So though I don't watch Mad Men, I was curious to read about advertising in the 60s and 70s from the women's perspective. And I think that was my only problem reading the book, I don't watch Mad Men and the author spends a lot of time comparing the actual stories of life with those that occur in the show, highlighting the similarities and the differences.

Other than being at a loss due to these comparisons, I enjoyed this read. Having started it on Saturday morning for a couple of hours, and finishing it on Sunday in a few hours, it was definitely a quick read. Also, not only did it give insights into advertising but really insights into what it was like to be a working women in that time period. Very interesting to see how far we have come and how little we have gained - a crazy juxtaposition.

Personally, I can't wait to discuss it at book club, and even more so, to discuss it with my Dad to see where he concurs and where he doesn't.

When reading a book like this, the true story of some incredibly horrific situations that people actually faced, I hate saying I enjoyed it. I feel almost repugnant using that word as a voyeur into someone's tragedy but there's no escaping that I'm glad I read it.

The first part of the book, covering Louis' childhood and pursuit of Olympic dreams engaged me but then I found myself avoiding reading his story once the war started for two reasons 1) Ms Hillenbrand crams a lot of necessary but not necessarily captivating information about the planes and the war into this section 2) I knew a bit of the horrors that awaited Louis and I honestly didn't want to face them. Yet at some point, I was hooked and compelled to read straight through until I finished (probably from 25% until the end). Yes, that was me sneaking in paragraphs at the Yankee game whenever innings changed or pitchers changed or even when players argued calls (there was some bad umpiring at this particular game - and apologies to Rain for my distraction).

Spoiler Alert

But one of my main motivations to finish wasn't my impending book club meeting or to find out what happened to Louis (it's obvious from the get-go that he survives), it was to find out what happened to Louis' friend and pilot, Phil. Ms. Hillenbrand (probably intentionally) left his fate and the fate of many of Louis' colleagues in question until the end and I had to know - did he ever marry Cecy...

There were points in the story where I did get confused as to the soldiers that came and went, and some of the facts regarding life in the Japanese POW camps were stomach-turning (but you can't water that down, it wouldn't be right) yet this is definitely a book I think people should (must) read - if only to honor those in some small way that sacrificed so much.

I totally enjoyed the author's tone and the language used, as a matter of fact, I thought the language so well done, that I used this book to balance out the most recent book club selection Fifty Shades of Grey (review to follow), which was so poorly written, I felt as if I needed something to stimulate my brain. So I went back and forth between the two books, a chapter of each, just to prevent my brain from melting and oozing out my ears (okay - so maybe I don't need to review 50...).

My only complaint about Empire Falls would have to be the pacing. From the climax to the finish, I felt as if I was in my dad's car and he was driving 70, then hit the breaks and slowed, then sped up again, only to hit the breaks to slow again. So much so, that when I thought I was finally at the end, I wasn't and when the end finally did come, well, honestly, I didn't want it too. I wanted a bit more resolution - just to make sure everything turned out as I wanted.

I found the characters all flawed and in some ways, all likable. Basically, real people who all have issues and you just need to pick and choose whose issues you would most like to have around.

I only wish I'd finished this book in time for book club, because I really wish I had someone with whom to talk about it now.

Predictable!

Yep, just like the first one, Sprinkle with Murder, the author telegraphs the killer right from the beginning, the story is formulaic at best, and those involved with Fairy Tale Cupcakes (the name of the bakery), are starting to have the Jessica Fletcher effect in Cabot Cove. Remember her? She was the mystery writer in Murder She Wrote who always ended up solving murders. I'll tell you, Cabot Cove had a higher mortality rate than Alphabet City in NY back in the 70s and 80s and if I ever saw Jessica Fletcher walking down the street, I'd run away. Well, Scottsdale AZ is turning into the same thing - not only that but it's basically those within two degrees of the trio that run the shop. I think it's the believability problem you have when your main characters in a mystery series aren't in a related profession (e.g., bounty hunter, cop, lawyer, medical examiner, private eye) that might "normally" have dead bodies appearing.

