I enjoy time alone as much as the next person, but after a lightning strike fried the alarm system at the house last week (an ongoing insurance saga), I felt a certain level of anxiety from having to spend yesterday evening entirely alone without the security of having a loud siren to scare away potential intruders.

After finishing the novel Disgrace and flipping through some sewing books, I decided that the only way I could truly relax was if I had a cookie. It was nearly midnight. Surely, no one would attempt to murder a girl in her home-made apron while she was baking cookies at nearly midnight.

I baked six delightfully yummy caramel and chocolate chip cookies using a simple recipe in Small-Batch Baking, a book with recipes to yield small portions for two or three people. Now, if only I can make two or three friends.

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Out by Japanese author Natsuo Kirino is so perverse, so disturbing, so sexually violent that it’s hard to believe it was written by a woman. But gender assumptions in Japan is precisely the topic (among an array of far more unpleasant issues) that Kirino addresses in her novel.

Masako Katori, a resourceful woman of wit and poise, is only a shell of a woman she once was. After being under appreciated and exploited as an accountant in an office run by men, Katori takes a job at a lunch box factory working unimaginable grueling night shifts. When a coworker at the factory murders her husband, Katori takes charge of disposing the body by cutting it up into pieces and depositing them throughout the city.

But what seems truly heinous in Out are the conditions that influence the women in this novel to live in robotic obligation towards their homes, families and workplaces. They are ignored by their husbands, mistreated by their own children and even dismissed by the police after a brief, cursory investigation into the crime.

Out is a difficult novel to understand. Book reviews printed on the paperback reprint edition claim Out is “pitch-black comedy” though I imagine much of the comedic tone gets lost in translation. While I’m sure many readers (myself included) may find the sexual themes of rape and violence far from funny, there is something tragically comedic about a man and a woman who can only feel love when they loathe each other. Out is a difficult novel to understand and a difficult one to read without a strong stomach but it is definitely worth the try.

I completed the “secret” Valentine’s Day project for my boyfriend of 4 1/2 years and gave it to him last night. I created a “That’s Amore” book or the “Unbelievably-Romantic He’s-Lucky-To-Have-Me” book. I included pages of inspirational quotes, a list of things I love about him and why he would do well to marry me some day (i.e. I am awesome). I used scrapbooking material and did a somewhat sloppy job of binding the pages together. Still, it turned out well and he was impressed.

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