Books and Cookies

Honestly – is there a better combination in the world than books and cookies?

Being the sloth that I am, I’m combining two blog posts in one today: first joining the wonderful monthly Virtual Tea Party as hosted by my dear friend Su from over at Zimmerbitch, and shamelessly taking advantage of you being distracted by cookies, tea and coffee to talk also about the books I’ve been reading lately, thus joining my lovely friend Lani who came up with the brilliant idea to do a monthly reading round up this year.

Oat shortbread

Ever since I was a child I had this very serious love affair with oats. They belong to my all-time favorite foods. No wonder then, that I also like to bake oat cookies from time to time, in this case oat shortbread.

Oat shortbread

This time I added some spelt flakes to add more crunch, and also because I thought that it might look nice.

Oat shortbread and green tea…

But to be quite honest with you – I rather overdid on the crunch side of idea. The spelt flakes are actually not to blame for this, it was me forgetting to get the cookies out of the oven after an appropriate amount of time, thus creating little hard rocks instead of crunchy cookies!

… and a hare.

So either you try to be brave and risk loosing a tooth or two, or have to dunk the thing into your coffee/tea and let them soak a bit.

Or – and I hope you feel a little bit reminded of a certain witch here – might I tempt you with some Turkish delight?? 😉

Pomegranate flavored Turkish delight – store-bought I’m afraid

I know, it’s rather sweet, but at least you can be sure that all teeth will remain in place.

Turkish delight

And while you’re pondering wether to risk your teeth or your soul/conscience, let me throw some books at you, that I hope you might have read too, or maybe want to now that you’re aware of them:

First book of the year was a suspense novel written by one of my favorite writers, “Brother Odd” by Dean Koontz.

It’s the 3rd in a series where he’s focusing on a young man named Odd Thomas, who is able to see the spirits of the dead which naturally complicates his life a bit.

In this novel Odd Thomas is a guest of St Bartholomew’s Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. I think it’s not too much of a give-away when I tell you that this is not going to happen for him. 😉

Have you ever read something written by Dean Koontz?

Another favorite writer of mine is Alan Bradley, a Canadian mystery writer known for his Flavia De Luce series, which began with the acclaimed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. “The Golden Tresses of the Dead” is the 10th book in this series, and if I were you, I’d start reading this series TODAY!!! Really, it’s that good.

Flavia De Luce is an 11-year old sleuth, who is also a brilliant amateur chemist with a specialty in poisons and has a knack for solving crimes – rather to the annoyance of the local police force. Reading these books makes me remember that feeling of being unstoppable when I was the same age, which is maybe why I love the books so much.

Next in line were “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco (1989)

“The Observations” by Jane Harris (2006)

“The Crossing” by Michael Connelly (2015), “The Jewels of Paradise” by Donna Leon (2012)

“The Swan Thieves” Elizabeth Kostova (2010)

and “Novelist as a Profession” by Haruki Murakami (2015)

Did you read any of these? Or want to tell me what books you’ve been reading this year so far?