list maker thingy and soon we had Iggy and the boys, the Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, the Clash, etc going while we cleaned up.  Then, after dinner was a time for more thoughtful discussion with a backdrop of (only slightly) more mellow fare from the likes of The Black Keys and The John Spencer Blues Explosion.

Books, travel, art, music, good food, good drink, good friends, good conversation and darts.  A night to remember.

Cheers!

The Gollywhopper Games

If I forgot to mention it, Winterdance was not part of the TBR Double Dare.  I gave myself that one exception for the book club.  Everything else I'm reading until April, including The Gollywhopper Games, counts.

My wife told me about this book a while ago, but I had to squeeze it in now because this won the Georgia Children's Book Award and Jody Feldman is going to be in Athens, GA to accept the award this spring at the conference.

Gil Goodson knows just about everything there is to know about the Golly Toy & Game Company and desperately wants to be a part of the biggest and most exciting yearly contest in the univers, The Gollwhopper Games!  Thousands of contestants are quickly whittled down to ten, including (I doubt this is much of a spoiler) Gil.  Why does he want to play and win so badly?  His dad made him a deal: win the Gollywhopper Games and the family can move away from their town (which happens to be the same town as the toy company headquarters).  Turns out his dad had, until the last year and a half or so, been an employee at the company but had been (wrongly, Gil is sure!) accused of stealing ideas and money.

There are some tough competitors, fun puzzles, and delightful Dahl-ish touches in the amazingly absurd company headquarters (one room of which can be seen on the cover).  Of course during the course of the games, the truth of what happened to his dad begins to reveal itself and Gil has some decisions to make before things come to a satisfying conclusion.

Highly recommended for those who loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Westing Game and puzzles of all kinds.

Winterdance

The cover looks all nice and serious, doesn't it?  The photograph is by Mr. Paulsen himself.  It definitely strikes a man-out-in-nature tone.

That element is not lacking in the book by any means, but after finishing it, you come away with a different tone altogether.

This book is hilarious.

Oh sure, there's terror aplenty.  But Paulsen knows better than anyone, that terror and humor go hand in hand and this book is full of absurdities.

I mean, come on.  It's about running the Iditarod, for crying out loud. His subtitle is: The fine madness of running the Iditarod.  Madness indeed.  Do you have any idea how long this race is?  It can change year to year, but the most common estimate is 1150 miles.  To put that in perspective, that's roughly the same distance between Maine and Florida.  Alaska is really really big.  Maybe an illustration will help here.

It's not just the length, either.  We are talking about some insanely terrible conditions.  Oh sure, there is snow and ice and lots of biting dogs and their poop.  There are also savagely attacking moose, cliffs, breaks in the ice long stretches where there is no snow to sled on (!), drunken revelers, and  places where the temperature gets so low as to be not fit for life.  That's not even counting the unpredictable weather that can blow severe storms in at the drop of a snowshoe.

I know, I said this was hilarious and you're far from convinced at this moment.  But what this book most reminds me of is Bryson's A Walk In the Woods in which a woefully unprepared author and friend try to hike the entire Appalachian Trail.  I've read Bryson's but don't seem have to posted about it.  That's okay, my book club has picked it for sometime this year, so I'll write it up then.

So yes, Paulsen decides to run the Iditarod and proceeds to do every single thing wrong that you can think of.  He doesn't do any research at all, just plunges right in.  The only things he has going for him is his incredible sense for dogs, his inhuman determination, and a whole bunch of just plain dumb luck.

Probably the funniest bit is when he takes the team out on their first night run during training.  He's living in northern Minnesota and he's got a team of fifteen pumped up running dogs pulling a freaking car (sans engine) through the woods.  At night.  You know what else comes out at night in norther Minnesota?  Skunks.  I badly want to tell you this anecdote, but know I couldn't do it justice.  Even if you're not interested in the whole book, do pick up a copy in a library or bookstore and treat yourself to the top of page 82 until page 88.  I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

The first half of the book is like that.  The training and the numbskull mistakes that sometime almost kill him and sometimes just provide onlookers (usually his wife) with something to point and laugh at.  He doesn't even get to Alaska until past the halfway point of the book (which is under 300 pages).  The second half, the race itself, has just as much hilarity but also more scary challenges to overcome.

At the end we learn that due to a heart condition he won't be able to run the race again (though we also learn he did it at least one other time before the bad news from the doctor).  This was published in 1994 and the events described were from about a decade before that.  It's okay, he seems to have lived well with his heart condition. He's now in his seventies and has published over sixty books since this one.

An enjoyable book from an entertaining writer about something I never want to do but am so glad he did so he could write about it so well.  Highly recommended.

It Takes Flexibility!

It takes more flexibility than you know to be the school librarian.  I posted about this topic earlier in the month for my monthly GLMA post.  The past couple of days have been shining examples of this as well.

What would you do if there was an unplanned morning morning meeting that ran right up until you had to run the morning broadcast/announcements show and then you have a slight window of opportunity to set up for an incoming class but as they are walking in the door you realize you can't do the lesson you've planned because of a technical problem.  You have a class of 4th graders patiently waiting (if you're lucky) and all you have is a cart with you lesson junk on it (including last week's almanac lesson with a stack of 25 almanacs on the cart).  If you're me, then you say, "You liked that almanac lesson so much last week, I've decided to extend it!"

This is commonly referred to as making lemonade.

Now what if it's Monday afternoon and an administrator says, "You always have good ideas. We're having choice professional learning sessions TOMORROW [my emphasis] and I'm short a presenter. Could you throw something together for TOMORROW MORNING? [again, my emphasis added]." You say, "Sure, no problem!" (Probably because you are nuts.)

What would you do?  If you're me you think of the most generic librarian presentation you can (hopefully something you've seen many times) and cobble it together quickly using ideas stolen borrowed from presenters you've seen in the past.  Web 2.0 it is!  Using a pre-made Prezi template, I made this presentation which focused on Google Docs (indispensable and always more to talk about whether the audience uses it or not), Prezi itself (because PowerPoint is evil and since they're seeing it in action, it's easy to show them how to use it), and some other little fun tools.  The part on Prezi led to other creative sharing sites like Animoto and Glogster.  We also talked about Youtube's new Education site.  There were a few more.

Then I made a quick and dirty website to share the links for those interested and...Wham!  I look like I know what I'm talking about, people seem happy, and I've already had three teachers in here asking me to show them some of this stuff in more detail for certain educational applications.  And not all of the visitors were even at this morning's presentation!

Whew!

You have any examples of working on the fly like that?  I'd love to hear how you handled it.

2012 Youth Media Awards: Dear Kidlitosphere...

Yes, I have the Youth Media Awards live stream up on my laptop in my office. http://www.webcastinc.com/client/ala-webcast/

Yes, I'm also following their Twitter stream @ALAyma

But no, I'm not going to post the list or pictures of the winning book covers.  For some reason everyone does that instead of just providing a link.  I don't know why this seems necessary to people.  If we're in the Kidlitoshpere we follow this stuff.  We're not looking to your blog for news.  We're looking to your blog for your reactions, your opinions, your commentary. Feel free to pull up a bean bag chair, grab a grape Nehi and let us know what you think.

Enjoy the day and enjoy the news.  Congrats to the winners.  I may have more to say about this later but right now, just remember, our job isn't about award stickers. It's about getting the right book to the right student.  That book, whether it be an international award winner, or the latest full-color offering on Monster Trucks, if it's the just right pick for that kid, then it's the best book of the year to me right then.

I look forward to reading your reactions to the news in...just about one hour now.