Evil Genius

 Creepy book (in a good way)

Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky portrays a marvelously bizarre character who narrates the novel as well as portraying, in her words, her equally bizarre workmates, friends, husband, and other random people that she encounters. At one point, she says: “My life was meaningless, probably.“ (p. 176) Maybe just chaotic, maybe meaningless, generally surreal, I thought, while reading it.

For example, the narrator, Celia Dent, among many things, collected Barbie dolls. She had mutilated her first three dolls by stabbing them in the face with a nail-file. Later she had a huge, never-unboxed collection of them: 

“To make up for what I had done to those poor rubbery faces, I began to collect Barbie dolls in earnest. I took loving care of them. I never took those dolls out of their boxes. My mother encouraged my interest. She cleared out the pantry. Together we put up shelves and painted them pink. Over the years, my collection grew. Every birthday and every Christmas and every time I got an A on my report card, my mother gifted me a new doll for my collection. But it was maybe too late to reform me.” (p. 20)

Celia Dent’s inner life is full of violence. There’s some of it also in her physical life — as well as the “lives” of the Barbies. As she works in her job at a telephone company complaint center, and commutes from her home in Redwood City in the San Francisco Bay area into the city, her mind is full of oddities —

“I heard the same little song in my ear that I’d heard on the train the night before—love and death, love and death—and the people scurrying along the sidewalk with me, all those scurrying souls, yearning toward that train station, whipped their heads around and stared at me in wonder. Those people had heard my innermost secret thoughts. My body had shouted my secret thoughts out in every direction. All the thoughts I’d tried so hard to keep quiet. Thoughts about love and death, is what I mean. Thoughts about how love could be a land mine buried in a shimmering field of wheat, or a pistol shot, or a sticky trap set in a corner, or a noose, or an insidious addiction—and so could death be all these things.” (p.75)

She sees herself in odd ways, sometimes by imagining her father of whom she knows nothing whatsoever, but speculates that he might be the subject of a photo with the name “Dirk” written on the back. Her mother won’t tell her anything. But she creates an identity for herself —

“I remembered what I had always known: I was Daughter of Dirk. I was Minion of the Crab Queen. I was in a full fever. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was supernatural. I was uncanny. I was magnificent.“ (p. 117) 

Most critically, she’s a witness at a very bizarre and violent death scene, which I can’t tell more about because it would be a terrible spoiler (and I’ve already spoiled a bit). Anyway — upon being held in jail she ruminates on refusing to talk: 

“As was my right. Remaining silent had been my right ever since Ernesto Miranda’s landmark case in 1966. Think of it. One man, named Ernesto, single-handedly altered the dialogue in every climactic scene in every true-crime show and police procedural to come, forevermore, and what’s more, thanks to Ernesto, I was walking away a free woman, but with a soul still burdened by my unconfessed crimes.” (p. 206) 

The New York TImes review was complimentary about Evil Genius. The reviewer focuses on the era of 1974 as depicted in the novel: “Revolution was in the air, and to be young was very heaven. Or very hell, according to 19-year-old Celia Dent, the narrator of Evil Genius. Claire Oshetsky’s noir delight of a novel … Evil Genius alludes to Hearst, Watergate and other flashpoints of the era as Celia seeks freedom beyond the narrow cage of her life. Now older, she peers back some 50 years to a moment of transformation.” (source)

Review © 2026 mae sander

From Ann Arbor (in reality) to Paris (in memory)

Grocery Shopping

The Guinness mascot at our Kroger store.

A Cheerful Fence

 

More Olympics

We watched Biathlon because an acquaintance of Tom, Evelyn, Miriam, and Alice was competing.
I managed to get a photo of my TV at the moment of her arrival at the finish line (she was thirteenth).
We also continue to watch figure skating and a few other sports.

Unfinished History Book

The Bookseller of Florence is interesting, but I don’t feel compelled to finish it.

