I was hoping to review The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gluten-Free Eating today, but it looks like my tomato plants are about to be delivered and I’m not ready for them. Eeeek! So I think I’m going to get into gardening gear and go do some digging. I’d like to say it’ll be up tomorrow, and it very well might be, but tomorrow afternoon is my endoscopy so I’m not sure what all I’ll get done. I apologize in advance for the slow pace of reviews (and everything else) this week. Hopefully I’ll make up for it on Thursday and Friday!

Edited to add: *groan* Apparently the former owner of the house buried landscaping fabric all around the roses I’m trying to dig up. It’s under a couple inches of soil, and it’s thick enough to be a real impediment to digging things up without being thick enough to stop some tough things from growing up through it. I spent a while loosening up soil around the plants, but I’m going to have to appeal to that husband of mine to do some digging.

Many of the friends we’ve made in the last couple of years are in the SCA: the Society for Creative Anachronism, and have been for decades (literally). They aren’t as active as they used to be, but they definitely still participate. We visit a friend’s house for fighter practice in Virginia nearly every weekend (at least, on those weekends that we don’t go to the same house for D&D).

Anyway, I’m still pretty new at the photography thing, but I did take a few photographs to share. The guy in the plain white tabard is my husband; he’s borrowing a shield at the moment, so that isn’t his device. The knight in green and gold is Jervis, who comes up with so many of the slogans on those T-shirts we love to make. The fellow in red-and-tan (not in armor) is Cian (his SCA name), another friend. And I couldn’t resist including a photo of the pouring rain we encountered on the ride down—it was so bad we kept passing car wreck after car wreck. Here’s hoping all those folks got out alive.

Anyway, here’s a slide show of those photos:

I also included a slide show in today’s book review, the first of our cookbook reviews with images of some of the foods we made: Erik Sherman’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pizza & Panini. Also, last week I reviewed Julie Leto’s Phantom Pleasures.

Well, I suppose we should be grateful that whoever-it-was just ran up a $1600 phone bill in my husband’s name. Or I suppose, that’s all we’ve found out about so far. It apparently happened 2-3 years ago, and we’re just now getting the collection notice. Fingers crossed that we can get all this worked out easily. Police reports and all that will be involved. Urgh.

Oh come on, you just knew it couldn’t last. I have a camera. I have cats. Of course this would eventually mean cat photos. If you’re insane enough to want to view lots of ‘em (well okay, I’ve been trying to exercise some minor bit of restraint) you’ll find more at my flickr album, errant cats. Yes, I use my flickr account strictly for my cat photos. I realize that’s silly and I don’t care.

I’ll at least try to stick to only one or two photos posted directly here, so if you don’t care about a ton of cat photos you won’t have to run screaming. Deal? Good.

Now I just have to upload my latest homemade pizza photos to my photobucket account before I finish with that book and review it…

Oh, speaking of cat photos, go look at this post at B&b ex libris for a hysterically unusual tale of cat love and an adorable cat photo.

And now, Cahlash and Selene:

Sometimes I latch the screen door and leave the door open; they love to roll around in the sun in the doorway. They’re remarkably kitten-like given that they’re nearly 7 years old!

Since I had to order a case for my camera anyway, I ordered Elizabeth Vaughan’s ‘Warlord’ trilogy, using the excuse that it would bring me over the limit for free shipping. (It just leapt into my cart, I swear!) It got shipped in two parts, and although the first package that arrived listed the first two books of the series on the invoice, instead I received one of the books and… a classical music CD I’ve never even heard of before. That was odd. Luckily Amazon has a very easy return process, although they had no option to select for ‘you sent me the wrong item’.

Anyway, speaking of fiction, today’s review is of Lynn Viehl’s upcoming Twilight Fall. Enjoy!

I will spare you. I will not do the ‘omg I just got a new camera and have to illustrate EVERYTHING’ thing of taking a picture of the mountain of tissues next to me. And I was only tempted to do so for a fraction of a second, I promise. I was up at 3 am this morning because lying down made me feel like I was drowning. So, here’s the slightly punchy result: a 3 am review of Lynn Kurland’s With Every Breath. (Is it just me, or is there something ironic about that title under the circumstances? Maybe I should call it ‘With Every (Gurgling) Breath.”)

What is it with the apparent popularity of Scottish Highlands time travel romances? And how many of them are out there? Is this a micro-genre? Mini-genre? Or has it gotten to full-blown sub-genre status? And if so, why? I mean, yeah, it’s fun, but wow is that a specific set of constraints for a group of books!

So, that review there is the reason why that book doesn’t make an appearance in my latest photo of my review book stack. And Lynn Viehl’s Twilight Fall isn’t in it because I’m reading it today. The hysterical thing is that it’s only two days since I took that last photo and I already feel compelled to update it.

By the way, I’ve now updated the designs in the entire MMO category of Gamers’ Heaven (well, those that I planned to update). Take a look, and more will come!

