Bedside Manner: Return to Treehouse

Remember me? The heathen with no bed frame to speak of, let alone a bedside table?

I have good news, literati! When last we spoke, I had a short stack (sorry, still full of pancakes) of books next to my bed, and a rather lengthy confession regarding how little of them I'd read. Well, I'm pleased to inform you most of those have made their way back down the ladder and onto the shelves: I finally finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle, blazed through Good-Bye, Chunky Rice one Sunday morning (quite like this one, as I recall, as I was rather full of pancakes – sensing a trend?), and over the past two weeks, cranked out half a dozen recipes from The Perfect Scoop to aid productioneer Shelley Hiam in her recovery from jaw surgery.

Fun fact No. 1: I bought more produce for those six ice creams and sorbets than I have in months.

So that brings us to now: It's just over seven months after that original post, and there's a new stack of pulp to get me through these positively viscous summer days.

I learned long ago that I am a serial monogamist when it comes to reading. Some people are able (and willing!) to juggle this novel with that one, this book of poems with that biography; I feel scuzzy enough reading features and shorts at the paper all day and then diving back in to a narrative as if nothing ever happened. In school, when people in an English class would ask what else I'm reading, I'd sort of give them this blank look and blink twice, which probably made them wonder what I was doing in an English class, but really I was just trying to figure out how to reconcile two or three different sets of characters and subplots and totems and motifs and …. And but so the one actual book that makes the cut these days is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, recommended to me ages ago by my friend Kristin. I've only recently dipped into the second section, and when I hit the end of the first yesterday, which cuts off mid-sentence, I was mildly outraged until I flipped through and found the rest of that character's reminiscences tucked away in the last chapter. I'm still contemplating which counts as more linear: obliging and reading cover to cover or bucking the page numbers and reading the characters one at a time. We'll see.

Fun fact No. 2: The bookmark currently in place is the business card for a Pentecostal church up in North Austin, given to me by a plumber a week and a half ago as we watched my water heater (R.I.P.) drain.

Though you can only see a corner of it, the thing sandwiched (note to self: stop it with the food references) between the novel and the magazines below is one of the Times crosswords from late last week that fellow proofer Sarah Smith and I were struggling to finish up together and that I keep hoping I'll wake up with all the answers to; meanwhile, Ms. Myers and Ms. Gorme, whoever they are, haunt my dreams.

The only other significant presence these days is that of August's issues of Saveur and Food & Wine, both given to me by the Chronicle's own Annette Patterson. The former – in addition to its beautiful cover story on pesto, its guide to California's San Joaquin valley that is of particular interest to a girl who spent four or five years in Bakersfield in her youth, and enough tips, recipes, and gadgets to make me want to call in sick for the next month – has a short feature on Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, and between that and Virginia Wood's review of Jeni Britton Bauer's cookbook last week (see "'Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home,'" Food, Aug. 5), I'm more than convinced that that needs to be one of my next cookbook purchases. The latter, a little worse for wear for having inexplicably ridden around in my car next to a cake carrier for the better part of a week before making it inside, has a fabulous cover shot of fried chicken that succeeds in making my mouth water and my mind wander (when oh when will I get more of that absurdly addictive fried chicken from Olivia again?!) every single time I see it. There's also a recipe for homemade tamales inside that, next time I'm feeling adventurous, is just going to have to happen.

Of course, who's got the time to feel adventurous when there are books to finish, blogs to maintain, and baked goods to demolish? Speaking of which, if you'll excuse me, I think I've avoided eye contact with those leftover pancakes for quite long enough.