Happy Birthday Agatha Christie!

I am in the process of reading all of Agatha Christie's mysteries. The goal was to do it in order, but I've already messed that up, so I'm keeping to the published date order as much as possible. 


Questions:
Who is your favorite - Poirot or Miss Marple? Poirot, and a nod to Inspector Battle.


Favorite Book (so far)? Chimneys


Thoughts on Hastings... Love him. He keeps Poirot's overlarge ego in check.

Agatha Christie and the Doctor

Favorite reference to Agatha Christie..."The Unicorn and the Wasp"episode of Dr. Who that explains what happens in those 11 missing days. Great stuff that. 

Joanna Trollope to rewrite Jane Austen

From the Guardian Book Section
"From Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to Emma Woodhouse and Mr Knightley, Jane Austen created some of the most enduring romances in literary history. Now, publisher HarperCollins is hoping it has dreamed up another marriage made in heaven, commissioning Joanna Trollope to write a contemporary reworking of Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility.


The pairing is the first in a what the publisher has dubbed a "major" new series, in which it will team modern authors with Austen's six novels, asking them to reimagine the books in a contemporary setting. The project is the latest addition to the current vogue for Austen
remixes, which have ranged over recent years from the unexpected  success of Seth Grahame-Smith's zombie mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to erotic fiction author Mitzi Szereto's X-rated Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts."


Must say that being a contemporary writer, I had no idea who Joanna Trollope was... go figure. I can't wait to see who HarperCollins contracts with to rework Persuasion.

Coffee Cake

I tend to enjoy recipes by Alex Guarnaschelli. She seems relatively normal for someone on Food Network and I've had good success with the things I've tried before that she has created (or I assume she's created). I've been needing something good for breakfast, and since I still have this fear (unrealistic, I realize) of yeast, I've avoided breakfast breads so coffee cake seems to be a decent alternative. So here goes.

You can get the recipe here.

September 11, 2001

It is difficult - this tenth anniversary of the tragic murder of innocent Americans and other nationalities that were either in the Pentagon, in the Trade Center or on one of the planes used as weapons. Everyone remembers where they were, when it seemed like just one horrific thing after another kept happening, and it's doubtful those memories will ever fade.
I was immediately very busy. My chancellor wanted an event for the next day to honor the victims and responders, and to mourn those we had lost at our university. It was my first real event in a job I had been on less than two weeks. Hell of an initiation, but it kept my mind off things going on in the world. We had deliveries of tables, chairs, podiums, speakers to engage, oh, and a capital campaign gala to cancel. It sounds superficial and it was, but it helped to be busy.
I don't think I really had a good idea of how much of an impact this had on me until late in the night. The Boy and I had gone to a restaurant that we were already quite the frequent customers because I knew there were no TVs in the restaurant. Later, I noticed how quite it all seemed. No flights over head, few cars. It was eerie. It was a very sad time. And it made me very very angry. Ten years doesn't make it any less sad, but hopefully, we, as a people and as a country, have learned something about ourselves and what we hold dear.