Some Annotated Reading May 16

This was my week for some more sophisticated reading. You don't always see that here.

Once again, I finished reading a book this week. This time it was Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. This is the second book by Lahiri that I've read, and I can now officially say that I am a fan. I now have a favorite mainstream literary author. Her work is so accessible while at the same time including unique (to me) cultural material. Unaccustomed Earth is a book of stories. I hate to call them short, because they aren't, and they seem to have something more than short stories do. Something different. The last three are connected. Oh...my...gosh.

Alice Munro died this week, so I thought I'd read one of her stories. I believe I'd tried reading her before. The New Yorker happened to be offering The Bear Came Over the Mountain to digital subscribers, so I read that. I almost quit reading it early on, because it appeared to be a dementia story, and I've had quite enough of dealing with dementia. However, I stuck it out, and it's an infidelity story! Didn't quite get the ending on my own reading and don't understand the title. But, believe me, in the future I'll never hear that song without thinking of cheating. It turns out, The Bear Came Over the Mountain is a famous story with a movie adaptation, and there's lots written about it. I skimmed what Katie Zdybel had to say about it at The Darling Axe, and it supports my thought that this story is far more about Grant cheating than Fiona having dementia. It also gave me some thoughts about the ending. I guess a short story is pretty impressive if it inspires a reader to research it.

I read Can You Actually Steal a Recipe? by Ashlie D. Stevens at Salon, because I occasionally write about eating. I consider recipes intellectual property and want to attribute them to their creators. But recipes for me are usually just suggestions, and by the time I'm through tinkering with them, they often aren't recognizable as anything but a generic recipe Gail had her way with. So this is an important issue to me.

Humor

I Sent My Cat's DNA to 23andme: Turns out I'm not her real owner by Gary Chapin in Muddyum. This is hysterical, starting with that terrific title and subtitle. Now, yes, it hits home here, because Ancestry.com recently sent me DNA info claiming that I am as much Scottish as I am French, which hasn't actually blown my mind, but probably because nothing does, anymore. But maybe it did, and that's why I found this cat thing so funny.