This I Believe

Welcome to Apple Pie for Dessert. This is, I believe, the fifth iteration of my attempt to chronicle what books I read and what I think of them. It started a few years ago as a blog that I oh so insensitively titled "A Year of Magical Reading," thinking I was clever to play off of Joan Didion's memoir of widowhood. No wonder it failed! Ugh. (In a further display of insensitivity and general idiocy, I also said I thought the book was depressing...nice) Then I tried blogging it over at MySpace, but MySpace had already exhausted its brief fling with coolness so that didn't work. A friend recommended GoodReads, which I do like for the ability to track what I've read and what I would like to read (especially great as an iPhone app, since whenever I'm in a bookstore and looking to buy something, I can see what I actually should buy!), but for the reviews...not so much. People seemed to like the reviews I posted - I had total strangers following my reviews and "liking" them, but to me they don't make any sense out of context. And that context is me. My reviews are less reviews and more reactions, which means you get a lot of my life and things I think about that have nothing whatsoever to do with the book. I'm glad people I don't know were entertained by them...perhaps they'll find them here and be just as entertained, only in context this time.

(Oh, and then for a little while I kept track of the books through an Excel spreadsheet. How boring is that? Then another couple of phone apps...so maybe this is the 6th or 7th iteration? Does it matter?)

I don't have any particular goals about how many books I want to read in a certain time period or how often I will post. Hopefully lots of book and I'll post as soon as I finish them, but don't let's any of us hold me to that, okay? I may, from time to time, post some of those old reviews as well.

As for the question I'm sure you're asking yourself...what does apple pie for dessert have to do with reading books? Nothing at all, of course. The Husband and I were brainstorming over lunch about what to call the blog and his suggestion was something to do with the word "ribald." He had a whole phrase, which is escaping me now, but at least "ribald" made it here. I suggested the eventual title and he vetoed it because it doesn't mean anything. Except that it does. Our lunch conversation moved onto other, more serious topics and at one point he said, "you have to believe in something." I replied, "I believe in apple pie for dessert."

We are getting close to Thanksgiving and my mom always made apple pie for dessert. Really good apple pie and my sister and I would argue over who got the pretty pink china plate at dessert. Interestingly, it turns out the secret to the pie's greatness is using a store bought Pillsbury pie crust. Who knew? And the last time we had dessert at my parents' house, my sister let me have the pink plate without a squawk. So neither of these things is of any import at all, but they still color my memories of Thanksgiving and my perception of how Thanksgiving should be.

NPR had a great series of essays called "This I Believe" all about how people's beliefs in various things, big and small, inform how they live their lives. Obviously, my various beliefs in whatever will inform how I read books and how I respond to them. So it makes sense that you, Dear Reader, know that I believe in apple pie for dessert.