Julie and Julia

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Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen Julie and Julia caught my attention when I saw it mentioned by Amy of Beauty Joy Food, who is one of my favorite food bloggers, because she often includes travel and social commentary among the recipes and food porn pictures.

The book, based on the author’s blog, is about a young married woman who has become a career temp, and decides, seemingly on a whim, to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cookery in a year. Described within these pages, with much wryness and just enough pathos to be interesting, are the details of the attempt, intertwined with vignettes that may or may not actually have occurred in Ms. Child’s life. If you’ve ever succumbed to tears when faced with the prospect of deboning a duck, or wondered what, exactly, one DOES with consomme, this book is for you – and even if your idea of cooking is pressing 3:00 START on the microwave, this is an entertaining read for it’s own sake.

A warning though – parts will make you hungry.
And parts will take your appetite completely away.

The Historian

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The Historian

Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth Kostova is obviously a fan of both European history, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and both of these interests are thoroughly intertwined in her first novel The Historian.

Written from the point of view of the unnamed female narrator, who is sixteen during the bulk of the events in the novel, it is a tale of three parallel chases, one in 1972, in which she is involved, one just before her birth, and one before her father was even in school himself, and led by the man who would eventually become his mentor. Along the way, paths cross and deviate, love affairs end mostly tragically, and the reader is guided on an historical tour of Eastern Europe, that leaves one craving goulash and wishing for a pocket full of garlic.

The object of the chase, is, of course, Dracula, who is depicted as a blend of Stoker’s undead Count, and the real Vlad Tepes.

The author, like Stoker (though I suspect in his case it was unintentional) even leaves the way open for a sequel.

If you liked the original Victorian novel, this book will appeal. I warn, however, that while the story is compelling, the language is a bit stilted – it reads very much as if the author was a contemporary of Stoker’s, and not a 21st century Yale graduate, though, the somewhat stylized language does fit the tale rather well.

Consider The Historian a must-read for any real vampire fan.

The Hungry Ocean

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The Hungry Ocean : A Swordboat Captain's Journey

Linda Greenlaw

Made famous by Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm, and the movie that followed, Linda Greenlaw was the captain of the Hannah Boden, a swordboat out of Gloucester, MA. In this book, her first, though I read her others long ago, and only just finished this one, she tells the story of a typical month aboard her ship, and explains how swordfishing really works.

As much a story of the sea, as it is a story about the people who work as commercial fishermen, this book is vivid and engaging, with equal amounts of action and humor, the latter most often represented by Greenlaw’s own dry wit. At times, I could feel the waves, and smell the salt air, so good was she and drawing her readers in.

I’m looking forward to re-reading her other work, just for more of her voice, and the flavor of her life, and I hope she continues to write.

Isabel’s Daughter

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Isabel's Daughter : A Novel

Judith Ryan Hendricks

Hendricks’ second book is a departure from the cozy Seattle she wrote about in Bread Alone, and returned to in The Baker’s Apprentice. This time, the setting is New Mexico, primarily in and around Santa Fe, and instead of bread, the main themes are art, herbs, and family.

Avery James, raised in an orphanage with only an embroidered t-shirt as a memento of the family she never knew, comes face to face with a painting of her mother while working as a caterer for a prominent artist. He befriends her, and offers to tell her about her mother, who died several years before, and she grudgingly accepts the offer. Swirling around the pair are rumors, old lovers, and a collection of old Mexican women who took Avery off the streets, and gave her a home, and their knowledge of herbs.

Like Bread Alone, Isabel’s Daughter paints vivid pictures of both people and food, but unlike Hendrick’s first book, this one’s ending is somewhat more bitter than sweet.

The Baker’s Apprentice

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The Baker's Apprentice

Judith Ryan Hendricks

I was first introduced to Ms. Hendricks’ work through the novel Bread Alone, which I mostly read in a single night in a hotel in L.A. that had an extremely uncomfortable mattress. That book was warm and funny, and when I finished it, I was inspired to bake bread for the first time in years, so when I discovered that a sequel was published this year, I immediately added it to my amazon wishlist, and then ordered it when I spent the birthday gift certificates I’d amassed.

