Adventures in Reading

You know I love to eat fruits and vegetables (I mentioned that a few days ago in this entry).

Really, I love food in general. Especially soups. Roasted red pepper and tomato soup. Wonton soup. Split pea and ham soup. Chicken and corn chowder. Guinness French onion soup. Spring asparagus soup. New England clam chowder. Egg drop soup. Southwestern pumpkin soup. Tom kha gai. Cream of mushroom soup.

But I’ve never liked chilled soup. Gazpacho? Take it or leave it. Chilled beet soup? Ick.

What I like about soups is how they warm you up, whether you like it or not.

So it was with a good amount of hesitation that I tried the recipe for Cucumber Yogurt Soup on page 192 of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp. (By the way, click here to read all of my posts related to this book.)

I’m definitely still not a chilled soup lover but this one was pretty tasty. Probably a good recipe for others who, like me, are wary of chilled soups. :)

I very much enjoyed Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Myriam Cyr (click here to read my other entries about this book).

I just finished reading this book and the infamous Portuguese Letters letters are lyrical, devastatingly passionate, and bitter as a woman scorned.

While many scholars argue that these letters were a work of fiction written by Joseph Gabriel de Lavergne, Comte de Guilleragues, Cyr persuasively writes that these letters were in fact real love letters written by heart-sick Franciscan nun Mariana Alcoforado to her ex-lover Noel Bouton the Marquis de Chamilly then known as the Count of Saint-Leger.

The account is compelling because of the fascinating narrative she composed of Mariana’s and Chamilly’s lives though here evidence seems to be largely circumstantial (the evidence in favor of Guilleragues seems to also be pretty weak).

I’d like to learn more about this debate and I’ll be sure to report back!

Letters of a Portuguese Nun is an easy read and having learned that the letters have inspired writers and artists for hundreds of years — Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets From the Portuguese” (”How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) among other works by Samuel Johnson, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and others — I am glad to have read this book.

I recently read The Definitive Book of Body Language: Why What People Say Is Very Different from What They Think or Feel by Barbara Pease & Allan Pease.

So when I went out over Memorial Day weekend, I had an exceptionally great time people watching and seeing nonverbal communication in action.

I noticed so many of the “courtship displays and attraction signals” featured in the book, such as women displaying their wrists, tossing their hair, and sitting in certain ways.

And for once I paid attention to how makeup and glasses really do affect people’s perceptions of women.

Definitely consider picking up The Definitive Book of Body Language; I guarantee it’ll make you think differently about all sorts of social situations!

Looking forward to more people watching this weekend. :)