top ten blogging confessions

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we all get to exercise our OCD tendencies and come up with bookish lists.  If you’d like to play along, check out this post.

Two years ago I did a post on bookish confessions, where I shared secrets such as: I have run up $100+ library fines (it was just the once, I swear!), I skip ahead in a lot (most?!) books, and that I semi-permanently stowed 14 boxes of books at my parents’ house.  Today’s list, however, focuses on blogging confessions.  Some may surprise you, others may not… but this is about the writing itself, the so-called behind-the-scenes, rather than books directly.  Well, except in the case of #10.  I had to sneak that in there.  Even if I’ve already ‘confessed’ it multiple times!

Top Ten Blogging Confessions

1.  Of the top 10 all-time most popular posts on my blog, 4 are recipes, and NONE are book reviews.  Welp.

2. I wait until a “good” week before updating my blogging stats for sites like NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Vanity is a killer, folks.

3. Currently around 50% of my reading = romance novels, and I very rarely blog or review them. 

4. Reading and reviewing graphic novels feels like cheating.  It’s so easy!

5. I signed up for the much-discussed, er… much-maligned (?!) Blogging for Books program because I want to review more cookbooks.  And no one is exactly throwing them at me right now.

6. I take any/all photos on my blog with my iPhone 4s.  I don’t own a camera, and haven’t since ~2007.

7. My best blog traffic day in any given week is Tuesday.  Thanks, Top Ten Tuesday meme friends!

8. I got my current real-life job because of skills I learned from blogging, but most days I feel like a rank amateur.  Have you seen my fellow bloggers?!

9. I hate vlogs and/or booktube videos.  I have never been able to force myself to watch one all of the way through.

10. I really do judge books by their covers.  All. The. Freaking. Time. I know I should know better by now!

What are your blogging confessions?  Or if you don’t blog, what’s your favorite from my list?

coconut brown butter bread

My brother is getting married.  Or I should say, ONE of my three brothers is getting married.  Lincoln lives north of Pittsburgh, while the rest of our immediate family is back home in Seattle, so we’ve remained close as adults (read: I nag him into visiting on a regular basis, because I’m an awesome sister like that).  It’s been great to get to know my future sister-in-law, too, and I’m totally jazzed that they plan to continue living ‘close by.’  They may even move to Philly!  Closer and closer… *evil grin*

I went up to the bridal shower last weekend.  As a member of the wedding party, I was asked to provide items for the bridal tea.  I signed up for breads – they travel well, and I was taking the train.  I decided to bring my new standby, Cynthia’s Banana Bread, but I wanted to diversify a bit, too.  I searched the interwebs for chocolate breads, but I wasn’t inspired by anything… until I stopped by The Smitten Kitchen blog.  It’s not chocolate, but this recipe looked like just the right amount of unusual, perfect for a summery tea.

My brother and future sister-in-law

Coconut Brown Butter Bread (modified slightly from a Smitten Kitchen recipe)

INGREDIENTS

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/4 cups 2% milk


1 teaspoon vanilla extract


2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour


3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder


1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup granulated sugar


1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and browned

Nonstick cooking spray for baking pan

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9×5-inch loaf pan with nonstick baking spray, set aside.  Brown the butter in an omelette-sized pan, and then pour into a dish and let cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and vanilla.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. Add sugar and coconut, and stir to mix. Make a well in the center, and pour in egg mixture, then stir wet and dry ingredients together until just combined. Add butter, and stir until just smooth — be careful not to overmix.

Spread batter in the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, anywhere from 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Cool in pan five minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.

Deb over at The Smitten Kitchen suggested that there’d be enough batter to make a couple of extra muffins, so the first time I tried this recipe, I split it between my regular loaf pan and a tiny disposable one.  Just my luck, the regular loaf was undersized.  I say you can put it all in one loaf pan, and if it rises high, so be it.  As for the flavor, it’s GREAT.  A real crowd-pleaser, and subtle enough for any palette.  It doesn’t taste very coconutty, so if that’s what you’re going for, maybe add a quarter teaspoon of coconut extract. 

Recommended for: a breakfast or midday snack when you want to try something a little out of the ordinary, and as a lovely tea bread (without chocolate or nuts).

Interested in other food-related items?  Check out Beth Fish Reads’ Weekend Cooking!

waiting on wednesday (77)

Today I’m participating in "Waiting On" Wednesday, a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Its purpose is to spotlight upcoming book releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

I believe that Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland books are a big part of the reason I've fallen back in love with middle grade (books aimed at readers ages 8-12... what I would have called 'Juvenile' growing up) fiction. I adore the whimsy inherent in Valente's descriptions, the inventiveness of her settings, and the overall magic of her stories.  I think these books are new classics, and I can't wait to have a set of them all lined up on my shelf together, to read over and over, whenever I need a bit of the fantastical to inspire my day-to-day life.  While I haven't read the third book in the series yet, I read, reviewed and loved The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland, and the short story The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland (all titles shortened for convenience, you understand).  Thus it should come as no surprise that I can't freaking wait for the latest in the Fairyland saga, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland. It will be released by Feiwel & Friends (Macmillan) on March 3, 2015.

When a young troll named Hawthorn is stolen from Fairyland by the Golden Wind, he becomes a changeling – a human boy -- in the strange city of Chicago, a place no less bizarre and magical than Fairyland when seen through trollish eyes. Left with a human family, Hawthorn struggles with his troll nature and his changeling fate. But when he turns twelve, he stumbles upon a way back home, to a Fairyland much changed from the one he remembers. Hawthorn finds himself at the center of a changeling revolution--until he comes face to face with a beautiful young Scientiste with very big, very red assistant.

Time magazine has praised Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland books as "one of the most extraordinary works of fantasy, for adults or children, published so far this century." In this fourth installment of her saga, Valente 's wisdom and wit will charm readers of all ages.

What books are you waiting on?

top ten classics i want to read

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we all get to exercise our OCD tendencies and come up with bookish lists.  If you’d like to play along, check out this post.

It was difficult for me to be honest with this week’s top ten list.  There’s an urge (I don’t know if it’s societal, familial, or a leftover from the snobbery of academia) to make myself seem smarter, better informed, more ‘intellectual’ than I actually am.  For instance, my first version of this list included Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.  But as I was revising, I kept thinking, “There’s a reason I’ve never read that book, despite being a Spanish major in college.  I never wanted to read it.”  And I suppose I still don’t.  Lest you be completely scandalized, I did read some of de Cervantes’ short stories (aka I’m not completely ignorant).  Still, it took a few tries to make this an honest list, one that contains books I really am excited to read… at some point in the future.

Top Ten Classics I Want to Read

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

4. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

6. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

7. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

8. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

9. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

10. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

What books would make your list of classics to read in adulthood?