Food for Thought

I don't read much fiction, but The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister was recommended on a blog I follow so I though I'd give it a try. This turned out to be a lovely story. Set in a restaurant cooking class, each chapter focuses on one of the students and how the food they prepare is a reminder of something important in their lives. The book has an easy pace. Bauermeister has a beautiful way with descriptions (the sort of writing often described as "lush") and there were many paragraphs I went back and read again just for the sound they made. The theory that food has magical qualities and is a reflection of the soul isn't new, but when handled correctly can be a great reminder of the many levels of nourishment we receive at the table. If you liked Chocolat (the book, not that pathetic excuse for a movie) or Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (note to self: read more Anne Tyler) you will like this book.

Eat, Memory is a collection of essays from the Sunday New York Times. The authors of these stories were given a simple task: write about an important event in your life that involved food. The results include the heartbreaking (cooking for a dying mother), the hilarious (a summer job spent in the B&M baked bean factory) and the historical (Julia Child's failing her Cordon Bleu final exam). Fun to read, but if you always read the Times Magazine you've seen them all before. Edited by Amanda Hesser with lots of recipes.

The subtitle of this book is "A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes." Sigh. In The Year of Eating Dangerously, British food critic Tom Parker Bowles travels the world looking for extreme things to eat. It's been done before, and done better. At least Parker Bowles comes straight out and admits that he's no Bourdain. Tom seems like a nice enough man, and he writes very well, but I just didn't need another story about durian and dog. For me, the most interesting part was the introduction when he talks about the food his mother cooked (Camilla, as in wife of Charles, as in Prince) and the crap he was fed at boarding school. If you haven't OD'd on food/travel literature the way I have give this one a try.

No time for books!

Seriously, both Survivor and Amazing Race are starting new seasons this week. Who has time to read? Not to mention Last Restaurant Standing (new sets this year, and subtitles for Raymond), Hell's Kitchen (so far no shirtless Grrr shots), and now that they're finished with tryouts, American Idol.

It's hard to believe that this is the eighteenth season of Survivor. Thankfully no beach this year. Brazil is gorgeous! But is it just me, or are the players getting a bit dimmer as each season goes by? And could Jeff be any more obvious with his interfering comments? Let them play the game, Peachy!

Whew!

I know, I know! My attention to this blog has been shameful lately. Just haven't really been in a reading mood. Not sure if it's the weather or the fact that I've got a dozen other things hanging over my head, but I haven't managed to finish a thing in over a week. But I've got seven or eight books going now and should have some stuff written up by next week.

To try and get myself excited about books again, I took an afternoon and entered almost 100 of them into LibraryThing. Sad to say it was only ONE bookshelf:



Now obviously I left a couple of stacks off the shelf just so you could see all the others tucked up in the back. And quite a few of Mike's books (a dozen Graham Greene and John LeCarre thrillers) got shelved elsewhere with the hardbacks by those authors. But who would have thought that so many books could fit on one shelf?

I'm really trying hard to pare down and organize things this year. I did find one book to put in the donation pile (a duplicate), which makes me feel very tidy.

Only ten bookCASES to go!

The Name Says it All

Can we just say I'm really not feeling the love right now?

Time to Vote

Ballots are now available online for this year's Bloggie Awards. It's a great way to check out a wide variety of blogs in many different categories. There really is some wonderful writing being published online--I should know, I subscribe to over thirty different blogs these days. Probably the reason I don't have as much time to read "real" books as I used to.

There are cooking blogs, travel blogs, blogs that feature gorgeous photographs, even minimalist blogs (maybe someday we'll be voting for Beth). Don't forget to visit the pages for previous years to find even more fantastic sites. And if any of you have a favorite blog, I'd love to check it out.

http://2009.bloggies.com/

Busy Week!

Things have been pretty hectic around here, what with the inauguration (even though I was smart enough to celebrate from home), and birthdays, and the ramshackle creation of a new soap blog. So very little time for reading!

I did inhale the latest story by Janet Evanovich, Inc. called Plum Spooky. It could have been worse. At least I didn't finish it wishing for that hour of my life back. And you can never have too many bird-flipping monkeys in this world.

Bathtub Books: January 19

So it's that time of year again when I spend every evening in the bathtub, reading a stack of books and recovering my sanity. So here's what I polished off this past week:



What's Age Got To Do With It? Don't ask me why I bother with this crap. I can't stand Dr Phil and his perky wife Robin drives me up the wall (so much for sane tubby time). Robin McGraw's book is all about how to be fit, healthy, and happy at any "advanced" age, but she really uses this book as a way to boast about how wonderful she is (hasn't had refined sugar since she was 26? Bet she never sleeps in her makeup, either). Life's too short to worry about how best to apply mascara to thinning lashes.



Winging It : This book is the sequel to Catherine Goldhammer's Still Life with Chickens. It talks about her daughter leaving the nest (gotta keep with the bird theme). Goldhammer, a single mother, had a rough time dealing with the separation and with the freedom that comes once the responsibilities of motherhood are over (or less--we're never completely free, are we?). The one thing that hit me was that we both attended the same Edward Hopper exhibit and had the same favorite painting: Sun in an Empty Room. I could look at it for hours. (You can look at it too at this site: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/hopper.sun-empty-room.jpg) It's part of a private collection so we were very lucky to see it at all. The book was a decent read.

Finished The Magician's Book (see fucking elf below). Also read the Chronicles again. And after hearing all those Tolkien stories I have a feeling Lord of the Rings is in my near future. Maybe I'll cheat and see the movies instead.

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers is the autobiography of Marcella Hazan. It was fascinating to read how a scientist became the leading Italian cooking teacher and author. I had never known that her right arm is useless due to a childhood accident and that she rarely showed it, even during televised cooking demonstrations. Interesting, but to be honest I prefer to read the cookbooks themselves.

And finally, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. I loved this book, and not only because I totally wanted to look like her when I was fourteen years old (the hours spent in front of the mirror with a cake of Max Factor eyeliner! Can you even buy that stuff anymore?). This is an expanded version of Fisher's stage show. She talks very openly of her fishbowl childhood, the crazy fame that came with Star Wars, and her mental health issues (addiction, bipolar disorder, and electroshock therapy). It shouldn't be funny, but the way Fisher tells her stories is hilarious. There's great warmth in the book as well. I give it an A.