When Did You Last Read a Play?

The other day my friend Ron sent me an email suggesting I read The Man Who Came to Dinner written by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. He’d just finished it and found it delightfully funny. The title rang a bell, and on further investigation I discovered that it is a three act play first staged in 1939. Ron’s recommendation got me to wondering: when was the last time I’d read a play, and more importantly, why had it been so long.

I probably haven’t read a play since college when I was a more adventurous reader, jumping between all forms of writing in all genres. Another reason I haven’t picked up a play for awhile is the misconception that plays are a lot of work to read–all those stage directions and a story told in dialog only. It is kind of like why I hesitate to pick up a foreign film for a Friday night flick. Too much work to read those subtitles.

But the reality is that after the first couple minutes of a foreign film, I become so absorbed that I forget the subtitles are there. It is the same with plays. Once I get started, it’s like the form disappears and I am within the action. Another advantage of plays is that they are generally short, which means I can read them without a huge time commitment.

I decided that I must reinvite plays back into my reading repertoire. With that in mind, I headed down to East Side Books and was happy to discover that they have an extensive Play section that I have been neglecting for years. Among the volumes, I found some old favorites such as a collection of six plays by Lillian Hellman who wrote the highly acclaimed and controversial The Children’s Hour. Hellman was quite an important figure during her reign. I suggest after reading her plays, that you check out her memoirs in our Biography section, Pentimento and An Unfinished Woman.

I was also happy to find several volumes of plays by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. He has been called the “father of prose drama” and it is widely acknowledge that he is the best playwright of all time after Shakespeare. I remember being memorized by The Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, two of his more famous works. I was also moved greatly by A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry when I read it in high school, just as Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller was an intriguing read for a college seminar.

Speaking of Shakespeare, East Side Books has no shortage of works by the master. In fact we have two whole shelves devoted to his work. Although best known for Romeo and Juliet, I would have to recommend the chilling MacBeth as a must-Shakespeare-read. It is said that MacBeth carries a curse that is invoked if cast members in the play speak the title of the play within the theater. To do so brings down a hail of misfortune upon the production. This legend is so widely believed that many MacBeth cast members don’t tempt fate and refer to the darkest of Shakespeare’s work as only “the Scottish play” or “Lady M.”

As much as I like to revisit old favorites, I was pleased to find a number of plays and playwright that I’ve never read before. Some names were familiar and moved quickly up on my must-read list such as Irish playwright Bernard Shaw who penned Major Barbara Man and Superman, and Pygmalion upon which the movie My Fair Lady is based. American Eugene O’Neill ranks high on my list also as I frequently hear references to A Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh. If I wanted to go way back, we have half a shelf of work by Sophocles as well as Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe, an excellent playwright in his own right, and John Milton of Paradise Lost fame. Some of the more contemporary names that tempted me were Harold Pinter, Noel Coward, and Neil Simon.

After perusing the Play section of East Side Books, I decided that there were just too many excellent plays beckoning that I couldn’t neglect them any longer. I have vowed to read at least one play a month in an effort to include this wonderful genre into my reading rotation. I’m going to start with The Man Who Came to Dinner.

If the last time you read a play was too many years in the past to count, make a stop at East Side Books today and pick up a play.  Our Play section is located next to Biographies across from General Fiction.  If you need assistance finding one of the titles mentioned above, please ask one of the East Side staff for help.

I Spy Great Espionage Novels at East Side Books

This summer I happened to pick up a book by bestselling author Dan Silva. I’d never read him before, and didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. The writing was smooth and held my attention. I had never read a spy thriller before with the exception of the work of Dan Brown, and even though Brown comes up with interesting premises and touches on fascinating ideas, I find his writing to be uneven at times. But not so with Silva, which made me wonder: Is there anyone better than Silva in the spy-thriller genre?

I googled “best espionage novel of all time” and found that there was no limit to the number of people willing to throw their two cents in about the best spy thrillers to date. But again and again, John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold kept rising to the top. I knew that East Side Books had a shelf full of his work, so I ran down and purchased a copy.

I’d been under the impression that le Carre was like Silva, a modern day bestseller who’d been around for maybe twenty years or so. I was surprised to discover that The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was le Carre’s third novel, and was published in 1964. Intrigued, I started reading the story of agent Alec Leamas and post-WWII relations with East Germany. It was a fascinating book, skillfully written and intensely plotted. I hadn’t read anything like it in a long time. I really felt like le Carre knew what he was writing about, which I discovered he actually did because The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was written while he worked for the British foreign-intelligence agency. (John le Carre is a pseudonym.) le Carre is now almost eighty years old, and writes to this day, recently publishing Our Kind of Traitor.