I finally did it. Now that I have a camera, I photographed my review book pile. It’s actually got one book in it that technically isn’t a review book (it was a contest win), and it’s missing one cookbook that I didn’t see an easy way of adding to the stack, as well as today’s review book: Weltman & Katt’s Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business. Now it’ll be easier to see if I can beat the pace of books—or if they beat me.

It’s funny; it used to be that things overwhelmed me very easily. This challenge, however, just motivates and excites me. I think that’s partially because (mentally speaking) things have been getting a whole lot better of late. You know things are going well, after all, when you and the therapist you’ve been seeing for your PTSD agree that you don’t need to set up a ‘next’ appointment—you’ll just call her if and when you have any problems. I think it’s also because I finally realized some months ago that reading & reviewing books is what I love doing. I don’t know why; it just is.

So here’s that photo:

Last week I reviewed Elizabeth Vaughan’s Dagger-Star, a fantasy-romance. The lead character, Red Gloves, is a female mercenary, and her love interest is basically a farmer. I enjoyed the book on a great number of levels: it possessed wit and humor; the characters had depth and dimension; the plot executed some unusual twists on the typical fantasy prophecy plot.

I also loved the somewhat unusual Alpha female to Beta male relationship.

This morning I read through the Amazon reviews, which were all over the map. Coming on the heels of skimming a discussion in a popular blog last week about men vs. women in which it quickly became obvious that some very outdated views of women still hold sway when folks think they’re talking anonymously, it left me with a few thoughts I had to put onto virtual paper.

First, a simple correction of perception. One of the opinions I saw on the book railed about the fact that Red enjoys and engages in one-night stands, and is casually sexual. To engage in a mild spoiler about her background, she was abused as a child. The reviewer thought it ridiculous that after such trauma, Red would be willing to sleep with a man at all, much less so casually. In truth, it’s not unusual for people who’ve been molested to become ‘hyper-sexual’ instead of the opposite—either can happen. From my knowledge of the subject (I’ve known multiple people from that situation and I was working on a psych degree from Harvard before we left Massachusetts, in addition to my own subsequent readings and research), I’d say the depiction was entirely believable.

Next, another reviewer said the book read as though the author had simply made her female character into a male and vice versa. I didn’t get that impression, although I can see how one might come to that conclusion. This makes the assumption that certain traits are exclusively female or male. If you have any kind of in-depth experience with the wide array of people out there in the world, I can’t see how you could seriously believe this, but as that blog discussion I mentioned proved, there are still plenty of people who do. While I’ll agree that there are traits that are more commonly female or male (or at least stereotypically female or male), I believe that’s a different issue that doesn’t preclude the depiction of, say, a strong, martial-minded female lead.

As an example of what I mean, one reviewer said that women simply don’t engage in emotionless sex—that this is strictly a male trait. I had to re-read that several times to be sure I was reading it correctly, because I was amazed someone could think that. It may be more common for men to do so, but it’s hardly an act that’s exclusive to them.

Finally, there are ways to make a character recognizably female or feminine without her having to wear pink or lace, cry at every opportunity, or get tied up in emotional knots at the drop of a hat. To my mind, Elizabeth Vaughan accomplishes this. Perhaps those who equate femininity with pink, lace, crying, etc. didn’t see it, but it seemed quite clear to me. Red had her softer side; it just wasn’t a stereotypically feminine thing, and to my mind that’s great. Many of the ways in which she was feminine or noticeably female were a part of her strong, Alpha personality, not in conflict with it. That’s only a problem if you think that females inherently can’t be strong, can’t be leaders, etc.

But then, I remember seeing a comment in that blog discussion that stated outright that men were suited to be leaders and women weren’t, so perhaps that’s what’s at issue. I wouldn’t have thought Dagger-Star to be so far ahead of its time in terms of gender depictions, but it seems that I was wrong. I hate it when I get a hard reminder that at the end of the day, a lot of men—and yes, some women—still believe all that crap about women being weaker, more foolish, unable to lead, etc.

The funny part is, romance novels often get accused of setting us back in this department, of perpetuating harmful stereotypes of weak women who need to be rescued by men. Instead, enough of today’s romances are being written by independent, strong-willed women that the opposite is coming to pass—many romance novels are now ahead of society in terms of promoting a strong, independent female image.

Special comment note: Look, the argument over men vs. women is already going on over at that other blog. If that’s what you want to talk about, go do it over there. If you want to talk about gender depictions in these kinds of books, great—as long as it stays reasonably calm and on-topic. I have neither the time nor the tolerance for yelling and name-calling, so if it happens, I’ll delete the comments and, if necessary, close comments on the post. (Go ahead, call it censoring—I don’t care.) I’m hoping my readership is small enough—and enough made up of all those cool, thoughtful book-bloggers instead of ye general internet audience—that I won’t have to worry about it.

On a separate note, I give maybe 50-50 odds on posting a review today. I think I’ve caught my husband’s cold, so I’m not getting so much done.

I have a camera. Yes, yes I do. I have my first ever digital camera. Yeah, I’m behind the times, so sue me.