Basically, I won't pay for these books, but since I'm getting them free from the Library (via Kindle), they're absolutely the lightest reading I need to break up the suspense of Tess Gerritsen's books plus they have cupcake recipes! Oh, and Bites by Becky made the Blonde Bombshells from the first book (tweaking the buttercream to our liking), and I think these are my new favorite cupcakes!

So yesterday afternoon we cleared the decks, banned Sammi and Chris from the kitchen, and tried to make macarons solo. You might think we made a big deal out of making a simple cookie, but you'd be wrong. And here's why.

Let's start with the ingredients. I'm giving everything in weight. If you don't own a scale and you endeavor to make these cookies, tough on you. Buy a scale. 'Nuff said.

Ingredients

• 165 grams almond flour
• 165 grams confectioners' sugar
• 1 pinch fine sea salt
• 150 grams granulated sugar
• 85 grams water (yes, weigh even the water)
• 115 grams whisked egg whites
• 1/2t cream of tartar
• food coloring (about 4 drops gel), if desired

Directions

To start, know there are two different methodologies for making the meringue, French and Italian. we did the Italian. Also know that we preheated our oven to 200℉ because before you actually bake the cookies, you want a skin on them. Some chefs leave the piped cookies out to form this skin (even overnight), others, like our instructor, Kathryn pre-bake the cookies at the lowest temperature in the oven. More on this later.

1. Put the almond flour, confection sugar and salt into food processor. Pulse four times for four seconds each, with about 10 seconds between each pulse (otherwise you risk creating butter instead of a really fine flour base). Then sift these ingredients so you get a smooth skin later on.

2. Put the egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of your electric mixer, fitted with a whisk. Begin to whisk the egg whites on medium speed until soft peaks form. Meanwhile, mix the granulated sugar and water in a small pot and heat on a medium-high heat on the stove. You want this to be boiling all across the pan, no dead zones (i.e., no place where bubbles are not rising to the surface). It should be 235℉ or soft-ball stage for those familiar with the term. For us, we would dip a little spatula into the bubbly liquid and drop it on the edge of the stove, if a little ball formed there twice in a row (no spreading), it was ready. Now, while your bubbling away your syrup, if you get to soft peaks on your meringue, turn down the speed to low until the syrup is ready. Don't stop moving that meringue around.

The simple syrup cooking - see the dead zone?

It's a lot to keep track of right?

3. Now, take that syrup and quickly and steadily pour it into the meringue with the motor back up to medium. You want to do this along the edge of the bowl (rest the lip of the saucepan on the lip of the bowl), so as you don't get the syrup all over the whisk. Beat the meringue until it's medium peak, the bowl is lukewarm (no longer hot from the syrup) and it's kind of glossy. About 4 minutes.

4. Fold the almond flour blend into the meringue, until it's incorporated. What does that mean? It means that if you think the ingredients are combined, lift the spatula about 1 inch above the bowl, if the meringue holds its shape, you're not ready. The mixture should fall back into the bowl in one continuous drip. Oh, and by the way, if you're using food color, you should add it when you're about 75% done folding (yeah, good luck with that. We did it when everything looked almost combined). Oh and if you over mix or under mix you can end up with cracked cookies.

This batter is pretty close

5. Spoon the batter halfway into a pastry bag. With those industrial bags at class we used two, with the smaller Wilton bags Becky had on hand, three. Twist the top of the bag to close it (we tied ours off with rubber bands after using a bench scraper to make sure the batter was at the bottom).

Becky filling the bag - gives you an idea as to the consistency

6. Now for your baking sheets. At the very least double up. We tried all sorts of combinations, two uncushioned jelly roll pans, two cushioned cookie sheets, two cushioned jelly roll. I think the last batch on Becky's two cushioned, heavy jelly rolls came out the best. Anyway, stack two together (it disperses the heat, and you may want to use three if you have issues) and line with silpat or parchment.

7. Snip the bottom of the pastry bag, leaving a quarter inch opening and pipe the batter into one inch circle rounds about 1.5 inches apart on the sheet. Kathryn has a Piping Guide on her website that you can slide under your sipat or parchment paper to ensure even size cookies.

