“Garlic and Sapphires” by Ruth Reichl

Posted on January 19, 2026 by JBL

A memoir of the author’s six years as New York Times food critic. It has great food writing but also is well constructed, sweet, and very, very funny. The recipes and column reprints that punctuate the narrative are a nice touch.

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“The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” by Michael Chabon

Posted on January 2, 2026 by JBL

This reminds me in some ways of The Intuitionist: the form is a hard-boiled detective novel, but it’s built on an absurd premise (that, following World War 2, Jews were resettled in Alaska instead of Palestine; with many other nuggets of ridiculous non-history throughout the book) and is a wonderful story with wonderful characters and just a pleasure to read. Many outstanding turns of phrase; I particularly enjoyed the many descriptions of how things smell. Really a lot of fun.

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Last books of the year

Posted on December 19, 2025 by JBL

Here’s what I finished since my last book post:

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks. Some of Sacks’ writing has really drawn me in, but this was unfortunately not an example. Some parts were engrossing (the discussion of phantom limbs) but mostly it didn’t grab me.

Several Terry Pratchett Discworld novels: basically feel like snacking on popcorn; silly, goofy, harmless fun, done in an afternoon if you want. Avoids the problem I had with Alexander McCall Smith because, although the writing style is pretty uniform, the characters vary from one book to the next. (I was advised by ZD that it’s better not to read them by “type”, perhaps this is why.)

Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle. I grabbed this off the library booksale shelf because I knew of the author; I didn’t realize it was a sequel (to A Star Called Henry), but perhaps half-way through it suddenly became clear that the back-story that has been sprinkled around is actually a whole book’s-worth, and that it matters. So not a completely ideal reading situation. The humor was excellent, and the parts set in New York were fun; I think if I were more musical the writing about jazz would have been more relateable, but it was pretty compelling even so. I think that, rather than read the either of the other two books in its series, I would go try some of his earlier work.

I feel like I’m missing something? I dunno. I just started Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union this evening and it’s going well so far.

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Chole, again

Posted on December 1, 2025 by JBL

So once upon a time I wrote down D’s mother’s “recipe” for chole (scare quotes because go read it and you’ll see). But there are lots of variations. Here’s one that I made recently, based on this youtube video, that was well received.

Ingredients:

  • Two small or one large onion, either chopped finely or run through a food processor
  • Three plum or roma tomatoes, ditto
  • A piece of ginger the size of your thumb, minced
  • 2 large garlic cloves, minced
  • Ground spices:
    • 2 tbsp chana masala spice mix
    • 1 tsp ground coriander seed
    • 1 tsp anar dana (ground dried pomegranite seeds)
    • 1/2 tsp ground red pepper (cayenne powder)
    • 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • Whole spices:
    • 1 tbsp cumin seed
    • 1 black cardamom pod (badi elaichi)
    • 3-4 cloves
    • 2 inches of cinnamon stick
  • 2 15 oz cans of chickpeas, rinsed (or dried chickpeas that have been soaked for several hours or overnight)
  • 1 teabag of black tea, steeped in a cup of boiling water; something like Tetley that makes a really dark color is ideal
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil or more
  • Water
  • 1 tsp fenugreek leaves
  • Fresh chopped cilantro

Directions: Heat the oil in a pressure cooker over medium heat, and lightly fry the cumin in the oil. Add the onion and the remaining whole spices. Cook, stirring frequently but not constantly, until it starts to stick to the bottom of your pan. At this point, keep cooking, but splash a bit of water into the pan and stir to un-stick, repeating as necessary until the onion is substantially browned. (Up to this point takes me 25 minutes or so for a 1.5× recipe.) Add the ginger and garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add the tomato and ground spices. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the color is again brown rather than red. Add the chickpeas, tea, and enough water to cover. Close the pressure cooker and bring to pressure, and then turn off the stove and let the cooker de-pressurize naturally on the warm stove. Add the fenugreek leaves and cilantro. You can cook it basically as long as you want at this stage: it will become thicker and drier and the chickpeas will become softer, so it’s just a matter of taste.  Salt to taste.

Notes: If you’re using dried chickpeas, you’ll have to pressure-cook longer. If you’re using canned beans and no pressure cooker, that’s fine, but if you like your chickpeas to soften up then you’ll have to cook longer after everything is combined. This could be eaten with any Indian bread or with rice; serve with some chopped raw onion, maybe garnished with a bit more cilantro.

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30,000 edits

Posted on November 18, 2025 by JBL

I recently made my 30,000th edit to Wikipedia. I believe this was the one that made the odometer roll over; perhaps fitting that it was basically some pettiness related to my still finding this episode ridiculous.

