and then the music touched her, making her skin prickle and her throat hurt

I am home! Sitting in my light drenched family room, listening to my mother's Ipod blast over the spacious hardwood floors. I am playing Annie Lennox, music of my childhood permeating through my childhood home.

So it is Thanksgiving break, early for me, because I came home to attend a wedding that was just perfect on Saturday. And here I stay. Anyways, over college breaks, I try to do some reading for fun. As I've mentioned before, winter break is the time to tackle the long projects. After visiting my sitster's bookshelf yesterday, I'm now considering attempting Swann's Way this winter break, but I'm not sure how feasible that is yet.

At any rate, last week I picked up two short story collections at Carnegie to read this week. As soon as I got home I immediately started catching up on the months of missed magazines (an ongoing project, as I will probably resume Entertainment Weekly back-issue reading over lunch today), so it wasn't until last night in bed that I read the first of those stories.

The collection is called Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love, and though it's not as potentially corny as the title suggests, it definitely is light reading, though Lara Vapnyar is a talented writer. I've never succumbed to the pleasures of "chick-lit," but I do sometimes enjoy high quality fluff reading. Two of my favorite somewhat mindless reads are The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing and Kissing in Manhattan. Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love is not as much fun as either of those two. But the first story I read did indeed contain many promising passages about the joys of vegetables. Which is why I chose this collection in the first place. I love food. And I love love.

While artistic attempts to combine the two powerful forces before have proved worse than uninspiring to me (see the unfortunate 2000 Penelope Cruz film "Woman on Top" for one example), I think that Vapnyar's collection has the potential to satiate my craving for fun, throwaway romantic and tasty reading this week. And what better week to read about food during. Thanksgiving is, after all, the most awesome food holiday of all time!

So I'll post again on my other collection of short stories soon... But now it is time to make lunch (reheating my mother's superb pasta carbonara with a side of broccoli rabe and a slice of banana cake for dessert).