Inventory: tea

I took an inventory of my tea drawer, and it turns out that I have fourteen different kinds of tea.  I drink them at different times for different reasons and fixed in different ways; here’s an explanation of my tea whims.  (Note: An asterisk indicates loose leaf tea, which means I use a tea infuser instead of a tea bag.)

Blended Black Teas

• PG Tips.  The strongest, most caffeinated type of tea, PG Tips is good every morning with milk and sugar.
• Awake (Tazo).  An acceptable, slightly less hearty and more flavorful alternative to PG Tips, Awake tea is what I often order at Starbucks instead of their Earl Grey.
• Barry’s Irish Gold.  First introduced to me in Ireland, Barry’s is a good breakfast tea or a mid-afternoon pick-me-up with sugar and a lot of milk.
• Earl Greyer (Republic of Tea).  This is a strictly afternoon or evening tea for me, since Earl Gray tastes lighter somehow than other blends.
• All Day Breakfast Tea (Republic of Tea).*  I discovered this tea in a plastic bag inside a differently labeled tin while poking through my drawer, so I guess I’ll give it a try.  It smelled heavy on the assam, which is nice for breakfast.
• Angelina Breakfast Tea.*  This is a French tea blend, brought to me as a souvenir from France but which I rarely drink because I don’t have the right brewing equipment (need fill-your-own tea bags).
• Irish Breakfast (Harney & Sons).*  As I’m almost out of Barry’s, I’ll soon make the switch to this breakfast tea, alternating mostly between Irish Breakfast and PG Tips.
• Russian Country (Harney & Sons).*  Another infrequently drunk tea, Russian country is bitter even with sweetener, so I would drink it in the morning or not at all.

Flavored Black Teas

• Rishi Masala Chai (Republic of Tea).*  Chai is for rare afternoon or evening occasions as a substitute to placate a sweet tooth; usually I prefer chai as a tea latte from Starbucks.
• Vanilla Bean (Republic of Tea).*  A favorite from Central Market, this vanilla bean tea is good in place of Earl Gray as a lighter, sweeter afternoon brew.
• Hot Cinnamon Sunset (Harney & Sons).*  The one tea I drink black, this cinnamon tea is naturally very sweet and has enough cinnamon to make your lips sting.

Herbal Teas

• Chamomile (Twinings).  When I’m sick.  With honey.
• Hot Apple Cider (Republic of Tea).  A seasonal tea, it really does taste like apple cider, but, as with all herbal teas, contains no calories.
• Pumpkin and Ginger (Republic of Tea).  This tea tastes like Autumn, or Holidays, and is good in the afternoon or evenings.

My husband once asked me, “When have you ever not had a stock of tea?”  Well, I’ve never not had a stock of tea, but I didn’t realize until recently just how extensive my options were.  For someone who loathes making decisions, I’m surprisingly good at choosing tea.

30. Touchstone

TBR #30.  Touchstone by Laurie R. King.

First sentence: “Eight days after stepping off the Spirit of New Orleans from New York, Harris Stuyvesant nearly killed a man.”

Set in England in the 1920s, King’s stand-alone mystery novel is a bit of espionage, a bit of crime noir, and a bit of historical period piece. Harris Stuyvesant is an undercover FBI agent trying to do some investigation off the record–he’s after an Englishman suspected of planting three bombs on American soil.  He finds an unlikely ally in Bennett Grey, a shell-shocked captain who has an unusual skill: acute sensitivity that allows him to know when a person is lying.

A weekend at a country house, political unrest with the threat of a miners strike, and bomb threats contribute to the rising emotional tension and danger.  A slow start ultimately yields a satisfying twist.  I prefer the Mary Russell series on the whole, but I enjoyed this one quite a lot.

Immediately, more books

Thanks to a lovely visit from my parents, I instantly jumped my TBR list from 44 to 49.  Five more titles–three from my wishlist–get added to my large stack of books to read.  I am definitely set for the rest of the year, though in all honesty, I’m sure the looming list of titles won’t keep me from the bookstore or library for more than a couple of weeks.

