I've done approximately one (1) crapton of reading this spring, so it's time to come up for air with some reviews and recommendations.

Authors of the Impossible. Of the two books in this group by Jeffrey Kripal, this is the more specialized, written for those already familiar with his hermeneutics of the study of the history of religions. Here he takes the structure he used in Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom to explore the relationship between historians of mysticism and mystical experience itself, and applies it to those one might call students of the paranormal. Kripal is an immensely readable narrator who always keeps one eye tilted to the fact that it's crazy to buy into this stuff - and the other eye tilted to the fact that in some respects it's even crazier to not believe. (Yes, this dude is the reason I majored in religious studies at Rice.)

Can You Forgive Her? I have trouble forgiving myself sometimes, although not, perhaps, as much trouble as Alice does.

Drood. Yes, Dan Simmons sometimes plays like he's a science fiction author, sometimes like he's a historical fantasy author. But he knows, and you know, and I know, that it's all just horror. Highly recommended, but read before bedtime at your own peril.

The Imperial Cruise. Makes turn of the twentieth century American diplomacy, wars, and crimes against humanity just that much uglier when you read about the brutal Aryan subtext that rode under it all.

Mutants and Mystics. Here's Kripal at his best. If you love to analyze comics almost as much as you love comics themselves, give this book a whirl.

Northanger Abbey.  Deliciously and wickedly satirical. Was I this bad at 17? (Mark, don't answer that.)

Oliver Twist. I seriously thought I wasn't going to finish this. When good people are deceived about the motivations and actions of other good people, my stomach turns over. Eventually I realized that it couldn't end that badly or it wouldn't have been turned into both a musical and a Disney animated classic.

Pickwick Papers. It's easy to see why it was a favorite in its day. The comedy is spot-on, and the sentimental is as close to heartfelt as it can get.

Nicholas Nickleby. The characters in this novel form my favorite Dickensian ensemble, bar none.

The Return of the Native. I think in most Hardy novels the characters technically deserve what they get, but fate batters them so badly in the process that you find yourself wishing that they had just gotten a pass.

I'm grateful to Jessica Olin for inviting me to write a guest post for her blog, Letters to a Young Librarian. Check it out: A Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Government Information Reference Questions.

In order to bring a little more peace and happiness to the universe, I am sharing the best scone recipe ever. These are soft, moist, and a little sweet. The recipe comes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch, with a flour-related tweak, a few technique-related tweaks, and a tiny name-related tweak.

AWESOME SCONES

Makes 12-15 scones

**Ingredients**

1 1/4 cups almond milk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (not regular whole wheat flour)
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening (I use Earth Balance shortening, which comes in sticks and lives nicely in the freezer)

2 tablespoons safflower or canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

1. Preheat the oven to 375 and find a cookie sheet. Bring the shortening to room temperature and cut it into small-ish cubes. Put the milk in a bowl with the vinegar, give it a stir, and leave it to curdle for a few minutes.
2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Using a pastry cutter, a pair of knives, a potato masher, or your fingers, combine the shortening with the dry ingredients until the texture is like slightly damp sand.
3. Stir the oil and vanilla into the milk mixture, then add the liquids to your mixing bowl and gently stir until the dry ingredients are just moistened and starting to come together. Be careful not to over-mix: it's okay to have some dry spots left.
4. If you have an ice cream scoop with a release trigger, use that. If not, find a 1/4 cup measuring cup and spray it with a little cooking spray. Place the newly-formed scones on a cookie sheet. They need 2-3 inches of room as they do spread a little bit. If you would like, sprinkle the tops with turbinado sugar. I don't bother to flatten them because I like the slightly rounder scone, but do what makes you happy here.
5. Bake for 18-22 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet once about halfway through. Transfer the finished scones to cool on a baking rack.

I think these taste best completely cool, as they have a tendency to crumble apart when warm. They do wonderfully well in the freezer. Once they are completely cool, wrap each one in foil, then stick them together in a freezer bag. Take a couple out the night before you want them, and they will be fantastic in the morning.

I'm back with an installment of books I've recently devoured (minus the truly awful, the forgettable, and most of the many, many rereads).

After a great deal of fiddling around, I would like to share my latest Spatial Literacy assignment with all of you. It's an interactive map of participants in the Federal Depository Library Program, as of 2 September 2011. I don't plan to keep this updated, but if you're interested, here's how I did it:

1. Export all rows and columns from the FDLD as a text file.

2. Import into Excel, making sure each file is coded as "text" so as not to lose those leading zeroes we all love and cherish.

3. Create new rows, format them as "general, and use CONCATENATE to make a single cell for the address, library director, depository coordinator, etc.

4. Use copy and paste special to capture these new values before deleting the component columns for these fields.

5. Highlight each coded column and use find and replace to change those long wordy coded bits into acronyms or initials. I guess this isn't necessary, but I did it so it'd be easier to match values with a filter.

6. Make a copy of the Selective/Regional column, highlight the new column, and use find and replace to change the elements to the desired marker color and size.

7. Import into Google Fusion and geocode the address. The geocoding step has to be done several times since there's a limit on the number of addresses that can be coded at once.

8. Make the map public and share the link. You can also grab the KML file or URL and bring it into Google Earth.

One limitation I've found is that - surprise, surprise - the data in the FDLD isn't the best. Not all addresses are complete. Additionally, I didn't think about this when I was recoding some of the columns using find and replace, but you have to know about the program to know what AG, SA, SL, etc., mean. I suppose that the next step would be to develop an interactive legend that you could use to highlight participants using different markers depending on what feature you're interested in, but that's beyond me right now.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting enough to share. Behold!

Okay, don't behold. I can't figure out how to keep my Posterous theme from covering it. So check it out instead, and let me know what you think.

Every year, I think about signing up for the Out of the Darkness Overnight walk, and every year I don't do it. Every year, though, my Facebook buddy Carrie Aldrich flies to another part of the country to join the Overnight in honor of her friend Susan. I'll never get to meet Susan, but I think about her just the same way that I think about my friend I shouldn't have lost, but did anyway.