Books I've Read
I saw that both The Girl and MJ were doing this, so I am doing it too:
Number of books you own: No idea. Easily over a thousand just here in Germany. About 60+ are cookbooks.
Last book bought: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I ordered it online and sent it to my boyfriend. I loved the book, and was hoping that I could convince him to read it too...I think he'll be using it as a doorstop though...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Last book I read: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I read it just before John Paul II died, so it was a crash course in papal elections, etc.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl: this is just a classic. My kids will be forced to listen to this book and read it. (Not to mention sitting through the film a couple of times).
2) Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I was reading this book on the train while coming back from an interview with a PR firm in Munich, and I realized that I wasn't happy with the future I was carving out for myself. I wanted to be the Howard Roark of baking and pastry, not the Peter Keating of PR and marketing. The future has been a lot brighter since.
3) The Sweet Kitchen, The Definitive Baker's Companion by Regan Daley. Awesome book on baking and pastry. She takes about 200 pages to describe techniques and procedures, before even embarking on the 300+ pages of recipes...which are just decadent! Really inspiring too.
4) Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell. Preaching to the choir: it's what I want to hear about the way economics work in the world. Pretty simplistic, but still very good.
5) Naked in Baghdad:The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels. I picked this book up in the summer of 2003, and whizzed through it in a few days. Anne is such a great writer, truly fair and balanced. She was in Baghdad before, during and "after" the war, and she recounts her daily battles with the Information Ministry, and the free for all during and after the war. One of my favorite parts, was when they had to go to the daily press briefing to listen to the propaganda fed to them by Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (I actually kind of liked seeing that guy, he was always good for a laugh with his little beret). They were at a press briefing a few days after the invasion and one journalist asked al-Sahaf if it was true that the Americans had reached Saddam International Airport. And al-Sahaf answered, no, the Americans were nowhere near the airport, they were deserting in the thousands, and the Republican Guards were doing a great job, and one journalist passed a note to Anne saying: "Whatever that guy is smoking, I want some of it."
Number of books you own: No idea. Easily over a thousand just here in Germany. About 60+ are cookbooks.
Last book bought: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I ordered it online and sent it to my boyfriend. I loved the book, and was hoping that I could convince him to read it too...I think he'll be using it as a doorstop though...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Last book I read: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I read it just before John Paul II died, so it was a crash course in papal elections, etc.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl: this is just a classic. My kids will be forced to listen to this book and read it. (Not to mention sitting through the film a couple of times).
2) Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I was reading this book on the train while coming back from an interview with a PR firm in Munich, and I realized that I wasn't happy with the future I was carving out for myself. I wanted to be the Howard Roark of baking and pastry, not the Peter Keating of PR and marketing. The future has been a lot brighter since.
3) The Sweet Kitchen, The Definitive Baker's Companion by Regan Daley. Awesome book on baking and pastry. She takes about 200 pages to describe techniques and procedures, before even embarking on the 300+ pages of recipes...which are just decadent! Really inspiring too.
4) Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell. Preaching to the choir: it's what I want to hear about the way economics work in the world. Pretty simplistic, but still very good.
5) Naked in Baghdad:The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels. I picked this book up in the summer of 2003, and whizzed through it in a few days. Anne is such a great writer, truly fair and balanced. She was in Baghdad before, during and "after" the war, and she recounts her daily battles with the Information Ministry, and the free for all during and after the war. One of my favorite parts, was when they had to go to the daily press briefing to listen to the propaganda fed to them by Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (I actually kind of liked seeing that guy, he was always good for a laugh with his little beret). They were at a press briefing a few days after the invasion and one journalist asked al-Sahaf if it was true that the Americans had reached Saddam International Airport. And al-Sahaf answered, no, the Americans were nowhere near the airport, they were deserting in the thousands, and the Republican Guards were doing a great job, and one journalist passed a note to Anne saying: "Whatever that guy is smoking, I want some of it."
posted by CaliValleyGirl at 11:48 AM
7 Comments:
Wollen so Sie ein kuchenchef sein?
CVG make him stop, MJ keeps making me think this early in the morning...stop that MJ. :-)
Your German is pretty good!
Household6
Sorry household. I've been in such a great German mood lately. I don't know what's going on. It's probably because I just finished reading a book about Germany and I have a friend from Germany visiting. Though when she's here the last thing she wants to do is talk about Germany or speak the language.
I'm not so sure my German is all that good, but thanks for the compliment. It's probably legible, and CVG is a smart girl, she can figure it out. Now if you ask me to speak German, oh I'm horrible. My southern accent just doesn't work too well with words that have more than 4 letters :)
MJ,
You have a Southern accent? Oh that cracks me up.
Yep, I want to become a baker/pastry chef...but I am trying to figure out how to make compromises now with my future plans. Somehow owning your own bakery doesn't quite go along with military life, but I think it's something that will just have to wait a while.
How does that crack you up?
Hymer once told me that he thought I had a New England accent.
I do kinda laugh of the thought of you with a valley girl accent :)
I'm just a southern guy, kinda like Bush.
MJ,
Well, I don't talk like: oh my Gawd, gag me with a spoon-style...but I do use "like" "whatever" and "anyways" way too much!
I've always liked Southern accents. Quite a few of the wives in my boyfriend's unit come from Texas or Alabama, and I love listening to their drawl.
My only caveat on your list is Dan Brown... be very careful when reading him - he fully admits that he blurs fiction with truth in his books (he calls it "faction") to the point that it becomes like an Oliver Stone movie... what's fact and what's fiction? who cares... this is what we want you to believe.
I find that very annoying - then again I'm not a big fan of Brown's since I was tremendously unimpressed with the Da Vinci Code...
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