I regret to confess – I’m disapponted in the sequel. The Baker’s Apprentice lives up to all those negative stereotypes of second novels (though it’s actually her third), and while the old familiar characters – Wynter who fled her cheating husband in L.A. and moved to Seattle to bake bread, her friend and sometime roomate, the dancer CM, young blue-haired art school dropout and cake decorator, Tyler, andMac the bartender/novelist who wins Wynter’s heart – are all there, they seem pale shadows of their earlier selves, and instead of coming away from this book feeling cozy and wanting to sip coffee and smell bread baking, I feel cold and sort of hollow and unsatisfied.

If Bread Alone was a perfectly flakey croissant with sweet cream butter and bitter dark marmalade, The Baker’s Apprentice is Wonder bread – bland, spongey, and utterly lacking in color.

Atlantis Found

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Atlantis Found (A Dirk Pitt Novel)

Clive Cussler

My friend Rana mentioned the movie Sahara, and Clive Cussler books as a guilty pleasure in one of her blog entries, so when I saw several of his books on the library shelf, I picked one at random.

Atlantis Found reimagines the typical lost society of Atlantis and ties them together with a group of Nazi survivors hiding in South America and plotting to take over the world – on the surface not terribly original, except that it’s a Dirk Pitt novel which means there are exotic locations and cool gadgets and a sort of Indiana Jones / James Bond sense of fun.

I enjoyed the book a lot, but couldn’t talk about it because I knew it would be the type of thing Fuzzy would enjoy, and, indeed, he’s been reading it all weekend. I’m not sure I could read Cussler in large doses, but every so often, a visit with Mr. Pitt might not be ill-advised.

The Cat Who Went Bananas

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The Cat Who Went Bananas

Lilian Jackson Braun

From the first Cat Who… book, I jumped to one of the more recent, as I’d lost track of the series several years ago, and felt the need to catch up. Qwilleran and the cats (KoKo aquired a female partner a few books into the series) are in the tiny town of Pickax now, and the characters woven through this story are mostly old friends.

It involves a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest, bananas, bookstores, and real estate.

Enough said.

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards

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The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (Cat Who...)

Lilian Jackson Braun

I read this book years ago – decades even – when my mother still lived in the US, and we used to hit the library together every weekend, sometimes with my grandmother, sometimes not, and take home as many books as we could carry. Together, we worked through all of this series, as well as many others.

In any case, this book was originally published in 1966, but it manages to hold up pretty well, considering, and it’s the first in a long series of cozy mysteries about reporter Jim Qwilleran and his crime-solving Siamese cat KoKo.

These books aren’t intellectual in the slightest, but they’re full of great characters, gastronomic and architectural delights, and mild mysteries that are completely lacking in horror and gore.

Perfect for afternoon tea.
Or for sharing with your mother.

Miracle

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Miracle

Danielle Steel

I’m embarrassed to admit that I read this. In my own defense, it came as a book club selection I forgot to cancel, and since it was here, I read it. The story, that of a widower and a widow connecting with the help of their handyman, is pretty formulaic, and the characters are extremely two-dimensional, but I really liked the descriptions of the houses and the main character’s yacht.

This is the sort of book one only reads when locked in a bathroom or hospital waiting room, with no other reading material.

Kushiel’s Avatar

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Kushiel's Avatar (Kushiel's Legacy)

Jacqueline Carey

I don’t remember who recommended the Kushiel books to me in the first place, only that I resisted reading them for the longest time, then, when I did, sheepishly admitted that I liked them.

In any case, I bought this, the final book in the Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy, several months ago, but only read it very recently, when I was between trips to the library. I liked it well enough, I guess, but I hate to see series end, even though the ending in this case was a natural one, as the story arc was not only complete, but all the loose ends had been tied up.