“The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King tells the story of Vespasiano da Bisticci, a major Renaissance bookseller who created magnificent, hand-copied manuscripts for Europe's elite before the printing press disrupted his business.” (Goodreads)

Paris Today and in the Past

Headline in the Times of London this week: the famous Poilâne bakery in Paris is in financial trouble. Baking continues — at least for now. (source) What a shock! I have always thought that Paris food institutions were immortal.

Paris, 1976. Poilâne bakery on Boulevard de Grenelle, Paris. (My photo)

The Poilâne bakery was across the street from the apartment building where we lived in 1976. The elevated Metro line, which you can see through the bakery window in the photo, ran down the middle of the street. The tracks (with all their noise) went right in front of our apartment windows. 

The bakery had wood-fired ovens in the basement, and we could see the wood-delivery trucks each morning. We loved the bread that we could buy there. At first, we didn’t even know that this bakery was famous, we knew only that the bread and pastries were extraordinary. A Parisian friend explained how lucky we were to live near this culinary landmark.

Poilâne bakery is now more famous than ever. All baking is done at a central location in the suburbs where rent is much lower. Over the years, more shops have opened: there are five in Paris and one in London. This famous bread is also sold in many other food stores and is exported to the US and elsewhere.

Paris, 2018: Bread and Pastry at Poilâne on Rue du Cherche-Midi. (My photo)

The bakery today, still selling bread at the location that first opened in 1932. (From the Poilâne website)

A recipe book that we bought years ago.

From the Times Article

Blog post and original photos © 1976, 2018, 2026 mae sander

Other photos as credited.

Not Much Going On Here

 

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati

The characters in this novel come from Greek mythology. They are familiar figures from the Iliad, the Odyssey, and ancient Greek drama, as well as various modern reprises. Author Costanza Casati has recreated this drama as fiction about a family who embody what I see as completely modern self-awareness. Despite their modern outlook, they live in the ancient Greek world that has just suffered through the Trojan War. This treatment has good points, like the way she creates character development. It has weak points, like the excessive detail, which makes it a somewhat tedious read all together. 

The food references are disappointing. Example: “ There are no nobles and warriors tonight, only Clytemnestra’s family, and the servants set out bowls of pears and apples, cheese and nuts.” (p. 112)

From our trip to the Greek islands last summer:
a vase with images that relate to the Trojan War.

A temple from the era of Clytemnestra from our trip last summer: the ancient Greek Temple of Posidon at Soumion. Picky note: the columns of that era, as shown here, are Doric columns. On the cover of the book the columns are Corinthian: an anachronism. But I guess that the book is full of anachronisms.

A Brief Weather Reprieve

What do you do in a Michigan thaw? You try to get the salt and mud off your car.

It’s still a bit cold and messy for outdoor sports, but we have the Olympics.
(Brought to us by a pharmacopia of unpronounceable drugs).

We drove out into the rather desolate countryside. No signs of spring here.
The town of Dixboro, founded in 1824, has one or two old buildings.

Right now, I’m cooking a stew for this evening. I still love my crockpot, and haven’t replaced it.
NOTE in response to comment: Crockpot is the brand name of this pot, which is also called a slow cooker.

Blog post and photos © 2026 mae sander.

Valentine Celebrations

 

A garland of lit-up hearts in the kitchen window.

At the Botanical Garden

All the paths were covered with snow and ice, so we couldn’t take a walk,

In the greenhouse.

Cactus and Bonsai.

Valentine Treats

Len baked a beautiful loaf of bread with fruit and nuts.

Breakfast waffles on our special Valentine plate.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Happy Valentine Weekend

 Pre-Valentine Dinner Thursday

Valentine-themed treats: the cherries were packaged in a heart=shaped box.

A Valentine Critter

Shamelessly stolen from the internet for Eileen’s weekly critters.

More Valentine Stuff

Fridge magnet of the week.

As always with the elusive artist Bansky, it’s not clear what these mean as Valentines.

A recent Bansky mural at the Royal Courts in London, September, 2025. Already covered up.

