(no subject)

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

(no subject)

From avani

These are the top 100 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today, 2 October 2007).

(I suspect, based on the fact that people presumably don't add these books to LibraryThing unless they own them, that this is really mostly a list of books people think they ought to read.)

Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. I also marked red those on my TBR or am currently reading list.

( the list )

BTW, if you read Freakonomics, skip the introduction(s) and jump straight into the first chapter. The introduction(s) are painfully self-congratulatory and somewhat offputting. The actual meat of the book is interesting, though, even if I don't always agree with his conclusions.

Recipe: Pot Roast

This is one of my favorite meat-meals -- dinner yesterday. It's also reliably impressive, at least to most people who eat beef. And it's just pot roast and potatoes.

I use a seven-bone roast (also called the center cut chuck roast, or the blade cut chuck) -- named not because it has seven bones, but because it has one enormous bone shaped sort of like the number 7. It's a tough cut, grisly and full of fat, and that's exactly what I want in a pot roast.

The long cooking time usually makes this a weekend meal, unless you work at home or have flexible hours, but sometimes the boy and I would have a mid-sized snack at five and then dinner of pot roast at nine-thirty.

Today, for balance, I think I need to make pasta with vegetables or similar, though. ;)

( Pot Roast )