Eat Your Books (an ongoing adventure)

[desperance]

So I have now catalogued 353 of my cookbooks on Eat Your Books, my new favourite website. Of those, the recipes of 114 have already been indexed. That's what, 30%? I thought the number would come down, but not perhaps that far. I am hopeful this won't result in an ongoing neglect of the bulk of my collection, as the convenience of indexing steers me towards that minor third. We'll see.

In the meantime, though, I am excitedly rediscovering treasures that I laid in and then lost sight of; and also amusing myself with incidentals. The website breaks books down into categories: 323 of mine so far have a "country" classification, 159 "ethnicity", so on and so forth - and one, count it, one classifies as "nutrition". (That would be the gluten-free baking book I bought in anticipation of a need that may yet arise.) This kind of accurately represents my interests, and my ignorances too. A friend told my that my risotto was too high-carb for his diabetic metabolism, and I'm afraid I looked at him blankly. I just can't think of food in terms of carbs and proteins and I know not what, just as I can't think of writing in terms of intimate-thirds and beat-points and three-act structures and again I know not what. I have not the mind analytical, I guess.

Also I now have Kipling on Mars and I have no idea what to do with him. None.

Comments

[movingfinger]

At what stage of his career is your Kipling? Is he young just-starting-out Kipling or older celebrity Kipling?

[desperance]

This is older celebrity Kipling, inexorably drawn to this furthest outpost of Empire. Our narrator is a cub reporter sent to meet him off the starship and inveigle him into a lecture tour, while the grumpy Grand Old Man really planned a private visit. Events await. I just have no idea. Something hinges on the human/Martian interface - but all these stories hinge on the human/Martian interface, at the moment. There is a great gulf of incomprehension, in which stories splash like children in a river...

[movingfinger]

Kipling might have had a soft spot for such a cub reporter, I feel. The lecture tour inveiglement seems kind of unlikely---why? Those things were always arranged well in advance, not off the cuff. I dunno what you're doing with him (if you know where you're taking it, goal-wise), but if you need to get him in motion, I bet Kipling wouldn't refuse an invitation to the cub reporter's local Press Club equivalent, possibly with a dinner involved, and that perhaps might lead to a private tour perhaps of some piece of local history/scenery involving Martians uncovered recently or unreachable previously. Kipling would do that IRL.

I do think that the the current method of having Historical Personage Fight Crime is less interesting than having Historical Personage do something in-character but out-of-place, but my opinion is not important in this... I rather love the idea of Kipling on Mars.

Celebrity Kipling was good at protecting his privacy, but not a monster of discourtesy. (His Vermont house was designed to screen him from people.) This is why I think it unlikely that he would allow a cub reporter to inveigle him into a lecture tour. However, a cub reporter who was recommended in some way by a friend or acquaintance from the old days---in other words, with an introduction, worthy of it or not---might be able to get some time with him. (If the cub reporter had a tale or two published in Interplanetary Argosy, so much the better?)