book – Changing Way

Baguette Recipe

I love fresh baguette. This recipe works well for me. It takes about three hours start to finish. For most of that time the dough is doing its own thing while I do mine.

Anyway, here are the ingredients.

500g white bread flour: I recommend King Arthur flour.
10g salt.
10g instant yeast. I recommend buying it in packs of 500g or so. It keeps well in the fridge in an airtight container. You can buy yeast in little packets, but it’s a lot more expensive that way.
370ml cool water. You may need slightly more or slightly less.
Olive oil.

And the steps:

Lightly oil: a 2-3 liter container, square or rectangular; and your kneading surface.
In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, yeast, and most of the water. Keep adding water until you have a dough that you can knead. Err on the side of wetness.
Knead the dough on the oiled surface.
Tip the dough into the oiled container. Cover with a damp tea towel.
Leave for about an hour.
Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
Tip the dough onto the (re-)oiled surface. Divide it into four oblong pieces. Gently roll each piece into a bauguette-ish shape with your hands.
Place two baguettes on each lined tray. Put the trays on top of the oven and cover with the tea towel.
Leave for about an hour. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 425 F and heat a roasting tray in the bottom.
Lightly dust the baguettes with flour. Using a sharp knife, make three slashes in the top of each baguette.
Fill the roasting tray with hot water to create steam in the oven. Put the baking trays in the oven.
Bake for 25 minutes. I’d actually check them a little earlier. When ready, they should be golden brown on top and sides; on the bottom, they will be darker, and should make a sound when knocked. I take them out at slightly different times, due to unevenness in my dough-dividing and oven.
Cool the baguettes on a wire rack. If anyone tries to steal them, use one of the baguettes to beat them off.

The above is my version of the recipe from Paul Hollywood’s book How to Bake. I intend to donate the book the The Book Nerd, Barrington’s excellent used bookstore. I probably will use this recipe for the rest of my life, but haven’t made much use of the rest of the book, and find Paul Hollywood immensely annoying. For example, his recipe specifies the use of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Unless severe medical problems prevent you, you should knead by hand; people have been doing it for centuries, and it’s very therapeutic.

Enjoy the baking, the aroma, and the bread! Feel free to comment on how it goes for you, on any other aspect of breadmaking, or…

Regrets: Beyond the Dark Side

I regret the time spent on regret. That’s something I used to say when I was younger. Now, not quite so young, I find that regret is taking up more of my time than ever.

We tend to think of the dark side of regret. To put it like that suggests that there is a better side. My younger self implied that when he said that everything is like The Force, with a dark side and a positive side. A book due out in February 2022 will explore the positive side.

The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward is the title. The author is Dan Pink, a writer I greatly respect. I expect the book to advocate learning from the things we regret, and to provide specific strategies for such learning. It will also describe the dark side of regret, and how to avoid giving in to it.

At a more tactical and personal level, I just YouTube-stumbled across a video about some specific regrets. Elizabeth discusses eight regretted purchases, some of which I can identify with, and some of which might help me avoid similar regrets.

I hope you don’t regret reading this. Thank you!

Beeswing: Richard Thompson’s Memoir

Richard Thompson is my favorite musician. Between 1967 to 1975 he was involved with some of my all-time favorite music.

So I read his memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975, as soon as it was published (on April 6, 2021). If you need a sample of RT’s work, you could do worse than the song “Beeswing” (which is set during and after “the summer of love”).

Beeswing the book was well worth reading, especially for the painful passages related to Fairport Convention. If you don’t find painful stuff worthwhile, then you’re probably not a fan of RT’s music, and won’t enjoy this book. One of those passages describes the 1969 road accident that took the life of Martin Lamble, Fairport’s drummer: an excerpt is available at Rolling Stone.

Other passages are wrenching without being deadly, such as the sacking of Sandy Denny, and Richard’s decision to leave Fairport.

RT’s book, like his music, made me laugh amidst the darkness. I loved the scene in which he and Nick Drake were on the same Tube platform. RT “had to strike up a conversation, or what would pass for one, between two socially inept introverts.”

I loved Beeswing because I love RT. I think I love it more than it deserves: towards the end, RT seems uncertain about what to include and how to cover it. Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles is in many ways a better account of the same scene. To use the Goodreads 5-star systems, White Bicycles is a 5, whereas Beeswing is “only” a 4. But I’m very glad to have bought it, and will re-read it at least once.

