Erica Simmons

One of my quarantine cooking projects is to utilize my cookbooks more systematically and explore them in depth. This has been my go-to for the past few weeks, and I've made some tasty dishes from it. I question how simple the recipes really are - maybe just less complex than Ottolenghi's typically lengthy ingredients lists - but paring down shopping lists is appropriate at the moment.

There were parts of Rio Bravo that were brilliant, especially near the end. But a lot of it was very confusing. Part of this was due to narrative choices to chop the story into flashes, which I can appreciate, and part may have been more clear if I were immersed in the rest of the Marvel Universe. Overall I have loved this series, but the first half of the finale felt a bit weak.

DNF. I got this book after hearing Deborah Spar's interview with Terry Gross, which had resonated with me. But the book itself (or, the parts of it that I read) felt very basic and repetitive, and I really did not need to read the author stress one more time how much she had not considered herself a feminist. The overall message is important, but Spar doesn't really break new ground.

I bought this book, because I was enticed by the artwork, and it turns out that is the only real reason to read it. Birk's Dante's Inferno is a modern refashioning of the Inferno with detailed illustrations translating the Dante's Hell into a decaying, commercially saturated, urban wasteland reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The cover painting and the engravings inside are beautiful (in that way that Hell and abandoned freeway underpasses can be) and a fun re-interpretation of Gustave Dore's 19th century illustrations. The text, on the other hand, is just lame. With awkward insertions of contemporary figures, such as Bill Clinton, Thabo Mbeki, and Dionne Warwick, and such glowing sentences from Dante's mouth as “I was bummed for him,” Birk's modern translation is an insult to the original. I think this book would have been better if he had just left the text as is. I would not have minded the incongruency between illustration and text as much as I did the mediocre word-smithery. Skim the book for the pictures, but read a more traditional tradition for the Dante.

I picked this book up because it combines a few of my interests - fisheries management and comic books! - without realizing it was written specifically for middle school / high school students. I'm not sure it really succeeds as a comic book - the illustrations didn't always feel very well integrated into what felt much more like a text book - but it was in informative explanation of the magnitude and complexity of global fisheries challenges. Reading a book like this makes me so sad, though, about the world we are leaving for our children.

Landscape and Memory is a long book. It is hard not to be impressed by the shear number of pages Simon Schama can put out. And his subject matter - the cultural perception of landscape and its use in national discourses - is one I enjoy. This is an incredibly broad-brush view of the subject, meandering through Lithuanian forests to Bernini's fountains and the gardens at Versaille, then on to Mount Rushmore, to name a small sampling of the locations he grazes. There are wonderful passages in this book. One of his biggest strengths is his incorporation of art criticism into historical narrative, so the 600+ pages are adorned with beautiful paintings and woodcuts. Perhaps an art historian would not be impressed, but I love it.

Like most of Schama's writing, Landscape and Memory is less about furthering a complex, nuanced argument than about taking a leisurely stroll through the things Simon Schama finds interesting. This can be fun if you have a lot of time and a lot of patience. (I read this monster in chunks on the train.) Otherwise, this is a fun book to skim, oogling the pretty pictures as you pass.

This book could have been so good. The subject matter, the chapter headings (“The Upper West Side” for peninsula open space efforts), the photo insets pointed toward a very important, fascinating book on the social history of Bay Area open space and environmental movements. However, in the end, it read like yet another bland environmental history book, with a few exceptions. It's too bad, because it's clear that Watkins could have written something much more interesting. The final chapters on inner city environmental justice campaigns and their relationship with the more genteel green movements were more interesting, though.

Reading one of the wave of post-financial crisis books in 2106? Feels so 2010? This was one of the wave of audiobooks I downloaded with my Audible subscription back then, then forgot about until recently. But I'm glad I went back to it.

