this cat can read

Cut up some eggplant, zucchini, red chili pepper and onion into small pieces and roast for about 30 minutes:

Make the tomato/lentil sauce. There are some fresh tomatoes, carrots, garlic cloves in here. Add lentils, tomato purée or tomato paste, fresh basil and pepper.

Prepare spinach and ricotta filling (which is basically an egg, ricotta, dried oregano and pepper):

Bring everything together. Start with the tomato/lentil sauce and work your way up with lasagne, roasted vegetables, spinach etc.

Add some mozarella, parmesan and cherry tomatoes:

In the oven for about half and hour or so:

      I forgot a picture with some more fresh basil to serve the whole thing.

Tastes even better probably with fresh lasagne, but I didn’t feel like doing that today. Still very good.

The 15 of 2015

I didn’t read much this year. For the first time in 5 years I didn’t reach my Goodreads Reading Challenge. I know, fuck goodreads and reading challenges, but I like to keep track of my reading and setting a challenge on Goodreads is the easiest way for me to do this. So, not a lot of quality reading time this year and even less time to keep up this blog of course. Despite all that, here are my…

First books of summer, in which @CarrieMesrobian is my New Fake Girlfriend

June has been a good month in terms of pages read. I’ve also been reading quite diversely and I managed to get in some Middle Grade too. Also, I haven’t read anything atrociously bad in June, so that’s a definite plus. The good: Press play (by Eric Devine): An honest and raw story with a good voice, but the book was too long for me. (***) How it went down (by Kekla Magoon): an all too pertinent…

Books I read from March to May 2015: Graphic novels March Book Two ( by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell): more behind the scenes of the Civil Rights Movement with Congressman John Lewis. A must read for everyone. Huge hit with my students too. (****) Legends of Zita the Spacegirl (by Ben Hatke): the kid and I read a couple of pages of this every night. We love Strong Strong and One J We…

Today I am angry. I know the world doesn’t care about me being angry. I know the internet doesn’t give a fuck about me being angry. And even (the anti-)social media Twitter and Facebook don’t give a shit about my outrage. But today I am angry and also sad.

I am often angry, though. When my computer doesn’t do what I want it to do, I feel like throwing it out of the window (but I don’t). When…

Read in January and February 2015

It’s an absolute disgrace, but I haven’t read much this year so far. Here’s a brief overview:

The crossover by Kwame Alexander, which won the 2015 Newbery Medal and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin, in which 6 transgender teens tell their stories. I didn’t read much Middle Grade last year so I can’t say whether The crossoverwas “the best” MG of 2015. It was certainly different (told mostly in…

A list. What I read and liked in 2014. From Willy Vlautin & John Darnielle over Andrew Smith & A.S. King to Jon Klassen & Stephen Collins.

In 2014 I read a lot less than in previous years. This was mainly due to a second sort of job. In 2012 I started working on an ESL method. I wrote 2 units (well, 3 actually, but one’s for the next book in the series) last year, but this year I was also asked to coordinate another book in that same series. This meant I had to write units, edit my own as well as other people’s units and coordinate…

But it wasn’t really *in* DC, it was in an artificial little place called National Harbor, which used to be a dump site, apparently (only about 10 years ago). Now it’s a sparkly artificial bubble with at its center a really really really big indoor Convention Center … that did a lot of Christmas music lightshow thingies. But anyway, National Harbor:

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Here are a few things that happened at NCTE itself:

On Thursday, I did the NCTE on Tour to the Library of Congress. The workshop we got there with the sources and how you can use them in the classroom was awesome. And we got a guided tour of the LoC as well there and there was an exhibition about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so that was a nice bonus:

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Friday to Sunday at NCTE:

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  There was some – though not a lot of – time to visit Washington DC, which is nothing like I imagined it to be (my only East Coast refernence being New York City).   I decided to explore some of DC on my own on Friday afternoon, and the shuttle van took me to Union Station and then I just walked from there to the National Mall and then all the way to the Lincoln Memorial and then back to the White House until it was time to go to Politics and Prose (I can now also say I shopped in the same bookshop as Obama, ha!).

