Emma's Favourite Reads for 2020

From picture books to YA to adult fiction and some seriously thought-provoking non-fiction, Emma picks her reading highlights for the bumpy ride that was 2020.

Best Picture Book: This is a tough one, but I think I’m going to go with I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. It doesn’t talk down to the reader and the illustrations aren’t particularly childish either. When the dialogue doesn’t match the pictures, you get a real giggle, knowing that the characters are telling lies. This picture book has worked well one-on-one with toddlers as well as in class settings with primary students and special needs high school students. Plus I like just reading it to myself. There are two more hat stories by Klassen to enjoy as well: This Is Not My Hat and We Found A Hat. 

The Book That Got Me Out of My Lockdown-Can’t-Read Slump: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by she-who-must-not-be-named. A familiar favourite that I tried to read every day in lockdown but couldn’t until we hit Covid alert level 2, when I could suddenly follow a narrative again!

Best Non-Fiction: a tie between Clementine Ford’s Fight Like a Girl and Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race. Both gave me a deeper understanding of the issues (sexism and racism, respectively), and both got me suitably riled up to have some important conversations with people I love, but would usually avoid these topics with. Ford’s Australian voice and Eddo-Lodge’s UK perspective were both a refreshing departure from the US narratives that tend to overshadow these conversations.

Best YA: Puddin' by Julie Murphy. A sequel to Dumplin’, which was made into an awesome Netflix movie. It’s great. So great. Just read it. Friendship, growing up, inclusiveness, girl power – it’s just so great. Just awesome characters – some of whom struggle with accepting who they are, and some who live with full confidence, unafraid to broadcast their quirks. 

Overall Best Book I Read This Year: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. Really. As long as she can distract herself with work or alcohol, she’s utterly okay. I love Eleanor’s way of thinking. It’s relatable, ridiculous, hilarious, and terrifying by turns. Spoiler alert: she’s not actually fine. This book made me laugh out loud and cry heaving sobs.

Posted by Emma

Emma's List of Not-So-Favourite Reads for 2020

I’ve decided to make you a special end of 2020 list. Because 2020 was not as good as everyone hoped, here are five books I read this year that let me down: 

1. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. This always seems to be on those “Books you must read” lists, and it holds a special place in the hearts of many. But THIS BOOK IS MESSED UP! It’s not at all a coincidence that the tree is a “she”. She gives and gives and gives, and then she gets murdered. Apart from Little Women, I can’t think of a more obvious example of teaching girls that their only goal in life should be to attach themselves to a man and make him happy. AND THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY. The boy is a prime example of white male privilege – if you asked him, he’d say he deserves a place to rest. And it’s true: he has worked hard to pick and sell the apples, cut the branches and build the house, fell the tree and build the boat. By the time he’s an old man, he probably does need a place to rest, but he has not for a moment considered the tree. If someone else asked to share his resting place, he’d say, “No, this is mine, I earned it. Get your own.” Never mind that they were probably the one who planted the tree in the first place. I am angry at him, and I’m angry at the tree for never complaining or standing up for herself, and I’m angry at society for teaching her to give and never complain or stand up for herself. 

2. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. After hearing this book being praised by everyone I know who’d read it, I was expecting great things. This is often a problem when things are over-hyped, and is the reason I prefer not to know much about a film or book before I watch or read it. I’m not saying the book was all bad – there were some magical bits, but there is also a lot to criticise. It’s a debut novel, and you can tell that Owens is a non-fiction writer, not a novelist. Her natural history writing is perfect, but everything else is really clunky. The metaphors are too obvious, and a lot of what’s said in the dialogue should have been left for the reader to realise on their own. It’s really not a bad book, and I quite enjoyed it. I’m just really confused that it’s been raved about so much, with seemingly no mention of its flaws. 

3. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg. This 1987 novel was adapted for film in 1991 and it’s the movie I have vague memories of. While much of it still stands up, the very 80’s/90’s attitude of “you will magically stop being pathetic and become a better person when you get off your ass and lose all that weight, fatty!” has not aged well at all. The relationship between Idgie and Ruth was lost on me when I was younger, but I appreciated it on this reading. I always enjoy a book that switches between past and present, so that’s a plus, but I no longer have room in my life for fatphobia so overall it’s nope from me.

