Netflix of the Day

“Anyone can cook aloo gobi, but who can bend a ball like Beckham”

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM
An old but very amusing film.

“Bend it like Beckham" is to curve a soccer ball around defenders during a free kick, a technique mastered by the famous soccer player David Beckham. The film of this title is about an Indian-British family who live near Heathrow airport. The teenage daughter is a keen and skilled soccer player, to the dismay of her family — who want her to be a proper Indian daughter and either go to school and become a lawyer or get married to someone they choose. Her mother especially wants her to learn to cook aloo-gobi, the traditional British-Indian dish. She’d rather bend it like Beckham.

Her fellow team-mate is played by Kiera Knightly. We saw the movie close to the time it came out (2002) and just watched it again. We expected it to seem out-of-date, but in fact, it’s held up very nicely over the decades! It inspired me to try recipes for aloo gobi, the cauliflower and potato dish that’s in the title. Maybe I’ll make it again soon.

Aloo Gobi that I cooked in 2009.

Anyone can turn blue…

Three Avatar movies from the past and present.

Identities

“After hundreds of years, if there were so many sinners left, what had the Inquisition accomplished? They might root out Jews and Muslims and Erasmists and alumbrados, but then what was left?” (p. 367)

“When Luzia had seen the burnt bread, she hadn’t thought much about passing her hand over it and singing the words her aunt had taught her, “Aboltar kazal, aboltar mazal.” A change of scene, a change of fortune. She sang them very softly. They were not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish. But Doña Valentina would never have her in this house, even in the dark, hot, windowless kitchen, if she detected a whiff of Jew. Luzia knew that she should be careful, but it was difficult not to do something the easy way when everything else was so hard.” (p 6)

From the beginning, The Familiar is a book about secrecy and identity. Luzia, at the center of the novel,  has both an out-facing identity as a servant in an impoverished upper-class home in late-medieval Spain, and also a secret identity as a Jew who would like to flee to Salonika where she could practice her true religion openly. The novel adds an element of magical realism to this identity: Luzia can also do magic. 

Here is  Luzia’s view of the conversion which her ancestors had experienced a few generations earlier:

“Their great religion can make bread into flesh and wine into blood. But they don’t believe that any amount of holy water or prayer can truly make a Jew a Christian.” (p. 121)

“I have been baptized, she reminded herself. She went dutifully to mass. She knew her Pater Noster, the Ave Maria and Salve Regina, her psalms and commandments. She would happily eat ham and mend a dress after sundown on the Sabbath. And yet she felt her magic like a damning thread, binding her to the past, and to every Jew in every synagogue who still bent their head in prayer.” (p. 198)

The counter-theme of this book is a completely different identity: that of an immortal and magically created human-like being named Santángel who becomes Luzia’s friend and ally in struggling to survive and escape. He says: 

“In another life, in another world, I would be called a familiar. My gifts are not my own. They exist only to serve others. People fear me because I want them to, because their fear makes my life easier.” (p. 165)

The plot of this book is elaborate (maybe too much so). There are many twists as the stories of several characters are being told. That’s all I have to say about it. 

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

On the Weekend

 Brunch at Alice’s Apartment

Dinner at Home

Pork chops and snow peas with mushrooms.

Recent Reading Failures

I’m finding it hard to follow this book, which varies from one location, from one
set of characters, from one mindset, and then switches to another place, time, person, scene.
When I began reading Tokarcuk’s Flights, it was a relief to read well-formed sentences
and well-thought-out phrases, no stupid analogies (see next book)!
But then I bogged down and only read half.

Free book from amazon.com. It stinks. Bad writing, bad characterization, 
bad in every way. I tried hard but only read around 30%,

And a hoped-for reading success…

An insanely long book (over 700 pages), but maybe I’ll read it all.

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

Quiet Times, Good Times

Reading

Like many fantasy novels, The Bird King is around one third longer than it should be, as if the author didn’t quite know how to end it. Set in the historic era in Grenada, at the end of the fifteenth century, when the Moors were just being expelled from Spain, the book has a lot of interesting ideas about the relationship of Moslems and Christians at that time. I enjoyed these historic or almost-historic elements of the book. The presence of supernatural creatures was ok until it wasn’t.

This book seems more like a reference work than a readable history.
I read only parts of it. The author has written better books!

High Island Blues is set in the exact locations where we were birding in Texas in April.

