My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme

In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation. My tall and taciturn father, "Big John" McWilliams, liked to say that all Europeans, especially the French, were "dark" and "dirty," although he'd never actually been to Europe and didn't know any Frenchmen. I had met some French people, but they were a couple of cranky spinster schoolteachers. Despite years of "learning" French, by rote, I could neither speak nor understand a word of the language. Furthermore, thanks to articles in Vogue and Hollywood spectaculars, I suspected that France was a nation of icky-picky people where the women were all dainty, exquisitely coiffed, nasty little creatures, the men all Adolphe Menjou-like dandies who twirled their mustaches, pinched girls, and schemed against American rubes.

I was a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian. The sight of France in my porthole was like a giant question mark.

-My Life in France

I love Julia Child. I didn't know this before reading My Life in France, but it turns out that it's absolutely true. I totally understand where Julie Powell was coming from (although now that I can compare Julie with Julia, it doesn't do Julie any favors).

I don't see how you could read this book and not love Julia. My Life in France commences with Julia moving to France with her husband, the artist and diplomat Paul Child. She falls in love with French cuisine immediately, but it takes some time for her to develop the idea of cooking herself. She enrolls in Le Cordon Bleu, and takes to it with what one quickly discovers is a characteristic zeal. This is Julia Child becoming Julia Child.

As Julia takes on cooking, she meets Simone "Simca" Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who are writing a cookbook on traditional French cuisine. Julia gets involved, and the book quickly becomes a new obsession. Cookery-bookery (as Julia refers to it) involves enormous amounts of time spent developing, testing, and writing up recipes, then conferring with her co-authors (mostly Simca, as time wore on). Although the book did not originate with her, over the years it becomes Julia's baby. She brings stacks of manuscript with her when Paul is transferred from France to Marseille, then again to Plittersdorf, Germany; Oslo; and finally back to the States. We follow her throughout this epic undertaking, sharing in her delight at a recipe perfected as well as her disappointment when her publisher does not want to produce the finished work.

When I think of Julia, words like "pluck" and "moxie" and, inevitably, joie de vivre come to mind. Although her life was privileged, it wasn't always easy - particularly in the way her husband was treated by the government (he was interrogated during the McCarthy era). She always made the most of it, though, and I loved reading about her journey.

As much as this book is about Julia's love of food, and of Paul, it is about Julia's love of France. Although I am no cook*, I wholeheartedly identify with this love of France, which I've shared almost as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I used to take most of the money I received at my birthday and Christmas and put it in a jar marked "Money for France." I spent it in college - not in France, alas (though I did go to Italy). I still haven't been to France, but reading this book was a lovely vicarious experience. I highly recommend it.

A note on the film Julia & Julia: In my review of the book Julie & Julia (which I linked to above), I recommended the film over Julie Powell's book. My Life in France provided the inspiration for the Julia sections of that movie, and although Meryl Streep is delightful as Julia, this book is the most essential of the three works.

Up next: Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson, a study of the ways in which Lincoln is still part of our lives today. I love Lincoln, so I'm excited for this one.

*I do think reading books about food is inspiring me to experiment a bit more, though. This weekend I made an apple pie - it had plenty of butter in it, so I think Julia would have approved. This is the next thing I want to try:

YouTube - Julia Child Makes an Omelet.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth

"In the end we are faced with a mystery to which there is yet no solution. Indeed, if one were seeking proof of the existence of evil - and this is not a search I have ever undertaken, nor wish to believe in - then one need look no further than these monsters who by rights should not exist outside the realm of our nightmares."

-The Blood-Dimmed Tide

First off, I think I should note that The Blood-Dimmed Tide is a sequel, and I have not read its predecessor, The River of Darkness. I suppose this colors my perception of the book, especially in the development of its characters. That being said, I had no difficulty following the plot - there are numerous references to the previous case, but they are all pretty self-explanatory.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide is set in England, 1932. Ramifications from World War I are still apparent, and there is growing concern about the political situation in Germany. John Madden, a former inspector for the Scotland Yard, is living a quiet life in the countryside with his wife and two children. That life is disrupted, however, when a young girl goes missing. Madden can't help but follow his instincts and, despite his wife's fervent opposition, becomes involved in the ensuing investigation. Although he is never officially on the case - we follow police developments through Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair, a former colleague of Madden's - he can't help but feel a responsibility to see it through, despite the increasingly troubling evidence they are on the trail of a dangerous serial killer.

