WORD SPY

I’m reading a fun book called Word Spy: The Word Lover’s Guide to Modern Culture, by Paul McFedries (there is also a website here), and one of the new terms I learned is highly applicable to me:

A kind of temporal New Math comes into play: “If I sleep six hours a night during the week instead of eight, that’s an extra ten hours a week! Nothing will stop me then, bwah ha ha ha!” We become a new kind of creature: sleep camel n. (1999) A person who gets little sleep during the week and then attempts to make up for it by sleeping in and napping on the weekend. Silicon Valley refers to the pressured people who store up enough sleep on weekends to manage a 60-hour-plus week as sleep camels. The term brings to mind beasts of burden, expendables expected to die beneath you in pursuit of some higher purpose. (Business Day, July 11, 2000)

Other words I like include “speako” (an error in speaking), “time porn” (“television shows and other media that portray characters as having excessive amounts of spare time”), and “dining al desko” (eating at one’s desk).

HOME COOKING AND MORE HOME COOKING

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin: LOVE. She’s like the Natalie Goldberg of cooking—simple, practical, confident, eminently reassuring. She celebrates plain old food like Goldberg encourages plain old words, eschewing formality and promoting the idea that cooking is something anyone can do if they try. Also like Writing Down the Bones et al., her books are short and episodic, a mix of memoir, meditation, and instruction (she includes recipes). I devoured each one in about a day, came away feeling warm and fuzzy and hungry, and immediately ordered myself some used copies through Amazon.com. Here is my favorite Colwin quote:

It always seems to me that cooking is like love. You don’t have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It’s the same thing with food. You do not have to be a genius. You don’t have to come from a long culinary tradition....You just have to figure out what it is you like.

Take my word for it: if she can inspire me to bake, she actually may have magical powers. If you like food at all (liking cooking is not required), read these books, preferably over a piping-hot meal.