Book Reviews: Kids, Kaling and Christine

I'd like to blame the fact that I was stuck reading the same books for six months on having a new baby that required so much attention and time. It isn't completely untrue; babies have this innate ability to recognize when you're relaxing/settling down to watch TV/going to bed. They wait until you get comfortable, sigh with relief and then....OHMYGOD, MY PACIFIER CAME OUT AND IF IT IS NOT BACK IN MY MOUTH IN ELEVEN SECONDS, YOU WILL FEEL MY WRATH.

So yes, a baby was part of the reason, but I think the more accurate reason is that I just had so much TV to catch up on. Shut up, I know. But when you finally get the baby to sleep and you have an hour until you should go to bed yourself and you're faced with a book you may or may not be totally into OR a completely mind-numbing but entertaining episode of Survivor...well, I think we know where I stand on that. Plus, two of the books I was reading with Matt and the other was one I just didn't love.

Those are my excuses. I'll stop now.

After struggling through those last few months, I've now finished three books in about three weeks. It seems strange to review them all in one shot, but now I'm on a roll and I'm about to go back in the hospital with my son so I'm sure I'll finish two more in about five days, so here we go.

Someone Could Get Hurt by Drew Magary

Source: barnesandnoble.com

I have been a big Drew Magary fan for several years, since I stumbled upon his weekly mailbags on Deadspin. A freelance writer, he's written for a ton of places, and he excels at providing a first-person narrative that is both well-written and extremely hilarious. (For an example of why I love Magary so much, here is a piece he wrote a couple years ago on his attempt to take the SATs as a 35-year-old.) This collection of essays about his own experiences parenting his three young children came out when I got pregnant and it seemed like the perfect marriage of one of my favorite writers and a topic that I was understandably interested in.

At first, that's exactly what it was. We saw Magary read from his book for our anniversary last year and it was great. Then I read the first chapter aloud to Matt while we were on the way to learn about one of Joey's complicated medical issues at an appointment in Boston. The first and last essays are about his youngest child, a boy born with an intestinal disorder that required emergency surgery and a month-long stay in the NICU. Let's just say it hit a little too close to home. We read a few of the essays, but then took a break until we were in a better mindset.

The rest of the book, to be fair, does not have the dire horribleness of the first and last sections. Most are simple snapshots of a life with young children: turning a trip to a grocery store into a race; the ordeal of taking kids absolutely anywhere; his own struggles with feeling inadequate when faced with disciplining his oldest. There's nothing out of the ordinary, but the way he tells it, the stories are fascinating and hilarious. (Also, his final essay about life while his son was in the NICU for 27 days hit the nail so much on the head, it was freakish.) I don't think someone would need to be a parent to enjoy it, although I think anyone who would enjoy it needs a good sense of humor and not to be easily offended.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Source: crushable.com

This was one of those instances where I knew I'd like this book even before I started it. I find Mindy Kaling fantastic in pretty much every format, and enough people likened this book to Tina Fey's Bossypants that I was prepared. The comparisons are certainly understandable; both women are funny and fabulous, able to emit self-deprecation while showcasing the talent that got them the success they have today. But while you could picture Fey as the awkward band geek who is destined to show everyone up at the 10-year reunion, Kaling is more the drama geek who spends her free time binge-watching comedy sketch shows (which she did) in a room decorated with heart-shaped TigerBeat posters.

Kaling's book offers a little of everything - her childhood, the trajectory of her career (including the story behind her two-woman stage show about a fictionalized version of the relationship between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, which I want more than anything to see live), and random things that pop into her head. She has an entire chapter of selfies from her phone, most taken as a way for her to check whether that zit that appeared six hours before a red-carpet award show was adequately covered with makeup (looks good to me, Mindy!).

Whether or not you'll like this book is completely based on how charming you find Mindy Kaling to be. I personally adore her and so I adore this book. But if you find her annoying or just don't like her, well, it will probably take you even longer than six months to finish.

Christine by Stephen King

Source: Jmj713 on Wikipedia

This was the continuation of my Stephen King chronology experiment, which is still going strong. I probably missed a couple of reviews for books I finished over the past year or so, and I do apologize for that, but be assured that I haven't cheated. I've gone through them all. The fact that I finished Christine is a testament to that.

In addition to all of the excuses listed above, one of the big ones that kept me stuck on Christine is the simple fact that it is one of my least favorite Stephen King novels. It's funny to me that it is often one of the first stories listed when people talk about Stephen King's anthology, although I think it's because its plot is something that can be described in a handful of words. Carrie was the one about the telekinetic girl; The Shining was a haunted hotel; 'Salem's Lot was vampires; and Christine was the possessed car. But it's just not King at his best.

For those that aren't aware, Christine is a 1958 Plymouth Fury originally owned by a slug named Rollie LeBay and eventually purchased as a scrapheap 20 years later by Arnie Cunningham. Arnie is your typical high school nerd - glasses, acne, V-card still in tact. His only friend is Dennis Guilder, a decent-looking football player who dates cheerleaders. Dennis isn't EXACTLY the big man on campus, but he does pretty well for himself. Against Dennis' advice, Arnie is drawn to spend way too much for Christine and it quickly turns his life around: he alienates the parents to whom he had spent a lifetime being subservient; he clears up his acne and gives him enough confidence to start dating the new, beautiful girl in school; it makes him crazy and paranoid so he then ruins that relationship. Oh, and the car seems to fix itself and go after anyone who goes against Arnie.

