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A jalapeno cheddar loaf for an Easter potluck. Several people don’t each gluten or dairy–more for me!

Du Mez writes a history of how Evangelical Christianity has interfaced with politics and become obsessed with (non-Biblical) displays of masculinity. 

This book presents the Evangelical movement, particularly as it developed from the 1980s as more of a cultural movement linked to certain media consumption as the defining feature of the “Evangelical” voting demographic to explain how a religion-affiliated political movement came to define American Christianity. Largely, Du Mez is focused on voting patterns that claim to be religious but focus on gender roles and conservative politics above all else. 

The book looks at a few major movements: Evangelicalism from the 1920s through the 1960’s (finding John Wayne), the Cold War (Oliver North), and the war on terror through the modern era (“spritiaul warriors” and sex scandals galore). The main takeaway is the extended long-game that’s been played between conservative Evangelicals despite different movements rising to power across the decades. When there isn’t a war, the movement has been concerned with gender and whether American men are masculine enough. 

A historical argument is being made which leads to some one-sided exploration of how focusing on traditional gender roles led to scandals over predatory pastors which should be a consideration when reading this; this isn’t meant to be a non-thesis look at the Evangelical movement. 

If anything is seriously missing from this work it’s higher education. The Falwell’s certain make their appearances, as does homeschooling, but there is little to be said about the rise of institutions like Liberty University and the many loosely accredited Christian colleges. 

Listen: “Jesus and John Wayne” (googly eyes, Joy Oladokun, August Ponthier), “Jesus and John Wayne” (Gaither Vocal Band) 

An oatmeal loaf with the whole wheat content pushed to 50% which behaved surprisingly well if it was a bit slow to rise.

The greatest novel ever written? Hardly the greatest novel that Dostoevsky wrote. 

In many ways the 900 page length was too short as many of his ideas from previous works are represented here in somewhat shortened form and the plot is substantial. What is relatively missing are the characters who feel somewhat underdeveloped. Alyosha is not quite a Prince Mishkin, Ivan is no Stepan (and really barely present), and Dmitri is neither Raskolnikov or Rogozhin but the brothers all feel quite similar to characters in earlier works with a bit less development. 

This is not to say that it’s bad as it’s deserved its place in the cannon of Russian literature. However, after reading the rest of Dostoevsky’s major works, this just feels like many of the ideas are jammed into one novel that doesn’t develop them as well as the others independently. Along with the slightly flat characters, this novel just feels a little too short to cover everything. 

This completes my reading of Dostoevsky’s majors works and leaves me with “Poor Folk” and “The Gambler” among other notable works. My favorites among these remain Crime and Punishment (a nearly perfect novel with a lot of psychological insight but few ideas) and The Idiot (a novel of ideas and one of the clearest examples of Dostoevsky’s later thinking, particularly about Christianity). 

Last weeks with another 100% white flour loaf that was quite easy to manage but a little slow to rise.

Back to the oatmeal loaf which has always managed to give good results without being too difficult to work.

… and a pecan pie for “pi day” (a day late)

I’m biased from knowing a Szalay or two and seeing that it won a Booker prize I decided to pick it up.

It’s…fine? A novel about a man who has no idea what he wants beyond survival across many periods of his life. Written in some Hemingway meets Houellebecq meets “Saltburn” way, it doesn’t quite feel realized.

Maybe it’s Houellebecq more a more mass-market audience? There’s plenty to be uncomfortable with but it lacks much substance that the creepy old man Michel provides plenty of. In fact, this seems like an odd choice for a Booker which I tend to associate with ambitious writing (often too much for me). It’s fine.

Kudos to whomever at Scribner handled the marketing because it seems to hit on so many timely topics of (toxic?) masculinity, trauma, dissociation, etc in a way that was made to seem to relevant that even Dua Lipa couldn’t resist. But it just didn’t seem to add much to the conversation that was needed in 2025? Who knows

I can’t say for sure if I’ve baked a loaf of sourdough without some amount of whole wheat or rye flour, but as I ran into the dregs of a bag of whole wheat–why not? 100% King Arthur bread flour and nothing else! A pretty loaf and an easy dough to work with (I’d forgotten).

Seemingly unconnected, these are two novels about fate and how the past can carry on into new stages of life. 

“Outline” provides snapshots (several loosely collected dialogues) of a woman’s life after a divorce, largely focusing on a home renovation. The novel concerns figuring out how to think of oneself while moving out of the more standardized structures of marriage and the conventional family structure. Among many of the conversations, family and a sense of home are recurrent and often “nontraditional” in dealing with issues of immigration and homosexuality–many people move away in order to define the life they feel is right while the author lacks this sort of narrative. 

The other primary focus is the helplessness of feeling that nothing is going according to plan. There is an instinct to assign meaning and structure to everything that happens or turn much of it into fate. But yielding to some greater narrative leads to a stifling passivity where pressure grows and erodes relationships. While nearly coming to resign to feeling like fate is against her, the narrator comes to see the actions of her builder and her cousin through their acting against bad situations (for better or worse). 

Maybe this lacks the newness of reading “Outline,” the first novel in this trilogy but this felt more interesting than exciting. There is always some challenge moral ambiguity of the characters and (I guess intentional) passivity of the narrator which somewhat reduce many feelings of connection to the characters. But Cusk provides a lot to chew on in every chapter and different part to come back to. I do expect to finish the series with “Kudos” soon. 

“Thousand Cranes” spends a short period of time with a young bachelor, Kikuji, after the death of his mother and while a marriage is being arranged for him by his father’s former mistress, Chikako. Chikako, effectively a stand-in for a parent, tries to shape Kikuji’s life to resemble his father’s in lifestyle and dedication to the tea ceremony (largely alluded to through the repeated use of inherited tea bowls). However, Kikuji falls in love with his father’s second mistress and then her daughter. 

Tensions arise as Kikuji becomes his father’s surrogate for the continuation of conflict between two mistresses. However, this is not a dramatic novella about the tensions themselves but rather about several people trying to live through nostalgia and find some continued meaning in past conflict now that the object at the center of the conflict is gone. 

I didn’t enjoy this as much as “Snow Country” which was really very good and a little more subtle at times (although it also focused on relationships with mistresses). So maybe “Sound of the Mountain” at some point when I come across a copy.  

I guess I’ll keep going with the oatmeal loaves until they stop working so well or I get tired of them

Another oatmeal loaf

And a blueberry pie using this filling recipe and Claire Saffitz’s crust recipe.