renaissance girl

Books read so far this year

2009-10-01T19:30:02Z

I fell off the wagon in writing about the books I'm reading, but I have continued to read and want to keep track in some form. My original goal was to read a lot more books this year and that hasn't really happened. I'm going to work on that. T...

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April Non-Fiction: The Legend of Pope Joan

2009-04-15T19:27:41Z

For this month's non-fiction selection, I chose to delve into a standing mystery in Catholic culture. While quite meaty and intensely well researched, this book also stretches slightly into the memoir category as Peter Sanford intersperses his a...

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The Omnivore's Hundred

2008-09-02T21:14:52Z

Copied over from Very Good Taste and Wannabe Wino: Here’s what I want you to do: 1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions. 2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten. 3) Cross out any items that you would never consi...

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Willing by Scott Spencer

2008-08-25T23:21:14Z

Scott Spencer does, as The Wall Street Journal put it, have a way with language. His writing style is a unique take on the stream of consciousness ramblings of a conflicted young man trying to find himself in a modern world where everything has ...

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Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

2008-08-22T19:47:46Z

It wasn't terrible. It just wasn't my kind of book. I don't like chick lit. I don't like self-conscious books about imperfect women with insecurity issues. Not that the heroine has to have an incredible sense of self worth and self esteem, bu...

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The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles

2008-08-18T14:43:49Z

The Seamstress is, at its core, a tale of two sisters from a small country town in inland Brazil in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Each sister escapes the small town to follow her own path, and the story follows each over the course of a troubl...

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The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

2008-07-18T12:03:36Z

Like his previous novel, Little Children, a novel not really about actual children at all, Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher turns out to not really be about an actual teacher of abstinence. Ruth Ramsey, one of the two chief protagonists, do...

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Eating my values

2008-06-13T17:49:02Z

Last night, I had an eating epiphany. I was trying to use up the fresh vegetables and pork medallions in the fridge because I'll be out of town for a few days. I threw together a healthy (relatively...), tasty meal and found that because of my c...

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I could fall in love with Jersey at sunset...

2008-04-11T17:49:32Z

...but I won't. Well, that's not how the song goes, but I've been taking the pup for evening walks every so often instead of my usual morning duty, and you really can fall in love with a skyline at twilight. It really doesn't matter if it's New...

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Curing The Kitchen with TheKitchn

2008-03-25T16:43:09Z

This month, TheKitchn.com, one of my favorite blogs, is doing The Kitchen Cure, an 8 week kitchen makeover-of-sorts, based off of Apartment Therapy's Eight Step Home Cure. I really need to do a full cure, which is going on over at apartmentthera...

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