This book was a gift from Deb at Readerbuzz, which was wonderful of her! Not only the setting, but the activity of birding and the goals of the characters in High Island Blues are very much like the goals of the birders that we traveled with. Obviously, the major difference is that no one on our tour —that I know of — was motivated to murder anyone. The birding sites named in the novel are the same ones we visited. Two characters in the novel at one point go into Houston to have lunch at the Galleria Shopping Center, which was the location of our hotel at after the tour. As the characters drive through Houston and around the birding areas, I could picture just these places where we drove on our tour.

At one point, we saw an old motel in Winnie, Texas, near the birding sites. This motel was mentioned by name in the novel. We were told that our tour company used to have people stay there, but it has declined in quality. We stayed in a much newer hotel, happily.

The characters in the novel in fact stayed at an old house with a colorful landlady, which I suspect was entirely fictitious, and which enabled the author to create a conventional plot of the English Country House genre, but of course set in Texas. A very successful artistic decision!

As mysteries go, this is a great read. The author has written many successful books, some of which are also TV shows. I’ve loved the “Vera” TV series based on another series of books by the author, Ann Cleeves.

High Island — site of the action in the novel. Our birding trip to Texas in April visited
there, and the experience was just like the description in the book, despite the gap of 30 years.

A Swainson’s Warbler that we saw in Texas when birding in the sites noted in the novel.
Just before finding the body, the key witness was searching for this bird.
(Len’s Photo)

What’s on TV?

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Shared with Eileen’s critters

Recent Books

 

Library books. I have read one so far.
UPDATE: I read 100 pages of Girl, Woman, Other. It had no plot and I lost interest.

One view of my Apple Books page.

A very old favorite! With a puppy for Eileen.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
Not usually a sci-fi fan, I still found this an enjoyable read.
Yes, the contradictions of time travel! Yes, life on distant planets!

Trust by Hernan Diaz.
Nested stories that constantly surprised me! Especially the surprise ending.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.
Twins are always a good metaphor for something. Good read!

The Adventures of China Iron by Cabezon Camara.
I really did not like this book at all! Very forced and mannered writing.

Reading now: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
Finished it: it’s good.

And In Our Neighborhood

Finally: A few spring flowers among last fall’s dead leaves.

Mainly this week was busy with Evelyn’s very quick visit. We did a few things together, cooked good dinners, took some nice walks, and ate lunch out a couple of times — NO STRESS! Although I did finish some books, I didn’t have time to write the kind of reviews that I like to write: those DO take time and thought.

“Bombay Fish Tacos” at Cafe Zola. Mango with Urfa Pepper is delicious!
Evelyn had shakshouka, Len had the mezze platter. All good.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander. 

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and Eileen’s critters.

In My Life This Week

Source: Fiona Katauskas in the Guardian

Escape Watching

“Willy Wonka” — a very silly and watchable film from 1971.

“The Battle of Algiers” a very serious Italian film from 1967, which we had always wanted to see.
The colonial war in Algeria is mostly forgotten by now, at least by Americans (if we ever heard
of it in the first place). The horrors of war and politics never seem to change. 

Escape Reading 

Here are the books I’ve been reading during the past week, along with a quote from each that shows how the authors use food to create characters and atmosphere.

Ann Cleves: The Long Call. A good police procedural.

Quote from The Long Call — “The house felt different without Simon. Empty. Quieter. It wasn’t that he’d made much noise, except when he was cooking and those had only been good sounds: the rhythmic beat of a knife on the chopping board, the sizzle of searing fish in a pan, the rattle of pots. He’d given up drinking quite so much recently and so even those noises had been calmer, less frenetic.” (p. 333)

Alice Munro (1931-2024) has recently become notorious for being a hideously cruel mother.
Despite this, I decided to read some of her stories, which I didn’t find especially wonderful.
If they had to find a Canadian woman for the prize, I wish it had been Margaret Atwood.

Quote from “The Progress of Love” short story by Alice Munro — “I didn’t have a problem right away with Beryl’s story. For one thing, I was hungry and greedy, and a lot of my attention went to the roast chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes laid on the plate with an ice-cream scoop and the bright diced vegetables out of a can, which I thought much superior to those fresh from the garden. For dessert, I had a butterscotch sundae, an agonizing choice over chocolate. The others had plain vanilla ice cream. Why shouldn’t Beryl’s version of the same event be different from my mother’s?” (p. 44)

Every story in this collection of the best from last year seems better to me than the
stories I read by Alice Munro. Sad.