Pink Clouds

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

The Correspondent

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is a very sad book about Sybil, a very old and depressing woman (younger than I am, so I don’t cut her any slack) and her family, including her divorced husband, her somewhat wimpy grandson, a distant son and daughter, and their even-more-distant spouses. The book is in the rather old-fashioned format of letters exchanged between Sybil, these relatives, and a few other people from her past. Sybil had been a very accomplished lawyer, which makes her current state yet more depressing.

For reasons I don’t know, my granddaughter Alice received two copies of The Correspondent for her birthday so she left one for me. Her birthday was not at all depressing, so to cheer things up, here’s are some birthday weekend photos:

Alice’s birthday cake from a lovely bakery we had not tried.

Evelyn and Tom (visiting from Fairfax) made crab-cakes.

Sushi!

Alice and Tom and dumplings and tuna sashimi.

Wow, that’s a lot more cheerful. I don’t think I’ll bother to review the book after all.

Blog post and photos © 2026 mae sander

Parnassus

 

Parnassus on Wheels is a short novel about a delightful runaway named Miss Helen McGill. Helen, the narrator, describes how she’s been a stay-at-home housewife on a farm for many years. She’s done all the housework and cooking for her brother — a writer, and is sick and tired of it. A vagabond bookseller offers her a way to escape: one day, he sells her his wagon, his dog Bock, his horse Peg, and all his inventory, and shows her how to live on the road. 

For a while, the bookseller goes along with her in the wagon, though always saying he’s about to get on a train and return to his urban roots in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Helen gets used to cooking in the wagon and taking care of Peg and Bock:

“There were still some eggs and bread and cheese in the little cupboard, and an unopened tin of condensed milk. I gave Peg her nose bag of oats, and fed Bock, who was frisking about in high spirits. By that time the shoeing was done, and the Professor and I sat down to an improvised meal. I was beginning to feel as if this gipsy existence were the normal course of my life. ‘Well, Professor,’ I said, as I handed him a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and cheese, ‘for a man who slept in a wet haystack, you acquit yourself with excellent valour.’” (p 67)

The joy of the road are many, and she cooks over an open fire — though when she has an opportunity to eat in a hotel she relishes it as well:

“My! how I enjoyed that creamed chicken on toast, and buckwheat cakes with syrup! After you get used to cooking all your own grub, a meal off some one else's stove is the finest kind of treat.” (p. 98)

 It’s a fun read and I expect it’s been providing fun to readers throughout over 100 years since its publication. Maybe I’ll read another book by this author —

Review © 2026 mae sander

A book about Haiti: DÉZAFI

This book is written in a very special format called spiralism. As you follow the spiral in a sort of imagined space, you see some of the same sights and hear some of the same stories on repeat, as if you are passing by them recurrently. A dézafi (in Haitian creole) is a cockfight, literally, and can also mean a struggle like the struggle to live in a brutal dictatorship of the type that Haiti suffered at the time the novel was published (1975). It’s challenging to read but I find myself connecting the abstractions about tyranny to what’s going on right now in our own country, especially in Minneapolis, especially under the dictator in Washington and his passive enablers in Congress and his goon squads of masked thugs.

In the novel, typeface changes signal the type of narrator. Sometimes an omniscient narrator who portrays the characters such as Uncle. Sometimes the stream of consciousness of a sort of collective. Third person narratives appear in a sanserif typeface — these describe life in the village and a story about some individuals.

