Today while waiting for my car’s brake pads to be replaced, I finish The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. This is a short (fewer than 100 pages) fairy tale-inspired horror story about a mermaid and a plague doctor who get wrapped up in the sick games of a village they pass through.

I liked the idea of this story a lot more than the execution. Have you ever had the sense a book really wanted to say something profound about human nature? This book felt like that constantly. It also felt like the author desperately wanted the reader to be impressed with her large and esoteric vocabulary. Things were phrased and rephrased in ways that felt keenly like they were only there so the author could use a specific word. Which, fair, we’ve all done it, but the scaffolding showed so plainly here it felt very clumsy. I’m not usually one to fuss too much about purple prose, but the language here often felt decorative enough that meaning was obscured rather than clarified.

I like the vibes in this book, and the two main characters were engaging (although I felt like the half-mermaid children were a pretty glaring dropped thread) and the plot interesting, and some of the writing was beautiful, but more often it was distracting. I never sank into the book, which was too bad, because there were some cool moments.

Can’t say I’m inclined to look into more of Khaw’s writing, because I think her style is just not for me. I don’t think I wasted my time with this book, but I don’t need to see more from her.

Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year
Hardcover – April 16, 2024
by Christopher Kimball


Today we finished reading this cookbook. It's a huge heavy thing and I'm happy that I won't have to lug it around the car anymore. :D If you like big cookbooks, though, this is a nice chunky one. It is heavily international, which we tend to like. It has a lot of chapters, including food categories not often seen in cookbooks: Salads, Vegetables, Soups, Beans & Lentils, Grains, Eggs, Noodles, Stir-Fries, Oven Bakes, Braises & Stews, Seafood, Chicken, Pork, Beef, Pizzas & Flatbreads, Burgers & Sandwiches, Tortillas, Sauces Salsas & Pickles. The index is primarily by ingredient, rather than title, so you have to guess which ingredient in the title is the one it'll get listed under. Not ideal, but usable.

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[crossposted from my journal X]

What the Blurb says:

John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.

As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker than the expected social evils. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.

( Review, very mild spoilers )

The World Between Blinks by Amie Kaufman and Ryan Graudin

Cousins Marisol and Jake are at the packing up of their grandmother's house before the sale when they decide to boat out to a lighthouse, following a map they found. They lose the boat, they find a key, they use the key, and they find themselves -- in another world.

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