The Running Mate. Joe Klein

There’s a certain genre of movies I refer to as the “white men in suits” movies. They are the kind of movies where many of the main characters look alike and not much is done to differentiate them. I’m always slightly confused during these films, because the characters are so interchangeable. So in the third reel when it is revealed that Mr. So-and-so was really a double agent/mafia don/retired baseball player I always think, “Wait, who was Mr. So-and-so?”

This book was much like that. The story of a long time Midwestern Senator had a lot of characters who were sparingly introduced and then referred to later not only by either their first or last names, but also a nickname now and then. “Who is this person?” I kept thinking as I read.

But I kept reading and aside from having little idea who was talking 60% of the time, I enjoyed this book. Charlie, the main character was wonderful to follow through his trials and tribulations. He really wanted to do the right thing, which was difficult in the changing political landscape of the early 90s. His father was a fun character who would wander in and out and I enjoyed a few of the staffers too.

I enjoy politics (though not so much these past years) and it was fun to have a fictional window to a Senate campaign. There were story threads that could have been more developed and story threads that wandered on forever, but overall this was a pretty okay book.

Bruunch!

It started during a teacher team meeting in January. We, the adult leaders of First Unitarian Church’s YRUU, were having all sorts of ideas. “We should have brunch.” someone said.

“No, we should have ‘brUUnch‘” someone else countered. (UU for Unitarian Universalist)

“What would we eat?”

“Well, fruuit. And muustard.”

And we were off. Umlauts were suggested, food was planned and on April 6, the advisors descended on our kitchen to cook our bruunch.

Jimmy made fabulous pancakes and waffles. His secret? A dash of cinnamon.
Deborah (in lovely apron) made fruuit salad and Marcia (in red hoodie) made a lovely spinach egg dish.
I was in charge of bacons: regular, turkey and soy.
Here is why the youth constantly refer to me as “Marcia” and vice versa. This is actually Marcia, not me, removing something from the oven.
Deborah cleans. Ron, the other member of our team, served the important role of heeding the call, “Ron, can you help me with this?” He also took these pictures.
We wave and cook!
The finished spread. Jimmy, me, Marcia, Deborah and Ron pose in front of the food.
And the youth descend.



It was later remarked that we could think of our bruunch as “the first annual bruunch.”

The Rope Walk. Carrie Brown.

Alice turns 10 at the beginning of this book. She leans out the window at her birthday party and as she leans, we are introduced to her five older brothers, her professor father and the house keeper Elizabeth who came to work when Alice’s mother died one month after her birth. We also meet other sundry characters including Theo, the grandchild of Alice’s neighbors Helen and O’Brien, who is staying with them for the summer. Theo and Alice become friends and together they befriend Kenneth, an older neighbor.

The book is best when describing Alice’s feelings and emotions. There are so many great examples of being 10 years old. I especially loved the friendship that developed between Theo and Alice and this was another book I didn’t want to finish. The closer I got to the ending, the more I set it down.

On an unrelated side note, the author’s picture fascinated me. It may have been because her hair was pinned up, but her steely expression to me seemed to be straight out of a frontier photograph from the 1850s. And I mean that as a compliment.

New sidebar feature.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, my state quarter collection–which was six quarters away from being complete–has now left my possession. I’m sad about this because collecting state quarters since 1999 has been a very happy nerdy sort of thing with me. So, I will collect them again. The trick will be finding the over sized holder to display them in. It was huge, and had a big multicolored map of the United States with a space to display each quarter in its full glory.

After I find that or something similar to it, I can recreate the magic. I’ve posted a list of the state quarters I’m missing and as I recover them, I will remove them from the list.

Read in March

I finished seven books this month, which, considering that there was a week of vacation in there, doesn’t really seem like very many. Still, this month’s take was three more than the average American read last year. (And yes, one was a picture book which I read in 10 minutes, max, but it still counts.) Interestingly, this month, I finished almost every book I started. Four of the books were fiction, so I’m still going through a pretty big non-fiction period. I would guess that normally I read one nonfiction book for every ten fiction books I read, though I have no statistics to prove it at this point. I could throw together some data, but I’m a bit busy right now. Also, except for Bad Haircut I really enjoyed every book I read. I think Goodreads is coming in handy that way. In fact, I think I’m going to wander on over to Goodreads and take a look at my “to-read” list so I can request a few things.

Finished
The Buffalo Soldier
Chris Bohjalian

Terrific
Jon Agee

Body Drama
Nancy Amanda Redd

New Kings of Nonfiction.
Ira Glass, Ed.

Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies
Tom Perrotta

Looking Back: A book of Memories
Lois Lowry

North River: a novel
Pete Hamill

Started but didn’t finish.
Meditation Now or Never
Steve Hagen
A good step-by-step guide, but if the title is to be believed, it is “Never” for me. I’ll read it again when I’m ready to take on the practice in earnest.

Didn’t even start.
The Moments Lost: A Midwest Pilgrim’s Progress
Bruce Olds