Orange oddity

This week I am reading 5 books that are piling up beside the bed. They all have orange dust jackets. Hmmm. Odd.
The first book is called The Orange Revolution, about Ukraine's notorious election and attendant revolution, so it makes sense that it would have orange as a primary colour. The author calls the use of orange in Yushchenko's campaign "a triumph of branding".
The others are :
All the Fishes come home to roost by Rachel Manija Brown. It is a memoir of her very odd childhood in India where her parents moved to follow their fringe religion of Baba-loving. Excellent writing and very funny, sad and hopeful. India -- lots of sun? Orange?
Eat, drink & lose weight by Mollie Katzen. Sad but true, I am reading a "diet" book. It is by Mollie Katzen of Moosewood Cookbook fame, so I thought that perhaps it would have a friendly vegetarian slant. But no, she calls herself a flexitarian! Argh. (see my earlier post for an explanation of how much I love that phrase) Still a couple of good recipes in the back though. Orange...why? To catch the eye?
The Jigsaw Puzzle by Anne D. Williams. An absorbing history of the jigsaw puzzle. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who can get obsessive about putting things back in order... More reddish than orangey, but still.
The Green Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer. It has a golden-orange painting on the cover; only the word Green is actually green. A story of the sudden discovery of a Ukrainian past for a Toronto woman and her search for the truth about her family.
All orange. Is it a printer's conspiracy? Do they have pots of leftover orange inks from the 70's?

Morning person?

I was thinking of labels we give one another this morning as I stumbled into work. As my coworker cheerily greeted me, I realized in a flash of genius...some of us are morning people and some of us are not. I would have to say that I am not exactly a morning person. If I have to function well before 11 am it's always a bit dicey.
So that I am not simply defending myself, read the scientific facts on sleep habits at this great blog. Then read another very amusing blog which explains it all so much more eloquently than I ever could.
My husband and I are both night owls, thank goodness. I was traumatized enough in this life by my "lark" of a mother who would try to sing me out of bed for school. Sorry, Mom, but it's going to take a lot to make that up to me!

Book List : Foodie reads

Here are a few books with food related themes that I've enjoyed:

1.My Year of Meats / Ruth Ozeki
A novel about an American tv producer trying to market meat to the Japanese; goes into meat production, health issues, and political issues. Despite all that, it is a nicely organized and readable book -- quite original, and very entertaining.

2.The Debt to pleasure / John Lanchester
A great read about a gourmet with a penchant for mushrooms...and murder.

3.Kitchen / Banana Yoshimoto
Not strictly about food, but kitchens, Earl Grey and noodles do play their part. Besides, the author's name is Banana!

4.Chocolat / Joanne Harris
Made into a lovely movie; all about the pleasures of chocolate & sensuous living. Mmm.

5.Little Indiscretions / Carmen Posadas
Translated from Spanish, a fun read about a chef/caterer who stumbles upon a deadly house party.

Food fight!

As part of my self-definition, I should also point out that I am a vegetarian; have been for nearly 15 years now. (my, how time flies) It always follows that I am asked why, and what kind of vegetarian am I, really? There are a few definitions; for my purposes, there are 3. For your enlightenment, they are the Ovo-Lacto (who eats no meat but does eat eggs and dairy), the Lacto (no meat or eggs, but yes to dairy) and Vegan (who neither eats nor uses any animal products at all, as much as this is possible these days). Check out the Vegetarian Times, or this site for Vegan info.
You can not say that vegetarians are all of a kind, any more than you can say that people who eat hamburgers are all of a kind. Well, I suppose you could say it, but it wouldn't be strictly true, nor useful. However, a new term making the rounds is flexitarian -- apparently a person who eats mostly non-meat, but will throw in a good chunk of chicken or fish now and again. Due to what, I have no idea. I have to say that I draw the line there...if you eat meat you are not a vegetarian.
As for myself, I am an ovo-lacto, with leanings toward vegan. In case you were curious.

Book List : Childhood Favourites

These are some books I loved as a child and have reread frequently over the years. All highly recommended:

1. Anne of Green Gables / L.M. Montgomery
Everyone knows the story of this red-haired orphan who finds a loving home and community in small-town PEI in the 1890's or so. There was something about this story that touched me deeply; I was convinced I had lived in Avonlea in another life.

