your voice explodes inside my head

I'm knee-deep in memories tonight, some mine, some only legends. The first note of importance (not that anything is all that important here, as indicated by the fact that I'm about to talk about what I had for supper) is that we had a v. Ukrainian feast tonight -- my mom made pelmini (pork dumplings; she was inspired by the pork-filled raviolis that I raved about from Flour + Water a few weeks ago), and I tried my hand at deruni (potato pancakes). The pelmini were absolutely perfect in that eastern European sort of way, and likely better for us since we were using fresh ingredients that weren't grown in the shadows of Chernobyl. The deruni turned out very well too, but they were somewhat time-intensive; they required grating two pounds of potatoes (I cheated and used a food chopper), a carrot, and a whole onion. Worse, they required rinsing and squeezing out the potato mass several times, which served to rinse out the starches or whatever else quickly turns potatoes brown when they're exposed to air. I mixed the potato, carrot, and onion with a bit of flour, milk, and an egg, and then dropped them into cakes and fried them up in oil. Topped with sour cream, they were v. close to the deruni we had when we were last in Ukraine in 2007, and I may make them again once a year or so when I'm feeling particularly nostalgic and have forgotten how annoying they are to cook.

After dinner, I watched some fine CBS programming for awhile, and then picked up a book that I got for Christmas - "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society". I, as usual, read it straight through in one sitting -- and I have to say that it was hands-down the best book that I've read in months. It's told entirely through letters, which would normally annoy me, but in this case it was perfect. Letters leave so much to the imagination, but are still capable of creating whole worlds, and there's something v. interesting about knowing that the narrators (in this case, the letter-writers) are remembering things, filtering them, and choosing what to write about/what not to write about. It's not a style that would work often, but it's used rarely enough that it's refreshing to come across it once in awhile.

Perhaps I loved it because it contains some of my all-time favorite obsessions - literature, the British, and World War II. It takes place in 1946, and relates some of the experiences faced by the residents of Guernsey when it was occupied by the Germans shortly after Dunkirk; the Germans went on to hold it for five years, during which time the Channel Islanders were entirely isolated from the rest of the world and lived through serious rationing and deprivation during the occupation. Naturally, reading about all of this was right up my alley; that it was told mostly from the perspective/letters of a woman who intends to write a book about Guernsey made me enjoy it even more.

Perhaps I should have been a history professor; I certainly enjoy dealing in memories, whether my own or someone else's, and I can get fascinated by just about any story (case in point: I spent the last hour reading up on Eleanor of Aquitaine, which was rather unnecessary since I already know more about her than is necessary in the real world unless one is a history professor or unfortunate enough to confront an entire "Eleanor of Aquitaine" catetory on "Jeopardy!"). But perhaps the reason I'm not a history professor (other than my shameless enjoyment of my crass consumer lifestyle) is that I'm attracted to the *story*, not just the facts. For me, the story is everything; even my own memories, even some of the most profound, tragic, euphoric, and enlightening moments of my life are recalled almost like a story in my head, a story that could have happened to someone else but just happened to happen to me.

And so if that's the case, I really need to get down to business and tell as many of them as possible. I'm excited about Madeleine and Ferguson, but as I've said before, I doubt that romance novels alone will be enough to sustain my creative urges in the long run. So, I'm taking another writing class at Stanford this winter -- one on writing historical fiction, which will be eminently useful for both romances and for a possible career in literary fiction down the road. Whether I have time for it or whether this is a fool's endeavor remains to be seen, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Between the book and my ongoing love affair with Wikipedia, it's now after three a.m., and I should really be in bed. Please go out and buy the "Guernsey" book -- I would love it if someone, anyone in my acquaintance became so excited about letters as I am, so that we could exchange civilized correspondence like the good old days. Lord knows I have enough stationery to last a lifetime at my current rates of correspondence, so I'm going to have to look for excuses to use it up in the coming years. Goodnight!