I leave the piping to Becky; she's the bomb (though sometimes her cookies have "nipples" - that's when you don't remove the pressure on the bag before you take it away from the cookie and leave a little bit sticking up).

8. Here's my favorite part, slam the baking sheet down about 10 times from a height of six inches to remove air. Make sure your fingers are holding the silpat/parchment in place as you slam. This gets rid of the air bubbles and kinds of smooths the cookies out a bit (sometimes it gets rid of small nipples).

9. Now you bake them - first for 15 minutes at 200 degrees to get the skin and raise the oven temp to 350 (we started at 325 with a hot convection) and bake for an additional 9 minutes or until the macarons just come off the parchment paper when you lift them.

Can you believe it this is where we ran into our problems. You see Kathryn suggested that we do a test batch of four (we did six) to see how our oven runs. The first batch we cooked a bit too long and we thought the temp too high so we lowered it to 300. The second test batch came out well.

Second batch

Then we started to get lopsided feet (that's the part that spreads at the bottom of the cookie). We started rotating our trays, adjusting oven temps (was it too hot, too cool?), and this is where we ran into the problem I alluded to earlier with regard to that 200℉. You do a batch, first 200, then 350 (or in our case 300) then you want to put the next tray in and well, you have to wait for the oven to cool back down to 200.

Lopsided Feet

Was that our problem? I just don't know. In the end though, we switched trays, kept the oven door closed during the skin forming section and stopped rotating and actually got a decent batch of cookies. I'm going to write Kathryn to see if she has suggestions to avoiding the lopsided feet though (I'll let you know what I hear).

So that's it - now we had dozens of these little circular cookies. Getting them to look like macarons after all that was easy. Pair your cookies together (no need for match.com here), so you have like sizes wed, pick a filling (there are dozens of possibilities), spread or pipe on to one bottom half of a cookie, place it's pair on top of the filling (bottom side in), give a little twist and voila!

We had some Becky-made key lime curd in the fridge already, so we used that to make a bunch of these, but there are also some nutella ones floating around, and later I may fill some with this almond spread I have (similar to Nutella but with white chocolate). Don't be afraid to make your own - we were just beat at this point and went with what was already on hand.

Key Lime Macaron

After filling they're even better if you let them sit for a day (or two), in tupperware. That way, if your cookies were at all dry, they absorb the moisture from the filling and have a bite on the outside but a softness on the inside. Remember though if you use a curd or cream filling, you need to store them in the fridge.

Kathryn co-authored a book on macaron, Les Petits Macarons: Colorful French Confections to Make at Home, baking that I'll be purchasing but I think next up will be a solid batch of nutella macarons.

The key to these is infinite patience, a sense of humor and an excellent baking partner (Becky wishes she had one of these ;D).

The series, set in Boston, starts with The Surgeon and features Detective Jane Rizzoli. Without giving anything away, let me tell you right now that Dr. Isles does not feature at all in this first book (I kept waiting for them to introduce her but it never happened). Let me also tell you that Jane Rizzoli, by book description, looks nothing like Angie Harmon (Angie's too tall and too attractive, IMHO) but I must say, I do think Angie definitely captures the characters "masculinity" well and her brashness. I'll also tell you, as I've taken a sneak peak at the next book in the series, The Apprentice, Sasha Alexander doesn't look anything like Maura Isles. I can't speak to her portrayal though because, the author Tess Gerritsen, literally, introduced her character just before I dozed off last night.

What I can tell you is that Dr. Gerritsen writes a gripping mystery, a thriller really, that at times, had me skimming pages. Maybe because she's a doctor her knowledge of human anatomy fills the story with some gory, if not grotesque descriptions of a serial killer's "work" that I just couldn't stomach. I usually prefer lighter mysteries (I'm not good with suspense; I hate when bad things happen to characters I like), but the story compelled me back. I will not lie though, I'd read a chapter of this and then a chapter from the second book in the Cupcake Bakery Mystery (review tomorrow) just to lighten my tension levels.

If you're familiar with the TV series, than you'll be somewhat familiar with this story as the series starts with the story in the second book, with back-story information to this one. Still, it doesn't detract at all from the book.

