From this week’s Booking through Thursday:

Sometimes I find eccentric characters quirky and fun, other times I find them too unbelievable and annoying. What are some of the more outrageous characters you’ve read, and how do you feel about them?

For a brief moment I thought I’d skip this week’s BTT due to my notoriously bad memory for details; I was sure I wouldn’t be able to think of an answer. Then I realized it’s such a good question, and I had such a good answer for it, that even I could come up with something.

The two main characters in Bill James’s detective novels, Harpur and Iles, are… unbelievably quirky. And yet, I mean that in the best possible way. I’ve encountered them in two books so far: Wolves of Memory and Girls. They’re completely wacky, and yet so well-written that you just can’t rip your eyes away.

From one of my reviews:

Colin Harpur and Des Iles are two of the strangest detectives you’re likely to come across in your literary wanderings. They have a bizarre interdependent codependent relationship, and each of them has his insane quirks. Iles is a schizophrenic dandy who often scares people more than the criminals do. Harpur is a solid, methodical man who thinks very highly of Iles, despite having slept with his wife Sarah, a fact of which Iles is prone to reminding him—loudly—at the most inappropriate moments.

And the other characters in these books aren’t all that much more ‘normal’ than those two! They’re deliciously fun to read about, particularly since James has a knack for hysterical dialogue and interior monologues that can keep your attention for hours.

And speaking of reviews, today’s is of the EatingWell Healthy in a Hurry Cookbook. Yum!

So far the diabetic desserts cookbook is faring well in our testing, but the Shaker cookbook isn’t. The high-scoring cookbook streak had to end sometime, I guess!

Today’s review is of Margaret M. Wittenberg’s marvelous New Good Food. It’s a fantastic reference work for folks who want to know more about and make use of whole foods of all kinds.

Speaking of healthy cooking, it looks like I’ll be getting my next scan next Monday to see if my gallbladder has deteriorated enough to remove yet. Hopefully so. That won’t necessarily cure all ills, but it should at least get rid of that nagging soreness and the tendency to sometimes hurt when I laugh.

We’re finally going to get to grow some tomatoes in the garden this year, so I also finally picked up a tumbling composter. I LOVE getting to compost. There are just so many good things about it. Your waste produce and excess fallen leaves don’t go to waste as trash—instead they feed your bushes, your trees, your flowers, and most delightfully, your edible produce. You also don’t have to spend as much money on soil amendments and fertilizer if you’re making your own. It’s a long-term money-saver AND a waste reducer. Hard to beat that. I can’t wait until we’re picking home-grown tomatoes.

In homage to the well-dressed vampire we’ve managed to become enemies with in our D&D campaign:

I’M DEAD
I just wear it well

Yesterday was a D&D day. We visited friends in Virginia, brought rice pudding, ate yummy spaghetti (I think when you have kids with narrow tastes and you make lots of spaghetti, you must get awfully good at making great spaghetti), and played D&D all day.

You could tell a lot of folks had had a rough, long, or stressful week. People were unusually cranky. But rather than taking that out on their friends as I’ve seen so many people do, they let it out through their characters. Our characters yelled, pulled weapons on each other, and yes, I think we had to roll initiative several times when there was no one but the party members in the room. The group even got kicked out of a part member’s aunt’s home for a couple of days.

And then we adjourned for dinner and chatted happily around the dinner table. Or adjourned for the night and had hugs and “when are we getting together next?!” all around.

That’s when you know you have great friends—when you all can let your stresses out together through your hobbies and activities, and at the end of the night you all still love each other just as much as when you arrived in the morning.

Today’s Booking Through Thursday:

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

I can do you one better—one of my whole favorite authors, not just a single book. Many of the people I talk with about books have heard of most of my favorite authors, at least in passing: Anne Bishop, Garth Nix, Tobias Buckell. However, almost no one has heard of Thomas Ligotti. He has a very loyal cult following among a very small number of people because he writes extremely unusual, bizarre fiction. It’s absolutely captivating. I highly recommend his Noctuary, with Songs of a Dead Dreamer coming in a close second:

When all the landscape is dying, descending fragrantly to earth, we alone rise up. After light and warmth have passed from the world, when everyone stands melancholy at the graveside of nature, we alone return to keep them company. This is our season to be reborn.

I could also list Bettie Sharpe among my little-known faves, but that’s only because she’s just barely started publishing.

Edited to add: I went and found Ligotti’s website for folks interested in exploring his work.

And, a handful of links:

• Mercury in sushi—I mourn.
• Free Fall by Isaac Marion—weird and beautiful fiction.
• Loud Neighbors—another weird and fascinating Isaac Marion story.
• Best source for specialty cooking stuff EVER: King Arthur Flour Company.
• The most bizarre item we’ve ever sold through Cafepress, and I’ll tell you right now that we’ve sold more than one: Level 70 Hottie Thong. Yes, you read that right—thong.