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

Rights are being declared, death is being dealt with support raised by the rhetoric of rights. So it was in France and elsewhere in the late 1700s. There are many ways to make this time even more dramatic. One, of course, is to write a rap opera about Alexander Hamilton. Another is to write…

A novel that adds magic to the revolutionary mix. That’s H.G. Parry’s A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. It features many different points of view (PoV) and places. We start with Fina, a girl of six, being taken from Africa to the Caribbean as a slave.

We soon move to England to join William Pitt, then a twenty-year old lawyer concerned with a case about magic use. “Even Commoners are allowed to use magic to defend themselves,” he points out to a senior colleague. Other PoVs include that of Robespierre, thus giving us a French revolutionary perspective. Multiple PoVs can be confusing, but they are not here: it probably helps that many of the PoV characters are famous from history.

This is a big book in terms of themes: rights, slavery, politics, loyalty,… and magic. Parry mixes the themes well. For example, what limits can and should be placed on magic? Is magic use a right for those who have magic powers? How, if at all, should governments curtail the use of magic?

It’s also a big book in terms of pages: there are over 500 of them. I might have enjoyed the book even more had there been fewer: in particular, there is a lot of conversation.

Parry set herself a big task, and achieved her ambition. She blends historical character and fact with a magic system. I’m looking forward to the sequel, which I gather will be very France-focused. I don’t think we’ll meet Alexander Hamilton–who was by the way consulted by the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. But perhaps a third volume might tell of the role of magic in the American Revolution?

Legendborn: Finished, Enjoyed; Sequel?

I finished Legendborn, Tracy Deonn’s debut novel, full of admiration for the way she brings into present-day southern USA black history and white legend. To be specific about the latter, she draws on the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

So there’s magic, and Merlins. As we get in to the novel, there are other magics. Deonn is very good at combining opposing elements: different magics, past and present, black and white.

Legendborn doesn’t get a five-star review from me, although it has many five-star reviews on Goodreads. It is clunky at multiple points and in multiple ways. In my previous post, I remarked on an early scene that made me almost abandon Legendborn. Leaping to the end, I felt that the author was jumping up and down telling me that I should be frantic for the sequel.

That said, I think I’ll read the sequel. What about you?

Legendborn: Good February Read, Not Great Start

Legendborn is a book I almost did not finish (DNF, as we say on the bookweb), but am now enjoying greatly. Please let me tell you why I’m glad I got through the first fifty pages (of the US hardback edition, numbers may differ between editions).

Debut novelist Tracy Deonn tells Legendborn in the first person. Bree, the protagonist, describes herself as “Black” and “a smarty-pants”. Legendborn starts in February: Black History Month, and the month in which Bree’s mother was killed in a hit-and-run, crushed inside her car. Later the same year, Bree and her friend Alice move to Chapel Hill to start an early college program.

This is a young adult (YA) fantasy novel: Bree is 16; we encounter fantastic elements, including memory manipulation and monsters, from the start of the book. I tend to like YA fantasy, although I am hardly young.

I particularly enjoy fantasy when it draws on myths and legends. Legendborn, as the title suggests, does just that. Some of the students at Chapel Hill are descendants of knights of the round table, one a descendant of King Arthur Pendragon himself.

I love the way that Deonn intertwines two strands of Bree’s experience: present-day Black, and ancient Arthurian. There are actually more than two strands, but combining these two is impressive enough. Arthurian legend is the palest lore this side of Snow White. Bree’s entry into the Arthurian white kids’ club presents a challenge for Bree and for the author. Deonn writes it superbly.

And yet I almost gave up on Legendborn. Why? Early on, the writing annoyed me. There is excessive use of italics. There are some very. Short sentences. Some of which don’t have a. Verb. Then there is… well, let me provide an extended quote by linking to a photo of page 17 (again, page number may differ in your edition, but it’s the scene in which Bree meets Selwyn Kane). I shuddered so much that I almost DNF’d right there. The next 200 or so pages have rewarded my perseverance.

I’ll post again about Legendborn when I finish it, which I will do in the next few days: so in the first half of this Black History Month. In the meantime, what do you think of Legendborn, based on your own reading, on this post, or on opinions expressed elsewhere. By the way, thanks to the booktubers whose enthusiasm for Legendborn got me past the DNF stage.