4. The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord. You know that old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Yeah, I was fooled again. The author’s name is very similar to mine, the cover is absolutely beautiful, and the title promises the magic of names and language and etymology. But it was just another American teen summer camp story, with a tame romance, and a dying parent to try and manipulate you into feeling something, and a “God will get you through anything” message. Throw in a black kid and a trans kid and some kids who live in poverty or have parents in prison, and few other tokenisms, but only for the purpose of making the straight, cis, white protagonist a better person. Bleh.

5. Please Don’t Go Before I Get Better: Poems by Madisen Kuhn. The vast majority of this book is not poetry, as the front cover suggests, but stream-of-consciousness prose. There are a few lists and a few poems, and only two or three of the poems are actually any good. Kuhn made her name as an Instagram poet, and although she’s been through a lot in her young life, she doesn’t have the wisdom or crafting skills to turn her experiences into good poetry yet.

Posted by Emma

Bread! Bread! Bread!

If lockdown didn’t prepare you for July’s baking club theme, your only hope is to become friends with someone who can bake a good loaf.

July is winter. July is frosty mornings. July is pulling the curtains closed in the afternoon, wrapping yourself in a blanket and dunking freshly baked bread in hot soup. I’m lucky enough to have memories of making bread with Mum in the winter school holidays: measuring the flour; making a well in the dry ingredients to add the wet; covering the bowl and putting it in the hot water cupboard to rise. I remember learning to knead the dough and how quickly my arms grew tired. I remember wondering if all mums had such strong, tireless arm muscles, or if it was just mine. I remember Mum breaking off lumps of dough for my brothers and me to make shapes from. I remember learning to divide the dough into three parts, rolling three long sausages, and plaiting it carefully, squeezing the ends together, brushing our creations with milk before sliding the tray into the oven.

We’d love see photos of you baking with your children or grandchildren these holidays. Email them to hdlprogrammes@hdc.govt.nz and we’ll try to feature them on Facebook and/or our next baking blog.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love the smell of freshly baked bread. And the pleasure of making your own is something we can all experience; all you need are a few ingredients, access to an oven (or skillet for flatbreads), and a bit of patience.

The potential variations are endless, but a basic bread needs just four ingredients: flour, yeast, salt and water. And of course, you can find recipes that don’t even need the yeast. People around the world have been making bread with just flour and water for thousands of years. For those who don’t do gluten, you can swap out the wheat flour for any number of alternatives. Gluten-free flours often have a different texture, so it’s best to use a specifically gluten-free recipe, or experiment with different combinations of ingredients to produce a bread you like.

Of the different stages of making bread, the rising and proving stages take the most time, but you can leave the yeast to do its thing. Hands-on time is usually around an hour.

If you’re looking for books in the library, the call number to go to is 641.815. There are so many options, from books full of breadmaker recipes, to artisan, sourdough, and gluten-free bread books, and books for complete beginners.

My favourite homemade savoury bread is rosemary and sea salt focaccia, and for sweet, I love a cinnamon and brown sugar Swedish tea ring. So what will you make?

Here’s a recipe for crumpets from The New Zealand Bread Book by Kiwi legends Simon and Alison Holst.

Crumpets (makes 10)

Ingredients

1½ cups hot water

1 cup milk

1 Tbsp granulated yeast

1 tsp sugar

2 cups (280g) plain flour

1 tsp salt

Method

In a large bowl, mix the hot water and milk together. Sprinkle in the yeast and sugar, and leave to stand in a warm place until the surface bubbles, usually 5-10 minutes.

In a microwave-safe bowl, heat the four and salt in 10 second bursts on high, until it feels warm (2-3 bursts of 10 seconds each).

Add the warmed flour and salt to the yeast mixture and stir vigorously for several minutes. Cover the bowl and leave to stand in a warm place for about 30 minutes, until mixture is bubbly and has doubled in size. Do not stir the risen mixture.

Heat a well-buttered or sprayed frypan to 150°C (lower than you would use for pikelets), and spray or butter some 10cm rings (egg rings or tin cans with the ends cut off). Place the rings in the frypan and spoon the dough in to 1cm deep.

Cook crumpets for about 5 minutes each. The crumpet texture is created by bubbles rising through the dough to create tunnels. The baking ring can be removed once the edges have set (3-4 minutes), and once the top is set, turn the crumpets and cook for 1-2 minutes to dry the surface.

Cool on a rack, and brown under a grill or in a toaster before eating with your favourite toppings.

