Another recipe, a paean to P. O’B., and more on the ideal reader

I had my favorite thing for lunch today. Here it is: cut a pita bread in half across its diameter, then separate the sides so you have four half-moons. Cover each one with slices of pepper jack. Put ’em under the broiler until the cheese is brown and bubbly, about 5 minutes. If they burn a little, so much the better. For an extra special treat put some thin slices of ripe tomatoes straight from your garden under the cheese. Ahhhhhh.

Well, I’ve been eating this for years, and it only occurred to me recently that this is TOASTED CHEESE. Toasted cheese is deeply meaningful to me because it’s what my two best friends, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, eat all the time. They don’t have pepper jack (or pita bread, or a broiler, for that matter) but close enough. My husband and I were thrilled, thrilled, when they showed the toasted cheese thingy in the movie.

I’m so in love with those books. It’s sort of embarrassing. I have even experimented with cooking suet puddings (delicious, but not for the faint-of-heart). The reason this is sort of embarrassing is because I am most definitely not Patrick O’Brian’s ideal reader. Oh, I am so far from it. I probably don’t get three-quarters of every book. Mind you, I’m not sure it really matters all that much. I have no idea (for example) what really happens when the ship “broaches to,” but I do know it’s very, very bad. I don’t know what a “backstay” is, but I know it’s good luck to scratch one. “Futtock-shrouds?” No clue, but it sure sounds cool. And let me just say that the remaining quarter that I do get, well, it’s sublime. Can you imagine a series of twenty books that never get stale or repetitive? I’m hard-pressed to think of very many trilogies where all three are equally good. Let alone twenty!

Query: is there an author you adore but clearly are not the ideal reader for?