Some YouTuber ELKs are LEAKY

I appreciate YouTubers who are ELK: Enthusiastic, Likeable, Knowledgeable.

My first ELK of 2021 is Daniel Greene. He’s a successful YouTuber: I believe he’s full-time now; he recently hit a quarter million subscribers. That’s not bad for someone who has been described as a disheveled goblin host, and now describes himself as such.

He is one of several YouTubers I consider not only Enthusiastic, Likeable, Knowledgeable, but also Young and Attractive. That suggests the acronym LEAKY, but I don’t think that’s a good way of describing people I like. So I’ll make sure that my next ELK will not be young; that ELK is not a BookTuber either.

Back to Daniel, the young attractive goblin ELK. I should recommend a specific video. That’s tough, since he covers a lot of ground, and posts a lot of videos. I’ll go with his video on how to start with Stephen King. If you’re familiar with King’s work, you’ll be we able to assess Daniel’s analysis, and decide whether his channel is for you. If you’re not, then Daniel can help.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Daniel, ELK’s etc.

2021: Books

What’s good about 2021? It’s not 2020.

What’s there to look forward to? Books and music, among other things.

To start with music… I hope to go to at least one live music show in 2021. As for recorded music, my favorite musician does not have a new album due out in 2021, as far as I know. But he does have a book due out.

Richard Thompson’s memoir Beeswing covers the years (1967-1975) during which he and some friends founded Fairport Convention, the band made some great albums, he left, he made his first solo album, he married Linda, and the two of them made my favorite album: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. I hope that it is only the first of several memoirs.

The link from Beeswing in the previous paragraph goes to Bookstore.org. I think I’m done with Amazon links. Unfortunately, Bookstore doesn’t yet have entries for two of the books I’m most looking forward to in 2021 (so I’ll link to Goodreads, despite reservations). Each in the concluding volume in a fantasy series.

Jade Legacy concludes the trilogy that Fonda Lee wrote by mashing together martial arts, Godfather-esque conflict between families/gangs, and other things she loves.

The Fall of Babel is the fourth and last book in the wonderfully strange series that started with Senlin Ascends. I posted about this series about three years ago, and my enthusiasm for it has only grown since. I’ll probably re-read the first three in the month before The Fall of Babel comes out.

What are you looking forward to reading in 2021? What else are you looking forward to in 2021?

ELKs on YouTube

What makes you want to follow a particular YouTuber? My best answer is that they must be ELK: Enthusiastic, Likeable, Knowledgeable.

Merphy Napier is my first ELK. Merphy is a booktuber: she posts videos about books and authors, mainly in the genre of fantasy fiction. Here’s the video she posted earlier today, about her favorite authors as of late 2020.

If you watch the video, you’ll certainly see that she is Enthusiastic. I think you’ll find her Likeable, but that is of course very subjective. As someone whose reading overlaps with hers, I can testify that she is Knowledgeable about the genres she reads.

In future posts, I’ll post about other ELKs. Some, but not all, will be booktubers.

In the meantime, you are your favorite ELK YouTubers? Or what are your criteria for YouTube excellence?

DNF’d, Then Did Finish: Strange?

Strange the Dreamer caught my attention due to positive reviews and sounding like my kind of book. I enjoyed the early chapters, in which Lazlo Strange talks his way onto the Godslayer’s expedition to the lost city of Weep.

I found less interesting the chapters in which we meet the other main characters, the Godspawn. I DNF’d after about 200 pages (or what would be about 200 paper pages: I have the ebook).

The book takes off just after that point, in Chapter 26 (of 67). The main Godspawn character sees Lazlo, then meets him in a very interesting and superbly-written way. I found this out when I decided to give Strange the Dreamer another try.

I enjoyed most of the rest of the book. Looking back, this surprises me, since a rather hastily-developed romance dominates. The city of Weep is explosively changed during the climax.

Then, we have one of those endings that isn’t a resolution, but a lead-in to the sequel. I don’t think I’ll read the sequel.

I’m glad I went back to, and finished, Strange the Dreamer. I see what people like about it: the worldbuilding, the writing, the characters. But I can’t heartily recommend a book that takes so long to get going, and doesn’t really conclude.