My New Year's Resolution

So I read a lot. I mean, all the time. And this doesn't include the enormous quantity of student papers that are just a given. And I lose track of what I've read and what I've liked...more than once, I've picked up a book, read the back, bought it, and realized thirty pages in that I've read it before. Not that I have anything against rereading; I'm an inveterate re-reader. But it is a little bit of a waste of money. So I thought I'd spend this year writing about what I've read and what I think about it - it'll help me avoid repeat reading and maybe someone else might be interested.

So this New Year so far has been all about food. I finished up Jason Sheehan's memoir Cooking Dirty, which was a good gonzo read. I'm a kind of addicted to the Food Network and Top Chef and it was interesting to read something that was the grittier, tougher side of things - cooks versus chefs, sex, drugs, and knives...it's similar to Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, but a generation later - Sheehan's just a few years younger than me. And today(in between waay overdure grading of essays and making brunch for some friends) I read Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone, her memoir of becoming an eater. I used part of it earlier this year in one of my English classes, so I was interested in the rest. One of the things I liked about both books - and something I loved about Julia Child's memoir - is the inspirational value of second acts in American lives(contrary to Fitzgerald's famous line). All of them - Child, Reichl, Sheehan - found their calling later than we're expected to...in their thirties and forties. None of them planned to be what they became, and ended up loving and being really good at. It gives me hope. Not that I don't love my career and my life, but it's nice to feel that there's always the opportunity to change course.