A Virtual Party

Last night we stayed in and watched the marathon of old Pink Panther movies, and after New Year's we watched an old Peter Sellers movie (1968) called "The Party." If you haven't seen it and wonder what the 60's were about, esp. the 60's in California, here is your film. I've seen this three times and I still laughed until I cried. Peter Sellers was a comic genius.

Our young guest was allowed to stay up until midnight. She began to flag around 11:30, but kept away until the New Year. I had one glass of wine and nobody else drank anything. So why do I have a headache? Must be the late hour.

O.K. I owe you soon news apropos the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Yesterday for the first time I noticed something new. The book review began separating trade paperback from mass market paperback (think bigger versus small physical books) some time ago. The Hard Cover list is still another animal.

What I noticed Sunday was that Atonement was #3 in "Trade Fiction", which being a literary novel, one would expect, just as one would expect it to go round again with the movie (quite watchable, by the way). But HARK! Atonement is #7 ont he Mass-Market Fiction list!
And that's not all! The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet, which I would expect to find on the Mass-Market fiction list, is in Trade Fiction, hardly literary, although Follett is a good writer who spins a compelling tale. And The Pillars of the Earth is also #5 on the Mass-Market Fiction paperbacks. What gives?

Publishers must be hedging all bets and printing both in Trade Fiction and Mass-Market once the novel leaves the hard cover printing. Mass-Market used to be all genre fiction, just as Trade Fiction was mostly literary fiction.

Comments on the Best Seller List: Sue Grafton, whom I love is number one if "T is for Tresspass." Grafton is a good writer, and her descriptions of weather and old people are really so well done. She is funny, too. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is the only Literary book on the list, and there are several "general fiction" as well as much genre. No fantasy for a change. Otherwise, about what one would expect.

Normally, I wouldn't bother to point the miscengenation between Trade Fiction and Mass-Market, but I haven't seen it blurbed anywhere. Was I baking or shopping or wrapping when the rest of the world was commenting? I never know. Try to keep up on things, but it's hard.

New Calendars today. We have the usual odd assortment, from Islands to art deco to the Farmer's Almanac, a European business weekly and the Boston events calendar.

Last night we had stuffed shells for dinner, my own recipe, in which the shells are baked in a basic tomato sauce. Stuffing was low-fat ricotta, an egg, garlic, parsley, spices, wheat germ (non-sweetened), Monterrey Jack cheese with a bit of pepperoni diced into the mix. Quite yummy. With a big green salad and homemade garlic bread, it couldn't be beat. Sometimes, simple is best. Tonight we're having a dish made with cauliflower and pasta and that, too, is simple and good.

Diet starts on Sunday, in case you want to know. South Beach diet has the best recipes, but Weight Watchers has a few good ones, too, although you have to watch both of them for non-natural foods like egg-substitute and (yech, yuck) non-fat half and half, a misnomer is there ever was one.

Make a resolution to read all the ingredients in everything you buy, and if it has weird stuff that you don't use in your kitchen and can't buy in the store, eschew it. Too much sodium? Find another brand. Eat healthy, eat hearty. Bake bread and make soup.

The extent of all my wisdom for the day, maybe the year.

Oh, and do rent "The Party."

Grapeshot