Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I really enjoyed The Disappearing Spoon. I hope you like it.

After finishing An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage I'm now reading The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester's biography of Joseph Needham. I'll probably add some fiction soon as well. Not sure what yet.

Famous Modern Ghost Stories (1921) edited by Dorothy Scarborough
Free download from Project Gutenberg .

Read so far and recommend:

* The Willows by Algernon Blackwood – One of Blackwood’s best !

* The Beast With Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey – This story has spawned at least two feature films. Creepy story about a possessed severed hand.

* The Messenger by Robert W. Chambers
In France, some working men uncover a pile of 38 skulls buried with a list of names. The skulls are those of English soldiers who were killed invading France in 1760. Interestingly the list mentions 39 skulls, and ::cue suspense music:: , the list is written in Breton, a language that has not been used for hundreds of years.

* The Woman at Seven Brothers by Wilbur Daniel Steele – Traditional ghost story set on a remote lighthouse. Well told story; you feel like you’ve dropped in on the 1920s with common rooms, lamp rooms and windy staircases.

Yea!! I'm going to read that, too!

Just finished "How the Light Gets In" and "Heart Shaped Box". Holy forking shiitake "Heart Shaped Box". It was awesome!

Probably going to start "Dexter is Delicious" soon.

Just about to start The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I've heard good things about it so I hope it lives up to my expectations.

You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore

Finally finished No\/a Swing (which was really good) and started Empty Space. Already encountered some quite mind-blowing bits in the first couple chapters.

(And I really need to fix my \/ key. At least the fan is quieter now.)

Ashfall. Good story, but I don't love the writing. It's not bad-bad, just a bit forced in parts.

Want to read all of these. Thank you.

The Marriage Plot

I'm blaming this on Footface. After reading The Riverman, I was curious about Ann Rule's book on Bundy. So creepy! She knew him really well before any of the murders became big news. She knew him during the investigation when she was a fledgling crime writer and got a contract to write a book on the investigation. Such a serious of coincidences--if it were a moving, I'd be rolling my eyes at the implausibility of it all.

I'm not into true crime at all; it creeps me out. Ann Rule is actually a good writer, something I snootily hadn't expected (I'm listening to it on audio). She focuses mostly on her conflicting feelings about Bundy and her evolution from denying to accepting his guilt. It's really kind of fascinating and gives some I sight into why so many women stood by him, even marrying him (!) when it was obvious to everybody else.

I suppose if there is a complaint about the book it's that it puts all the focus on Bundy and not so much all of his victims, which seems wrong, but again, it's a compelling book. She doesn't get much into gory detail, which I appreciate, but it also probably makes Bundy seem less of an evil character than he was. At any rate, I kept finding myself sort of liking him and then realized, holy crepe, what the fork am I thinking?!

Now I sort of want to read a more unbiased book, but don't really want to get sucked into reading true crime. Ick. I closed my room blinds. I always have them open since my room just faces the back yard and an empty field and then trees. I'm so easily creeped out!

Just finished this - very good indeed.

OMG, it's Halloween already, and so far I haven't even found the time to read some Bradbury!
At least my current read is subtitled "A Haunting".

It must sound better than it reads. I don't really like the way she writes (amongst other things, I find her super repetitive), but I read her stuff because I'm interested in the subjects.


I know what you mean - there were a couple of times when I looked at the photos and though, yeah, I would. I think it's fair that her account focuses on him since she knew him, but not the victims. But I'd also like to read more about the victims.

I read Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, which is a short story by my bff's husband (it's on Amazon - it counts). I didn't like it. He's British and writing about an American, but the character came off as really British. And I just don't like the style - it's the kind of thing that would've been popular in England in the 60s and would probably mostly appeal to middle-aged British men. It's a bit too nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say-no-more.

I'm also in the middle of another brief British history book, 1851-1931 or 1945, I can't remember. The author's bias is a bit too obvious - he clearly yearns for the days of empire and seems a bit too forgiving of a few things. But maybe that's my bias showing.

I totally want to read these too! Especially because it's Halloween!


