The Anxiety of Influence:  On the Few Books I Was Able to Read While Writing My Own by Marcia Butler  Like most authors, I’ve been a voracious reader most of my life.  But when I’m writing the first draft of a novel, I’m careful about what, and how much, I read.  Its influence I fear—that I’ll lose my voice, my thumbprint.  This worry about porosity dates back to my career as a professional oboist.  When I performed the Mozart Oboe Concerto, for example, I avoided listening to other oboists so as to not get muddled with someone else’s interpretation.  While following this instinct, the few books that I do read almost always show me something specific—at times, pivotal—for my work in progress.  By now, this has occurred enough times that I’ve come to expect it.  I’d like to think it’s a form of grace—almost like a higher power is curating, bringing specific books to me.  https://lithub.com/the-anxiety-of-influence-on-the-few-books-i-was-able-to-read-while-writing-my-own/ 

5 Books to Read if You Loved Where’d You Go, Bernadette:  Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe by Evan James; The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman; Small Admissions by Amy Poeppe; Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman; and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.  Sienna Farris  Read description of stories at https://getliterary.com/books-to-read-if-you-loved-whered-you-go-bernadette/ 

There is much controversy over who invented the first ice cream cone.  Both paper and metal cones were used in France, England, and Germany before the 19th century.  Before the invention of the cone, ice cream was either licked out of a small glass (a penny lick, penny cone, penny sucker, or licking glasses) or taken away wrapped in paper which was called a “hokey pokey.”  During the 1770s, ice cream was referred to as iced puddings or ice cream puddings.  The cones used were referred to as wafers.  During this period, wafers were considered as “stomach settlers” and were served at the end to the meal to calm digestion.  They eventually became luxurious treats and were an important element of the dessert course.  When rolled into “funnels” or “cornucopias,” they could be filled with all sorts of fruit pastes, creams, and iced puddings.  Stories from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, in 1904:  The first version, and said to be the official version by the International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers (IAICM), credits pastry maker, Ernest Hamwi, with coming to the aid of Arnold Fomachou, a teenage ice cream vendor, by rolling the ice cream in crisp wafers that he called a Zalabia (a wafer-thin, waffle-like confection sprinkled with sugar).  It is also claimed by the family of Nick Kabbaz, an Syrian immigrant, that he and his brother, Albert, were the originators of the cone.  The Kabbaz brothers may have worked for Ernest Hamwi in his booth at the Fair and came up with the idea of folding cakes to insert ice cream in and also the idea of making them in the cone shape.  Abe Doumar (1881-1947) also claimed to have invented the ice cream cone in a very similar way at the Fair.  The story is that sixteen-year-old Abe, a recently arrived Syria immigrant, was met at the dock by a recruiter.  He was given unique items to vend at the St. Louis Fair (paperweights filled with water purportedly from the River Jordan).  One evening while talking to one of the waffle concessionaires, he suggested that he could turn his penny waffle into a 10-cent cone if he added ice cream.  He then bought a waffle and rolled it into a cone, to which he added ice cream from a neighboring stall.  In one fell scoop, he invented what he called “a kind of Syrian ice cream sandwich.”  When the Fair closed, Abe was given one of the waffle irons to take home.  In North Bergen, N.J., Abe worked out a cone oven (a four-iron machine) and had a foundry make it.   He then set up business at Coney Island, New Jersey, with three partners in 1905.  The first of his many ice cream cone stands at Coney Island.  A Turkish native, David Avayou, who had owned several ice cream shops in Atlantic City, New Jersey, claimed that he started selling edible cones at the St. Louis Fair.  He claimed that he had first seen cones in France, where ice cream was eaten from paper or metal cones, and had applied the idea in edible form at the Fair.   According to another story, Charles Robert Menches and his brother Frank of St. Louis, Missouri, ran ice cream concessions at fairs and events across the Midwest.  The family of the brothers claim they came up with the ice cream cone at the 1904 World’s Fair when a lady friend, who for daintier eating, took one layer of a baked waffle and rolled it into a cone around the ice cream.  They had the idea to wrap a warm waffle around a fid (a cone-shaped splicing tool for tent ropes).  The waffle cooled and held its shape to provide an edible handle for eating ice cream.  The brothers are also credited with the invention of candy-coated peanuts and popcorn that was sold under the name “Gee Whiz,” today known as Cracker Jacks.  https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/IceCream/IceCreamCone.htm 