I had about five or six things I was thinking of writing about today, but I’m drawing a near-blank. You’d think I hadn’t had my cup of coffee this morning yet. Okay, one at a time, let’s see how many I can remember:

Book reviews: Today’s review is of John Izzo’s The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. I know it sounds gimmicky, but it’s actually a very good book.

I have three cookbook reviews upcoming soon: a Betty Crocker whole grains cookbook from Wiley; an EatingWell Healthy in a Hurry cookbook; and a New England cookery cookbook. I’ve also gotten four new cookbooks for review; two are filled with decadent desserts; one involves coffee drinks & desserts; and one focuses on olives and olive oil. I’m nearly done reading Margaret Wittenberg’s New Good Food as well.

Sayonara, Rite Aid: Imagine for a moment that you’re getting a prescription filled. It’s a medication that you have to take three pills of every day. Your doctor deliberately gives you a scrip for the time-release version so you only have to take it once a day, all three pills at once, so, for example, you won’t forget to take it at lunch. It’s a psychoactive mood stabilizer prescribed for bipolar, so it’s something you can’t mess around with in terms of blood level. You get the prescription filled. Thankfully you’ve been taking the medication for a couple of years already, so when you open the bottle up a couple of days later you know damn well your pills shouldn’t be bright pink.

Turns out they gave you the non-time-release version—without changing your instructions to take it once a day.

Imagine what could have happened if you had never taken the drug before and didn’t know any better, if you’d actually taken all three pills at once. Spike in blood level, possible toxicity effects… at best, without a consistent blood level it certainly wouldn’t have kept your moods stable.

Yes, human error exists at pharmacies. They can miss the very large ‘XR’ that indicates extended release (a later check of the carbon copy proved it had been on there). But any halfway-awake pharmacist should have realized that the direction to take three pills in the morning, combined with that drug, could be bad.

I was willing to deal with the apathetic pharmacists and ridiculously long wait times at our local Rite Aid because it was so close to home. I’m not willing to deal with careless mistakes that could truly screw me up. I’m now a happy customer of a different pharmacy, which is an extra 15 minute drive away, but had noticeably awake pharmacists and techs, a much shorter wait, and much nicer facilities.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: I love the game’s economy system more than that in any other game I’ve ever played. However, in order to really go nuts with it, you pretty much need a society (guild-equivalent) to work together. Each player is allotted ten plots of land (essentially) per server that they can put into use. On each plot of land you can build some sort of structure, like a plantation (which allows you to combine stored hours of labor plus money to harvest, for example, beans, maize, wheat, or hemp), a grain mill, a textile mill, a weaponsmith, a tanner, a hunting lodge, etc. The devs deliberately made these things fine-grained enough that you need more than ten buildings to really make anything useful.

One of my complaints in games like Warcraft is that ultimately, crafting isn’t entirely useful. There’s an end-state characters reach where there just isn’t much more you can craft that’s useful. Pirates put that to shame—there’s so much to build that’s constantly useful. Ships, ship modifications, ammo, consumable repair kits, buffs, etc. (special gunpowder, hull patches, and so on). With a good society you could really go to town playing with the economy and the pvp mechanics.

Unfortunately, everyone I know has already invested years into their Warcraft characters. Putting all that stuff together in Pirates would take a lot of time that they just don’t have. Nearly all the gamers I play with are adults, with jobs, spouses, kids. They don’t have time to do that and Warcraft, and since we already have our WoW guild kitted out and having fun, with its level 70 characters, the odds of them pulling up roots and settling down in Pirates—no matter how good it is—are virtually nil.

So as much as I’d like to play Pirates and enjoy the game, for the moment I’m not buying it. Perhaps later, if we can convince even a couple of friends to go with us, we’ll do it. But for now, it looks like we’re sticking with Warcraft.

EVE Online: Eve, on the other hand, is easier to get a satisfying experience out of without that active a corp behind you—simply because there are no levels, and thus it’s incredibly open-ended. There’s no worry that you’ll hit the top level in two months and say, “now what?”

I got my first Myrmidon and lost it again almost immediately in my first level three mission. I know, that’s incredibly pathetic. I blame the fact that I hadn’t had my coffee yet, because it’s a convenient excuse. (Actually, had my reflexes been slightly better I wouldn’t have lost my Myrmidon—I hit warp just a fraction of a second too late.) I went back with my tail between my legs, refused to drop the mission, spent a few days replacing my Myrmidon, kitting it out better, and building up shield skills, and went back and succeeded at the mission. Phew.

Okay, I don’t know if that was all I meant to talk about today, but it’s certainly enough for now. I’ll leave you with a bumper sticker that beautifully reflects my political feelings:

I vote for people not parties

I almost forgot about today’s Booking Through Thursday!

