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mouse

mouse@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 5 months ago

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Emily St. John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility (Hardcover, 2022, Alfred A. Knopf) 4 stars

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled …

Lovely

5 stars

I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.

My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).

Culinary Institute of America: Baking and Pastry (Hardcover, 2009, Wiley) 3 stars

The Culinary Institute of America holds nothing back in its mission to provide students, professionals, …

A bit of a letdown

3 stars

I found this book a little disappointing because of how it's organized and how much of baking it tries to cover. It starts out with a ton of information about baking as a profession, tools, and technical information about baking (like tables of different gelling agents, and bread techniques and terminology). All of that information is really good, well curated, and clear, but I wished that the techniques specific to certain kinds of baking were placed with the recipes, rather than all together at the beginning. It also spends a lot of time, understandably, on professional bread techniques, and a lot less on pastry techniques. It feels at times like a bread book with some pastry recipes included.

There are tons of recipes, but often they are variants on a theme (like banana, chocolate, or lacenut tuiles) but no basic recipe and no information on how to modify the recipe …

Judith C. Brown: Immodest Acts (Paperback, 1987, Oxf.U.P.(N.Y.)) No rating

The discovery of the fascinating and richly documented story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of …

Somewhat surprisingly for a book randomly found in a thrift store, this was interesting, accessible, and short (about 130 pages minus appendices). It was a fun way to meditate on ins and out of trying to understand people in history, in general and specifically in regard to morality and sexuality, as a person who can't escape their own subconscious contemporary context and also as a person with a very conscious perspective.