Flush with my success at discovering le Carre, I compiled a list of recommended topnotch spy thrillers, and returned to East Side Books. Espionage novels are shelved under Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, and I was excited to find that East Side has quite a deep collection.

AlthoughThe Spy Who Came in From the Cold was a run away favorite among espionage novel lovers, le Carre’s hit was closely followed by The Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett (who also wrote Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel picked as an Oprah Book Club book), and The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. I was pleased to see that East Side has a wealth of novels written by both of these authors. There is also a large supply of work by Tom Clancy and Len Deighton, two other authors that were frequently mentioned as the best of the best. There was even some Dan Silva who first piqued my interest.

Unlike the mystery genre, there are few women writing in the area of espionage with the notable exception of Helen MacInnes who’s book Above Suspension was mentioned often in my Google search. Margaret Truman also tries her hand at spy thrillers, and there are a number of her novels on East Side Books’ shelves.

The most surprising discovery during my “best of” spy thriller search was discovering authors I’d known only as writers in other genres, such as Graham Greene who wrote the notable thriller The Quiet American, which is next on my list. And also, one of my favorite writers, W. Somerset Maugham, author of Of Human Bondage, who wrote a collection of loosely connected short stories about the spy adventures of a playwright named Asheden. The book is also entitled Asheden. It turns out that Maugham, like le Carre, worked for British Intelligence. Norman Mailer also wrote a spy thriller called Harlot’s Ghost that was published in 1991.

Invite a little intrigue into your life. Stop by East Side Books today and explore the world of espionage one page at a time. As always, if you need any assistance finding any of the titles mentioned above, please ask one of the staff for help.

Zucchini Bounty

There isn’t much produce to be had in the Owens Valley this summer. A late April frost wiped out most of the fruit tree blossoms, and due to a long cool spring, gardens got planted late. Regardless, Diane, dedicated gardener and owner of East Side Books, is up to her ears in zucchini. So much so that she is sharing bagfuls with her staff at the bookstore.

This unexpected bounty of zucchini had me running for the Cookbook Section. After all, there is only so much fried zucchini, the only recipe I know for squash, that one can eat. Luckily, East Side Books has a number of excellent sources for zucchini recipes. For example, Jeff Smith, former PBS cooking master, includes recipes for Cold Zucchini Soup and Zucchini Quiche in his book The Frugal Gourmet Whole Family Cookbook. I have never misfired with a recipe by Smith and use his cookbooks often. (East Side Books has a number of his cookbooks, including a not-to-be-missed The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas.)

A number of cookbooks in our Italian Cooking Section includes zucchini recipes. An especially beautiful cookbook on this shelf is Lidia’s Family Table by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich. She features squash recipes such as zucchini lasagna and zucchini white bean soup as well as lots of photos.

But I really hit the mother lode of zucchini recipes when I moved over our excellent Vegetarian Section. The cookbook American Vegetable Recipes put out by the Farm Journal had sixteen zucchini recipes listed in their index. I was hungry after scanning the cooking instructions for Zucchini Corn Bake and Zucchini Casserole with Sour Cream.

While main and side dishes featuring zucchini are well and good, I found myself most interested in the zucchini desserts.  A zucchini is a vegetable, right? So, I figure adding a vegetable to a dessert automatically turns a treat into a healthy snack.  Are you following my logic?

Regardless, after perusing a number of excellent cookbooks on our shelves, one being a 1960 edition of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, I cobbled together enough information to figure out how to make a zucchini cake. I added applesauce, allspice, cinnamon, and chopped dried dates to give my zucchini a little twist. An hour later, my family was enjoying a moist, flavorful, and healthful treat. Just to make sure that the zucchini cake was as good as it seemed, and to meet my vegetable quota for the day, I ate about half the pan myself.

Healthful Zucchini Date Cake

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup applesauce

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour (I used 1 c. wheat and 1 c. white flour)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. allspice

pinch of salt

3/4 c. chopped dried dates

2 cups grated zucchini

cinnamon sugar mixture

Mix oil, applesauce, and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat well. Mix in dates, spices, soda, salt, and baking powder. Alternate flour and zucchini, mixing well after each addition. Pour into greased and floured13x9x2 inch pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or so.

Encouraged by my zucchini cake success, I tried my hand at zucchini cookies. With the addition of raisins, these tasty treats are sweet enough to appeal to my children yet healthy enough to send to school for their morning snack.

