2010 Reading Goals

I know it's not quite New Years yet but in celebration of today being the last day of classes for my undergraduate career (and in celebration of having finally finished all my required reading for the semester), I'm announcing my reading goals for the end of this year and all of next year. I figure that if I announce it I'll be more likely to follow through (or at least try to).

One thing I've loved about being an English major is that not only do I get to read lots of interesting books during the semester, I hear about even more interesting books through classmates and professors mentioning whatever they're reading that connects with what we're discussing in class. Unfortunately, that leads to a really long to-read list. My list is at exactly 100 books right now, but that's only because I haven't added all the books I own that I haven't read yet and the books I've heard about this semester that I haven't added to the list (my class notes are peppered with stars next to books I want to read).

So I have two goals for this upcoming year. 1) Read all the books I own that I haven't read yet (top priority is the Wizard of Oz series and Cherries in Winter... and Rootabaga Stories which my grandma gave me 10 years ago and I still haven't read). 2) Only be one year behind on my to-read list. That's the one curse of Goodreads. It shows when you added a book to your list, so I can see that I have books on my to-read list that have been there since 2007 when I joined. So my goal is that by the end of 2010 the only books on my list will be books that I added in 2010. Then in 2011 I can try to get caught up all the way (or at least within 50 books of being caught up).

If I manage to get all those books read (without ignoring Andy or quitting my job) it'll be a miracle. But that's what goals are for right? To stretch you to your limits?

So my challenge to you all is to make a reading goal for this year... whether that goal is to finish the book you've been reading on and off for years or read a book a week, just make a goal and start it as soon as you are done with classes and finals for the semester. It will make your year a lot better!

Seriously People... Get on Goodreads...

Okay, if the fact that I won one book on Goodreads doesn't get you on there, what if I told you I just won another book? That's right... I just won a second book... which is about cooking, but it's not a cook book. I'm now waiting for a copy of Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times. It looks like an interesting book, so I'm excited... actually I'm just excited about getting free books.

In other news... I've been reading a lot of good books lately. Lately my favorite is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. There's a movie for it coming out over Thanksgiving, which I will not be seeing (due to the fact that it's rated R... but also due to the fact that I don't think it could be as good as the book). this is definitely a book you need to approach with an open mind. Oprah used it for her book club after it came out and it led to lots of people saying how depressing it was. It can be depressing if you let it, but it can also be heart-wrenchingly beautiful. I chose to see it as beautiful, you just have to look past the situation and see the message in it.

My New Cookbook-- The Pioneer Woman Cooks

In my last post I said how excited I was to get my new cookbook. Well it came, I read, and I loved it... for the most part. Here's a quick run-down on the book.

The Bad

• Not a lot of recipes. The book is a good inch-inch and a half thick, so when I first saw it (after Andy had lovingly opened it for be before I got home) I had dreams of reading and perusing my new cook book for a few hours. Then I opened it and looked through it and was a little disappointed by how few recipes there are. I expected somewhere between 50-100 recipes, but I would be willing to bet there was only 25-30 recipes. For a first cookbook this wouldn't be bad, but considering she has a blog where she has been posting recipes for a year or two I expected a lot more. How hard could it be to add some of those blog posts? I know they need to be original recipes, but I would expect her to have more original recipes on her site.
• Long introduction to herself and her family. Like her blog, this book has more than just recipes. She has photographs of her family and the ranch, which is great... but I'd rather have more recipes. If you've read her blog, you already know the whole story about how she got started and I just don't see anyone buying the book who hasn't read the blog.
• Not spiral bound. This may be silly, but I think the best cookbooks are spiral bound... not hardback. It's a lot easier to keep a spiral bound book open on the counter while you cook. And it stays cleaner because you're not trying to find ways to keep it open (like setting your bowl on top of the book).
  

The Good

• Lots and lots of pictures! Like in her blog, Drummond illustrates each step of the cooking process. And she took all the pictures for the book as well, so as a beginning cook it's nice to know that an actual human being made the actual food I'm looking at (and that it hasn't been enhanced by a food artist). However, the downside of the pictures is that one recipe can take up 2 or more pages (which leads to the thicker, more expensive book with less recipes).
• Real recipes! Growing up in the Midwest, these are foods I grew up with! Although my mom may not have made all these foods, I knew what they were and I loved them. She doesn't use a lot of fancy, expensive ingredients that you can only get if you live in a big city, I can get any of the ingredients I need from my local supermarket.
• Lots of variations... even on the recipes that may call for more expensive ingredients, Drummond has lots of different variations for making a more traditional (cheaper) version of the food... or for making a more exciting version.
  
• Hands down the best part though... this is just good reading. Even if you don't have time to make the recipes, it's a funny book. Drummond's character and sense of humor comes through in her recipes. There are some instructions where I just had to laugh out loud.

So, overall, this was a good book. I don't know that I would've bought it for myself, but that's just because I'm cheap and it's $27.95 (or something very close to that). If you've been an avid fan of The Pioneer Woman for awhile I'd be sure to look through it before you buy it because I've read a couple reviews that say she did take some of the material from her blog and they didn't like that (personally I would love if she did more of that! who really wants to hunt through a blog to find all your favorite recipes??).

The best thing about this book though, is that it gave me some inspiration for helping my sister make a college cookbook for my brother for Christmas (or if she decides not to do that then I'll make it for a graduation present for him). After trying to get some family favorite recipes from my mom I've decided that my brother needs a step-by-step compilation of recipes so he doesn't have to try to get my mom to explain how to make something (chop up some of this, add some of that, stir until it looks right... we all know people with those sorts of directions and measurements).