Two very different books

Two books on my mind tonight. Late last night (too late) I finished Liz Lipperman's Liver Let Die. I'd call this first in a new series a "non-culinary" mystery. Jordan McAllister is stuck writing personals for a small-town newspaper and dreaming of a career as a big-time sports reporter when she is suddenly asked to take over the food column. Jordan knows how to fry bologna and that's about it--her cast iron skillet is literally unused, though she puts it to good use here. In one of the funniest scenes I've read in a long time, she is sent to review an upsccale steak restaurant. She confesses to the waiter that she doesn't much like red meat, so he suggests foie gras, convincing her that it's chicken. Confronted with the look and texture of foie gras, she desperateley stuffs it in a borrowed purse and escapes the restaurant. Her review includes more than  you want to know about force-feeding geese.
Jordan, like a babe in the wilderness, writes her column with the help of her assorted friends and neighbors, one of whom is an outstanding cook. Potato chip casserole becomes Budin de Papitas Frites con Pollo, and pork chop casserole is Cote de Porc a'la cocotte.
But murder is deadly serious, and the waiter who served her the foie gras turns up dead at the steps to Jordan's apartment. She's suspect #1, and her amateur attempts to find out who really killed J.T. and prove her innocence drag her deeper and deeper into something menacing that she doesn't understand at all. There's suspense aplenty before it all gets straightened out, and you'll have as hard a time as Jordan does figuring out who are the good guys and who aren't.
The other book is Lone Star Leaders: Power and Personality in the Texas Congressional Delegation, by James Riddlesperger and Anthony Champagne. The Bookish Frogs, a lay support group for TCU Press, had a potluck supper tonight. For a while, I thought we were going to have a dessert buffet but it turned out there were plenty of delicious appetizers and side dishes--from pulled pork sliders to spanikopita and mac and cheese. The desserts were plentiful and delicious, and the wine flowed. The best thing about those evenings is the interesting people who attend--had fun, for instance, chatting with a Facebook "friend" that I don't think I'd ever talked to before..
Lone Star Leaders was written by two political science profs, but it's not the dull scholarly book you might expect. Instead it's a coffee-table book full of anecdotes and enlivened by photographs and cartoons. Tony Champagne spoke tonight and was both funny and interesting, full of facts about the Texas Congressional Delegation that most of us didn't know, from stories about well-known legislators like LBJ, Sam Rayburn and John Nance Garner to some about lesser known legislators who have had a great impact on our daily lives. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop when he spoke--everyone was completely engaged. I"m looking forward to digging into the book.
Two good books--take your pick.

Beta readers

This week I heard from my mentor--since he doesn't think of himself as a mentor, I think I should now call him my Beta reader. I was never sure about that term but I see it all over the writing lists, so I looked it up: a reader who readers with a "critical eye" with the aim of improving a work for a general audience. Well, my Beta reader, Fred, had several suggestions which kind of all boiled down to I have too many balls in the air in the current work in progress and should eliminate some. I know he's right about at least one plot thread and will eliminate it. Another one I must review. One I'm pretty sure I want to keep, and another solution he suggested I've already solved in a different way--though when I told him, Fred seemed to think that was a good idea. But the one I really should write out will wipe out everything I did yesterday morning, so it kind of set me back on my heels. I'm once again moving ahead  at a good clip, accumulating words toward that goal of a 70,000-word manuscript, so I was dismayed at the thought of writing out a good chunk of it. I tell myself, or try to, that it's quality not quantity that matters. The truth is my March 15 deadline is for a finished manuscript and this is a first draft, so if I stop moving ahead in word count and go back to rewrite and reconsider, it becomes part of the revision process which I will now do sooner rather than later.
But at the same time I found a promotional contest for a new culinary novel--well, really it's sort of a non-culinary mystery because the protagonist is a food critic who knows zilch about cooking or food. There are several steps to this contest: post on Twitter, post on Facebook, buy a copy and submit proof, and finally, write a review. The prize, though, is worth all those steps--fancy digital cooking equipment. So what the heck--I temporarily abandoned my own novel to read Liz Lipperman's Liver Let Die and I'm having fun with it. And I tell myself thoughts about my own novel are simmering on the back burner of my brain. I truly do believe that theory.
Tonight was memoir class, and we had a stimulating evening of some profoundly honest and moving pieces and then one hilarious one plus some really interesting discussions about why you write memoir--one class member says she writes with such honesty she can't share it with anyone outside the class. A new member who says she doesn't know what she wants to write doesn't want to do memoir because parts of her childhood were difficult, she's dealt with them, and doesn't want to relive them. So there was a chorus of suggestions of what she can write about. Another member advocated that everyone has a story to tell and those stories must be captured and preserved. Each person has to decide how to approach memoir, but it sure was an interesting discussion.
Enough complex thinking--I have to get back to reading that mystery.