So on the five point scale:

• 1 hated it
• 2 didn't like it
• 3 liked it
• 4 really liked it
• 5 loved it

I'd give this a strong 3.

We're introduced immediately to Melanie and Angie, two childhood friends, now thirty-somethings, who have left previous careers (a marketing exec and a school teacher) to open a cupcake bakery. They're bank-rolled, by the third friend in the trio, an old-money, filthy rich guy, Tate, who now operates his family's financial investment firm. And you guessed it, all them are highly qualified to investigate murders.

When I tell you this book is so completely predictable (I picked out the victim and the murderer before the crime was ever committed), I'm being kind. Seriously, so formulaic, I could have written it and yet... I finished the entire book (okay - it only took a few hours) and I've put the second book on hold. Why? There are cupcake recipes at the end!! I'm waiting for Becky to get home to bake them for me.

Besides everyone needs a simplistic book every now and again, don't we?

First you should know that I'm a huge Wizard of Oz fan (the movie not the books). Except for the part when the tornado strikes, I could watch that movie over and over again (and I have). So let me tell you right off the bat, this is not Judy Garland's Oz.

This Oz is filled with corruption, back-stabbing, revolution, religion, genocide, oh and sex.

Now whether this is L. Frank Baum's Oz, I cannot say as I never read his original series. Though, I must admit, I'm curious and since The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is free on Kindle, I may download it to find out.

What I can tell you is that I'm a bit ambivalent about this book. The concept did and still does intrigue me. I still have many unanswered questions and issues with the story but what I cannot decide is whether I want to invest any more time into it (by reading the three subsequent books by Gregory Maguire) or let it go. For example,

1) One of the central themes to the story is the nature of evil? Is it born? Is it chosen? Is it in the eyes of the beholder? Remember history is written by the victors. Yet, I don't think Maguire ever really takes a firm stand or even let's us decide that question because of the constant lingering doubt as to whether the characters are acting of their own free will (a la spell casting by Miss Morrible and the interference of the dwarf and Yackel).

2) Where did the Wizard really come from? Our world, another as yet unseen and unnamed world?

3) So many of the characters were developed so well (especially our heroine, the Wicked Witch of the West - yes you read that correctly), yet the Wizard, well he was so one dimensional and in a way, so purely evil, I felt ... like it was a cop out... Will we ever find out why he drugged Elphaba's mother? Was he truly her father?

I'm sure I have more, but I'm interested to hear what other readers have thought and especially from anyone who may have read the entire series.

Again, as with the first two, I'm pleased with this story. It's fast-paced, plausible, and our heroine shows signs of growth in her new career (e.g., knowing when to carry a gun, taking advice, knowing when to get police involvement). Unlike other series mysteries (e.g., Stephanie Plum or Kay Scarpetta) where it seems the heroines make the same mistakes over and over, at least here we see growth and believability. Though I did find the ending a bit contrived, overall I enjoyed the story and will continue with the series.

The story is nothing really new for Stephanie, still trying to decide between Ranger and Morelli, still getting into all sorts of messes with Lula, still taking grandma to viewings, but if you love the series, this story was perfectly acceptable. Easy beach reading at it's ... well, not finest, but not horrible either.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

It's hard going further in the review without giving details away but I will do my best.

I found the book totally engaging, though some in our club had trouble adjusting to Jack's five year-old narration, it didn't bother me and I found the story quickly engrossing. I read it in less than a 24-hour period; I think that did help. You could probably sit down with this book early in the morning by the pool and have it finished by cocktail hour.

I thought the characters we cared about (i.e., Ma and Jack) to be well developed and completely believable. Some of the supporting characters, Old Nick, for example were painted with broader brush strokes (and for him, that was perfectly fine), but still real.

And while the subject matter is horrific at best I think the author was correct in choosing Jack to narrate it as it makes it bearable for the reader who must delve into that world. In the end, talking about the book and it's subject proved more difficult, I think, than reading about it maybe because I found Jack to be a pretty cool kid, one who even under these horrible circumstances I'm glad I got to know.