Blog - The Bushwick Book Club Seattle

Ten Inspirational Norton Juster quotes from The Phantom Tollbooth

In honor of our upcoming May 3rd show inspired by Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, here are ten of our favorite inspirational quotes from the book.

Bushwick Picks: Molly Wizenberg Edition

Tonight is the night! The Bushwick Book Club Seattle Presents:A Homemade Life is only moments away, but before the show begins we thought we would check in with the author, Molly Wizenberg. (We’re so excited to have her at the show tonight!) She shared with us the books and music she currently has on her list.

“I am the world’s slowest reader, and I only make it through a handful of full-length books a year. But a few months ago, some of us ladies at Delancey started a book club, and it’s been a great way to force myself to speed up a bit. (I can get really bogged down in details, analyzing a writer’s language and style. No fun for anybody.) A couple of months ago, we decided to tackle Madame Bovary. I was glad to finally check it off my list, though it made me feel like throwing myself out of a window. But this past month, man oh man, we read a great one: The Fault in Our Stars, by YA author John Green. It was so good that I haven’t been able to start another book since I finished it. I’m not ready to move on. I had read Green’s earlier novel Looking for Alaska a number of years ago, and I liked it, but TFIOS really knocked me out. The characters felt so true, so fully realized, so clever and smart and lovable. They felt like characters in one of those ’80s high school movies starring Molly Ringwald. I had been warned that TFIOS would make me cry, but I doubted that it really would (up until this point, only one book had ever made me cry: Plays Well With Others, by Allan Gurganus), but I wound up crying semi-hysterically for a good half hour or so at the end. My daughter’s babysitter arrived while I was still mopping up my face, and I scared the crap out of her as I clutched the book and weepily tried to explain myself. Anyway, all of this to say that I am now a giant John Green fan. Me, and about a million teenage girls.

I should add that I also read the New Yorker. In general, I tend to gravitate more toward nonfiction than fiction, and The New Yorker is my favorite place to read nonfiction.

And as for listening, well, to be perfectly honest, lately I’ve been revisiting stuff from the early- to mid-90s, like Hole’s Live Through This and all the Fugazi albums I used to listen to in high school. I remember being at a Fugazi show when I was 21 and thinking, I hope I’m never too old to like this, and it makes me very happy to see that I still do, 14 years later. I also dug out Sleater-Kinney’s One Beat the other day – I can’t believe it’s already 12 years old – and Ted Leo’s Shake The Sheets. Ted Leo’s songs are so catchy, and he seems to just keep churning them out. Very inspiring.”

– Molly Wizenberg

5 Fantastic Cookbooks You Should Know About

So you devoured A Homemade Life and loved the prose-filled stylings of Molly Wizenberg’s cookbook/memoir. Here are five other text-heavy cookbooks that you might enjoy.

The Best New Recipe by Cooks Illustrated Magazine

This text-heavy giant is a workhorse in the kitchen. If it was a player on your favorite NFL team, it would be the veteran center. A quiet and stable leader on the field, it knows its job and works hard to protect you, the kitchen quarterback. This book doesn’t include stories for each recipe and is instead laden with the steps the masters in the Cooks Illustrated test kitchen took to insure that these recipes really are the best. I’ve had people tell me that my chocolate chip cookies are “effing delicious.” Here is my secret: follow the recipe in this book exactly as printed.

Bushwick Picks: What We’re Reading Now

As readers, we cheat on books; the monogamous reader is a rare thing. Most of us have a stack on our nightstand or a queue in our e-reader, and we bounce back and forth. Some books are longer reads, taking months or even years. Other books are one night stands, captivating in the dim hours of night and leading to bitter regret as we wake to a cold, unforgiving alarm clock (and work day) in the morning. So the question is, what are you reading now?

Poster Inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life – design by Michael Wallenfels

The poster for our upcoming event – orignal music inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life – Design by Michael Wallenfels.

Make Delicious Banana Bread Tonight

Are you in need of an easy homemade dish to bring to a party or potluck? Do you want to try a uniquely delicious take on a classic quick bread? If so, then Molly Wizenberg has a perfect recipe for you. Her take on banana bread in A Homemade Life is well-written and easy to follow and, as I found as I tested it, very delicious.

A Homemade Life is not your typical cookbook. You won’t find recipes with numbered steps or tons of full color photographs. Instead you’ll find short stories from Wizenberg’s life followed by a recipe relating to that story. These recipes are the heart of the book and are used to connect the readers to the stories. Prose-filled cookbooks are my jam so I’ve been enjoying it immensely. To get the full book experience, I felt I had to try out at least one recipe for myself.

4 Molly Wizenberg Projects (Other Than Her Books) Everyone Should Know

While prepping for the Bushwick show inspired by Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, I became very interested in Wizenberg’s other endeavors. She’s a local Seattle author who put down roots in Ballard. Naturally, I hit the Internet to find out more about her contributions to our community. I’ve collected them for you here.

1. Orangette

This is Wizenberg’s blog that started it all. She launched it in 2004 and from there it grew into the book we’re featuring at the April 26^th show. On her site, much like the book, you will find recipes and stories from her life.

Check It Out: orangette.blogspot.com

2. Delancey

The Ballard restaurant she opened with her husband offers a variety of New Jersey style wood-fired pizza. They now also own Essex the bar next door. Her next book which is named after the restaurant and details its opening and how it affected her life and her marriage.

Bushwick Song Of The Week: Outsider by Mike Votava | inspired by S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders

For a variety of reasons I didn’t much care much for S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The sentences were pretty bland (I’m a words guy) and the story was overly dramatic. But like any good Bushwick artist, I stuck with the dumb book to the stupid end, only with one slight tweak. While reading I imagined the Greasers and the Socs as members of rival boy bands, fighting for girls’ hearts while doing whatever it took to get to the top of the charts (now that’s a book!). This was not hard to do, especially since as a kid I had been witness to the movie version of The Outsiders which was jam packed with all my favorite 1980s Tiger Beat Heart Throbs including C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise and The Swayze (R.I.P.). My inspiration for this song came from that boy band premise. So I threw in a few lyrical references to the book and did my best to make a boy bandy-esque song that would make all the teenage girls squeal. And squeal they did (or at least they did in my head).

Click here to Download the Bushwick song of the week.
It is FREE, but only for the rest of the week.

Sue’s Little Free Library Update

I asked my awesome Mom, Sue Garvin, to write a little update on how things are going with her Little Free Library since she last wrote. You can read the initial post about it here.

During the crisp fall weather, the park was busy with kids. For Halloween this year, I made 80 tootsie roll pop ghosts with a little free library ad attached. It was a good way to get the word around in the neighborhood. Then, I loaded the library with lots of kids books. One day, after the Girl Scouts delivered their fundraiser candy, they stopped at the library and picked out some selections.

The Poster For Our Next Event: Original Music Inspired By To Kill A Mockingbird

The next Bushwick event is coming up on March 5th at the Royal Room – original music inspired by Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Check out the poster below, designed by myself.