Quote from  “Democracy in America” short story by Allegra Hyde — “I turned onto my back, my hands behind my head, pretending to ponder Honey’s question. The rented room was above a local grocer and below us the register clanged with the afternoon rush, shrill with its clattering belly of coins, the swish of paper money, credit card beeps, as locals purchased pumpkin pie filling, mint ice cream, meat, for one of their culture’s holidays. This was the kind of American town I had come to see, but it had not yet shown me what I wanted to know.” (p. 146)

I keep trying to read fantasy and si-fi, but it rarely speaks to me.
Definitely this well-regarded novel did not speak to me.

Quote from Binti — “I stood up, realizing that my time of death was not here yet. I took a quick look around the giant hall. I could smell dinner over the stink of blood and Meduse gases. Roasted and marinated meats, brown long-grained rice, spicy red stews, flat breads, and that rich gelatinous dessert I loved so much. They were all still laid out on the grand table, the hot foods cooling as the bodies cooled and the dessert melting as the dead Meduse melted.” (p. 30)

Escape Eating (In Real Life)

Lots of Clementines and Mandarins.

I made Beef Bourguignon according to the recipe of Julia Child (which I know by heart).
We enjoyed it with a salad and some of Len’s bread.

A light dinner salad. Farro and arugula are under the apples.

Mugs from the past.

 Blog post shared with Deb at Readerbuzz — © 2025 mae sander

Reading and Watching This Week

I reread There, There by Tommy Orange, which I originally reviewed in 2018 (link)
I am now reading the newly-published sequel. My recent visit to the Museum of the American Indian
included an exhibit about broken treaties between the US and the Native Americans. Totally relevant here!

A Beautiful Bird Book

Thanks to Deb at Readerbuzz, who reviewed this last week, I bought a copy —

there was a great price on amazon.com.

I’m reading this wonderful book a little at a time. It’s very packed with information about birds.
The large format enables images of many birds at their full size.

The details of each bird’s capabilities illustrate the general way that birds are adapted to life on earth.

New on Streaming

I have only watched a few of the episodes from the first 12 seasons of Vera, but now started the new one.

Finally Read

Finished this book on my second attempt. 

Colson Whitehead is a brilliant writer. During the last few years, I’ve read four of his literary and historical novels which are fantastic. Zone One was published in 2011 — a very different type of book. It’s about an apocalyptic future where a plague is turning humans into living skeletons that eat not-yet-turned humans. “There were hours when every last person on Earth thought they were the last person on Earth.” (p. 108)

The book is centered around one character who goes by the name Mark Spitz (because he can’t swim). He is a very average American, but somehow a survivor. Whitehead  shows Mark Spitz’s consciousness of the apocalyptic scene that has replaced a recognizable America — especially New York. There are wonderful observations of middle-class people who had a comfortable life until faced with disaster. Food descriptions help to set the horrifying atmosphere in a nightmare world: Whitehead is a wizard with working food descriptions into the narrative to make it come alive. I marked many passages; here’s one about Mark Spitz:

“On impulse he purchased a deluxe combo juice at the café on the way out and decided not to say anything when the pimply skel dropped a banana slice into the blender. He hated banana. He drank it anyway, blowing into the striped straw to dislodge a plug of pulp, and stepped out to the sidewalk into the rush-hour stream of the dead on their way home, the paralegals, mohels, resigned temps, bike messengers, and slump-shouldered massage therapists, the panoply of citizens in the throes of their slow decay. The plague was a meticulous craftsman, dabbing effects with deliberation.” (p. 133)

Mark Spitz works with others to try to restore humanity by destroying the living skeletons and disposing of the corpses — anyone can see that they are zombies, but Whitehead is such a clever writer that the word never appears in his text. A search of the Kindle edition turns up only one use of the word which is on the copyright page as a keyword for library searches!

I’m really happy that Whitehead turned his fantastic gifts to creating novels that I’m more enthusiastic about. I think he’s one of the best authors writing now.

Strange Weather We’re Having!

Tuesday, February 27: Record High. Detroit was 73°

Wednesday, February 28: More than 35 degrees colder!

Temperature dropped as low as 19° F by Thursday morning.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Readerbuzz and Eileen’s Critters.