Zucchini Cookie Treats

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup grated zucchini

2 cups flour (I used 1 c. wheat and 1 c. white flour)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

1 cup raisins

Cream together butter and sugar.  Add egg. Mix well. Add zucchini. Mix in the dry ingredients. Stir in raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes.

The zucchini on my counter has dwindled to one small squash. I am hoping Diane comes in soon with another load.  In the meantime, I am thinking about trying out a Zucchini Latka recipe I spied in one of the cookbooks at East Side Books.

What are you doing with all your zucchini? We’d love to know. Post your favorite recipe in the Comments section below. If you are searching for new squash recipes, or any other recipes, drop into East Side Books and check out our great cookbook selection.  You are sure to find a recipe that makes you want to run home and fire up your oven.

As always, if you need any help, please ask one of our staff for assistance.

New in World War II – Complete Time Life Series

If you have been in the store, you know we have an overflowing World War II section.  There is just so much written about it, and as a history buff, I can’t pass them up.  So why add another shelf full?  Because they are so good!  Many people have shelves full of Time Life series at home, or our parents do, so you may not take another look.  If you have not read them though, they are excellent, easy to read, well illustrated, great for kids or adults… can’t beat them.

This is the most complete selection of the World War II series we’ve ever had.  If you are missing a few, or just want to learn more about the War, please come and see our selection!

Local Foods, Local Gardens, Local Books on all of them!

I was thrilled last Friday evening after closing the store to actually remember and then to not have other obligations that required scurrying off somewhere – I  got to shop our new Friday Farmer’s Market!  Still small, but wonderful all the same. I am glad it is on Friday’s now!  I bought beautiful beets from Bishop Creek Farms and spinach from Banner Springs.  Their arugula looked great too, but that is flourishing in my garden.   I also tasted salad offerings from TheSecretSandwichSociety, yummy.  If that society is still secret to you, you need to check out their website and order some lunches to be delivered in Bishop via bicycle.  Their menu has vegan choices and is all healthy and conscientious, as well as delicious. Make sure to use The in the web address or you will be ordering from New Hampshire or someplace, which defeats the whole local concept!

We had such a late spring that my own garden is slow and looking a little stunted.  Just last night though, we ate our first little squash in a quiche also made with our own ham and eggs. We also had a nice arugula salad, which my kids were not crazy about, but I liked.  I get tired and frustrated with my gardening efforts sometimes, but when most of the meal was produced by me or people I know, it really does make me feel happy and a little virtuous.  I am also happy, ecstatic actually, to see more and more local food options popping up around the Owens Valley.  Check out the UCCE Master Gardener’s of Inyo Mono handbook for a nice list if you’ve missed them.  Bishop Creek Farms mentioned a Facebook page as well to check out.  Of course you can come by the Farmer’s Market tomorrow night and talk to Master Gardeners in person (you can get started on a fall garden you know) and the other producers as well as craftspeople.  Mammoth’s Farmer’s Market is on Wednesday nights if you live to the north.

Do I have a book tie-in?  Of course I do!  If you have not yet read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, come pick up the one copy we still have on the shelf.  She is just a wonderful writer, and even vegans I know loved her chapter on butchering turkeys!  While her current location in rural Virginia makes eating locally (food produced within 100 miles) a little easier than in the Owens Valley, she makes the effort seem worthwhile, or more like essential, and very doable.  Plus she includes recipes! Another writer who beautifully inspires us to treasure those heirlooms and regional specialties is David Mas Masumoto, a peach grower in the Fresno area (Fresno is within 100 miles as the crow flies…..).  He wrote the classic An Epitaph for a Peach, as well as Letters to the Valley (signed copy on the shelf now) and Harvest Son.  Well worth reading.  Also pulled from the shelf, Fading Feast by Raymond Sokolov looks fascinating as well.  It is “a compendium of disappearing American regional foods”,  things like Smithfield Ham, Minnesota Wild rice and abalone from La Jolla.  It has recipes and pictures, and is part travel memoir to boot!  The Omnivore’s Dilemma  by Michael Pollan has been making news for quite some time on the scary science behind the other end of the food spectrum, we also have High Tech Harvest by Paul Lurquin and similar titles if you need more convincing.  More fun reading looks like Blithe Tomato by Mike Madison, “an insider’s wry look at farmers’ market society”.  I don’t think our Bishop Farmer’s Market has quite reached society status yet, but it is fun and shopping feels like joining a burgeoning movement.

Don’t forget all of the excellent gardening books on our shelves as well, from Sunset Western Gardening to classics on pruning and JI Rodale’s Earthworm’s are Our Friends.  I am sorely tempted to take that one home every time I see it, so please come rescue it !

