Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife Giveaway

Nava Atlas is a woman of many talents. She has written several vegetarian cookbooks, a veg cooking site and a score of vegetarian cooking articles.

You can also check out her Nava Atlas artist site to see some of the visual art pieces she's created, especially readable art and altered books.

If you like your art dished up with a healthy helping of sarcasm, though, you'll want to check out her new book, Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife. In this book Nava has combined 1950s cookbook pictures and cooking commentary with tongue-in-cheek faux recipes describing various stages of married life.

The book started out as a collection of stories from several of Nava's friends going through divorces at the same time. Nava expanded it to cover a variety of situations, from newlywed "bliss," to the first children, through to a a possible long-term marriage (or divorce).

Just as an FYI, this is a humor book, not an actual cookbook -- unless you can think of a way to combine a "... small dollop of reality, drizzle of domesticity [and] blueberries..." (from Honeymooners' Bountiful Brunch on p4). If you can -- I'm scared/ impressed by you & please don't invite me over for dinner!

Nava not only gave me my copy of Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife, but an extra signed copy to give one of my readers. So, I will give the extra copy to the first person who leaves a comment asking for it and telling me that you're not able to go to BlogHer '09 (because I hear rumors that there will be some copies of this book available at that conference).

Wordless Wednesday - Prairie Dog Play

I know -- two prairie dog pics in a row for Wordless Wednesday, but I couldn't pass this one up.

For my quilty Wordless Wednesday, click TexasRed Quilts. Click here for the Wordless Wednesday headquarters.

Teaser Tuesday - Larger Than Life

Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

It asks us to:

(1) Grab our current reads.

(2) Let the book fall open to a random page.

(3) Share two (or three) teaser sentences from that page somewhere between lines 7 and 12 (avoiding spoilers).

We're also supposed to share the book title and author so others can find the book themselves.

Here's my teaser for today:

"One thing I have been able to find out: Saber Duncan was born just about two years ago. The bio that Mosaic -- or you, or she -- concocted is just that. Concocted."

This is from Larger than Life by Kay Hooper. Kay's been one of my favorite romance authors since the early 1990s. This is a new paperback reprint of a book that was originally published in 1986. Since I started out reading her books whenever I found them in the local used book store, there are plenty from the 1980s that I haven't read yet.

Saber Duncan is a singer who was a fairly forgettable pop star until she returned from a year out of the spotlight. Her style, passion, and maturity were completely different when she returned, so biographer Travis Foxx is curious. He's decided to investigate and to convince Saber to authorize him as her biographer.

Mystery, glamor, romance... sounds like my kind of summer reading.

Humane Award!

Caspette, from The Narrative Causality, just gave me the Humane Award:

The Humane Award is to honor certain bloggers that I feel are kindhearted individuals. They regularly take part in my blog and always leave the sweetest comments. If it wasn't for them, my site would just be an ordinary book review blog. Their blogs are also amazing and are tastefully done on a daily basis. I thank them and look forward to our growing friendships through the blog world.

Thank you so much, Caspette! I am nominating the following bloggers for this Award:

• Smash at Great Books and Fresh Coffee
• Daryl at On the m104
• Kat at Sassy Irish Lassie
• Janie at Sounding Forth
• L. Diane Wolfe at Spunk On a Stick
• Kaye at The Road Goes Ever On

I'm celebrating with a new work desk (ok, so I finally decided the one I'd been working on was just too small for 8 hours a day and found a great deal over the weekend).

Drop Dead Diva - July 12 Premiere

This weekend is the series premiere for Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime, which I got to watch ahead of time.

Plot Summary: In the beginning we are introduced to two women. One is Deb (Brooke D'Orsay), a beautiful tiny blonde whose only worries are her interview to be a TV gameshow model and possibly fat knees. The other is Jane (Brooke Elliott), a "plus-sized" trial attorney who has been pulling all-nighters, but blending into the background at work.

Both women die at about the same time (don't worry, that's not a spoiler -- it happens in the first few minutes). Things happen and Deb's soul (personality, memories, etc.) comes back in Jane's body (getting her cravings and, thankfully, legal knowledge). Deb now has to decide, with the help of her guardian angel (Ben Feldman) and very loyal assistant (Margaret Cho), if she can live Jane's life and become a less shallow person now that she has a second chance at living.

My Reaction: I thought this series looked interesting from the commercials. It's pretty much a chic lit novel in TV form.

I liked the definition of the characters of Deb and Jane. Lifetime is setting this up as a new twist on the brains vs. beauty comparison. To me, it seems more like a story of finding balance. Deb is almost completely self-centered (and I'm glad we won't be getting too much pure-Deb screen time). Jane is still a caricature of the hard-working no-time-for-herself junior attorney, but in a fairly believable way. The writer (Josh Berman) has a law degree and must have either worked at a firm or have friends who do.

Like most pilots, this one works hard to build the backstory that supports the focus of the series. Ok, the afterlife / unauthorized reincarnation plot is not my favorite and I certainly won't be building my theological framework on the show's view of heaven, but it's a device to get where the writers want to be -- which is a combination of Deb and Jane. There are plenty of equally implausible origin stories that I've been glad I've suspended disbelief to see how they play out (ummm.... teen vampire slayer, etc.).

I like the people in this series so far. I like the conflicts they've built up between Deb's old life and Jane's life. I like where it looks like they're going combining Deb's strengths and Jane's strengths. I some good ways, this reminds me of the first season of Ally McBeal. The challenge is going to be playing on the dynamics the pilot sets up without overdoing the fat-girl jokes or ugly-duckling / vapid swan stereotypes. If the writers aim to have Deb and Jane be more realistic people I think the show will do well.

Bottom Line: I've set my DVR for this series to see where the writers are going to take it -- even though it's a change from the "no legal TV shows" rule I set after joining my first law firm.

Drop Dead Divas premieres on Sunday July 12 at 9pm EST/ 8pm here in Texas.

(Thank you Lifetime for letting me get a sneak-peek at this show!)