Crazy Heart and After You on Realgoodwords

There's a sense of ownership sometimes, when you read a book before you see the movie. There is something in reading the words on a page and creating an image in your mind of the characters that makes you feel like you really know them. You develop a relationship with them. That's probably why more often than not, the movie does NOT live up to the book. From what I've heard from others, Crazy Heart is NOT like that. (Yes, it's true, Crazy Heart hasn't made it to northern Minnesota yet!)

Thomas Cobb published his first novel in 1987. "Crazy Heart" got great critical acclaim and was even optioned for a movie by Chuck Barris (of The Gong Show). But that movie never happened (Chuck went off sailing on his yacht instead) and the book went out of print in the early 1990s.

Flash forward to last Sunday night at the Academy Awards ceremony. Jeff Bridges takes home the Oscar for the character Thomas Cobb created, Bad Blake. And "The Weary Kind" won for best song.

I had the chance to talk with Thomas Cobb about the resurgence of Bad Blake in his life and where the story originally came from. Tune in for our conversation this week (Wednesday evening from 6-7 and Sunday morning from 9-10).

I'll also talk with Julie Buxbaum about her novel "After You" - the story of how Ellie steps into her best friend Lucy's life after she is stabbed to death. One of the things I like most about this novel is how books and stories and words can heal. Ellie reads "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett with Lucy's young daughter Sophie as a form of comfort. Could I see Julia Roberts playing the role of Ellie in the movie version of After You? No way!

What movie version of a favorite book didn't quite live up to your standards?

MN authors featured - Nicole Johns and Scott Muskin

Nicole Johns and Scott Muskin have some things in common - they both are writers - they both live in Minnesota - they both graduated with MFAs in creative writing from the University of Minnesota - and they are BOTH on Realgoodwords this week. I happen to think the last similarity is the most important :)

That being said, their books are very different. Nicole Johns "Purge: Rehab Diaries" is remarkable in its honesty. She writes of her experience with and recovering from an eating disorder. Here's an excerpt:

An eating disorder is driving to a gas station in the midst of a blizzard and writing a bad check to buy dozens of stale doughnuts because they are being sold at the day-old discount price and you are ravenous because you have been starving yourself, again. Your car gets stuck in the middle of an intersection, your tires churn up wet snow, you're going nowhere as you cram doughnuts into your mouth, sugar circling your lips and chin, granules of sticky sugar on the steering wheel, and you don't care that there is oncoming traffic, a light is about to change, and the tires are spinning. All you care about is making it back to the apartment before your roommate gets off work, in time to stick the index finger of your right hand down your inflamed throat so that doughnut pieces will heave their way up your esophagus and plummet into the toilet bowl.

Scott Muskin's first novel, "The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson, Mama's Boy and Scholar"is up for a 2009 MN Book Award for Fiction. This is what the book jacket says of it:

Hank Meyerson isn’t the whiny sort of mama’s boy. He’s more the wry, shaggy, chubby sort—an over-thinker, a ranter, and sometimes a crier. He adores Emily Dickinson. He kibitzes. He has the audacity to fall in love with his sister-in-law.

Plus, he mentions KAXE on his webpage!

Minnesota is such a great state for creativity and especially writers, like the two newer voices you'll hear on Realgoodwords this week. Got a MN author to recommend? Email me!

This week on Realgoodwords: Love and Love gone wrong

Is Potica Bread? Check out this recipe!

Last week on Between You and Me and Realgoodwords we talked about bread with listeners.... you can see the bread recipes that were submitted here.

Kim Ode was our guest - she's a StarTribune reporter and wrote a book about her passion for bread called "Baking With the St. Paul Bread Club - Recipes, Tips & Stories". We talked about some of the family recipes that represent this place where we live. She suggested trying the recipe submitted by baker Pat Roberts who includes a recipe for Walnut Potica.* Kim says to NOT be put off by the length of this recipe, that it is totally worth it. She also suggests making it with someone else.

WALNUT POTICA from "Baking With the St. Paul Bread Club" by Kim Ode
makes 5-6 loaves

Dough
1 1/2 c lowfat milk
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c unsalted butter (1 stick), room temperature
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs, beaten
5 to 6 cups bread flour

Filling
1/2 c unsalted butter
1 1/2 c lowfat milk
2 c granulated sugar
1/2 scant cup honey
2 1/2 lbs English walnuts, about 10 cups
4 large eggs, beaten
1/2 c unsalted butter, melted

Heat milk to 120 degrees F. In the bowl of a mixer, combine sugar and butter. Add milk, and mix until combined. Add yeast, salt, and beaten eggs, and mix. With mixer running, add flour, 1 cup at a time, but not more than 5 cups. Dough should be soft to moderatley firm, not stiff. If kneading with a dough hook, knead about 15 minutes, or, if by hand, 30 minutes, adding flour sparingly. Dough should be elastic and have air bubbles no larger than 1/4 inch. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat top, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about 2 to 3 hours. Be patient; this dough doesn't like to be rushed.