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Mamdani

Posted on November 11, 2025 by JBL

The political situation has been super bleak for … most of the last 9 years? But obviously there are moments of light, and last week’s elections were one. I haven’t been a resident of NYC in a good long while, but my family is there so I still follow the local politics somewhat. De Blasio was a good example of how being basically decent isn’t enough in the face of organized opposition, and Mamdani comes in with a lot more of that, but I am cautiously optimistic.

Anyhow the actual reason I’m writing this post is to comment on how vapid a lot of political journalism is, even (especially?) the data-driven kind. Here’s a chart from the New York Times:

The thing about this map is that it reveals absolutely nothing about Mamdani, Cuomo, or the election; almost all it shows is where Republicans (who do not vote in Democratic primaries) live in New York:

There are some minor secondary features, but any time there is a close Democratic primary in NYC and the loser runs as the proxy-Republican in the general election, you will get a map exactly like this.

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Life update

Posted on November 7, 2025 by JBL

Had solar panels installed on our roof this fall; finally passed through all the bureaucratic hoops and were permitted to turn them on yesterday. Here’s a live-action shot of me this morning:

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Books I (re-)read in the last year or so

Posted on August 27, 2025 by JBL

I’m not going to write individual posts on these but here they are (doubtless missing some); the heavy lean on sci-fi and fantasy is the result of having joined a “speculative fiction” book-group.

  • S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy (City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper, Empire of Gold) — pretty good genre fantasy with an Islamic twist; I liked the palace intrigue parts (mainly I think in the 2nd book) the best, but the epic battle and overall resolution was underwhelming. The first book suggested there would be interesting historical fiction aspects, but that wasn’t ever realized.
  • Hisashi Kashiwai’s Kamogawa Food Detectives — I’m not sure if I would say this was “good”, but it was an excellent accompanyment for a trip to Japan, and for thinking about the Japanese perspective on food and fine dining. My hotel in Kyoto was just down the street from where the diner/detective agency “is”, which was a funny surprise.
  • Golden Hill by Francis Spufford — absolutely wonderful in all respects.
  • Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass — I absolutely loved this when it came out originally, I think it holds up fine to reading as an adult.
  • Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories — wonderful.
  • Various Alexander McCall Smith novels — the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books were charming but they’re completely interchangeable and I found it grating to read two of them back-to-back. I do not enjoy The Sunday Philosophy Club at all.
  • Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh — very enjoyable sci-fi.
  • Diana Wynn Jones’s Howl sequels — I enjoyed Castle in the Air, not so much House of Many Ways. Seriously though it’s too bad she didn’t have better happy endings than “everyone gets married”.
  • A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark — mostly entertaining steampunk fantasy with an Islamic twist. A weird focus on visual descriptions, like he really wants to be writing the movie version. Mostly an engaging and entertaining world but man the peace summit was poorly written. Entertaining enough that I might find some of his previous work.
  • The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — this is the kind of fantasy I need, 100% palace intrigue to 0% epic battles, very engaging, interesting characters with real-ish emotions and motivations. As someone trying to avoid being department chair I found the scene in which the nephew of the main character says “You better have a son quick because I don’t want to be emperor” quite relatable.
  • Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire — so because I am a literate person I had heard of this but I didn’t know anything about it before I read it. It is incredibly funny in a surreal way that I cannot possibly describe. Wikipedia says “[its] unusual structure has attracted much attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction…. It has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism” and uh that sounds right to me. Certainly worth reading!
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Everything is terrible

Posted on August 13, 2025 by JBL

I am currently overseeing the hiring of graders and TAs for lower-level mathematics courses offered by my department (we don’t have enough graduate students of our own to cover them all). Here is the subject line (!!!) of an e-mail I received today:

Here’s a simpler and more concise version of your email: *** **Subject:** Application for Part-Time Mathematics Grader Dear [Recipient’s Name], I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Data Science and have a strong interest and experience in teaching and grading Mathematics courses. I would be glad to contribute my skills to the part-time grader role. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, [Your Name] *** Do you want me to also make it **slightly more formal** while keeping it short? Sources

In summary, everything is terrible. Also, the Luddites were 100% correct.

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Voices

Posted on December 21, 2024 by JBL

So a couple of years ago I was sitting in the Special Session on Young Voices in Combinatorics at an AMS sectional meeting, and Rafa had just turned 41, and I thought “Huh, pretty soon I should invite all my friends to come speak in a session on Early Middle-Aged Voices in Combinatorics”. So this blog post (scheduled back in 2022) is an experiment in seeing if I still find this joke funny now that I’m 40.

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