I love mysteries, I truly do. I am not a big fan of gore, however, and I would not in all likelihood pick out a book on my own that featured violence against children (this is one of a number of books my aunt lent me recently). This book is not gratuitous, but it is also not for the faint of heart - I basically had to put the content of the crime out of my head and focus on the investigation, because thinking about it too much would have made me queasy. I will say that I think the plot moved along at a respectable speed, and things were neither overly simplistic nor needlessly complicated. On the other hand, it never turned into a page-turner.

Madden, whom I realize sounds like the protagonist from my plot description, is not so central as one would assume. Clearly it is meant to be his story, and he is the hero who does a lot of the best detective work, but he's more peripheral than I would have liked. Because author Rennie Airth decided to have Madden as a retired detective (a result of a perilous situation in the first book, apparently), it could never truly be his investigation. That's where characters like Angus Sinclair come in. Unfortunately, Sinclair doesn't have much of a personality. He's only marginally distinctive from the other policemen mentioned, and the major difference between them seemed to be rank - Sinclair is in charge of the investigation, Bennett and Holly are his superiors, Billy Styles is younger and lower on the totem pole - other than that, there's little to speak of. Madden himself is an enigmatic figure, prone to scowling and not saying much. Apparently he was quite angst-ridden in the first book, as a survivor of WWI as well as a grieving widower, but his second marriage* seems to have largely put him on even keel. Nice for him, I suppose, but who wants well-adjusted detectives? Detectives with demons for me, please.

Another facet of the book I found interesting was how un-period it seems to be. Aside from the references to the rise of the Nazi party - the quotation above comes from Jewish psychologist visiting the Madden family from Austria - there is very little that signals you that this book is set when it is. Indeed, in the early pages, with references to motor traffic and a doctor off golfing, it would have been very easy to suppose that the book was relatively modern. Normally I feel like period books have more small touches that make them of the era - things that one assumes required a fair amount of research. To be fair to Airth, perhaps it was a deliberate choice to limit such references, to make the era seem more relevant and to draw parallels to contemporary society. I dig little nods to history, though, so I found the modernism somewhat disappointing

Up next: My Life in France by Julia Child, which I am finding delightful so far.

*Incidentally, Madden's wife, Helen, is a doctor. Although I'm no expert on the era of the book, I have to feel this would be unusual in 1932. No one ever mentions it, though. Perhaps it was discussed sufficiently in the first book?

The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford

I closed the book, pushed it to one side, and then reached for Volume III. My fingers trembled - a little - as I lit a cigarette. I knew why I had lingered so long over the preschool child piece, even though I hated to admit it to myself. For a long time (I said to myself that I was only waiting to finish my cigarette first), I was physically unable to open the book to my article on Jacques Debierue. Every evil thing Dorian Gray did appeared on the face of his closeted portrait, but in my case, I wonder sometimes if there is a movie projector in a closet somewhere whirring away, showing the events of those two days of my life over and over. Evil, like everything else, should keep pace with the times, and I'm not a turn-of-the-century dilettante like Dorian Gray. I'm a professional, and as contemporary as the glaring Florida sun outside my window.

-The Burnt Orange Heresy

That excerpt is from the third page of The Burnt Orange Heresy, and it's what I'd call a heck of an opening. Three pages in, and we already know that narrator James Figueras has done something very bad indeed. As to the particulars - well, Charles Willeford knows how to keep those under wraps for a good long while.

In fact, as the novel wore on, I forgot that Figueras had made that Dorian Gray comparison. He's cold and ambitious, certainly; an art critic who's hungry for prestige. He takes an opportunity to make what could be a career-making connection with a legendarily reclusive artist - of course, it comes with a catch. And that catch leads him down, down, down...

