Baked apple and reading on a rainy day

It seems that the summer may be for the moment, gone. We usually have great weather in September.  But meanwhile, since the winds are pretty stiff, I took down the awning from outside the front door and rolled it up for next year.

And decided on baked apple for dessert.  Seems autumnal.  I got some Stayman Crisp from the farm stand.  And though they look rosy and are sold as eaters, they are whoa, too tangy for that. Made my face sort of crumple up.  So I decided they would be great cooking apples.

And tested my theory by scrubbing, coring and stuffing one with golden raisins, drizzled with good honey (not that supermarket stuff that's a lot of corn syrup, did you know they can legally do that without mentioning it?).  And microwaved it for four minutes.  Worked a treat.  Very tender, still tart but edible.  Highly recommended.  The beautiful cobalt blue ceramic bowl, guaranteed micro safe, from the thriftie, played its part, too.  Always more appetizing to eat from a bowl the right size and a good heft and color.

Front end of a storm here today, rain all day.  Good day, if you don't have outside commitments, which I didn't, to read.  Since I'm in the middle of four books at the moment, I thought I'd just mention them.

The biggest (though I didn't realize it, since it's on the Kindle) is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  Set in l984 Japan, it's a long long sort of post apocalyptic/sc/fantasy or something, and really more gripping than I would have expected for me, not being my usual route.  You find out after a while what the title means, but I shan't explain it here, better to make the discovery.It involves vengeance, cults, publishing, strong women making stuff happen.

Then there's the never failing Philippa  Gregory and The Last of the Tudors, a lovely, leisurely, history-packed, very accurate, fictionalizing of that period, starting with the ill fated Lady Jane Grey, who seems to have been a bit of a pill, all things considered.

And I'm in Jhumpa Lahiri's latest, In Other Words, a memoir of the adventure of learning to live in another language, not her original Bengali, nor her fluent English, but Italian, with all the traps and rewards you can imagine.  She's an engaging writer.  I think I'd gladly read a treatise on how to fill out my tax forms if she wrote it.

And those of us who have lived in a country where another language is spoken, no matter how fast we learn and get fluent, always have that feeling she expresses, of not being able to sound as thoughtful and adult in the foreign language.  Like David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day, mocking his own struggles in French to sound like an actual adult rather than a kindergartener.

Then, just in from the elibrary, Death on the Downs, by Simon Brett.  Another in the Fethering series, with the redoubtable Jude and Carole at work again finding bodies and mysteries.  A lot of sly wit in here, too. Kindle and other electronic things are putting a real crimp into my book reviewing, no pix..