FINDING BETTY CROCKER

Shout out: The first book D sold as a literary agent, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food, by Susan Marks, has been published by Simon and Schuster and I’ve seen favorable reviews in Library Journal and Entertainment Weekly. I’ve got my very own copy, thanks to E of St. Paul, and started reading it this morning. I’d probably have enjoyed it even if there wasn’t a personal connection, since it touches upon my loves of food books, early-twentieth-century social history, women’s history, and advertising/propaganda (not to mention the MN angle—did you know WCCO was started by the Washburn Crosby Company, which created Betty Crocker and became General Mills?), but how cool was it to look at the acknowledgments page and see D’s name right there? So cool. Way to go, D! Buy the book, everyone.

THE BLACK THUMB

The Black Thumb is a 1948 novel by Constance and Gwenyth Little. Through the “Book Lovers’ Page-a-Day Calendar” A’s mom gave me for Christmas, I found out about this great publisher, Rue Morgue Press (which seems to consist solely of a husband-and-wife team), that reprints all these vintage mysteries that have fallen into obscurity—many written by women and featuring strong female detectives. My library has about 20 of them. The Black Thumb is really fun so far—it takes place in the scarlet-fever convalescent wing of a hospital, contains an axe murder, and features a sassy crime-solving young nurse who carries on witty, bickering love/hate banter with a hot doctor. All this in just 150 pages, and considering how eager I am to find out whodunit (and whether Nurse Norma scores with the hot doctor), I should be finished by tomorrow.

HOW WE ARE HUNGRY

How We Are Hungry, Dave Eggers’ new book of stories: I can’t help it, I know a lot of people hate him, but I’ve seen him read three times and still maintain a fondness for him—I like the way he writes and I like his snark and he’s kind of hot, too. Also, when he signed a book for me, he drew a really detailed picture and I appreciate that. But nothing he writes will be as good as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to me. Some of his work since seems repetitive or self-indulgent, and I don’t like short stories much anyhow, though this collection reprinted “After I Was Thrown In the River and Before I Drowned,” a story I first read in Nick Hornby’s anthology Speaking With the Angel, and I was reminded how much I love it. Anyone who can make something moving and poetic from a story about running and jumping narrated by a very fast happy dog is OK by me.