I hate to say too much about this one. Naturally, if you're not wild about noir or suspense, it's not going to be the book for you. But for anyone who might be interested, I think the less said, the better. And it's not even so much that it's a mystery - not in the usual whodunit? way. It's more of a window into the mind of a criminal - perhaps more comparable to the aforementioned Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as psychological portraits of guilt like Crime and Punishment and The Secret History. Much slighter, I must say - my copy is only 140 pages.

I did want to mention, however, that in addition to crafting a nifty bit of suspense, Willeford is also an artist himself - it shows. I'm an avid museum-goer (and former Art History student), so I appreciated that Figueras rang true in that regard. I also enjoyed that, after launching into a particularly lengthy critical reflection, Figueras eventually noticed that his listener had fallen asleep. Not everyone loves Dada, it seems.

Up next: I finished The Burnt Orange Heresy a couple of days ago, so I'm actually quite close to wrapping up The Blood-Dimmed Tide, another mystery. (Lovely title, I know. It's actually Yeats, as it turns out. Who knew?)

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

"One more word. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part."

-North and South

I hope it does not spoil things to reveal that the preceding passage comes at the end of a botched proposal of marriage. If you're not familiar with the story of North and South*, I'm not sure how to better describe it except Pride and Prejudice (with its own famous trainwreck of a proposal) by way of Dickens. Now, Gaskell's prose is not as lively as Austen's, nor as rich as that of Dickens. (I don't want to oversell it.) But the comparison is inevitable: North and South could just as easily be entitled Pride and Prejudice: Industrial Edition.

Margaret Hale is representing the South. She's from the countryside, and unexpectedly finds herself relocating to the factory town of Milton after her father, a curate, suffers a crisis of faith. Milton is smoky, loud, and populated with a very different sort of people than Margaret is used to (and not just because of their delightful accents). Then she meets Mr. Thornton.

Mr. Thornton (representing the North, in case that was unclear) is the wealthy and well-respected proprietor of a local cotton factory. He and Margaret clash early and often. Margaret, still narrow-minded in her views of trade, does not consider him to be a gentleman. And Mr. Thornton thinks her far too (wait for it) proud. But, interestingly, the bulk of their argument revolves around labor issues. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound interesting. But the fact that their issues revolve around a matter of substance is what puts North and South apart from so many of the common "opposites attract" stories.

The other threads of the novel aren't quite as engaging. Margaret begins to form a tentative friendship with a sickly former-factory girl, whose constant refrain about her imminent journey to Holy Jerusalem is wearying, although not necessarily inaccurate. Margaret also deals with her surprisingly needy parents and with the case of her wayward brother, who has been accused of mutiny. The latter storyline is broached with perhaps one of the most ham-fisted instances of exposition I've ever read, to wit:

"Poor Frederick," thought she, sighing. "Oh! if Frederick had but been a clergyman, instead of going into the navy, and being lost to us all! I wish I knew all about it. I never understood it from Aunt Shaw; I only knew he could not come back to England because of that terrible affair."

So yes, it's a bit dated in terms of phrasing and language. For some reason I only very rarely get that impression from Dickens, although he and Gaskell were contemporaries. (According to my edition of the book, Dickens thought North and South was "[an] admirable story...full of character and power.") Of course, Dickens is rather short on grand romance.

In my previous post, I alluded to the fact that Mr. Thornton is possibly more swoonworthy than the much more famous Mr. Darcy. Naturally, it's a matter of taste. I think Mr. Thornton's biggest asset is that he's a self-made man. He's very capable, and he's eager to better himself (he takes classics lessons with Mr. Hale). Not that Darcy isn't accomplished...but what does he do all day? In addition, we as readers actually spend more time with Mr. Thornton, and get a better sense of his feelings. Some people are a bit leery of angst (and after Twilight, I well understood that feeling), but really, how can you argue with passages like this:

[Mr. Thorton] turned round to his mother; his face was very gray and grim. "Yes, mother. I do believe he is her lover." When he had spoken, he turned round again; he writhed himself about, like one in bodily pain. He leant his face against his hand.

Ah, jealousy (he's mistaken, of course). I don't remember Darcy writhing around, feeling the pain of his love. That's pretty intense.

