I spent a good 2/3 of last night reading a book called "Teany Book" by musician Moby and his ex-girlfriend Kelly Tisdale. Seems the two of them opened a tea house on the lower East Side of New York City called "Teany" not only because the space was small, but also because Moby and his friend consider themselves small persons. I've not had the opportunity to listen to Moby's music, but I did see him on a Sci-Fi Channel commercial in which he played music with the space ship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and thought it was pretty funny.
And I dearly love tea. I've been a tea fan since age 2, when my mother, an inveterate tea drinker, sat right down with me and my dolls and stuffed animals and had a 'real' tea party with real tea! I've tried coffee at various times in my life, and other than coffee soy ice cream, I just don't like the stuff, and it doesn't like my colon one iota. But what's wonderful about this book isn't just the information on various teas and herbal tisanes, it's the humor layered throughout the book, the funny cartoons Moby draws and the fabulous, and I mean scrumptious sounding vegan recipes, taken from their menu at Teany. Because I'm not able to eat any eggs or dairy products, the vegan items are perfect, as they eschew any animal products at all. That means I only have to take out the nuts, onions and strawberries that I am allergic to, and I am all set! There are some things, like key lime mini-pies and chocolate tea cakes that I am dying to make. There's a recipe for green tea chocolate pudding that sounds like heaven, too, but then, all the recipes sound wonderful. It's an intimate, warm and funny book, and I highly recommend it.
The Seattle Times has a Pacific Northwest Magazine insert, tab sized, that usually just publishes boring home and garden articles. However, twice a year, they publish lists of books that are coming out, and this years spring book list had some very promising items on it that I feel compelled to record here, lest I forget the titles when I'm next in a bookstore or at a garage sale.The blurb before the listing says these are "101 most anticipated books of spring"and since this is officially the first day of spring, here are the ones I am anticipating, in no particular order.
1) The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
2) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
3) Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
4) The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
5) The Writing on the Wall by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
6) Everything She Thought She Wanted by Elizabeth Buchan
7) The Sign of the Book by John Dunning
8) The Breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard
9) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
10) Writing With Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005 by Margaret Atwood
11) Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
12) The Genius Factory: The Secret History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz. This book delineates the outcome for more than 200 children fathered by "genius" sperm. Fascinating.
I just got a copy of "The Fair Folk" edited by Marvin Kaye in the mail from the Science Fiction Book Club, and I am looking forward to reading it, as some of my favorite authors have stories in it, from Patricia McKillip to Jane Yolen and Tanith Lee. And speaking of Tanith Lee, she has, according to my very well connected friend, Renee Stern, written a sequel to "The Silver Metal Lover" which was one of my very favorite books of the early 1980s. That and "Electric Forest" are both about women dealing with body issues and as I've had to deal with body issues all of my life, these books spoke to me in a very intimate way.
Now I am left wondering if Magda Cled will make another appearance in a sequel to "Electric Forest"?
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