thistlechaser: (Book with cat 3)
[personal profile] thistlechaser
Hey, folks in Europe, just a heads up. Burger King beef supplies in Europe tainted with horse meat. Burger King claims none of the burgers they sold had any in it, but you might want to avoid BK for now until all this clears up.

Boy did my stomach drop when I heard this story, before reading any of the details. It's been a while, but I have had Whoppers in the past.

Books! Book #4 of 2013: Letters of a Woman Homesteader, a collection of letters by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. This also filled one of the challenge requirements for the year, "Read a memoir by someone you've never heard of". Close enough to a memoir to count!

Unfortunately this book was slow reading. The details were semi-interesting, but without a plot it just dragged. All the letters were her writing to her former employer, none of them writing back, so it was even less of a narrative than it might have been.

In some ways it was depressing. While I know times were very different then (1915), it was annoying that this woman had to ask her husband's permission when she wanted to leave the house. Not even perfunctory asking him, she had to be as careful with her requests as she could, because he could and did sometimes say no. Plus the word "nigger" was tossed around way too much (in my modern opinion). Candies covered in chocolate were called "niggers", for example.

At the 50% point of the book I almost stopped reading (since I could give myself credit for it, having gotten that far). I almost started skimming, but instead I kept reading it. It was slow, slow, slow but I got through it. Was it worth reading? I guess. I didn't enjoy it much, but it was an interesting view into that time.

Next up is a book that has been in my to-read pile for a long time. Someone on LJ recommended Infected: Prey by Andrea Speed to me, and I made the often-mistake of buying the whole series instead of the first book.

Starting it last night, I was quite worried. I was pretty sure it was self-published, and put that together with M/M and you likely have your hands on some fanfiction-turned-into-book. My worries seem groundless though. I'm a chapter or two in and enjoying it quite a lot. I'm having a really hard time turning off the editing part of my brain though; the author likes semicolons a bit too much for me. But, since I'm enjoying the story, I'm trying to turn off that part of my brain and just go with it.

Date: 2013-02-01 09:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peppygrowlithe.livejournal.com
I'm having a really hard time turning off the editing part of my brain though; the author likes semicolons a bit too much for me.

I see what you did there!

Date: 2013-02-01 09:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thistle-chaser.livejournal.com
Yes. :D And how I edited that sentence! "Can't make a mistake, can't make a mistake, can't be commenting on someone else's writing if I make a mistake myself..."

Date: 2013-02-02 11:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] evilgrayson.livejournal.com
I'm not too worried about horsemeat, to be honest. I've seen it for sale on supermarket shelves in France (it's very red), and I know enough about the meat industry to be absolutely sure that I've eaten some at some point. Horse meat is a rather less horrifying concept than what usually goes into burgers, sausages and hotdogs, and personally I happen to be very fond of haggis.

If you don't know what goes into haggis, you don't want to.

Date: 2013-02-04 05:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thistle-chaser.livejournal.com
Very true. I suppose I should be more disturbed at there being bugs and rat meat in my burgers than horse...

Date: 2013-02-02 01:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] spike7451.livejournal.com
Glad we don't have Burger King here in Australia after reading that

Will check out that second story you mention, not sure I could plough through the first.

Date: 2013-02-04 05:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thistle-chaser.livejournal.com
I'm really enjoying the second one! Hope you do as well.

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