Recently at work I was part of starting a new book club that I named "Dazzlin' Divas Book Club." There's about twelve of us that all share a love of reading and always pass along favorite books to read so we figured we may as well start a club.
The first book we read was the Time Traveler's Wife which if you've read you know how hard it is to get into. It took me about half the book to understand what was going on, but then it got reeeally good. Well, only two of us could get through it in time for our first meeting so needless to say that was kind of a bust.
So I started thinking what kind of book will all of us most likely be able to read fairly quickly and be able to discuss with some kind of enthusiasm at our meeting? And of course me being the foodie I am, I thought cookbook! The perfect combination of cookbook and novel came in the form of "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" (do NOT say this three times fast) by Gesine Bullock-Prado. This book will make you want to hop the first plane to Montpelier, Vermont and march into her bakery and order everything at the counter.
The author has a wonderful blog here that has demos and a neat commercial for the book. Her memoirs are poignant, heart warming, and will literally make your mouth water. I'm going to *attempt* to recreate her Golden Eggs recipe (it's a glorious yellow cake recipe in which the finished product you dip in melted butter and cinnamon sugar...yum.oh.) for the book club meeting coming up. I literally want to start my own 3:00 pm "coffee and cake" time after reading this book, but I'm pretty sure my co-workers will look at me a little weird.
Reading has always been one of my favorite things to do, and I'm just now getting back to the place where I carve out time to do just that. My nickname is affectionately the "book club nerd" because I read whatever book is handed to me within two days, but that's just how enveloped I get when reading somebody else's world. It's a wonderful escape from the harsh realities that I face every day working for law enforcement.
There are many things that I would like to get back into bit by bit. Marriage and babies can be all-consuming if you let them, so occasionally I know I'm going to need "back to me now" moments. Whether it's to read, scrapbook, play piano, or dance a jig (though this will probably be done in my closet in the dark so I can't even see myself) I'm going to take the time to do it.
