January 1, 2021
Today starts a new month, a new year, and a new blog post. None of these things will finish today, however. The process may change through some trial and error, but for this first post I will write about the walk on the day it took place and then add the book review(s) once they are finished.
I am learning about blogging as I go because I have never really read a blog before. My friend writes a blog and I read and edit his posts with our writing group, but that isn't the same as reading a blog for the reasons I imagine people usually read a blog. I do, however, have lots of experience scrolling through a blog to get to the recipe at the bottom. If that's you, too, I am happy to report that this blog post does have a recipe at the bottom. First, I have to write a bunch of shit and post several pictures for you to scroll past so here we go.
Duffy and I made the drive to Beaufort today since the office was closed and I had more time than usual on a Friday. All morning, my Insta feed and ESPN had been shoving the fact that it is a New Year down my throat. I'll spare you from my thoughts on new year resolutions and how my thoughts and actions about them have changed over the years. I know you don't give a fuck about that because I'm me and I barely care. But, I did start thinking about how our calendar came to be as I was backing the car out of the garage. A quick search in the podcast app pulled up Episode #252 of Daily Knowledge Podcast: How the Modern Calendar Came to Be which was a delightful 7 minutes of me saying out loud in the car to Duffy, "Oh wow! I didn't know that," about 16 times. Like, did you know that the Russians were 12 days late to the 1908 Olympics because they were still using the Julian calendar when most other countries had shifted to the Gregorian calendar which more accurately represents the solar year? Huh? Did you know that? Or did you just say out loud to no one, "Oh wow! I didn't know that!"?
Before we get on to the meat of the post, I thought I'd give a brief overview of Beaufort, NC since that is where 7 of the Little Free Libraries are located and we'll be there a lot. Beaufort is the fourth oldest town in North Carolina. Probably most famous for its association with Blackbeard/Edward Teach the pirate. It is a very walkable little town that sits on Taylor's Creek opposite Carrot Island where wild horses live. If you look closely, you can see one of the two wild horses I saw today, but neither of the pictures turned out well because I was too far away. Don't worry, they are out often and I'll get some better pictures on another walk.
The Walk
Where I walked: Beaufort, NC
Distance: 3.65 Miles
What I listened to: The Office Ladies Podcast Episode 49: Safety Training and part of Episode 50: Product Recall
What I saw: Lots of happy people. My fellow walkers are a fairly friendly group in general. Today everyone seemed to be in an extra good mood, over and above what fresh air and exercise generally does for the body and soul, which is nothing to sneeze at (unless its early fall here which really kills me for a reason I have yet to discover). No, this was something more. I'm assuming this was the product of all the 2021 rhetoric. That 2020 was the problem and that once it was 2021 it would all be better, magically and instantly. I'm getting off topic, let's return to the walk.
UPDATE FROM JANUARY 12, 2021: No one is in a good mood anymore.
I also saw: two discarded masks (very 2020), one pair of discarded gloves (very 2019), one set of child-sized footprints immortalized in cement, discarded poinsettias, and a SHRIMP BOAT (I love shrimp boats so much that I am the creator and sole user of #shrimpboatfangirl on Instagram).
Little Free Library
Lat: 34.71162 Long: -76.63902
Isn't she cute? Here's the blurb from the owners of this library from the Little Free Library website.
"This wonderful gift from my sister in law and brother and their family is a much appreciated gift and I hope it will benefit the many people who walk the waterfront street on which it is located. Reading is so important and one of those things people like to do on vacation at the beach. Our small 300 year old town is unique in its people, atmosphere and hospitality. We hope the library will be used and have already used some of the 4 bundles of children's books that came with it. Come by."
Below is a picture of the offerings of this library. A decent mix in this box: a best selling romance with a sad ending (I think, never read Me Before You and never will because the subject of that book is one of my anxiety triggers) that was turned into a movie recently, a collection of autobiographical essays by a sports writer - Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, An Army at Dawn which I saw the cover of and put back immediately (I will always judge a book by its cover and I will never feel bad about it, but check back some other time and I'm sure I'll contradict that very aggressive statement I just made) and then some mystery/action/spy type books that I think of as equal and opposite of romances in that they are written by men for men (although I do not mean that both sexes cannot write or enjoy reading both genres).
