Read and Appreciated in 2003
A Year’s Best List
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2003 was a dreadful year for me and I’m glad it’s almost over. Not to bore you, but I’m in pain. I have been an impatient reader, critical about almost everything I’ve been subjected to in the name of entertainment. Reflecting my low spirits and bad attitude, my list is more a list of “Reasons to Go On Living When You Feel Like Shit” than a true inventory of the year’s bests, but I’ll stop complaining now, and stick to more upbeat subtitles.
Best Food For Low-Carbists
1) Not really ice cream, but Tofutti brand “Hooray!” soy bars. The company’s slogan is “Parve Never Tasted so Good” and I quite agree. Neither meat nor milk, these vanilla “ice cream” bars are enrobed in a rich dark chocolate, and at under $3.00 for a six-pack, my favorite low-carb snack. Available at Trader Joe’s.
2) Ashland Fudge Co. Sugar-free Chocolate. About $14.00 a pound plus shipping, but one of the better tasting sugar-free chocolates I’ve tasted. Yummy hazelnut and caramel clusters; peanut butter cups. Serious almond bark. From a candy store in Ashland, Oregon that also makes fairly amazing candied apples, not that I can eat them, what with my teeth the way they are.
3) Best candy worth going off Atkins for: Enstrom’s Almond Toffee. I blame my sister for getting me hooked. This stuff is so good you might have to lick the inside of the box. Or am I the only one who does that?
Best Treatments for Back Pain
1) Percodan
2) Physical Therapy
3) ThermaCare heat compresses
Best Story Collection
1) I knew Pamela Painter from her writing manual What If? but The Long and the Short of It, published by Carnegie Mellon University, February 1999, has made me an appreciative fan of her short fiction. Her stories are spare, real, and moving portraits of families in crisis. Some of them are very short. All read as if she’s been there. These must be true stories; I believe every word.
2) I’ve signed up to take a writing class from Ehud Havazelet and in preparation, I read his collection, Like Never Before from Farrar Straus & Giroux, September 1998.
Wow.
These interconnected stories examine the members of one traumatized family and explore the many ways we fail one another. The writing is beautiful and evocative. Though a mainstream collection, the book ends with a powerful ghost story.