Mr. Thornton is somewhat different in the miniseries, which stars Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage. I'm not planning on doing a separate post on it, as I haven't seen it recently enough - I actually watched it before I read the book the first time. I did rewatch the first episode, though, and was struck with how, uh, violent** Mr. Thornton is in the miniseries. It's a bit of a leap from the book's Thornton, who prides himself in keeping his emotions in check (writhing aside). Other than that, I would say that in most regards the miniseries is more enjoyable than the book. The ending is changed substantially for the better, and some of the gloom of the book (people die off fairly regularly) is toned down.

Up next: I'm going to try The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford, which is favorite of my dad's.

*Like many classics, North and South has an utterly dull cover in pretty much every edition. Thus I substituted another miniseries picture, which I find more aesthetically pleasing.

**Perhaps I shouldn't find the violent turn of the miniseries surprising. After all, very shortly thereafter Mr. Thorton grew out his hair, traveled back in time, and happily spent his days as the evil henchman of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I Want To Read: When Will There Be Good News?

This is Kate Atkinson. She is awesome.

Well, I don't know her per se, so perhaps I should qualify that her writing is awesome. Her most recent book, When Will There Be Good News?, was released last year. The only reason that it's not already in my hot little hands is because I am trying to preserve some modicum of fiscal responsibility. (It's not in American paperback until January 2010).

When Will There Be Good News? is Atkinson's latest mystery featuring the Scottish detective Jackson Brodie. I picked up the first, Case Histories, based on strong reviews and the intriguing title. (Atkinson has a way with titles: I like Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Emotionally Weird).

It was a good pick. Great, really. The thing with Atkinson is that she infuses well-crafted mysteries with language that is associated with literature, as opposed to (heaven forbid) genre fiction. It's not uncommon to find a mystery writer who can navigate a tricky plot but who doesn't rise above mediocrity on a sentence by sentence basis. And of course there are many, often more well-respected writers who can write beautiful stories in which very little seems to actually happen. Atkinson fuses the best of the two. Her stories are ambitious, complicated, sometimes messy, but absolutely enjoyable.

It's the reason I haven't just checked the book out from the library. I'm convinced that once I've read it, I'll want to hold on to it. It's nice to have that level of trust in an author. It doesn't always work out of course (see: The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell). Also, of course, I don't feel that I can go to the library when I have a pile of unread books sitting in my apartment. Oh, the troubles of a reader.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

I took a fateful cab ride many years ago. Rolling back from the Lower East Side with a bunch of close friends, all of us fresh from scoring dope, I jokingly remarked on an article I'd seen, detailing the statistical likelihood of successfully detoxing.

"Only one in four has a chance at making it. Ha, ha, ha," I said, my words ringing immediately painful and hollow as soon as I'd said them. I counted our number in the back of that rattling Checker Marathon. Four. And right there, I knew that if one of us was getting off dope, and staying off dope, it was going to be me. I wasn't going to let these guys drag me down. I didn't care what it took, how long I'd known them, what we'd been through together or how close we'd been. I was going to live. I was the guy.

I made it. They didn't.

I don't feel guilty about that.

-Kitchen Confidential

Tony Bourdain is not a rock star, although it would be an easy mistake to make. He's a (now-famous*) chef, and reputedly quite a good one. Kitchen Confidential details his misspent youth as a cook-for-hire, and how he cleaned himself him up, got serious, and started running Brasserie Les Halles here in New York.

Kitchen Confidential also, famously, tells some tricks of the trade - I've been hearing the "never order seafood on a Monday" advice for years now, based on this book. That's really only one chapter, however, as Bourdain mostly hops from kitchen to kitchen, giving a behind-the-scenes look at some of the many places where he has worked. I especially liked the chapter in which he takes the reader through a day in his life at Les Halles, giving a comprehensive look at every thing a top chef must juggle, from ordering food to managing staff issues to, of course, actually cooking. It only reinforced my belief - initially brought on by reading the excellent Heat by Bill Buford and by watching bits and pieces of Hell's Kitchen - that I would make a lousy chef. Not only because of my absolute lack of culinary skills, although certainly that would be a problem, but because of the lightning-fast pace. Also, the yelling. I prefer slower, yelling-free environments. This is one of many ways in which Bourdain and I differ.