I stood here for long enough that the people in the house and probably their neighbors were likely getting uncomfortable with my presence in their yard. But it was a difficult decision to make. An difficult and highly important decision. I needed a book that was interesting enough to me that I was likely to finish it AND was something that would be interesting to review.
I ended up going with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I chose this book because I have heard of Raymond Chandler, but have never read any of his books. Also, I knew there was a movie called The Big Sleep and I thought it might be fun to watch the movie after reading the book. I read Dracula for the first time this past October and then watched the 1931 film staring Bela Lugosi as The Count and that was an absolute gem of a movie, the special effects reeeeeeeeeally held up over time (but honestly weren't much worse than the CGI in the Twilight series).
Update from January 12, 2021: I did end up renting the movie from Amazon for $2.99. The movie was made in 1946, is in black and white, and stars Humphrey Bogart. The movie was much better than the book, but more on that later.
I thought about hiding it, but I cannot lie to you, kind reader. I actually took home 2 books.
I mean, HOW could I leave The Amish Cookie Club behind? HOW? Ask yourself if you would have been strong enough to disappoint that face, dig deep and be honest. AND there are recipes in the back. So, as promised, I have included one of those recipes at the bottom of this post.
Book reviews
The Big Sleep
I want to tell you all the reasons I disliked this book - and I will - but first I'll say something nice. That's the way these things work, I think. The nicest thing I can say about this book is the nicest thing I can say about any mystery. I had not solved the case myself before the book ended. It is always such a fun experience to not see the end coming, such a thrill to be fooled. BUT, usually once you reach the end you can look back at all those little clues and wonder just how you didn't figure it out before. This book isn't quite like that. I can see how all the pieces fit together, but there was no way anyone could have known what had really happened before the very last chapter. In fact, the main character didn't know what really happened until the penultimate chapter and that was only by accident.
When I describe books I usually talk about what "level" they are good at. What I mean is that writers like Stephen King are good at the story level - their stories just suck you right in and you don't really care that the sentence structure is simple and that there aren't any ten-dollar words. Writers like Cormac McCarthy - there are no writers like Cormac McCarthy so I'll just say Cormac McCarthy- is great at the sentence level. You can read one of his sentences completely out of context and still find it moving and beautiful.
This book has a hard to follow story line. There were significant story lines and characters who didn't seem to have a direct impact on the actual case the book ended up being about. In the opening chapter, the private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by an old man to get rid of someone who is trying to collect gambling debts from one of his two daughters. That turns into a blackmail scheme and all the bad guys basically end up killing each other and that should have been the end but somehow it wasn't (but I cannot stress this enough, it should have been). So that's why the ending was hard to see coming. It was almost like it was two books in one.
On the sentence level, Raymond Chandler just tried way too hard. Sometimes they were good ("Bubbles rose in her glass like false hopes") and sometimes they were cringey ("You’re the second guy I’ve met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail."). I've included some more of my favorites below.
I made a left turn and a lot of enemies.
It was a nice neighborhood to have bad habits.
I went to bed full of whiskey and frustration.
One of the things that makes a book likable is how likable, or if not likable at least relatable, the main character is. Philip Marlowe was neither of those things to me. Marlowe is supposed to be a wise-cracking-tough-guy-lady-killer-man's-man and he was probably all those things to a male reader in 1939. But to a woman in 2021, he comes off as a straight-up asshole.
That's a clip from the movie with a direct quote from the book. He cannot seem to speak to a woman in a way that isn't degrading, but, of course, the women in the book just eat up all that heman woman hater schtick.
"Hold me close, you beast".
And hold her, he does. In fact, he kisses 3 out of the 4 women who are mentioned in the book. And of those 4 he physically assaults 2 - slaps one and pistol whips another.
Have you ever seen that SNL skit Sexual Harassment and You where Tom Brady as Hot Guy can say or do whatever he wants to his female coworkers but Fred Armisen as Geeky Guy can't even look at a woman without getting HR called on him? Cause if you have you don't really need me to tell you anything else about this character.
The book does end in a surprising way and all the disjointed story lines finally, finally, finally come together. I almost want to read it again now that I know the ending because I think I will be better able to appreciate the intricacies of the story, but my eye muscles are still very sore from all the eye rolling I did so I doubt I will read anything by Raymond Chandler anytime soon.
