A Girl With a Sword

making up for lost time

This past week I decided to take advantage of the superb discount I got at the bookstore and buy more books than I've ever bought at one time (not counting textbooks). This is what I got, all told (my discount, however, doesn't stop until Thursday, when I get my last paycheck):

1. The Serpent Slayer: and Other Stories of Strong Women
2. The Hero and the Crown
3. Fire and Hemlock
Girls with swords.

4. St. George and the Dragon
The only retelling of The Faerie Queene for children. Sadly lacking Duessa--evil snake woman.

5. Literary Theory: an Introduction
6. Getting What You Came For : The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D.
Goin' to grad school . . . Someday, when I get all the paperwork done.

7. Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
8. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
Keeping up with Laura . . .

9. Searching for God Knows What
Keeping up with Tami . . . Seriously, though, I love this guy. I probably shouldn't. He is a little silly, but it's so fun to read a Christian writer who seems so much like me. And the PCA magazine did give him a pretty nice article this summer.

10. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
I need to hide this in my heart, along with my dear silver friend. This is the title Dr. Wildeman always wrote at the bottoms of the papers I turned in to him. I'm so happy I finally bought it. I feel complete.

11. And my new darling:

I am a domestic goddess. (although, I admit, my goddessness would be more empowered if I bought this. But I'm trying to restrain myself.)

I love this cookbook so much. I read what Nigella writes and it just reminds me of myself, and I like that. I like it when she writes, in the introduction, "The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn't good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake. So what I'm talking about is not being a domestic goddess exactly, but feeling like one." And when she says little things like, "I know in my heart of hearts they would be better with blanched almonds which you then grind yourself when you want them" (from her recipe for "Spanish Macaroons"). And she makes allusions to freaking Proust, as all good baking books should, I love it!

(The cookbook, I am just thinking, also reminds me of Domestic Goddess Bekah Tuggy, who I love almost as much as myself, and who needs to come up here and make my apartment look beautiful just like she made my room look beautiful when I lived with her.)