I was told there'd be culturally-relevant observations

I'll be damned if I end my 25th year without knowing how to make non-instant [i.e., "traditional"] rice.

As mentioned, Reading Program 2010 is going well. Working on Sloane Crosley's "I Was Told There'd Be Cake" and while it's not terrible, neither will it become a favorite (or even a volume to return to, infrequently). Since my completion of an M.F.A. in fiction writing, I've become increasingly more interested in genres other than fiction; I've turned to memoirs, cookbooks, magazines widely varying in quality and content, volumes of poetry, collections of essays. Crosley's collection I discovered via Goodreads and, based on the title (who the hell doesn't love cake?) and the glib combo of the cover photo/sans-serif font in which the title is printed, I decided to give it a go. [Aside: I realize that the preceding statement critically undermines whatever "cred" I have as a reader, if there is such a thing as "reader's cred."] Yes: so, the point. The point I'm getting at is that I can neither like nor dislike Crosley's essays because said essays are insubstantial: they don't give me enough to (dis)agree with. Addressing topics such as one's youthful envisioning of "Oregon Trail" as a means of gaining power over individuals who, in life, control and vex one, the essays are funnyish, cuteish, and short enough to be read during in-between bits of time [i.e., lunch breaks, the ten minutes between packing my lunch and having to leave for work]. I'll finish reading "Cake," but only because I'm 100 pages in and because I rarely, rarely quit a book.

Update: the rice burned. Again.