Using a food processor and working in small batches, grind nuts until uniformly fine, being careful not to grind to a paste. Heat milk in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy pan, preferably cast iron. Add butter until melted, and then add walnuts, sugar, and honey. Stir over medium heat until mixture boils. Don't let it scorch! Temper eggs by whisking in small amount of boiling mixture, and then add tempered eggs to nut mixture. Cook for 30 minutes over low heat, stirring frequently. Don't let it scorch! Set aside until dough has risen.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Take a large, clean piece of fabric - an old sheet or a tablecoth - and spread over a large table, making a smooth, unmoving surface. Flour generously. Take off any rings or bracelets. Place dough in middle of table, and using fingertips, pull dough from underneath, slowly stretching toward table edges. Take your time. If a hole appears, don't patch it. Keep pulling until the dough is as thin as onionskin. It will cover an area about five feet long by three feet wide.

Spread 1/2 c melted butter over dough. next, using a spatula, drop dollops of nut filling all over dough, and gently spread until entire surface is covered with a very thin coating. Cut off any thick edges of dough.

Remove tape, and holding on to cloth, lift one long edge, using it to roll dough inot a long cylinder. (Make sure it doesn't roll off the other side of the table.) Lay five or six greased 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch loaf pans along roll for a guide, and then with the edge of a teacup saucer (a saucer seals the ends better than a knife can), cut dough into pan-sized lengths. Place each piece seam side down in a pan. Prick each piece four times with a fork.

Bake on middle rack of oven for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 325 degrees F, lightly cover loaves with aluminum foil, and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. When done, loaves should be medium to dark brown and loose when pan is lightly shaken. Do not underbake. Remove from pans, and cool on wire rack.

These freeze well if tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and aluminum foil.

*potica is pronounced po-teets-sah

writing workshop in Bemidji "Dreams, Visions & the Inner Image"

Friday February 5th, 2010 from 6-10pm and Saturday February 6th from 8:30am-6:30pm there will be a writing workshop facilitated by Dr. CarolAnn Russell - poet and professor of English & Integrated Studies at Bemidji State University.

The workshop is being held at the Headwaters School of Music & Arts located at 519 Beltrami Avenue in downtown Bemidji. It's open to the public and cost is $125 with a $25 down payment requirement.

Participants of "Dreams, Visions & the Inner Image" will have time for personal and reflective writing as well as exploring poetic forms and visual drawings.

Call the Headwaters School of Music & Arts by January 31st to register - 218-444-5606.

what would you do if you knew?

If you knew that your time here was fleeting. Not just that you might have an illness or a disease, but that your mind was slipping. Your knowledge of your own life would be gone in a matter of months really.

I'd like to think that I'd do everything that I'd always meant to do. That's the cliche, isn't it? Skydive? Run a marathon? Run the chainsaw on my own? But actually, I'd just like to savor what I already have....maybe slow down a little. Definitely spend more time with family. With friends. And a lot of time in coffeeshops with my notebook. And I'd eat only things that I absolutely loved.

It's a scary thought and one that most of us don't want to even contemplate. We can chalk Alzheimer's up as an "old person' disease" but that wouldn't be the truth. About 4 million people are living with Alzheimer's disease and 5% of them develop symptoms before age 60.

In Lisa Genova's novel "Still Alice" we come to know what it would actually be like to be diagnosed at 50 and live with the disease. If you knew the end would come and by then you wouldn't realize it, would you take the steps to do something? Lisa Genova has a PhD in neuroscience and in her research of people with early onset Alzheimer's disease ALL of the people she talked with had contemplated ending their own lives before it became too late. She found that staggering. I think I understand it, don't you?

Lisa is my guest this week on Realgoodwords. Check out this video on "Still Alice"....

What's up this week on Realgoodwords

I'll be talking with authors of two very different books this week on Realgoodwords. Lori Armstrong is the author of No Mercy, a new mysery series featuring Mercy Gunderson. Mercy is a former Army sniper who comes home after her dad dies to take over the family ranch in South Dakota. Life on the ranch is almost as dark and bloody as her time in Iraq.

Wendy Tokunaga is the author of Love in Translation. It's the story of American Celeste Duncan as she sets off on a wild goose chase to find some answers in her puzzling past in of all places, Tokyo. The clash of cultures is very fun in this novel. She finds herself not only getting some answers about her own heritage but at the center of a wildly popular Japanese reality show. Check out the video trailer of the novel below.