Not sure what to do with some of those beautiful beets?  Here is a favorite recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer cookbook.  Her cookbooks are a pure joy to read, and laugh-out-loud funny at times.  (We have her memoir on the shelf too, did I mention that?)  She says this recipe is vaguely Scandinavian, to be served with Hasselback Potatoes and salmon, which I of course do.

Raw Beet, Dill and Mustard Seed Salad
 
big bunch fresh dill (apx 6 T when chopped)
18 oz raw beets ( I have no idea how much  is 18 oz of beets, I use about 4-5 med to large beets per recipe)
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 TS mustard seeds
a spoonful or so of chopped fresh flat leaf parsley for garnish
 
 
Blitz dill in food processor to chop.  Use julienne or grating disc in food processor to grate peeled, raw beets.  (Nigella’s quote here on peeling beets – “I use rubber gloves for this, so I’m not like Lady Macbeth with my incarnadined hands forever.”  Personally I never have rubber gloves handy, so live with red hands, it does not last forever!)
 
Turn beets into bowl with dill and toss.  Squeeze the lemon juice over, drizzle in the olive oil and toss again.  Use a nonstick or heavy frying pan (cast iron works great) to toast the mustard seeds for a couple of minutes.  Add to beet and dill salad and toss again.  Sprinkle with some reserved dill and/or parsley for a “final uplifting hit of more vibrant green”.  (Gotta love Nigella’s use of language!:)
 
She says you can use parsley or any herby combination you are in the mood for if you can’t find fresh dill, but I would not give up the dill.

Garden fresh, it is one of the best parts of summer.  Along with reading a great book, or reading a great book about gardening.    And do you have any ideas for arugula?  Come see us.

Newly filled shelves – great summer reading!

The benefit of having SO many books coming in recently is some newly well stocked sections.  Need some fun, light summer reading?  The Romance corner has been completely reworked and restocked.  We have an amazing selection of Nora Roberts, Nicole Jordan, Joan Johnston, Debbie Macomber, Linda Lael Miller, and many more popular authors.  Plus the Regency Romance Shelf, the Paranormal Romance Shelf, and the Vintage Gothic Romance section are filled with new titles, although they are still lacking signs, so just ask if you don’t see them!

If you are in the mood for self improvement, Self Help, Spirituality and Health sections have many new titles as well, can’t go wrong there!

Thanks for checking them out.

Do We Have Anything on the Napoleanic Wars? Yes!

Thanks to a wonderful batch of books recently delivered, we now have a wealth of history on Napolean and Imperial France, plus some interesting titles on medieval and ancient warfare.  Military history is always a popular topic, so I am not expecting these to last long – come see if we can fill any gaps in your knowledge!

If you are looking for the new stash, check France – history, and General Military history.  If you don’t see them, we may still be covering or listing them, so please ask!  Here is a sample to tempt you:

Towers and Piles and Stacks of Books, Oh MY!

Yesterday I reached a decision…. although I am always the one that says you can’t have too many books, our store has too many books.  It is a fact.  And unfortunately, they seem to be taking up permanent residence in the store and growing roots rather than finding new and happier homes.

What does this mean for our customers?  It means I will NOT be buying more books in July, and possibly August either.  I need to focus on selling books rather than buying books and stuffing more into our already overstuffed store.  I am sorry for any inconvenience, but really I see no option.  If you have an estate or some special situation, please feel free to contact me, but I cannot promise to take any more or buy any books for cash.  I am hopeful that backpacks full of summer reading material leaving the store will solve the problem and we will resume our buying schedule in a month or two.

Thanks for your support.

Diane

What's Your Inspiration Gift Book of Choice?

It’s graduation time, and the perfect chance to impart a little wisdom to all those young people who’ve reached a significant milestone and are ready to take a new direction, if they can only decide which one!  Since I gift books for every gift giving occasion, of course I give books for graduations too, but I really want to hear your favorites.  I’ll be posting up some I’ve pulled in the store in the next day or two….  but help me out please!

Children's Book Sale, Plus Great New Stock!

If you are filling up a summer reading bag, now is the perfect time to come in.  Our children’s room is stuffed to the gills with new material, especially hard to find Newbery Award winners, high quality picture books, and a wonderful selection of children’s history.  While Nancy Drew is still a little thin (on the shelf of course), we have many other great series to investigate.  And the best news?  We’ve put all Children’s and Young Adult books on sale for June!  You will save 10% on any Children’s books, or a big 20% if you buy 8 or more titles! 

Here are some of the recent history acquisitions to entice you….