Would I recommend this book to you? Yes, if you just can't seem to get over that guy who can't get over himself.
I know what you're thinking. There are two types of people who like Amish romances: fifteen year old girls whose entire life revolves around her church youth group taking trips to Chik-fil-a and grandmothers who drink herbal tea while crocheting in their bath robes.
I am here to disillusion you of that stereotype. I liked this book and I am neither a fifteen year old girl nor a grandmother.
So what if I drink herbal tea while crocheting in my bath robe? Doesn't count because I'm not a grandmother. But maybe I liked this book because for a very brief moment in high school I had a real-life Amish romance of my very own.
His name was Josh (probably?) and he was a Marine (definitely). I tell this story all the time because it I find it hilarious and thinking about that time in my life makes me cringe in a fun way (instead of other high school and college memories which make me cringe in a way that makes me wonder how I ever show my face in public). Every time I tell it, I always get stopped right after the first sentence. "Wait," they'll say with skepticism dripping from their lips, "how could he have been Amish AND a Marine?" And you know, that's a great question and I don't pretend to know the beliefs of the Amish in general or their family's beliefs in particular, but I do know that his father was also a Marine.
Anyway, either believe me or not but let me finish the story. So Josh (damn, I think that was his name but I'm realizing that was 15 years ago and how is that possible) lived in Georgia with his family and I lived in Tennessee with mine. His family was somehow connected to the Taylors who attended our church, either they were related or just family friends I don't recall. So his family would drive up in their cars (I swear they were Amish) a couple of times a year and come to church with the Taylors. His mother and sister wore the traditional plain colored dresses with white aprons and kapps. Josh and his father wore button-up, long-sleeved shirts with suspenders. Josh's dad had the long beard of a married man but Josh was always clean shaven.
I have to tell you that I was absolutely OBSESSED with this boy. I mean, as obsessed as you can be with someone you see a few times a year and then never think about when they aren't immediately in your line of sight. But when he was there, I was obsessed. My immediate family usually sat in the 2nd row but when Josh was there I sat with my Aunt Alice who sat in the back of the church so I could stare at the back of his buzzed head.
We literally never spoke to each other over the years, but I knew we were both aware of the other one. There were some extremely heated looks between us in the fellowship hall of Fairview Baptist Church. Much like the following, an excerpt from the book, one quick look and I forgot that I was surrounded by tables full of people loudly chewing fried chicken and banana pudding in a church basement - it was just me and him.
"He reached out to take the hoe and, when he did, his hand brushed against her fingers. For the briefest of moments, Myrna met his gaze, and it felt as if the rest of the world evaporated."
If a very sexy exchange of garden implements doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what will.
I did speak to his father every time they visited. We had a couple of inside jokes, one being that he refused to tell me his first name and I'd always needle him, throwing out the most ridiculous names I could think of. I thought it was a sign of respect in their culture that he refused to tell an unrelated girl his first name, but Josh later told me he just really hated his first name.
Josh was a few years older than me and I learned that he had joined the Marines when his parents and sister showed up one Sunday without him. Can you imagine my devastation? If you've never been a 15-17 year old girl with a ridiculous crush on a boy you've never seen outside of a church building and never actually spoken to, then you have no idea the depth of pain I felt.
But later that day, I had cause for real joy. Unspeakable joy. All those looks had been just as meaningful to him as they had been to me! I knew it all along! His parents had asked my parents if Josh could write to me while he was overseas. My mom asked me if I wanted to and of course I said yes. I gave his parents my mailing address and my email address and the courting began.
We tried writing both paper letters and emails, but both were fraught with difficulties and we probably communicated less than 20 times back and forth while he was gone. The paper letters were obviously slow because he was in the middle of the ocean and in Israel. He actually told me that one of the mail boats sank, but I'm not sure that actually happened. Emailing was also difficult. He was only allowed to be on the computer for a limited amount of time. This was back in 2006 or so and the only internet access I had was at the school library. I would have to get to school early to use the computer and write to him. I felt exactly like Meg Ryan every time I logged into my account. The only thing I remember from his letters is that he told me they actually had to peel potatoes for the entire ship when they were on kitchen duty.
