Lunch and Books

On Wednesdays, we have "Pistil lunch" for whomever happens to be working that day and sometimes guests.  After a rainy spring, we've had a gloriously sunny week here in Seattle.  Consequently, our lunch moved today from the round table in front of the gas fireplace to the red Formica table in the nook off the kitchen, which has a door opening onto our sunny balcony.  Our meal was only slightly marred by the yappy little white dog in the yard across the alley...

Today it was just Kam and Amy and we had fried rice (with carrots, celery, onions, peppers, shitake mushrooms, garlic, cabbage, and tofu, garnished with green onions, cilantro, and black sesame seeds) and homemade kimchi on the side.  We drank red wine, and had chocolate for dessert.

What we're reading:

I am in the middle of  Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, a novel by Francine Prose that I picked up from the free shelf at a coffee shop.  It is narrated by various characters (photographers, writers, dancers) associated with the Chameleon Club where cross-dressers of all genders create surrealistic performances on the eve of fascism.  I've also just finished a novel by Rachel Cusk, Saving Agnes, the third novel I've read by this wonderful writer.  And I also just read a back issue of Granta from 2016 on the theme of Ireland.
---Amy

Just finished Designed by Travilla, compendium of Marilyn Monroe‘s most famous on-screen dresses designed by Bill Travilla. For balance I am reading Samuel Beckett’s monograph on Proust. One furnishes a guilty pleasure, the other a sort of pleasurable guiltiness.
--Kam

I am reading White Slaves of Maquinna:  John R. Jewitt's Narrative of Capture and Confinement at Nootka. Trade paperback, 186 pp. Illustrated with black and white photos and drawings. The book was originally published under another (similar) title in 1815. It recounts the author's capture with another crew member from an American trading ship playing the waters of the Northwest coast and his adventures over the next few years living with the tribe that enslaved him. He is a metalworker and so has real value to the tribe, and he tells them his shipmate is his father. He slowly learns their language and becomes acclimated to their ways, eventually marrying, though it is short-lived. It's quite an interesting tale, full of detail as the author kept a journal through his stay. American Indians are either worshiped or reviled in such stories. In this one, though the author considers them "savages" he is also quite fair-minded and reveals a people who are both noble and ingenious and full of superstition and bad temper, just like most humans. Interesting! 
--Sean