This book is a great dive into our long, complex political relationship with the financial industry, from Jefferson and Hamilton through the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. Johnson and Kwak analyze the history of financial crises, bank regulation and deregulation leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, and how we have mostly failed to make the structural changes necessary to prevent another crisis like this in the future. Along the way they point out how differently we handled our own financial crisis than the reforms western countries have forced on other emerging market countries in similar situations. This book is thought-provoking and depressing. Although our economy feels more secure than it did six years ago - and books like this may be less in vogue - 13 Bankers is a good reminder that if we want to prevent another crisis we need to enact real political change.

Read on a weekend trip with a friend's family. I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid and even got away with writing book reports about them in middle school! In this outing, I successfully turned myself into a unicorn, but it's not clear whether that actually saved my village, or if I'm happy about it. I did have to abandon all wishes to achieve this, so I guess this is a very neutral ending. ;-)

Depressing, but very well written, account of hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Horne, who was the city editor for the Times-Picayune, writes with the knowledge and nuance of a local. He does an excellent job humanizing the many people whose lives the disaster overturned, and this book left me shocked at the failure of our response. I hope we don't let this happen again, but I fear we have not learned the lessons that we should have. Which is why this is an important read.

When I was in middle school, I spent many hours playing the computer game Where in Space is Carmen San Diego, and I voraciously memorized trivia about the planets and moons of our solar system (as well as the mythologies they were named after). This book - a stylish, beautifully designed fictional travel guide to the solar system - brought back fond memories of that game. This book is gorgeous and has some fun information in it. I definitely learned some new facts and got inspired by the crazy variety of environments that revolve around our sun.

My big complaint with this book is that it shares a shortcoming with a lot of “ain't it cool” science books and TV shows: it shares a lot of interesting facts about the solar system without really explaining why (what scientific forces or concepts explain these phenomena) or how we know about them. I suppose I'm asking for a drier, less approachable book, but I found the level of explanation lacking and want to look up more.

Oh, also - this book has amazing NASA images, but I wish they had included more. These were some of the best parts of the book!

As a weird, only child from coastal Maine with a job I love that sends me traveling all over the country, the book makes me feel very seen. From observations about the video game / faux-family psychology of airline frequent flyer programs and becoming a “regular” at a hotel (and the simultaneous exhiliration and alienation of an itinerant lifestyle) to John Hodgman's life lessons from odd jobs, this memoir has a lot of insights that I related to. This book made me think critically about my own life in the way a great memoir can.

And to clarify, although this book is hyper-relatable for my own weird life, the book's larger messages - about kindness, empathy, curiosity, and being open to adventures but also honest with yourself and not letting yourself get too carried away from the relationships that really matter in your life - are much more universal.

It was fun to read this book, since it is such an icon in the history of journalism and political scandals. But it really isn't very well written. And Woodward and Bernstein kind of come off as irresponsible, career-minded jerks. Of course, that might make the book more honest, but I don't have to like it.

I feel bad. This is one of the first books I haven't finished in a while. I found it interesting, but not interesting enough to keep me for 800 pages. The gender politics of the book are... interesting. And a lot of it was x-rated enough that I felt awkward reading it in public, which was a bit stressful. Not that anyone else would know what I was reading, but I still felt somewhat indecent reading some of the more explicit material on the bus.

Since I started traveling to Alaska for work, a few people have recommended this book to me, and I'm so glad they did. John McPhee is an easy, beautiful writer. The portraits of the people, the places, and the conundrums of Alaska as it transitioned from wilderness / lawless frontier to become a part of the U.S. legal system is fascinating, depressing, inspiring all in one. McPhee helped me dream of other lives and other perspectives, and made me think of Alaska with even more awe and humility than before.

A very deep dive into what it would be like to colonize Mars - the science, the engineering, the environmental politics (to terraform or not, and if so, what are the limits), the economics, and the interpersonal relationships. This book was fascinating, and at times very moving, but also very... long. Each section of this book is told from a different colonist's perspective. Some of those colonists I loved spending time with, and others I had a hard time tolerating. Overall a fascinating book, with depressing commentary on our own condition on Earth.