25 Books, part one

One of the other things I managed to get done last weekend was to organize the books, that is, my unread books. They'd gotten scattered hither and yon around the house, and some were (gasp!) commingling with the already read books. There are now 25 books on my bedside table - six in progress, and the rest waiting patiently.

The books I'm in the middle of - the left hand pile - run the gamut from things that have been kicking around for a while (like since LAST Christmas) to stuff that arrived this past Christmas.

The Whore's Child (Richard Russo) is a book of short stories that I acquired mistakenly thinking I hadn't read it. Apparently, I can't remember a damned thing, because I have already read it, but I'm reading it again, because he's great, and slowly, because it's short stories.

Organic Housekeeping (Ellen Sandbeck) was a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law, who knows that I'm a slovenly housekeeper because she's seen the dustbunnies. It is actually quite amusing - besides what you might expect (use white vinegar to clean almost everything), it has practical wisdom like:

Rather than adding chemicals to the air to mask an unpleasant odor, try to hunt down the source of the odor and eliminate it. (This rule should not be applied to family members or pets. They may simply need to be bathed or have their socks or diapers changed.)

Stones from the River (Ursula Hegi) is a novel I bought a while ago on a friend's recommendation. For some reason, it's taking me a long time to get through it, even though I quite like it and I find it to be well-written.

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford was a Christmas present last year. Oops. But it's letters, and therefore can be picked up and put down, which is my justification for not having finished it yet. She was a major character, the Communist branch of the Mitford clan and a muckraking writer who knew everyone. And her epistolary prose is rough and idiosyncratic and utterly charming, even when you have no idea what she's talking about:

Anyway I loved getting yrs of 18 Aug. Vive la "deep depression!" Serves her bloody well right: might be as salutary, if not more so, than Maya's knee-cap job?

The River Cottage Meat Book (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall): yeah, I read cookbooks in bed - wanna make something of it? This one is fascinating - both a paean to good meat and good farming and good butchering, and a loving primer on how to cook that good meat.

Vegetable Harvest (Patricia Wells) is yes, another cookbook! It was a Christmas present, this year. She has a wonderful sensibility, and her recipes are generally spot on. In case you're wondering, this is not a vegetarian cookbook - rather, it's a vegetable-centric general cookbook.