 

Does it get any better than butter and golden syrup soaking through a warm crumpet?

Posted by Emma

Baking Fit for a Queen

For the first time ever, the Hastings Library Bakers Club happened online this month, and lots of people at home joined in. It seems baking is one of those things we all love to do, if only we had the time. Now we finally have the time!

Each month we have a new theme at Bakers Club, and this month, it was “Fit for a Queen.” Despite our annual public holiday falling in June, Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday is actually on the 21st of April, and she turned 94 this year. Early June was her grandfather, King George V’s birthday.

Now, I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, eyeball-it, she’ll-be-right kind of baker. I measure my ingredients pretty roughly, and if I’ve reached the last of something, I’ll tip in the rest of it, or not bother to top it up with the last 30 grams. The markings on the oven in my flat wore off years before I moved in, so temperature is always a guessing game, and if something burns, I’ll just scrape off the blackened bits and eat it anyway.

So baking something fancy? Suitable for royalty? Not really my forte. A quick search online (never as satisfying as looking it up in a library book) tells me Her Majesty the Queen’s favourite cake is a chocolate biscuit cake (find the recipe here), but it sounds like far too much dark chocolate for my taste. (It turns out the queen and I probably wouldn’t get along if we flatted together; I love to pile on the garlic and onions, which is a big no-no in the Kensington and Buckingham Palace kitchens. However, at least we agree that strawberries are everything in summer, but shouldn’t be shipped in out-of-season).

Inspired by the deliciousness appearing on the Library’s Facebook page, I decided to try a favourite from my childhood. I had to ask Mum to send me the recipe.

Araby Cake

· 125g butter
· ¾ cup sugar
· ½ tablespoon golden syrup
· 2 eggs
· 1 cup flour
· 1 ½ tsp each of cinnamon, mixed spice, and ground ginger
· 1 tsp baking powder
· ¾ cup milk
· 1 tsp baking soda

Cream butter and sugar with golden syrup and add beaten eggs. Sift in dry ingredients except baking soda. Warm the milk and mix baking soda in. Fold all together. Bake in round cake tin at 150C for 30-40 minutes.

Ice with chocolate icing:
· 1 cup icing sugar
· 1 tsp vanilla essence
· 1 dessertspoon cocoa
· 1 tablespoon butter (melted)
· Add water if needed

I have spent hours researching the origin of this cake and why it’s called “Araby”, but to no avail. The best guess is that it’s an old European recipe given the name Araby because of the spices used, which would have come from the Arab region. The recipe came to my family through an elderly patient of Mum’s back in the early 1990s. She gave Mum a cake one week, and after bringing it home for us, Mum had to ask for the recipe the following week. If that patient were still alive now, she would be a good 15 years older than the queen. If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for the queen, I say.

I also made the obligatory Anzac biscuits, too, using the tried and tested Edmonds cook book recipe.

Next month’s theme is “Go Global.” Our physical worlds have shrunk, but we still have access to international recipes, and our taste buds love to travel. What will you whip up?

Posted by Emma

Catalogue link: Edmonds Sure to Rise Cookery Book

Poūkahangatus by Tayi Tibble

Tayi Tibble is a force to be reckoned with. She crafts poems from words the way Hendrix plucked musical magic from the strings of his guitars. Other reviewers have said, “required reading for NZers”, “the talent is undeniable”, “breathtaking”, “book of highlights”, and, my favourite: “qweer n millennial n great”.

Tibble has been making waves in the New Zealand poetry scene in recent years. She is only 24, but this, her first book of poetry, reads like that of someone much older, despite the references to Kim Kardashian, Twilight, and The Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger. It seems to draw from a rich and deep understanding of relationships between all kinds of people, and between people and media. Every time you think you know what to expect, she surprises you.

The collection is a deeply personal discourse on colonisation, with a solid foundation and academic understanding of what it means to be brown, young, a woman, and navigating the world in your own skin. I say deeply personal, but that doesn’t mean every poem is about Tibble herself. She writes a variety of characters from different eras and different stages of life. Her recent experiences of high school and adolescence nestle comfortably next to poems set in the 60s and 70s.

Poūkahangatus is unafraid and powerful. You might not like every poem, but you will find something in this little book that speaks to you. I will treasure this collection and look forward to whatever Tibble comes out with next.

 Reviewed by Emma

Catalogue link: Poūkahangatus