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

I make up my own mind about the books I want to read, but I use information from reviews to aid me in doing so. I.e., I’m not going to avoid a book because someone else didn’t like it, or read it because someone else did, but I’ll look at the reasons why they liked or didn’t like it and use that to help me figure out whether I’m likely to enjoy it or not.

This is the same philosophy I use when writing reviews. I firmly believe my reviews should be just as useful to folks who don’t share my tastes and views as they are to those who do. I think someone should be able to look at my gushing review of a book I loved and get enough information out of it to know they probably wouldn’t like it, and vice versa. I’m sure I don’t always succeed at this, but I try anyways.

Speaking of which, today’s review is of Elizabeth Falkner’s Demolition Desserts!

Damnitall, I’m going to sound like a fangirl at this rate. Anyway, I’d intended to post a review of Demolition Desserts today. Instead, I got sucked into reading Bettie’s Like a Thief in the Night last night and just couldn’t stop. Now I can’t get it out of my head. She’s a little like Anne Bishop with her amazing and larger-than-life characters. She’s a little like Tim Powers with her ability to create her own mythologies. But really, the best compliment I can give her is that her voice is her own. She’s Bettie Sharpe, and even though she’s only published one free ebook and one for-pay ebook, that’s a very recognizable style and voice.

It isn’t often that I feel the need to gush over a writer’s ability, but twice in the last year I’ve been bowled over by an author’s debut of one sort or another. First time it was Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain, and now it’s Bettie Sharpe’s Ember. And in the case of Ember, I wasn’t even asked to review it—it was posted as a ten-part serial at Dionne Galace and now is up as a free ebook at Bettie’s site. I just loved it so much that I had to review it—not just so you can go read it, but in the hopes you’ll go check out Bettie’s first ebook, A Thief in the Night, released today (I’ve got my copy!). Both books are erotic romances, and they’re so far from formulaic. Ember is an incredibly fresh and unique take on the Cinderella story that totally tickled my fancy.

I also have to pass on one other odd fiction-link: I Am a Zombie Filled with Love by Isaac Marion. It’s poignant, insightful, and funny, all at the same time.

I was up late last night playing D&D, so I’m a bit dead on my feet today. One of the cats seems to be a bit sick, too, so cleaning up cat puke at 11:30 pm (yay, raw bunny vomit that apparently had been drying onto the hardwood all day while we were gone), 5:30 am, and 11:30 am didn’t help. I hope he feels better soon, poor thing.

There’s plenty for me to put up this week (including reviews of Demolition Desserts, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, Bettie Sharpe’s Ember (coming tomorrow!), and New England Cooking), but they won’t go up today. I’m also putting off playing Pirates until later, because the update seems to be wreaking a little havoc with my ability to play, and I don’t have the patience this afternoon to try again; maybe tonight or tomorrow.

So, I’m mostly posting to point you to a blog that you really should check out. It’s authored by our partner-in-crime Jervis, and called Thraveon.

What makes it worth reading? Well, Jervis has been all over the world, and somehow managed to have all sorts of insane experiences. Better yet, he’s a hysterically fun storyteller. If you want an example, check out the entry he calls ‘Airport Skiing’ and I call Bowling for Monks. Share it with your friends, leave comments… help us encourage Jervis to write more and more about his entertaining experiences.

I’m out of coffee! Somehow I missed the fact that I didn’t have any more in the cupboard. *sob* No coffee today.

Well, at least I got another review written: Greg Patent’s A Baker’s Odyssey. Excellent bread!

I think I’m going to save my review of Bettie Sharpe’s super-awesome Ember until the 15th, so I can link to her new book when it gets released. She’s an incredibly good new author, and I think incredibly good new authors deserve all the exposure they can get.

We’re still going strong with the recipes from the artisan baking book. We have a batch of pumpernickel dough in the fridge now that’ll yield fresh home-baked bread for the next handful of days. I noticed at Amazon that there was a baker who was very snippy about the whole notion of this different way of making bread. What made me shake my head, though, was that some of his complaints weren’t even particularly valid. He said the title’s ‘5 minutes a day’ was misleading because of things like rise time, but the book is extremely explicit about the fact that it’s referring to time during which you’re actually working with the recipe, not time during which you can be doing other things. He also said that because it’s a wet dough people would find it difficult to shape into anything other than a round boule loaf, yet I’ve found it just as easy to make dinner rolls and baguettes with it. I can’t help thinking this is either a bit of traditionalist bitterness (it’s different/easier so it can’t possibly be good), or a smidge of feeling threatened that folks might not need to pay $5-10 for a fancy loaf of bread at the bakery if they can make it themselves so easily. In particular I have to think this is the case because all of the other people who’ve used the book—myself included—have had delicious results with it. To which a feast of almost 20 people from last weekend can attest.