I had the good fortune to encounter Trader Joe's Roasted Gorgonzola crackers at a Christmas party recently. I tried them eagerly, because I love crackers and I love Gorgonzola. The crackers were tasty, but they had only the faintest hint of Gorgonzola flavor when they first hit the tongue. After that it's all salt and cracker.

I am a bit conflicted about cheese crackers anyway. (Breaking news, area woman conflicted about cheese crackers.) Even the cheesiest of cheese crackers still taste mostly like cracker. And I am never clear about the function of a cheese-flavored cracker. Are you supposed to eat it by itself, or with cheese? The crackers above are pictured with cheese, but is that a hint about what the crackers are supposed to taste like or a serving suggestion?

I did a bit of research and discovered that, in fact,these crackers are not exactly what they seem:
http://garlicgulch.com/blog/false-advertising-trader-joes-gorgonzola-crackers-contain-no-gorgonzola/

The dark underbelly of the cheese cracker reveals itself. I may never be the same.

Conversion by Katherine Howe

I've always been fascinated but by what used to be called hysteria and now is called conversion disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder). It's a kind of collective delusion. Some people think that's what was happening during the Salem witch trials. But there are many other examples of schoolchildren, often girls, falling ill with a sickness that later turns out to be all in their heads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria).

I remember hearing about the real-life case this book is based on and reading every article I could get my hands on just trying to get to the bottom of it. When I heard there was a novel written on the subject I couldn't wait to read it. And I finally got my chance today. Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, the book didn't live up to my expectations.

This is one of those cases where the real story is so interesting that any fictionalized version would just be a shadow. The narrative is juxtaposed with a parallel narrative taking place during the Salem witch trials. This element seems a little bit too on the nose.

But the subject itself is still fascinating and I admire the author’s effort to make sense of it.

An Abundance of Katherines

I loved John Green's latest novel The Fault in Our Stars as so many other people did. So I was interested in reading some of his other novels.

I picked up his 2006 novel An Abundance of Katherines at the library. I had a bit of trouble getting into it. I had trouble warming up to the protagonist whose main features seem to be that he was a very smart and that he’d been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. That wasn't enough for me to really empathize with or understand him and I struggled several times just to keep reading. Things improved a bit when the protagonist, Colin, and his best friend, Hassan, embark on a road trip. They meet some interesting characters along the way and the plot picks up. The less time we spend with Collin and his heartbreak the better, for me at least. In fact, my favorite part of the novel wasn't even written by John Green. It’s the appendix, where a mathematician friend of the author’s explains Colin's search for a mathematical formula that will predict the length of a relationship.

I'd love to hear your opinion on these two books or your suggestions for new types of crackers! Please let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions of other books to read or crackers to eat. Thanks!