Despite the fact that I find the prospect of ever encountering him in real life slightly terrifying (the man is intense), I really enjoyed having Bourdain as a guide in the world of cooking. Kitchen Confidential is actually not the first book I've read by him**, so I knew to expect the cursing and the chain smoking and the jibes at vegetarians. I assume many people are also familiar with his persona from his show No Reservations which I, not having cable, have never seen. I mean, it took me this long to read the book. Clearly I'm a little behind.

Up next: Although I have My Life in France by Julia Child sitting here, I've decided I need a little breather from cooking. I'm rereading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Another reread, I know. Why, you might ask? Surely it's not just an excuse to post pictures from the miniseries, like this:


No, of course not. That would be terribly shallow of me. You'll just have to wait a bit to see why I think Mr. Thornton is perhaps a better catch than Mr. Darcy. Oh yes, I said it.

*He passes the dad test: If my dad knows who someone is, that person is really, truly famous (as opposed to Us Weekly-famous or only-on-music-blogs-famous).

**A Cook's Tour, which follows Bourdain around the world as he seeks out the perfect meal, is highly entertaining and informative. I believe it was also a tv show on the Food Network, which I'd love to see, if only because in the book he'd occasionally go off on great tangents about the hazards of filming.

President Obama's Summer Reading

I've decided to bring out the big guns in recommendation, y'all: Barack Obama. Summer reading list (via Slate). Let's do this.

1. The Way Home by George Pelecanos
2. Lush Life by Richard Price
3. Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
4. John Adams by David McCullough
5. Plainsong by Kent Haruf

My thoughts: First, I have actually read two of these books! I mean, I don't really remember Plainsong at all, so maybe that doesn't count. But if the President and I ever had to make small talk (because that seems pretty likely), we could totally chat about John Adams. Slate seems to think that he will be dropping Adams references in the months to come. I, for one, love this idea.

Onto the ones I haven't read: I'm sure Hot, Flat, and Crowded is very well written, terribly informative, etc. It sounds like miserable summer reading, though. I'm much more on board with the Price and Pelecanos, both of whom wrote for The Wire. I think it's pretty safe to say that they've got a handle on the urban crime story. I read The Night Gardener by Pelecanos because of the Wire connection and found it pretty engaging, although crime still isn't really my genre of choice.

I wonder if anyone kept tabs on what the First Lady brought. Fingers crossed for Sookie Stackhouse!

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

The kitchen was a crime scene. Eggshells littered the floor, crackling underfoot. What looked like three days' worth of unwashed dishes were piled up in the sink, and half-unpacked boxes had been shoved to the corners of the room. Unseen down the dark throat of the trashcan, yet as conspicuous as tarpaulin-covered murder victims, were the mutilated remains of eggs. If the purplish-stained shreds of yolk clinging stickily to the walls had been blood spatters, a forensics specialist would have had a field day. But Eric wasn't standing at the stove to triangulate the shooter's position - he was poaching an egg in red wine. Two other eggs sat on a plate by the stove. These I had poached myself before Eric's and my impromptu reenactment of that scene in Airplane! in which all the passengers line up and take turns slapping and shaking the hysterical woman, with Eric taking the roles of all the passengers and I the part of the hysteric. These three eggs were the sole survivors of the even dozen I had begun with three hours before. One incoherent gurgle of despair escaped me, seeing those two pitiful things lying there, twisted and blue as the lips of corpses. "We're going to starve, aren't we?"

-Julie & Julia

I've been flipping through Julie & Julia, which I finished last night, trying to find a passage that would best demonstrate Julie Powell's writing style. Although the one above does not illustrate her tendency to go off on tangents (my head was spinning in the opening pages, when she seemed to be cramming in every thought that flitted through her mind), it does give you an idea of the level of drama you will contend with throughout the book. It's not just some broken eggs, oh no, it's a massacre.

On the one hand, I can sympathize with Julie. She embarked upon an extraordinarily difficult project: to cook the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, and to blog about the experience. She lives in a crummy (although spacious, and in New York that can't be dismissed out of hand) apartment, she hates her job, she's worried about turning thirty. These are all concerns that foster some sympathy.