“In Ravin Sèch, in Bouanèf, life is hard for the villagers. Thick tangled underbrush, thorns, dense shrubs, whitethorn acacia, sisal. In the midst of the collection of decrepit huts that make up the village a few strangely elegant houses with corrugated iron roofs stand out. Under a rusty bridge a few children are sitting around, arms crossed. A chatty river the color of horse piss flows caressingly over rocks and pebbles. The MacDonald Company railway tracks unfurl straight ahead flanked by two battalions of banana trees. Farther in the distance the sky and the sea are quarreling over whose blue mantle prettier.” (p. 21)

Alternately there is a stream of consciousness with various individual’s identities, printed in italics:

“The cock crowed long ago...  The drums have been rumbling, the bamboo  horns growling, and the conch shells honking for quite a while.  Don’t keep hanging on to a rotten branch.  Don’t rush to speak while the wind is blowing. Learn to listen  so you don’t mistake the sound of rain falling for the rumbling of  the storm. You just open your mouth and the swirling dust changes  direction and the smoke somersaults. Let’s learn to observe! Let’s  learn to listen.” (p. 22)

Dézafi is a challenging book, as it constantly spirals back to the same thing, and as I read I felt more and more how it was repetitive and demanding of my attention to what was new and what I had read before. We return frequently to the Loupgarou or werwolf and to zonbis, a kind of undead creatures. Poetic passages define the terms;

A stab with a dagger  to puncture the two-headed drum  

A flash of lightning  to reveal the double-edged knife  

A loaded word  to unmask the fifth-column traitor  

A shedding of skin  to undress the mardi gras figure  

A handful of salt  to knock out the lougarou’s teeth 

A stroke of the whip  to knock o% the rotting navel 

A cup of water  to kill the death vèvè  

A single rock thrown  to blind the eye of the devil peering through the  peephole  

A single word uttered  to open up the road to the sun  

A single cry for help  to clear the path to the light. (p. 56-57)

 There’s so much to learn about zonbies such as their reaction to salt —

“Alibé, my brother, salt gives soul. When salt gets  into a zonbi’s bloodstream, it slaps his body, shakes  up his guts, wakes up his brain. Once a zonbi gets  a taste of salt, he stops being passive, he becomes a  bouanouvo, he sees clearly, he becomes strong. That’s  when he gets enraged and wants to break loose. You  understand, Alibé? You understand why Sintil says salt  is poison?” 

I’m not sure I understand this book.

Review © 2026 mae sander 

 

Ultraprocessed Foods: Better than we are told

 I just read a great article (link) putting the processed foods in perspective. It appeared in today’s New York Times, written by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg:

We Shouldn’t Want to Eat Like Our Great-Great-Grandparents

Feb. 8, 2025

Below, I’ve quoted three key paragraphs — but I strongly recommend reading the entire article, which points out many of the advantages of  “industrial” foods both to individuals and to our society and our economy. I think it also is important for pointing out the fallacies in promoting non-industrial foods.

“Virtually all the food we eat, junk and vegetables alike, is part of an industrial system. Acknowledging that fact and embracing the system’s scale, reliability, safety standards and abundance is a far better path to improving it than chasing a fantasy of Edenic premodern food that never existed.”

“Half a century of worry about the safety of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s, often derided as “frankenfoods,” has not yielded a shred of compelling evidence that they endanger human health. The genetically modified Rainbow papaya, which is resistant to the ringspot virus, saved Hawaii’s papaya crop. Arctic apples from Washington State, genetically modified to brown more slowly, reduce food waste.”

“The policy tools exist to minimize the harms and maximize the benefits of a system that provides food, much of it healthy, in abundance. But first we need to stop demonizing industrial food, and instead think about how to make it better.”

The article includes numerous specific examples of how industrial foods are valuable and how alternatives use up scarce resources without fulfilling the promises made for them. It’s really worth reading!

Winter Quiet

 

Rereading an old bestseller — Foucault’s Pendulum.
Unberto Eco’s magnum opus is not as compelling now as it was when it was new. I may not finish it.

The first time that I read Foucault’s Pendulum, we were living in Paris, and we went with friends to the location where we could see the 1851 original. It hangs above the apse of the former church which is now the Musée des Arts et Métiers, located in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Of course this location is critical in both Eco’s book and the movie version of the book.

The pendulum swings…24 hours a day.
In the dome: a classic mural, shared with Sami’s Monday Murals.

What We Are Eating

Critters

Lobster Socks

Zebra Socks — shared with Eileen’s Critters.

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Shared with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.