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I loved being in Politics and Prose on Friday evening to see some authors in a more ‘natural’ environment of a bookshop. Fantastic:

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And then, the absolute greatest thing *ever*: the ALAN workshop…the panel discussions (so many great talks there), obviously the box of books (which caused me trouble getting over, so I just left about 10 or so there to be donated), the authors who were all so kind and signed books and even had time for a chat (I talked to M.T. Anderson! And David Levithan! And Libba Bray! And Frank Portman!). The panel with the transgender teens and their moms totally blew me away; Libba Bray’s speech was fantastic; the parent and child panel with Neal Shusterman, so many great discussions . I would do ALAN again in a heartbeat! Look:

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I went back to DC for a DC@Night tour on Tuesday evening. Boy, am I glad I did that:

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  Finally, some random observations about my visit:

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So, NCTE/ALAN: a once in a lifetime experience for sure…but definitely one I would like to do again. I probably can’t do this every year (school), but I’m definitely checking out options for conventions that are a direct flight from Brussels. Atlanta in 2 years will probably be too soon, but 2019 is Philadelphia and that’s a direct flight too, so who knows? :)

Read in November 2014 - books that will kick your ass!

I didn’t read as much as I would have liked to in November. I also don’t have the time right now for more than sketchy impressions of the books I read, rather than the full reviews they rightfully deserve. So here goes nothing…

Power books by power women, or also: books that will kick your ass as they rightly should:

 1) Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future (by A.S. King aka the most missed…

100 Sideways Miles (by Andrew Smith)

Look: here’s the thing. I don’t know much, but if there is one thing I know, then it is this: Andrew Smith is a 16-year-old boy.

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

So, OK, I don’t know what it actually is to be a 16-year-old boy, but I have lived with one for the last 18 years (because grown up men will always be 16-old boys, no matter how old they get) and I made him read[1] 100 Sideways Milesan…

Read in October 2014: John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van and a few others...

Wolf in White Van (by John Darnielle)

This book is easily going to make my top 10 of the year. I haven’t read any of the other books of the National Book Award long list, but they must be darn good for this one not to be a finalist, because, holy crap, this is a damn fine piece of writing. Strongly recommended to people who like good shit.

4 whole stars

We Were Liars (by e. Lockhart)

I admit to…

Read in September 2014 and update on things to come soon...

Due to severe lack of time, here’s a photo impression of recently read books:

Holly Smale’s Geek Girl: All the rage in London, so I decided to check it out. It’s not even half bad ;) Of course, it’s utterly predictable, but it’s an easy read which will please a lot of my reluctant readers. 3 stars

Because this seemed to be all the rage in London, I bought the series.

  Michael Grant’s Messenger…

Long overdue (August) update: the disappointments, the surprises and some greatness!

A long overdue update about books read in August.

The disappointments:

Crazy (Amy Reed): Even though it gives an insight into a important mental health issue (bipolar disorder), it’s not done very convincingly. The book is told in emails between Connor and Izzy, which is a poor choice of narrative device to tell this particular story, because it gets in the way of real character development and…

1) Brock and Barrington Stoke

Now, I’ve always liked Anthony McGowan and his wittier-than-witty sense of humor in books. Seriously, if you want to know how dark and twisted should be used in the same sentence as humor, go on an read *any* of his other books. I promise you there is no one like McGowan out there. But, I think Brock just made me like him even more! Brockwas published by Barrington…

After 3-ish days in London and visiting some of the ‘bigger’ book stores (4 Waterstones and 2 Foyles*), it is obvious that what YA is concerned, the ‘world’ will think there are only 4 or so worthwhile books and/or authors (in the “adult” book world it was all about Robert ‘J.K. Rowling’ Gallbraith’s second book, The Silkworm):

John Green (The Fault in Our Stars had its own stand in most of the stores, but also his other books get a prominent spot)

Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl, Fangirl and Fangirl, and some Eleanor & Park which even had its own “very special edition”)

David Levithan (who has his own underground billboards, people! Yay! See photos below.), whose books for some reason have all gotten a ‘John Green Cover Makeover’ What is that all about? Also, Waterstones Picadilly was selling tickets for a David Levithan event in August.