It's a fine story, but it's not to the King standard for writing. Most of the characters are one-dimensional: Arnie is the classic high school nerd; Dennis is the high school jock with a heart of gold; Leigh Cabot is the beautiful new girl in school; Rollie is the dirty old man. I'm not sure when King wrote the book, but the uselessness of Leigh hearkens back to one of my beefs with 'Salem's Lot, back when King seemed to have difficulty writing women characters that weren't boring. Perhaps even more baffling is the way in which the story is told. The first third is in first person, with Dennis serving as your narrator. But at the end of the act, Dennis is seriously injured in a football game and spends the whole second act in the hospital, and so the story is told via third person. Dennis returns as your narrator in the final third. It seems strange - why not just make the whole story in the third person? 

I'm not crapping on King at the moment. Stephen King at his worst is still 10x better than most writers at their best. But compared to The Stand, Needful Things and some of my other favorites, Christine is something that simply exists.

MasterChef Recap: Wu Tang Clash

Source: ctv.ca/

The advertisements leading up to this week's episode of MasterChef promised archenemies paired with each other in the team challenge. While I was certainly intrigued, it was also pretty obvious that this was enough cog in the Gordon Ramsay/Fox Promo Wagon, where things are always THE BIGGEST BATTLE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE AND/OR RESTAURANTS. There were, of course, some obvious archenemies on the show. The battles between Leslie and Ahran, mostly fueled by Leslie's insistence of pronouncing the teen's name E-ran or Eye-ran or O-ran or Ramad-an in an infuriating power move, were already legendary, and everyone is archenemies with Courtney. But no one could tell me Big Willie ever had an archenemy in his life, and others like Elise and Victoria and the adorable Scottish Francis also seemed impossible to hate.

Turns out, that was pretty much what happened. With 15 people left, Courtney learned that her victory in last week's Elimination Challenge gave her the ability to pair the rest of the contestants up while sitting the challenge out herself. She immediately set her sights on Christian, one of the strongest people yet and the person who immediately stated he didn't want to have to work with her before realizing she didn't have to work with anyone. She paired him with Francis B, another strong competitor, and the two didn't seem like they disliked each other. I admit, I wondered what Courtney was doing here, but it turns out she and her stilettos have a much better mind for this than me and my moose pajamas.

Courtney's other pairings were Jaimee & Elizabeth; Victoria & Christine; Cutter & Dan; Big Willie & Daniel; Ahran & Leslie (because duh); and Scottish Francis and Elise.

The challenge was to create a surf and turf-style dish, with countless different types of meat and seafood to choose from. Right away, one team's cracks became evident and it's from a strange source: tough, get-er-done Cutter doesn't like loner Dan's wishy-washy attitude and inability to listen to anyone. Their bickering left them with two unrelated pieces of meat and seven items from the pantry, and Cutter spent the next hour trying to refrain himself from pulling Dan's goatee out, one hair at a time.

But let's not focus on the negative. At least not when we're having a moment across the kitchen, because look! Leslie and Ahran are talking to each other and listening to each other! Ahran's eyes have remained unrolled! Leslie is actually responding to Gordon Ramsay's pronunciation lessons of Ahran's name ("AGHHHHH-RAN!!!!!!!"). THEY'RE HUGGING IT OUT! It's like the commercials leading up to this week were completely full of garbage!

Ahran and Leslie's pork belly tostada with crab guacamole earned rave reviews from the judges, as did the dishes from Jaimee and Elizabeth (lamb and red snapper with carrots and kale), and Big Willie and Daniel (seared ahi tuna with buttermilk miso fried chicken). But the big winners were the underwhelming-by-themselves-but-unstoppable-as-a-team duo of Christine and Victoria, whose pork belly and monkfish with green apple risotto was both intriguing and delicious-looking.

The bottom three consisted of Dan and Cutter's venison and tuna and three carrots; Scottish Francis and Elise's rack of lamb with crab risotto, a Francis-style creative dish that was way too complicated for Elise; and Christian and Francis B's boring and non-creative Moroccan spiked rib-eye with king crab. After the judges saved Scottish Francis and Elise, I'm assuming to save us all from having two Francises in another challenge, the final four had to duke it out - individually, this time - in the Pressure Test.

The challenge? Spring rolls. You know, that favorite of Asian cuisine that someone who maybe grew up in China might have some experience making. You could actually see Cutter's head start to split open when he realized that his newfound mortal enemy Dan Wu would have an advantage in the challenge he had hoped would get him eliminated.

Indeed, Dan's spring rolls are alright, but not exactly stellar. Stellar belonged to Christian, who despite never having cooked spring rolls before, knocked it out of the park. Dan's safety was ensured, rather, because of the disasters that were Cutter and Francis B. Cutter had all sorts of problems: one of his rolls exploded in the fryer and he had to make another last-minute, he didn't have enough filling, they were too sweet, there was approximately a teaspoon of dipping sauce for six rolls.

But the hot mess was Francis B. After cooking with an uncharacteristic listlessness in recent days, he turned out a rough set of spring rolls. His big problem came when the fryer didn't cook them fast enough and he tried to speed the process along by searing them in a greased pan. Except the pan never had enough time to heat up itself, so he just had them sitting in cold grease. And while that might work for the Chinese restaurant down the road from me, it's frowned upon in the type of establishments guys like Joe Bastianich frequent.

In the end, Francis was just thismuch worse than Cutter, although I think he was eliminated more for his attitude and lack of fire than by his one terrible dish. Still, it was way earlier than I thought Francis would be leaving, that's for sure.

Dish I'd Most Like to Try: Victoria and Christine's pork belly and monkfish with green apple risotto sounded intriguing and looked delicious. I also can't say no to spring rolls, so put Christian's in my mouth, please.

Dish I Made Myself: Dinner was on the road, so I didn't make it myself. But I highly recommend the shrimp scampi at the Chateau in Westboro. Whatever breading they put on the shrimp should cover everything I ever eat.