alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

Super fascinating bio of the novelist Alexandre Dumas's father. He was an outstanding figure--born to an enslaved woman, his white father took him to Paris to receive a gentleman's education. He joined the military just before the French Revolution and quickly rose through the ranks to become a top general, leading military excursions alongside Napoleon in Italy and Egypt.

I was really surprised by the details of race relations at the time of the French revolution. For a short time, French patriots took the call to liberty and fraternity seriously and led the charge towards abolition. (When solicited to join this movement, George Washington of course declined.) But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor, all progress was lost: he imposed strict apartheid laws within France, stripped educated and decorated Black soldiers of their military ranks, and reinstated slavery across the colonies. Dumas, a titled 4-star general, was no longer allowed to live in his Parisian home and his widow was denied her pension.

I read this book as a read-along, and that added a lot of fun. Several people shared maps, illustrations, and other tidbits of information, so it was like an annotated version of the book :)

I learned a lot about the physical nature of the internet. I had never thought too much about it before, how it worked was kind of a foggy mystery. So, now I know.

I read this for the group Catching Up on Classics (July 2021 short story). I've never been a fan of Victorian moral lessons, but this poem was surprisingly enticing and unexpected. Plus, I learned the names of some fruits that I didn't know about: quince, greengage, and damson.

This is the real deal. It is so rich and there are many, many beautiful recipes from specific countries and traditions. Don't forget that the Islamic world reaches far beyond the MENA region: Zanzibar, Indonesia, Nigeria, and others are also represented.

What I love about this is that most of these cuisines are from warm countries, so I don't have to try to source cold climate foods like brussels sprouts, kale, walnuts, and cranberries in Brazil (: I'm very excited to dig deeper into this cookbook aaand I might buy it??

Intermediate-level asian fusion for the at-home chef (easy enough if you can source the ingredients). I learned a couple things while using this cookbook.

First, how to make those "styrofoam" noodles that sometimes garnish random dishes (deep fried vermicelli—the original calls for rice but I used bean thread, either way it's a messy ordeal that I immediately regretted).

Second, I like American Chinese food, Panda Express and its yuppie cousin PF Chang's as much as the next person, and you can think of these recipes as like the bistro version in that same vein. But if given the choice between gong bao ji ding and kung pow chicken, I'd take the former. This was an epiphany for me.

So many things have become automated since the Industrial Revolution, and it seems like we've been reading headlines that are variations on "The machines will take our jobs!" for at least a hundred years. But it also seems that around the same percentage of people are employed as have always been (or at least in living memory, as Graeber explains... Q. What was the unemployment rate in Ancient China/Rome/etc? A. Zero). So then, what are all these people doing all day if machines have taken over so many functions? Graeber's answer: complete BS. And according to surveys carried out in a variety of developed countries, about 35% of employed people agree with him.

Though the government is often accused of being bureaucratic and bloated, middle management "paper pushers" have expanded in all private industries and particularly in finance, healthcare, insurance, and academia. Graeber explains the sociology and politics behind why this is and why the lean, mean capitalist machine doesn't clean up this problem on its own.

Besides being absolutely fascinating, it is refreshing to read a voice that so crisply cuts through the BS put out by spin doctors, politicians, and your average twitter pundit (wink, nudge: Graeber was himself a very active twitter user, and public outpourings of grief after his death last year completely took over my timeline—our western generation truly lost a voice of sanity.) I highly recommend this book.

This is a great starting point for the most common questions people have about American Black culture and things we see in the media. "Why is X offensive?" or "Why do Black people...?" often earns the questioner a virtual slap on social media, but here Acho answers all of these things in an honest, warm, conversational tone (he reads the audio btw). Each chapter has follow up questions and references for further reading and steps to take. If I ever get the chance to do a book exchange with someone in another political camp (like: "what do you most want me to understand about what's important to you"), I'll probably choose this one.

Yes, this is exactly like swimming. The isolation, the pain, the drifting, the weightlesness, the hunger, the cold, the numbing repetition. Really makes you wonder what is enjoyable about the sport, and it seems the author herself never quite reaches a conclusion: perhaps the tight control and discipline, the familiarity, the sensation of feeling your body leave its regular physical constrictions.