David Levithan @ Camden Town Tube Station

David Levithan @ London Bridge Tube Station

Veronica Roth‘s Divergent series, which also has its very own special boxed edition, which included the ‘Four’ vignette-story-thingie.

We were liars by E. Lockhart

and there’ s a thing there about a series called Geek Girl by Holly Smale.

All that is great for these authors of course, but… the other authors don’t get the attention they deserve, *at all *. Books by so-called lesser known authors, like A.S. King, that I know were still sold a few months back, were just not available now.

Which is why I shamelessly plugged some of these ‘smaller names’ that *were* in the stores, like putting Andrew Smith ‘s Winger next to a stack of Michael Grant ‘s books (see picture below), or making sure a book like The truth about Alice by Jennifer Mathieu was now suddenly next to We Were Liars (which I picked up about 5 times but just put back time and again, btw, it starts with a map and a family tree. I don’t like maps in books.), getting Trish Doller‘ s Where the Stars Still Shine some ‘facetime’ (see picture below), and always, always putting Grasshopper Jungle in plain sight!

See what I did there?

This book also deserves some facetime

… and so does this one.

Grasshopper Jungle and Winger side by side!

So there.

  But all that doesn’t mean that London doesn’t like books. London does like books, even though ‘they’ may not be very adventurous in their preferences (which of course, is not unlike any other place). They like to keep things fairly traditional, I guess. But yes, London likes to honor its traditions and nowhere was that more clear than in the Books about Town benches, which is really a great initiative and something every major city should do once in a while. Here are a few photos capturing some of that.

  Clarice Bean – Books about Town

The Librarian (Terry Pratchett)… and who might that be on that bench? Oh, it’s Tim Federle!

Dr Seuss (front)

Dr Seuss (back)

  And yes, then there was also this little thingie that happened: lunch with Andrew Smith! What was that you said? LUNCH WITH ANDREW SMITH!*

Remember that Dr Seuss bench?

  *Who signed all of my books. So honored he took the time to talk to little old me. What a great and interesting person he is! And he got some fantastic news about Grasshopper Jungle while he was in London: Edgar Wright is to direct the movie!

Andrew Smith signing books

  In other news:

Books I bought while in London:

I want my hat back and This is not my hat (by Jon Klassen): both so incredibly witty! Perfect picture books!

Lost and found (by Oliver Jeffers): such a sweet picture book about friendship, again I can see why Jeffers’ books are favorites to so many kids and parents alike.

The journey home by Frann Preston-Gannon who won the Sendak Fellowship and worked on this book while with Maurice Sendak. This one is a picture book with a clear message about our planet and what we do/have done to it.

Brock by Anthony McGowan, the book he wrote for Barrington Stoke and which is ‘a dyslexia friendly’ book. Knowing McGowan’s wit, I really look forward to reading this one.

Why we broke up by Daniel Handler.

The boy in the smoke, which is Maureen Johnson’s book for World Book Day 2014 – and it’s a story that fits in the Shades of London series.

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian (by Sherman Alexie), which I didn’t own yet.

She is not invisible (by Marcus Sedgwick): I am really curious about this one. Midwinterblood obviously won the Printz last year, but I felt it really wasn’t Sedgwick’s strongest book, nor did I think it was ‘the most literary YA book’ of the year or even ‘the best’ book of the year, so I don’t really know what to expect from this one.

great picture books

Books I read while in London:

Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña: de la Peña is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. This is such a perfect coming-of-age, caught-between-culture story. Excellent stuff.

Better Nate than Ever by Tim Federle: this is how to do showtime Broadway musical fun. I’m usually quite frustrated with books with that very topic, but not this time: I loved every second of this book. So funny! Can’t wait to see what’s next for Nate in Five, Six, Seven, Nate!

  * Here is a photo of the new Foyles, by the way:

The new Foyles flagship store at Charing Cross

Geoff Herbach has a thing with sports and ‘funny’ (intentional or not) male voices. In Stupid Fast, Felton was the boy ‘on the outside’ who suddenly came to the center of attention because of his athletic prowess. In Fat Boy vs the Cheerleader, Herbach once again has a look at ‘a boy on the outside’, Gabe ‘Chunk’ Johnson, a fatband geek who – after hearing that funding for summer marching camp is…