{"id":4854,"date":"2025-11-30T19:59:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4854"},"modified":"2025-12-24T17:04:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:04:05","slug":"november-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/11\/november-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"November 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Lilac Girls<\/em> &#8211; Martha Hall Kelly, 2016. For Second Monday. We all hated it &#8211; bad writing, lazy premise, offensive execution. I did look up <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kr%C3%B3wki\">krowki<\/a> <\/em>(sic &#8211; the book doesn&#8217;t even have Polish diacriticals, though it does French!), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Satan_from_the_Seventh_Grade\"><em>Satan from the Seventh Grade<\/em><\/a>, and rice with molasses &#8211; probably <a href=\"https:\/\/teriskitchen.com\/desserts-recipes\/molasses-rice-pudding.html\">molasses rice pudding<\/a>?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Underland: A Deep Time Journey<\/em> &#8211; Robert Macfarlane, 2019. Nature\/Enviro &#8211; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Excellent Women<\/em> &#8211; Barbara Pym, 1942. Great Books &#8211; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Star Beast<\/em> &#8211; Robert Heinlein, 1954. Something prompted me to pick up this old favorite &#8211; maybe the conceit of the pet that grows up over centuries and is passed down through the family, but I don&#8217;t remember specifically. It&#8217;s one of Heinlein&#8217;s best juveniles, IMO. Was he consciously using &#8220;John Thomas&#8221; to be titillating\/in-jokey, as in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Promise_Her_Anything\"><em>Promise Her Anything<\/em><\/a>? Probably!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Big Jones Cookbook: Recipes for Savoring the Heritage of Regional Southern Cooking<\/em> &#8211; Paul Fehribach, 2015. For the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a> monthly challenge, &#8220;A cookbook or book about food.&#8221; I wrote: &#8220;Interesting history of Southern cooking with great-looking recipes &#8211; I&#8217;m especially intrigued by the roux\/boiled milk icing. It was enjoyable to read even if I don&#8217;t get around to making any of the dishes!&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4854"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4892,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions\/4892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}