Yeah, I enjoyed this book as a young'un and re-read it recently, expecting not to like it so much, but it holds up! Very interesting book, I thought.

I know what you mean about conflicting feelings about Bundy--in Rule's book he's likeable--how she knew him, in that environment, but he had that charasmatic/charming effect on many savvy people it seems (I think when he was arrested, many people vouched for him, like judges and stuff) and I suppose there was a side to him that was truly likeable, and then there was that, you know...serial killer side. It's a good book.

For another side of Bundy, from the horse's mouth, so to speak, there's also: Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer where he speaks of his crimes in the third person.

Do you like that series? I've read mixed things. Also, did you end up enjoying Code Name Verity?


Yay, hope you enjoyed it!

I've started listening to audio books, last week I listened to a great Aussie YA contemp from a male pov, Jarvis 24.

As long as it was Halloween (and with my drinking buddies not having time for me after all), I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days - a collection of shorter non-Sandman comics (but Dream does make a guest appearance). Lovely.

Oh, and... Jim Butcher fans might already know this, but chapter 1 of Cold Days is up:

http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresde ... -days-ch-1

(ETA: Confession of an audiobook addict: I cant help but read this in James Marsters' voice in my head.)

Just two more chapters and I will have finished The Hound of the Baskervilles. Perfect read to celebrate my favourite season.
I was 10 or 11 when I first read the story, which was a simplified version suitable for children. Never thought that the original novel was so creepy!

I'm struggling through the second book in the Malazan series...actually have no idea what's going on!

That's on my to-read list! I'm curious what you think.

I'm reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

How do you like it? His first two books are seriously some of my very favorite books I've ever read, so I had really high hopes for this one and was bitterly disappointed.

So I finished the Zelda Fitzgerald book by Linda Wagner-Martin. While I think it's great to have a bio written from Zelda's perspective rather than Fitz's, where most of the perspective of her life comes only where it relates to him in the books out there, I felt that LWM worked really hard, certainly more than is necessary, to denigrate Scott. Yes, it's true he battled with her about her novel Save Me the Waltz because he felt she was dipping into "his" material for Tender is the Night. I mean, if you read both books, they came out drastically different even though they touched on that material, so Scott's irrational anger was pretty moot. Creative material is there for whatever artist feels so inspired by it to use. That said, he helped her somewhat with the book (reading proofs, helping her with some revisions) and also, even though Wagner-Martin went on through the whole book about how unsupportive of her writing career he was, in the last chapter, she says that Scott suggested Zelda release a book of her short stories and he'd write the foreword for her and help her out with it. From everything I've read, the only time he ever thwarted her creative efforts was with Save Me the Waltz because of his erroneous notion that she was infringing on "his" literary territory. Even in Scottie's (their daughter) bio, which was written by Scott and Zelda's granddaughter, Scottie herself is reported to have always said that her father was incredibly supportive of her mother's creative pursuits throughout their marriage.

Also, Wagner-Martin's claim that FSF's Crack Up essays were "fiction" because they didn't refer to either Zelda or Scottie is ludicrous. I mean, it makes sense to me as those essays are confessionals about his personal mental anguish at a difficult point in his life, why would he want to drag his wife and young daughter into that? Completely understandable to me why he'd not include them there and their exclusion doesn't instantly render them to be "fiction". Also, the fact that FSF doesn't mention them emphasizes the estrangement he felt from them to my read, which is true of their situation at that point in his life (in the late thirties, FSF was in *California, Zelda was institutionalized and/or living with her mother in Alabama and Scottie mostly lived with the Obers, who were Scott's literary agents). Completely disagree with that assertion.

I dunno, I appreciate the premise, but she lost me on some of her points. Nancy Milford's book is still my favorite book on Zelda.

*or North Carolina.

I'm reading Ape House by Sara Gruen. I bought the ebook a while back because it made a sensation in one of my publishing classes for the advance it garnered. So far it's OK.

Now you have to watch The Deliberate Stranger starring Mark Harmon. It's not very good, but it's really "fun." You know what I mean.