The last post

2008 is rapidly drawing to a close and with it, this National Year of Reading.  It has been an exceptional year for me as far as reading goes: 68 books so far and still time to squeeze in one more.  This blog was set up as my contribution to the National Year of Reading and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.  I’d like to end by thanking everyone for dropping by.  Also, a big thank you to the publishers who gave me permission to feature their titles on here, but more especially, to all the writers without whose books I would lead a very ordinary life.

Happy reading in 2009!

Browned to a lovely black

Jamie’s Ministry of Food by Jamie Oliver

Michael Joseph 2008, 360 pages

During and after the First World War, food was in short supply and malnutrition was common.   So at the outbreak of World War II,  the Ministry of Food was established in order to deal with the extreme shortages and teach people how to make the best use of the food available to them.  Today’s battles are being fought against bad health and obesity, as many people have little or no idea about how to cook and what makes a balanced diet.  Jamie Oliver hopes to recreate the successes of the Ministry of Food by encouraging healthy eating; he promises that within hours of reading his book, you’ll be making great meals even if you are a complete beginner.

My husband is on a mission to teach me to cook, so that in the event of anything happening to him I do not have to go into a home.  Yesterday tea-time, I offered to make him a sandwich as he was feeling unwell.  I took two bread-cakes (baps, rolls, whatever) from the freezer and let them defrost before buttering and filling them with sliced ham.  When I came to cut mine in half, I discovered that it was made up of two bottoms, which meant the other sandwich (now smothered in mustard and half-eaten) had been made up of two tops.  Jamie Oliver reckons that anyone can learn to cook in twenty four hours. Could it be that I’m the person to prove him wrong?

(Actually this book does contain some very simple and appealing recipes which could even tempt an idiot me into the kitchen.)

And the winner is……

The winner of the Christmas caption competition is Ken Wilkinson.  Yes, I did feel a little elf conscious (why do I do these things?)   I’ll be in touch with details of your prize.

Christmas caption competition

A Very Merry Christmas from offmytrolley.  Whoever comes up with the wittiest caption for this picture wins a prize.

Grateful for small mercies

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Chatto & Windus 2008, 176 pages

Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch smallholder, trader and adventurer.  Although he does not deal in “flesh” he takes a young slave girl, Florens, as  payment for a bad debt.  Florens can read and write and may prove useful on his farm, and so she joins his household of misfits – Rebekka, married off to a man she had never seen; Lina, a Native American whose tribe were wiped out by smallpox, and Sorrow, the peculiar daughter of a sea captain – all of whom are displaced and struggling to survive.

I came to this book with no expectation other than that it would be a quick read, and even in that I was wrong.  The story is told by multiple voices, some of which (for me) were easier on the ear than others.  This is a little book with big themes and I suspect that everyone who reads it will take something very different from it; a good choice for a reading group.