One of the things I want to do with it is include photos in the cookbook reviews to make them more interesting—this way you can see for yourself how the recipes came out.

(I expect this could be particularly interesting when things go… wrong.)

Anyway, while it’s true that I’ll end up taking way more images of the cats than any person should, here’s a taste of other things to come. And yes, this was tonight’s dinner:

Not familiar with the concept of honor killings? Familiar with them but don’t know much about them or how you of all people might do something about it? Read this post by Azteclady over at Karen Knows Best; read Joss Whedon’s original 2007 post; and then pick up a copy of the book, Nothing But Red to help raise awareness and money for the cause. Heck, buy one for a friend, or a local library.

And please, do read Whedon’s post. I have nothing to add because he already said it all, far better than I could have.

The one thing that all ‘experts’ on health and eating (whether they’re doctors, nutritionists, or just proponents of the latest fad) seem to agree on is this: colorful, non-starchy veggies are healthy. They go back and forth on everything else, but not that. Of course, most of that back-and-forth could be accounted for if people just used a little common sense—everything in moderation, and the farther removed it is from the kind of diet we were designed for and eating over the last few thousand years, the more you should exercise that moderation. Seems to make sense to me, anyway.

So, yeah: vegetables. Whole grains. Good water. Fruits, whole, not juiced, so they have fiber to slow the blood-sugar spike.

I can’t entirely give up meat and it’s one of those things the ‘experts’ go back and forth on. However, I do recognize that it is a lot harder on the environment than eating a similar amount of vegetables (it takes so much more in the way of resources to produce that meat), and vegetables are better to eat in bulk. So over time I’ve gradually slid into a semi-vegetarian diet. Usually we get a freezer pack of meats from our butcher, which we know are good quality, then once a week or so we take a package out of the freezer, thaw it, and make something with it. Occasionally we have a little deli meat as well, although we’re trying to avoid the ones with preservatives these days where possible. We got some natural turkey breast at the Whole Foods market last weekend, and I was really surprised to discover how much more flavor it had than the stuff from the grocery store. We used one slice at a time in whole wheat wraps with plenty of veggies, so it served as a satisfying bit of flavor.

Although I’m not a vegetarian, I do use vegetarian cookbooks, because they’re a wonderful source of delicious and nutritious vegetable recipes. I particularly enjoyed reviewing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, Third Edition, which contained a whole lot of fascinating information on nutrition and the like.

I also got a kick out of Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers, the chef who cooked for Google. It’s got some amazing natural foods recipes in it, including a smoothie recipe that knocked my socks clean off.

Lately I have a new morning routine. While the cats eat their breakfast (which takes a good 10-20 minutes since they eat a raw diet), I leave my meusli to soak. It’s a slight variation on a fantastic recipe from the CIG vegetarian book; I just use dried cranberries instead of raisins (I like the tartness) and plain kefir instead of yogurt (I like the consistency), and I add a squeeze of agave nectar. I do my stretching from Stretching Illustrated or some yoga. I have my meusli, which fills me up better than oatmeal, cereal, eggs, or anything else I’ve tried, and I have some V8. (Yeah, it’s got a lot of sodium, but it’s a start, and it’s better than hot chocolate or OJ.)

I should be better about having veggies for lunch, but I’m lame and often have kefir with agave, more meusli, or leftovers. Sometimes we make a bean salad or something similar ahead of time for our lunches (it’s easy for my husband to pack in a cooler), in which case I might have that. Then there’s dinner, which could be just about anything, but these days is likely to be heavy on whatever produce looks good.

I won’t claim I’m suddenly losing a ton of weight or anything. I still need to get more exercise than I do, as well as eat less (I’m a compulsive over-eater with a wicked sweet tooth). My medications also don’t help—when I got switched from one ADD medication to another a couple of years ago, I suddenly gained more weight than I care to think about, and I have to fight just to keep from gaining more. But at least I have more energy when I eat well, and I know by eating less processed foods and less sugar I’m reducing the chance I’ll develop type II diabetes (which does run in the family) or other, related problems.

Then there are articles like the one that discusses a possible link between chemicals in body products and breast cancer tumors. Chemicals are being found in people’s bodies that probably got there through things they apply to their skin, hair, etc., and those products don’t have to abide by the same strict safety guidelines that foods do. You can’t avoid exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, but you can at least reduce it. I use all natural products when possible (it’s a little tough for me because I’m allergic to aloe, which is in almost everything), buy organic when I can afford it, and don’t use most cosmetics.

I never thought of myself as a health nut, but as I hit my mid-30s I’m kind of becoming one. Maybe I’ve just been made more aware of my health by recent changes in it (like the pains that seemed to be gallbladder problems, but might be ulcers instead). Maybe I’ve just started noticing the quality of life that some of my older friends enjoy, and others don’t, and I’m making some decisions about what I want to be capable of in another ten, twenty, or even forty years.

At any rate, it’s the sort of thing you have to think about sometime, and act on eventually. Otherwise you run out of time.

Today’s book review is of Elizabeth Vaughan’s amazing fantasy-romance Dagger-Star.