Anyway, he came home and we went to eat Mexican food. For some reason, sitting across the booth at Las Fuentes was not as sexy as sitting down the table from him in the basement of my church. He took me home that night and we hugged. He texted me later that he wished he would have kissed me. The next day I went to the Taylor's house with him and we looked at his pictures from Israel. He did not kiss me that day either and then I never saw him again.
Great story, right? Riveting stuff, but now on to the review.
This book has a good story, but you have to like this type of story. This type of story being a quaint, G-rated romance with a happily ever after. It was not necessarily good at the sentence level. I was a little worried when the author used the word teasing 3 times on the first page. This happened throughout the book. She would use the same words or phrases so often that I thought I had lost my place and was rereading an earlier passage. That kind of thing can really take you out of even the best stories so I wish she had used the Thesaurus a bit more.
The title of the book is The Amish Cookie Club because it involves a group of 4 older Amish women who meet twice a month to make cookies and complain about their kinner (children). The book centers around one daughter in particular, Myrna, and subsequent books in the series tackle the other women's troubled children (they are "troubled" as far as I can tell because they aren't married).
At first, Myrna is not a likable character because we see her through the eyes of the older women before we get her perspective. Most romance novels are written solely from the perspective of the main characters (mostly the woman, but sometimes it switches from the woman to the man by chapter). That makes the reader very sympathetic to the MCs, even if they have some undesirable traits. In this book, we learn that Myrna is an outspoken and harsh young woman who cannot keep a job and cannot land an Amish husband due to her, and this is an actual quote from the book, "spirited nature". In the first chapter we learn that she was fired from her most recent job because she refused to sell junk food to an overweight man.... Yeah, hard to like someone like that. Over the course of the book she has a very satisfactory character arc.
The meddling women decide to find her a job as a caregiver to soften her up a bit and to get her away from working with the general public (which if you have ever been in customer service in any way you know is its own kind of hell unless you are a very specific type of person). One of the things that I did not like about this book is that it isn't a dedicated romance novel. There are just as many chapters from the perspective of the meddling women as their are from the hero and heroine. That makes for a well-rounded story, but if you are a in it for the romance it can make the other chapters a drag and difficult not to just skip over.
The perfect position soon arises when it is found that a widower in a neighboring district has 4 young children and no help. Ezekiel - WHY are all Amish men in fiction named Ezekiel - was married to a woman who passed away from breast cancer. Myrna and her mother visit Ezekiel's home and the job duties, hours, and pay are quickly agreed upon.
According to this book, the Amish culture is such that widowers often remarry quickly for both practical reasons (needing help in running the house/farm/business) and for religious reasons (to be gone from this world is to be present with the Lord and that is nothing to mourn). Myrna is worried that she is being pushed into this arrangement as a replacement wife, but Ezekiel makes a point to tell her at the beginning of their arrangement that he will not be following this custom and has no interest in marrying again.
It almost goes without saying that Myrna and Ezekiel "Call me Zeke" develop feelings for each other, but are kept apart by a misunderstanding. A lot of romances are very frustrating because the misunderstanding is too simplistic or too far-fetched that adults would let things get that far without just talking a situation out. This one was actually a very believable situation. The misunderstanding is how they feel about modern medicine. Zeke's first wife died of breast cancer for which she never received any treatment. The Amish grapevine has it that Zeke is such a conservative that he denounces all modern medicine and instead relies on the divine will of God. Over the course of the book, two of Zeke's four children become ill and both Zeke and Myrna treat the children behind the other's back. The misunderstanding eventually gets cleared up at the end and the couple declare their sincere love for each other.
Zeke and Myrna are married and two days later, on the last page of the book, they do what Josh and I never did - share a kiss.
Would I recommend this book to you? Yes, if heated stares from a distance are your thing.
As promised, the post ends with a recipe!
Myrna's Sugar Cookies
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1 teaspoon
1. Mix together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder and set the mixture aside.
2. Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.
3. Beat in egg and vanilla to the creamed sugar and butter mixture.
4. Mix in the dry ingredients.
5. Roll teaspoons of dough into small one-inch round balls.
6. Spread out the dough balls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
7. Bake 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 375 degrees.
8. Let stand on cookie sheet for a few minutes before removing them to cool on wire racks.
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