I really enjoyed the thoughtful overlap of visual arts and swimming. I wish I could experience both of those things right now.

Interesting to pair this book with Bravey by Alexi Pappas. Both talk about the reality of pain in sport, something I wish I had learned to confront and deal with better when I was in high school. I don't remember my coaches talking about dealing with the psychological aspect of pain--funny since it completely consumes the majority of every single practice and the hours leading up to practice. I think my performance would have improved if I had figured out a better pain game plan. Both books also talk about athletes keeping up outward appearances even when you know they are hurting, all stoicism and tight lips. Maybe running and swimming attract the sort of personalities that logic away the complaints, "Quitting is not an option and complaining is a waste of energy." Ha. Maybe coaches carry that mentality too, and that's why no one ever really talked about it.

This was disappointing, since I usually find Sam Sifton's no-recipe recipe column to be playful and expressive. On the whole, the recipes here are meant for pulling together a quick weeknight meal using whatever you can scrounge up from the pantry and the back of the fridge. I appreciate this concept.

There are some are truly good ideas: a light fish chowder, or beef curry, for example. Others, not so much: peanut butter sriracha pickle sandwiches. Or how about "black bean tacos" featuring canned beans, shredded cheddar, lettuce, onion, and radish—do you really need a book to help you think of that? Incredibly, there is a separate recipe for "cafeteria tacos" and one for rice & beans served with tortillas in other sections of the book. I found a few sets of recipes like that: a variation of just 2 ingredients can surely be added as a note to the original recipe? Cowboy ragu & sloppy joes. Fried rice & kimchi ketchup fried rice.

A couple entries had me scratching my head: ravioli with duck liver mousse sauce (luckily I *always* keep a jar of duck liver mousse in the pantry), or curry with ground goat meat. I have literally never seen ground goat for sale in my life and I know where to buy pig feet and oxtail. Obviously you can sub with any other kind of ground meat, but I hope you see how bizarre it is to pitch this idea to an audience who presumably lives on canned beans and ramen noodles (yes, one recipe includes instant ramen and "fridge stuff").

Anyways, I do like many of Sifton's other cookbooks, but I will certainly give this one a pass.

1. Congratulations to Shalane Flanagan for her TCS NYC Marathon win!! I am so impressed by her life and I was excited to watch the final 20 minutes of her race.

2. Yes, I do read cookbooks, front to back. Call me a nerd, but I am a good cook.

3. I personally wouldn't use this cookbook and I am very disappointed about that. I did take note of a couple of the drink and salad dressing recipes (I've been focusing on teaching myself to make good dressings this year) to try but that is it.

Why wouldn't I use this cookbook?
1. I have a grain allergy -- no gluten, no oats. Although recipes are tagged as vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, etc., if something bready didn't have wheat, it usually had oats. Nearly the entire breakfast section of the book is useless to me.

2. Many of the ingredients are inaccessible to me. North American foods like kale, maple syrup, bison meat and hazelnuts are impossible to find on a normal supermarket trip. One time I did see bottle of maple syrup at a convenience store (!?) and it cost what I would normally spend on groceries for the entire week. Besides that, a lot of the ingredients are just plain expensive, like way out of my budget expensive. For example, despite being a South American grain, quinoa is a novelty health food item in Brazil and costs upwards of 5x the price of brown rice. We eat about 1 kilo of rice per week in my house, so that makes a huge difference in my budget.

3. The remaining recipes that fall into the I-can-afford-it-AND-I-can-eat-it category are really basic. Roasted veggies, marinara sauce, bone broth, hummus, stewed pears. Things that I used a recipe as a guide the first time I made it but didn't need one after that. Not dissing on ppl who are just discovering these kinds of kitchen staples, I started there too, but I'm 10 years into cookbook reading and I just don't need a recipe for those things any more.

I would encourage you to check out Melissa Clark's cookbook [b:Dinner: Changing the Game|30688016|Dinner Changing the Game|Melissa Clark|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488427017s/30688016.jpg|51233796] as a more useful alternative.