But wow, is she ever melodramatic about it. See, Julie Powell is kind of neurotic, which I can identify with, but she is also super loud and in your face about it, which I find pretty obnoxious. To be fair, she is quite up front about acknowledging her own faults. However, after just the second or third tantrum over cooking, I felt my sympathy withering away. I mean, really. I guess I've never had a lot of patience for overly dramatic people, and I found her actions in a lot of instances to be so over-the-top as to be almost incomprehensible. Open to any given page and you're just as likely as not to find her crying over aspic or yelling at her long-suffering husband, Eric*. It gets a bit tiresome.

I feel like it's rather unkind for me to rag on Julie, considering she's a real person. But this is the way she chose to present herself to the world, for better or worse. Is it what she's like in real life? I have no idea. If you choose to read this book, though, you'll be spending time with this Julie, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Onto the food. The food was interesting. I'm not really a foodie, and I'm certainly far from being a competent cook, so I was a bit out of my element. I cannot imagine making even one recipe out of MtAoFC, let alone all of them. To be honest, most of them did not sound that appetizing to me. There is a lot of offal involved, folks. And even putting that aside, it's hard to get excited about eggs in aspic. I mean, that's a culinary challenge, for sure, but what a nauseating result.

The food looks better in the film, which I saw prior to reading the book. Looking back, it was a great adaptation. Julie is played by Amy Adams, who has enough charm to temper her character's more obnoxious tendencies. And of course the real star of the show is Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Julie Powell invented little fictional passages from Julia's life and inserted them throughout the book; I didn't feel that they really added anything. The film gives a more fleshed-out account of how Julia came to cooking, and her struggles to first succeed in a male-dominated world, and then to work on the behemoth that was MtAoFC. I wouldn't normally say this, but in this instance I would recommend the film over the book. Not that the film is any masterpiece, but it's pretty enjoyable, and I predict it will cause far less eyerolling.

Up next: As I suggested in my last post, the food trend will continue, at least for a little while: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, which I have wanted to read for years. Exciting!

*In the film, Eric, played by Chris Messina, finds it irritating that Julie portrays him as so saintly in her blog. Obviously no one is perfect, but if Julie is being reasonably accurate in her book, the man put up with a lot of hysterical crying and screaming. A lot.

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart

Rhonda gestured toward the box. "What happens to Mr. Benedict and Number Two depends on that," she said grimly. She sounded if she still couldn't believe it, and indeed, as if speaking to herself, she repeated in a whisper, "Everything depends on that."

The children moved closer. It was an ordinary-looking box, about the size of a fruit crate, with several holes punched into it. Together they peered through the holes into the box's dark interior, anxious to see just what it might be - what the box might possibly contain that would determine the fate of those they held so dear.

It was a pigeon. Only that. A pigeon.

-The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

To begin, I must say that I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this book. I had mixed feelings about the first book in this series, and I've learned that there are too many wonderful books in the world to waste time on mediocre ones. I was fully prepared to put this down after fifty pages if I wasn't engaged.

Well, guess what? I was utterly engaged by page fifty, to the point where putting it down didn't even cross my mind. I finished it up at jury duty yesterday, where the lively adventures of the Benedict crew helped to move the morning along a little faster. To enjoy reading it so thoroughly was an excellent surprise.

At the end of the previous Benedict Society book, the kids had thwarted the evil plans of Ledroptha Curtain, but he and his minions had managed to escape. When Perilous Journey begins, the kids have been out of danger for some time - but also out of adventure. Sensing this, their kindly benefactor, Mr. Benedict, arranges for them to go on a worldwide tour that will have them solving clues to get from one location to the next. Unfortunately, before they can begin, Benedict and his trusty assistant, Number Two, are kidnapped by the nefarious Mr. Curtain.

Stymied by Curtain's request that they give him information about a mysterious plant to secure their friends' release, the kids decide to embark on the trip Mr. Benedict had planned for them, hoping that his clues will at least lead to his last known location. Thus begins the titular perilous journey, which involves a lightning fast boat, a train, bicycles and even a seaplane.

One of the reasons that I found this book more appealing than the last lies strictly in the plot. In the original book, the kids infiltrate the mysterious school that Curtain has set up to train his associates. I found that it felt a bit recycled (Hogwarts by way of 1984, perhaps), while simultaneously feeling too clever by half - as though Trenton Lee Stewart were trying to jam in every bit of quirk and wonder he could think of, which left it entirely too quirky but not particularly wondrous.