2.Mara, Daughter of the Nile / Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Set in Pharonic Egypt, this was the impetus for my later infatuation with both Egyptian history and romantic suspense. This has been followed up by reading Elizabeth Peters.

3.The Witch of Blackbird Pond / Elizabeth George Spears
For some inexplicable reason I was fascinated with US colonial history as a 13 yr. old. This book provided great characters, history, romance and also philosophical considerations of religion, and freedom.

4.A Wrinkle in Time / Madeleine L'Engle
Another story about a young misfit of a girl who saves the world and finds romance along the way. Wonderfully imaginative.

5.The Borrowers / Mary Norton
The story of a family of inch-high Victorians having to survive the vagaries of their precarious existence beneath the floorboards of a kitchen. I loved the feeling of looking in at a human family from the outside, or more properly, from underneath. Provided a quote which has always affected my further reading -- "Stories really never end...It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them."

Reading Obsession

I am always reading; at breakfast, at work, after dinner, before bed... I've even had a dream that was subtitled.
I've been reading since I was three, and it's what I do. Why do I read so much? Well, for information -- as Canadian writer Diane Schoemperlen said "For those of us with a bookish bent, reading is a reflexive response to everything. Ths is how we deal with the world and anything new that comes our way. We have always known that there is a book for every occasion and every obsession."
I also read to get a glimpse at the world through someone else's eyes. Each new viewpoint is like a coloured scrap in life's kaleidoscope, adding complexity to the patterns that are always shifting. Reading other blogs is a great way to see new unmediated viewpoints -- thanks to all!

Categorizing ideas or things?

So my husband read my first post. And laughed. I am not exactly famous for my organizational skills around the house. Alright, I am messy. But I do have a very tidy, alphabetically organized spice drawer. It's a beautiful thing.
My excuse is that I am more interested in classifying information than physical objects. All the facts I hold in my head are categorized and easily retrievable. When we are doing a crossword or playing along with Jeopardy! my trivia retrieval skills are quite useful.
However, my real reasoning for the fact that he puts things away and I pile things up is that (self-categorization ahead) I am a right-brain organizer. According to Lee Silber in his book "Organizing from the right side of the Brain", you are a right-brain person if you can say yes to at least one of the following statements:
1. You prefer to pile rather than file your papers
2. You like leaving things out where you can see them
3. You save everything just in case you might need it...someday
4. You like having a lot going on in your life all at once
5. You frequently misplace keys, glasses, and other loose little items

Being so typically Libran, I must keep a balance; I say Yes to 2, No to 2, and half a Yes to one.
So now I have an excuse...if only the left-brainers around me will buy it!

Classified information

Hello world! My name is Melanie and I am a classifier, a categorizer, an inveterate cataloguer.
Anyone with the urge to neatly catalogue the world will understand when I say that the first and most compelling instance of this arises in connection to yourself. How (and why) do we categorize ourselves? I'm amazed by the variety of ways humans have developed to figure out who we are.

Take me -- I could introduce myself as a Libra, as belonging to the Year of the Pig, or as a middle child, or as part of Gen X. I could say I am a green-blue (True Colors), or INFJ (Myers-Briggs), or even just an introvert. Any of these categories is a type of shorthand to understanding. If we are any one of these, then we must have certain characteristics which explain our actions and/or inclinations.

The problem with this is that life is just too messy. Nothing fits neatly. I must categorize myself further by stating that I am a librarian. This naturally exploits my tendency to catalogue. Even so, I know from experience that cataloguing is an art, that one piece of information can be assigned to a number of different places. Knowing this does not prevent me from trying to find a pattern into which I can fit the random elements of my experience.

Life is a long and rambling mystery; but I can't help myself, all those -ologies draw me in. Where things fit matters to me. I am convinced that a life is a cosmic jigsaw puzzle -- the pieces have a specific place, and once the puzzle is done, some sense will be made of it. It is while you're doing the puzzle that it's hard to figure out what goes where.

Even having said that, I am sure that I will fit the same thing into different places a few more times during my life. I can only enlist Walt Whitman in my support :

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."