Chairs 2, originally uploaded by liza31337.

We didn’t stay here during All Tomorrow’s Parties, but it wasn’t a whole lot better.

Tickets for next year are on sale already, same great location!

This was a pre-release copy but the book had come out by the time I read it, so I already knew it had gotten good reviews. It’s one of those parallel-stories-separated-in-time novels, and as is often the case the best parts are the historical fiction. Ebershoff fictionalizes an actual 19th century memoir with the much-superior title, Wife no.19, or the story of a life in bondage. Being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy. At least I don’t have to explain the plot.

Anyway, I recommend it. Don’t read it if you’re a woman and have recently been dicked over by a guy, though. Especially if you own a weapon.

In my free book feeding frenzy I picked up a few young adult novels without realizing it. I decided to give this one a chance because it was British and therefore automatically more interesting (also it had originally been published by Oxford University Press, which I flatter myself by thinking is a mark of quality).

Despite the goofy title, as a suspense novel it’s not bad. There are some genuinely creepy scenes. I can imagine that a young adult suspense story is likely to be superior to one for adults because the prose is necessarily more clear and events move along at a good clip.

The problem is that like any number of other horror, fantasy or science fiction books with wildly inexplicable happenings, it doesn’t actually resolve to any conclusion. The open-ended “I guess we’ll never know what really happened” ending is okay for high school creative writing classes but it just does not cut it in published fiction. Authors: if you don’t know how your story ends, figure that out before you write the book.

A bigger surprise than the ooh-so-mysterious ending is that the UK cover is, for once, far inferior. Those fonts, they burn!

The world’s best, easiest chicken stock:

1. Buy a slow-cooker and a whole duck

2. Tear apart duck

4. Put duck and 1.5 quarts water in slow-cooker

5. Set slow-cooker to 6 hours

We supplement the dog’s kibble with shredded duck (she seems to have a bad reaction to chicken) so I hit on this as the laziest way to prepare it.  It turns out that the (essentially leftover) cooking water is far and away the best “chicken” stock I’ve ever made, and I’ve made some pretty elaborate recipes.  If I happen to have random vegetables like carrots and celery around I’ll throw them in, but it really doesn’t matter.

You can strain or clarify it if you like (I don’t bother), but de-fatting it is trivial: just freeze it and scoop off the solid fat later. I have completely given up buying prepared stock now.