To read next, and BTT snuck up on me--Encouragement

For our next read, my book group chose the book I was coveting last week--Just Kids, by Patti Smith. It's the memoir of her romance and lifelong friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and how they spurred each other to become artists. I had to laugh--a bunch of my book groupers had the same idea I did, so I didn't have to persuade anyone--they even brought the New York Times Book Review from that week, which featured Just Kids.

I also have a copy of the Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, on my nightstand. It's pretty hefty (um, 560 pages), and it's historical, but I think I'm up for the challenge. It's about Henry VIII, through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, his close advisor. I know it mixes fiction with fact, but I'm looking forward to learning more about this era of history by diving into this novel.

Is it really Thursday already? I don't know where the time goes. My book group friend told me her husband woke her in the middle of the night recently, to say he'd solved all their problems--he was just going to add another hour to the day between 3 and 4 in the morning. Sounds good to me! Here's this week's Booking Through Thursday question:

Suggested by Barbara H:

How can you encourage a non-reading child to read? What about a teen-ager? Would you require books to be read in the hopes that they would enjoy them once they got into them, or offer incentives, or just suggest interesting books? If you do offer incentives and suggestions and that doesn’t work, would you then require a certain amount of reading? At what point do you just accept that your child is a non-reader?

In the book Gifted Hands by brilliant surgeon Ben Carson, one of the things that turned his life around was his mother’s requirement that he and his brother read books and write book reports for her. That approach worked with him, but I have been afraid to try it. My children don’t need to “turn their lives around,” but they would gain so much from reading and I think they would enjoy it so much if they would just stop telling themselves, “I just don’t like to read.”

This is a tough question. Right now, I have two kids who don't read enough for my liking (and one who doesn't read yet!). My 13-year-old and his younger brother (10) both like to read, but both feel like they don't have enough time to read for pleasure, because they have reading to do for school. I don't get it, because when I was a kid, I was always trying to sneak more reading in.

I think my eldest really likes reading, but is seduced by social networking, video games, and other stuff that we didn't even have when I was a kid. My younger one doesn't like reading quite as much as his brother did at this age, but he does love a good story, and really gets into the books they read at school. For his "free reading" (reading he has to do for school, but he gets to pick the book), he most recently finished Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, which his older brother also loved, and he just had to read the last page aloud to me, because it had a surprise ending--gotta love that. But I wish he would pick up a book on his own more often. I'm not sure how to encourage it, other than getting more books for them from the library, and trying to provide them with some down time when they can read. I limit the "screen time" anyway, so that helps create time for reading. But I don't like to push reading too hard, for fear that they will just resist.

If anyone has any good tips to get kids to read more, I'm all ears.

A recipe

I went on an impromptu blogging break because of Spring Break, or maybe it was spring fever. We took a quick trip to Las Vegas, which always puts me into sensory overload. Then we hosted a Passover seder at our house, which is always a lot of work beforehand, but is so much fun during!

I managed to get some reading done anyway. I finished my book group book, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, while we were in Vegas. Completely incongruous! It's a book of ideas that made me think philosophically, and by the end of the book I was in tears, and I experienced all of this while sitting by the pool at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

I came to the Jewish holiday of Passover late in my life, but I've more than made up for it by embracing the ritual of the seder with gusto. I love to bake and eat sweets, and for a baker, the dietary restrictions of Passover represent a significant challenge--one I love to take on. I make flourless chocolate cakes, a chocolate-hazelnut torte, sponge cake, trifle, and several other crazy things this time of year. But the thing that everyone always loves most is my matzo buttercrunch, a candy made with caramel, chocolate, nuts and matzo, the unleavened "bread" of Passover, ubiquitous in our supermarkets this time of year.

So I thought I'd pass along the recipe, just in case anyone out there wants to try it. It's easy, and worth it, I promise.

Matzo Buttercrunch

4 to 6 unsalted matzos
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (or margarine)
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup coarsely chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, or chocolate chips
Toasted slivered almonds

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a jellyroll pan, or a cookie sheet that has sides, with aluminum foil, and then with a sheet of parchment paper.

Line the pan with matzos as evenly as possible, cutting them into pieces to fill in any gaps.

Heat the butter and brown sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil for 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the mixture from the stove and pour it over the matzos.

Put the pan in the oven and bake for about 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate over the matzos. Let stand for a few minutes, then smear the top with a spatula to spread the chocolate over the top of the matzos. Garnish the buttercrunch with the slivered almonds.

Freeze until firm, about an hour.

Break the buttercrunch into pieces to serve.

Don't eat all at once!

Update: Was checking in with all the blogs I check, and saw that one of my favorite foodies, Smitten Kitchen, had this same recipe posted! If you want to see better pictures, click here.

Reading Howard's End

Quotes From Howards End, by E.M. Forster:

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

"I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars."

"Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him."

I remember reading A Passage to India in high school, and finding it transformative. Now I'm reading Howard's End, and loving every page.