SFist Reads
With the holiday party rush, we're falling behind on our online reserve reading, content instead to learn about ideas for "Great Hair in a Hurry" from Allure (Yes, they're all basically just ponytails, how lame!) We feel nervous, knowing that our time is almost up with some of our books, and that their coveted status prevents us from renewal. If we were smart, we'd just sack up and buy what we're reading from one of our fine local independent bookstores, because what we'll spend in fines quite possibly exceeds the cover price of our books.
SFist Derrick just cracked the covers on a birthday present from his dad, George Taber's Judgment of Paris (For the record, SFist Derrick turns...uh...30...today. Yeah, 30. That's it.) The book covers the famous 1976 blind tasting in Paris in which French critics gave First Place to a California white and a California red. The event shoved California, and especially Napa, onto the worldwide wine stage, where it has remained ensonced ever since.
SFist Rain has just finished Julie & Julia by blogger (and SFist interview subject) Julie Powell. Rain started it on the night before Thanksgiving, figuring a book about cooking would be good motivation for the morning's feast preparations, and she got sucked into it right away. She only regrets she hadn't read Powell's blog about her attempt to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking back when she was posting daily. Luckily, most of that blog is still available for those who want more than the book has to offer...
SFist Rita just finished Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary?, which is, like everyone says, a total mess. Not unentertaining, mind you, but a total mess. It's depressing the way Candice Bushnell's Sex and the City books are depressing, in that way where someone's trying to make their life seem all glamorous but only succeed in making themselves look really sad instead. It's too bad, because the last chapter (on sex and politics) is really excellent but by the time you get there, you've already been beaten into submission by all the appalling antics of Dowd's giggly friends.