Thursday, August 22, 2013

Bout of Books: Day 3

For this readathon, I decided to do a reading journal of sorts each day. Hopefully they won't get overly long...

Yesterday was not my best reading day, even for a regular, non-readathon day. I read a bit of the cookbook, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, but I ended up spending most of my time with my husband (he had the day off) and my family (they were in town). So not much reading got done around here.

I started out my day by finishing Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. I'll write a bit of a review and post it later, but it's such a fun book. Obviously, reading a cookbook called for making some food. So today I made Reese's recipes for English muffins and Nutella.

Wow and wow. The English muffins were quite good (they unfortunately didn't have the airy bubbles inside that you get with the store-bought, but they tasted just as good) but the homemade Nutella was otherworldly. Reese describes it as "nubblier" than the smooth, waxy, store-bought version--which it is. I started out by vowing that I would grind the hazelnuts until they were as smooth as possible, but when I tasted the hazelnut paste, I decided I actually really liked the nutty little granules. I used a little less sugar, too. The result was a delicious nutty butter that I far prefer to the store-bought Nutella. A bit of it spread on an English muffin makes for a marvelous reading snack.

Anyway, enough of food. Back to books.


After I was done with all my cooking, I focused my energies on Bleak House. First, I watched the rest of the BBC adaptation (2005), which I loved. Then I started back in on the book itself. I've been trying to read it here and there since I bought it at the library book sale, but until I watched the film I wasn't able to get into it. Now that I have the characters a little more straight and I actually understand their purposes, I'm a lot more interested in the book. The best part is that I finally have time to just barrel through it, since I don't have to prioritize my school reading. I'm finally halfway through!

My goal is to finish Bleak House during the readathon. That might be a little ambitious, but since I don't have school right now I want to push myself to get it read.

3 comments:

  1. Is the version you watched the one with Diana Rigg in it? If so, my library has it, and I'll try to get it some time.

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    1. No, it's the most recent one with Gillian Anderson in it. I've never seen the Diana Rigg one.

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    2. Aha. Hmm. It's like 4 hours so... I'll put it on my "to-watch" list and see it some day.

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