When guavas ripen, they go from dark green to a lighter yellow-green color.  You’ll want to choose one of the yellowish ones and make sure that it’s free of blemishes or bruises.  Sometimes ripe guavas will also have a touch of pink color to them.  A ripe guava will be soft and give under your fingers when you lightly squeeze it.  You can also tell a guava is ripe by the aroma.  You should be able to smell the fruit’s musky, sweet scent without even having to put it up to your nose.  You can buy hard, green guavas and allow them to ripen at room temperature.  Placing them in a paper bag with a banana or apple will allow them to ripen faster.  Emily Johnson  https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/how-to-eat-guava-in-smoothies-salads-desserts-article  The most frequently eaten species, and the one often simply referred to as "the guava", is the apple guava (Psidium guajava).  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guava

My recommendation for a happy book is anything by Laurie Colwin.  Though Colwin died in 1992 at 48, her books have never gone out of print.  A regular contributor to the New Yorker and Gourmet among other magazines, she wrote five novels, three short-story collections and two nonfiction works centered on food and eating.  Set against the backdrop of Manhattan during the last quarter of the 20th century, Colwin’s work is populated with middle- to upper-class couples and their contemporaries whose professions are but window dressing; their true occupations are eating, wandering, longing and questioning the conditions of modernity.  Lauren LeBlanc  https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-03-25/escape-2021s-sourdough-hellscape-with-laurie-colwin-delightful-reissued-books 

May 19, 2021  In a story fit for Hollywood, the remains of a submerged Italian village have been revealed for the first time in over seven decades.  The village was found at the bottom of Lake Resia, a 2.5-square-mile artificial lake nestled near the borders of Austria and Switzerland.  The lake had been a popular tourist and hiking destination, both in summer and winter months, as seasonal freezing allowed for visitors to venture out onto it.  With a dramatic 14th-century steeple emerging from its turquoise waters, the setting had inspired a book and a Netflix series.  Nick Mafi  See pictures at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/lost-italian-village-emerges-after-decades-under-water

Little Island, the park that has been rising in the Hudson River designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Signe Nielson of the landscape architecture firm MNLA, opens May 21, 2021.  The island is located at 13th Street at the boundary between the Meatpacking District and Chelsea.  Little Island’s fascinating engineering, led by Arup, enables the park to rise on 280 organically-shaped concrete piloti on top of which sit 132 concrete “tulips.”  The piloti mix in with the pilings of the former piers, which were retained as much as possible.  With 350 species of flowers, trees and shrubs, the lush park has a lawn space known as “The Glade,” a 687-seat amphitheater (known as “The Amph”), and the provision of food and beverage vendors along a central plaza that contains seating.  Little Island is built atop the remains of Pier 54 and Pier 55, which once served the glorious Cunard steamship lines.  Cunard has a connection with almost all the major ships that came to or departed from New York City, some with unfortunate ends.  The RMS Lusitania left here in 1915, to be sunk by a German torpedo close to its destination.  The Titanic was supposed to dock at neighboring Pier 59 but never made it, but the RMS Carpathia which rescued survivors did dock at Pier 54.  Little Island will be open from 6 AM to 1 AM, although there will be timed tickets issued between 12 PM and 8 AM.  You can reserve these tickets on LittleIsland.org on in person at the park entrance.  Michelle Young   See pictures at https://untappedcities.com/2021/05/20/little-island-open-first-look/ 

May 21 is the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development or Diversity Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to highlight the value of cultural diversity and the need for people to live together in harmony.  Wikipedia 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2367  May 21, 2021