I managed 4 books in June, although one was a cookbook, and one a book of postcards, so you could argue that I didn’t read full books. I’m still counting them. Also, still behind on my yearly goal of 60 books read, which might be part of why I have been reading kids books.
Secrets of the Shopping Mall – Richard Peck
This was one of those books that stuck with me for ages as a kid. Even at 39, I can still remember bits of it: the kids eating herring in sour cream, the kids pretending to be mannequins, Teresa getting dressed up by a merchandising group. None of it faded, probably because it was so damn weird. I did forget about the turf war though, or the end of the book.
So 2 kids, Barney and Teresa, are tired of being hassled by the King Kobra gang. They hop on the bus and head to Paradise Park, which turns out to be a concrete shopping mall, and not truly paradise. Once there, they set up shop in a 7 or 8 story department store; sleeping under beds, eating from the gourmet section of the store, wearing department store clothes, you name it, they get set up. Until they realize there’s a pile of other kids also living in the department store. These kids are pissed because there’s an order to how they live, and Barney and Teresa are messing with it.
Truly a strange book. Made me want to live in a department store for a while. Not something you could do now, as the days of nigh watchman and no cameras are long gone. But this was written in the 70s originally, and things were different back then. When I read it, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. I guess time dulls down the things we enjoyed as kids.
Postcards From Impossible Worlds: The Collected Shortest Story – Peter Chiykowski
I started following this guy on Imgur, back when he posted a handful of postcards for perusal. Thanks to a lot of people loving his stories (which are creepy as hell), he made a Kickstarter, and I chipped in. The postcard book is the result of that.
See? Creepy. All his stories have a twist in some form or another. They’re just short short stories, a handful of words with an image attached. Still neat, and a good read. I don’t recommend reading them at night.
Momofuku Milk Bar – Christina Tosi, David Chang
This was a Bookbub deal, and it looked interesting enough for me to grab it. I spent the evening browsing recipes and reading stories, and finally finished it. I don’t think it’s a book for the average baker, which I am one of.
There’s a lot of work involved in these recipes, more work than the average person will want to do. Make a cake. Make a filling using a nut or fruit paste. Make the frosting. Assemble & frost the cake within acetate layers, so it looks pretty. Chill. Then serve.
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
I will try some of the recipes, although I’ll go the traditional route: baking in pans instead of cutting out a sheet cake. Frosting like most people do, not with acetate to keep the layers pretty and clean. No fruit or nut filling. We’ll see how it goes.
The full review of this can be read here, and it’s much longer than I’ll put in this post. The book follows Moth, a 12 year old girl living in the slums of post Civil War New York. Her mother sells her into indentured servitude with a wealthy woman who abuses her, and so she escapes. On her own and not sure what to do, she eventually falls into a house of whores and “near whores” of which she’s to become one. After lying about her age, she’s settled in to accept her fate, although she’s not happy about it.
This book is so complicated. I don’t usually read historical fiction, but I couldn’t leave this one alone. I read it for a swap, but once I started, I more or less devoured it. Moth is a complicated character, doing what she has to survive, but also hating every moment of a lot of it. She goes through a lot of realizations during the book, and the very end is a satisfying conclusion. Along the way we meet the teller of the novel, a female doctor who looks in on the girls and women of the whorehouse, and who tries to help with the sick and injured in the slums.
The “virgin cure” in the book isn’t so different than some we hear about today. The idea was that having sex with a virgin would cure a man of syphilis. While it’s not true, and we know it not to bed true, the idea still persists in some areas, where people believe it will cure them of different diseases.