The adventure of Perilous Journey moves along more quickly and doesn't get bogged down with school politics or the endless bouts of discussion and Morse code in Reynie and Sticky's bedroom. It's quite fun to let the clever and resourceful Benedict kids out into the real world, eliminating the claustrophobic element of keeping them cooped up on an island with their arch-enemy and all his henchmen. Okay, so they end back up on an island with their arch-enemy and his henchmen in this book, too - but it's much, much cooler. And may I say, the Ten Men (said henchmen)'s delightful way of speaking is exactly the kind of whimsy mixed with danger that you want in villains. ("'Now why would you do that, muffin? Why would you want to make old McCracken angry?'" for example).

The characters have become more nuanced in this second outing as well. Reynie, who has mostly been known for being clever and good, has become suspicious based on the events of the last book. He's finding it difficult to trust people, an interesting and realistic development. Sticky has become more confident as a result of his work in the last book, but has carried it too far, and has consequently developed an unfortunate habit of showing off his copious knowledge. He knows it, too, and finds it embarrassing and difficult to control. It will be interesting to see how these characteristics develop in the third book, due out in October.

Up next: Julie & Julia. I suspect I may go on a mini-spree of food-related books, in fact, based on what else I have sitting around my apartment.

Adaptation: True Blood, Season 1

When you came in, the air went out.
And every shadow filled up with doubt.

So begins "Bad Things," the devilishly catchy theme song of True Blood, HBO's adaptation of the Sookie Sackhouse novels. Is there any better way to describe that first meeting between Sookie and Vampire Bill? Him, sitting in Merlotte's, glowering, looking about as monstrous as he ever has. Her, delighted, bubbling over with excitement and anticipation. A vampire! Right here in Bon Temps!

True Blood loosely follows the arc of the first of Charlaine Harris's novel, Dead Until Dark. The writing and editing have been carefully done, with showrunners excising the superfluous (the Bubba character, most notably) and beefing up roles for interesting characters (especially Jason, Sookie's brother, and Lafayette, her coworker). They've also played up the political angle of the story, which gives some of the goings-on a bit more weight and real-world credibility.

The acting is across-the-board great. I've heard some complaints about the accents (three of the leads, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, and Ryan Kwanten, are from New Zealand, England, and Australia respectively), but nothing sounded radically off to me. Of course, I'm no great expert of the accents of northern Louisiana. Also, I think it's cute that Stephen Moyer says Sook-EH instead of Sookie, so I may be biased.

The real standout of the cast is Rutina Wesley, who plays Sookie's friend Tara. As I mentioned in my previous post, I love Tara. She's a fantastically complicated character; a woman who's strong, scared, funny, angry, and vulnerable. It's a huge oversight that Rutina Wesley does not have an Emmy nomination this year. I also have to recognize Ryan Kwanten, who plays Jason Stackhouse. He takes a character who seems pretty dumb and unlikeable, who continues to do idiotic things throughout the season, and injects him with enough warmth that you kind of have to love him. It's a bit of a tightrope act.

I also really love the mood of the show. The ambience. Vampires fit in quite nicely among the swampy backwoods and the antebellum homes. It's a funny show as well though, particularly because of Tara and her scene-stealing cousin Lafayette. The funny moments are offset by moments of outright horror, including spouting blood and - well, whatever else it is that might come out when a vampire is staked in the most spectacularly gory manner possible. It is not always advisable to eat when watching True Blood, fair warning.

Having finished the first season and being in possession of some iTunes credit, I was all set to settle in with season 2. I'm quite curious to see what direction they go in, considering that by the end of the season 1 finale, they've set up two storylines from the second book (but I'm pretty certain that they aren't planning to follow them too closely). Anyway, imagine my disappointment when I discovered it wasn't online yet. I'll have to console myself with season 2 of Mad Men - a fine show in and of itself, no doubt, but seriously lacking in vampires. (Time travelling crossover special, anyone? You know you want to see Sterling Cooper marketing TruBlood.)