While some readers have noted that they enjoy all of the fried potato blogging, another Friend of Crescat (now visiting Crescat Central in Bloomington, IN) complains that I give unforgivably short shrift to the fried jelly donut, a different Hannukah treat also known as sufganiyot.

I remain skeptical, having never really gone in for Krispy Kremes, funnel cakes or beignets either, but I am (almost) always willing to try new things. Still-- who needs a way to consume both one's french-frying quota and one's dessert quota in one dubious sitting?

The article goes on to discuss the french-fry-temples in the Jewish ghetto of Rome (which I unfortunately missed over Thanksgiving, too-distractedly downing espressos at every turn).

In my beloved Ada is a short chapter (Part 1, Chapter 28) on cheating at cards that I was never able to make sense of, until reading Penn Jilette's book on cheating at poker. In particular, I was baffled by this paragraph:

Sometime during the winter of 1886-7, at dismally cold Chose, in the course of a poker game with two Frenchmen and a fellow student whom we shall call Dick, in the latter's smartly furnished rooms in Serenity Court, he noticed that the French twins were losing not only because they were happily and hopelessly tight, but also because milord was that "crystal cretin" of Plunkett's vocabulary, a man of many mirrors—small reflecting surfaces variously angled and shaped, glinting discreetly on watch or signet ring, dissimulated like female fireflies in the undergrowth, on table legs, inside cuff or lapel, and on the edges of ashtrays, whose position on adjacent supports Dick kept shifting with a negligent air—all of which, as any card-sharper might tell you, was as dumb as it was redundant.

Carina notes that baking cookies (inter alia) has been more important to her than blogging. As a lucky recipient of some of her largesse, I can say that her biscotti are almost as good as her blog. I have just polished off the last of them, so now I am forced to consume my afternoon espresso with a small square of chocolate. Sic transit . . .

I am a sucker for bad poker books. Even though it is co-written by Penn Jilette (the louder half of irreverent libertarian magician duo Penn and Teller), How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker is not particularly good. First off, it doesn't actually tell you how to cheat your friends at poker-- it sends you off to serious books to learn about second- and bottom- dealing, serious card marking, and so on. (The book does more or less tell you how to swip chips out of the pot when nobody's looking and to mark cards with your fingernail.)

The bulk of the book is not about strategies but style and swagger. Be shameless. Be amoral. Be friendly. Skip town a lot. Never win too much or too big. Never win with flashy hands. Always lose the last hand of the night. And so on. This is probably actually useful advice and probably actually more useful than learning how to deal seconds since I never actually intend to cheat my friends at poker, but still the whole book left me feeling more than a little unsatisfied, like I'd just read the chinese food of poker books.

The coolest thing about it is that if you take the book jacket off, the naked hardcover has a false spine, making the book masquerade as some boring tome about the history of poker.

[50 Book Challenge, Surplus Edition]