1. Ball, Jesse.  The Curfew.  A new-to-me author of dystopian fiction.
2. Berry, Jedediah.  The Manual of Detection.  The back cover advertised this for lovers of Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, and Jasper Fforde, so I was sold.
3. Treisman, Deborah, ed.  20 under 40: Stories from The New Yorker.  Last summer’s fiction series in a collection, including Teá Obreht and Karen Russell.
4. Ferraris, Zoë.  City of Veils.  Saudi Arabian mystery, sequel to Finding Nouf.
5. Hartwell, David G., ed.  The Science Fiction Century.  More short science fiction in a thousand-page anthology, to take the place of The Norton Book of Science Fiction, which I finished earlier this year.

These will be exciting.  Thanks, parents!

Fits and starts

I started a new post about three times in my head, but couldn’t seem to get anything down.  Possible topics included

• A discussion of Touchstone by Laurie R. King at the midway point
• Weighing in on the gay YA publishing web frenzy
• An ode to autumn because autumn is perfect tea weather
• NaNoWriMo in general

Instead I am posting to tell you that the above is probably all you will get since I am spending this weekend celebrating my birthday.  And sometimes working.  And reading a thick novel.  And drinking tea.

Speaking of which, I have a date with a certain Sherlock Holmes mug before I go to work this morning, so fare well.

TBR: to be read

Okay, so it’s bad.  With the closing of Borders and my previous splurges, there are a lot of books on my shelf that I haven’t read.  Forty-two, to be precise, with two in the mail.  And that’s disregarding the nonfiction.  I am a bad, bad Kelly.

But I’ve finished rereading Megan Whalen Turner’s excellent series about Eugenides, so now I’m ready to get started chipping away at my TBR list.  Some of the titles have been there a long time.

I read a modest estimate of a dozen books a month, sometimes more but not very often less.  With three full months left to the year, excluding September, which is almost halfway gone already, I should be able to reduce the forty-odd books by thirty-six.  But let’s be cautious and call it thirty.

So that’s my goal.  I’m not saying that I won’t add some new titles to the TBR list, but I am saying that I’ll read thirty of them before the end of the year.

That’s reasonable, don’t you think?

See list below.

On originality and the SAT

As most high school students are all too aware, the SAT has a writing component: one twenty-five-minute, opinion-based, argumentative essay.  Since I’ve been working as a SAT tutor this summer, I’ve read hundreds of student essays.  I have thus come to this conclusion about originality.

It’s not overrated.

I read so many essays with bland, dull, and repetitive examples that I can become quite bored while reading.  I try to keep my mind objective, of course, while assigning a student paper for a grade; but honestly, something that’s poorly written but interesting might receive a higher grade than something that’s grammatically precise but dull as dirt.  Examples that fall into the category of coma-induction are what I call the Terrible Three.

1. Guess what!  Christopher Columbus discovered America even though he thought the world was flat.
2. Did you know that Galileo Galilei said the Earth went around the Sun even though everyone else thought it didn’t and they all said he was crazy but he was actually right?
3. And about that Adolf Hitler.  I heard he was really evil.

The fact might be obvious, but it bears restating: it’s far more interesting to read examples and scenarios that come from students’ personal experiences or particular and even peculiar passions.  I would love to read an essay about, say, a student’s favorite novel or his or her trip to India or Japan instead of the Terrible Three.  An example that is personal, unusual, and something the writer cares about makes a much better read than a mundane or well-worn topic.

There’s nothing wrong with writing what you know, but there is something to be said for writing what someone else may not know.

Originality is just interesting.

Eugenides makes me happy

One of my all-time favorite series is that featuring Eugenides, the Queen’s Thief of Eddis.  With The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner has written a character whose adventures I never tire of reading.

I hope this evening that one or more cups of tea and my tenth and possibly most significant literary crush will keep my sore throat from turning into something worse.  At least my spirits will be buoyed (like certain cannon I could mention).

“I love stupid plans,” said Eugenides.