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lunch in paris: a love story, with recipes
elizabeth bard
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Much like Cooking for Mr. Latte, Amanda Hesser's memoir of love and food, Lunch In Paris begins with a first date and first dinner and moves to more dates and more dinners and meeting family and getting engaged and then married, all the while living in Paris, she as an American, he as a native Frenchman. She writes about how maddening yet seductive France and the French can be – for example, how you're almost not a person in France unless you have a gas bill in you name (her then boyfriend thoughtfully added her to their apartment gas bill when they moved in together which helped later on when they wanted to buy an apartment). She also writes about the incredible food in France, yet the amazing slimness of French woman (always fascinating to read about). Included in each chapter are intoxicating recipes like molten chocolate cakes and summer ratatouille. Delicious!
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reviewed by: lisa may |
June 2010 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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pound of paper: confessions of a book addict
john baxter
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| I was highly disappointed in this book. I went out of my way to order it from Amazon.com hoping it would be like "Used and Rare" by Larry and Nancy Goldstone and it turned out to be a thinly veiled authobiography posing as a book about collecting. It was more about Baxter making his way from childhood in Australia to London, New York and Paris all the while dropping names of authors I've never even heard of (except Martin Amis). I must admit that parts of his life are interesting and he tells an amusing story but billing the book as "confessions of a book addict" is misleading. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
June 2004 [link] |
recommend
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the clothes they stood up in and the lady in the van
alan bennett
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Don't let the fact that this book by noted playwright Alan Bennett is a Today Show book club choice deter you - these are two very entertaining stories.
The Clothes They Stood Up In is a fiction piece centered around Mr. and Mrs. Ransome who, upon returning to their flat after going to the opera, discover that everything (everything! rugs! toilet paper! clothes! the stove! the casserole in the stove!) has been taken from their home. So the story follows them as they work to piece together their home and find out that maybe they aren't who they think they are without their material possessions. There's bit of a whodunit aspect with a mix-up between someone else in their building with the name Hansome and they end up getting all their stuff back in the end, but their lives have changed for many reasons. My favorite detail is about the sturdy and grim Mr. Ransome who finds that the thieves have stolen the old hair coloring of Mrs. Ransome's that he had hidden away and was using to dye his beard. He's too embarrassed to ask Mrs. Ransome to get some more and won't go to the pharmacy himself so he quickly turns grey. Very well written and thought-provoking.
The second piece is non-fiction and is about Miss. S and the van she lives in. For a while it is parked on the street where Bennett lives but he ends up inviting her to park it in his garden and so begins an almost 15 year reluctant “friendship” between Bennett and Miss. S. The van is chock full of stuff from decades of living, including food, clothes and garbage. It does not smell good. But Miss S. is oddly endearing if not a bit crazy and doesn't find anything wrong with having lived in cars for so long. In the end, Miss S. dies and Bennett finds out snippets of her former life but nothing that would explain her affinity for living in vans.
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reviewed by: lisa may |
April 2006 [link] |
recommend
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city of fallen angels
john berendt
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| You remember Berendt - you know, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"? This time, Berendt applies his talent for writing and nose for drama to Venice as he shacks up there for almost 10 years lurking, listening and observing life as a Venetian. A great, gossipy book results mostly revolving around the fire, conspiracy and rebuilding of La Fenice - the opera house in Venice that caught fire the night before Berendt arrived in Venice wasy back in 1996. Also contains stories about Ezra Pound's last days in Venice and controversy surrounding his will and estate. Lushly written, the book really takes you behind the scenes of the otherwise impenetrable Venetian high-class society and culture. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
February 2006 [link] |
recommend
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robbing the bees
holley bishop
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| This extraordinary bio is all about the sweet "liquid gold" and those furry little flying bees. For a year, Bishop shadows Don Smiley, a beekeeper in Florida, and writes about everything bee-related from Smiley's lucrative tupelo honey crop to his rendering of beeswax at the end of the season in an easy to read and immensely interesting book. The book covers everything about beekeeping as well as the role of bees and honey throughout history and reveals some startling facts: bees help produce one third of our food supply including garlic, apples, melons, almonds and onions. Bees were often used in medieval warfare in the form of projectiles (also popular in catapults were bags of snakes and the dead bodies of plague victims) and both honey and bees are valued for their medicinal properties. Makes you appreciate your little bear-shaped squeeze bottle of honey all the more. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
February 2007 [link] |
recommend
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food matters
mark bittman
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| What Mark Bittman proposes – eating less processed food and less meat - isn't exactly rocket science. But he tried this new "diet" and quickly lost 35 pounds in addition to clearing up some health issues. Of course, you have to have the poundage to lose but Bittman's overall message is "change your eating habits now, save the world tomorrow". The beginning chapters focus a lot on the science of eating and how out of control the food and marketing industry as become. Bittman references how eating meat is one of the single-most damaging things you can do to the earth and thus his book urges we eat less meat and less processed food. The book includes 70 recipes which are really horsy and oaty for my tastes but the book definitely has me rethinking what I eat and what I feed my family. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
April 2010 [link] |
recommend
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best ghost stories of algernon blackwood
algernon blackwood
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| Algernon Blackwood had an amazing, complex and creepy imagination. These stories are haunting, not exactly gross-out-loud Steven King blood-and-guts-and-shit-spewing-everywhere, but more in like an am-i-imagining-things-or-is-this-place-out-to-kill-me way. The absolute best stories in the collection are "The Willows" (often viewed as the quintissential man vs. nature horror story, but really even scarier than that), "The Transfer", and "Accessory Before the Fact" (which actually gave me goosebumps reading it--you would never guess that it was originally published in 1914!). For only $8.21 at amazon.com, this book is a steal and Algernon Blackwood writes some amazing fiction. |
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reviewed by: victoria |
May 2005 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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away
amy bloom
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Hokey, I know, to say that I was blown "away" by Bloom's novel "Away", but I really was. I settled in for a good story and emerge three days later for air and food and am still thinking about the book. Set in the early 20s we meet Lillian Leyb, seemingly meek and newly arrived in NYC from Siberia, where her Jewish family – parents, husband - had been brutally murdered by Gentiles. Fearing for her toddler daughter's life, she had lowered her out of a window of their home instructing her to head to chicken coop, and never saw her again. Inconsolable and desperate, she makes her way to a cousin in Brooklyn and quickly finds work as a seamstress with a popular theatre in NY, run by a father and son. Soon after, she begins an affair with both father and son when she receives word that her daughter is in fact still alive and still in Siberia. And so she sets off across the states, up to Alaska, with the goal of reaching Siberia to search for her Sophie. Along the way she is helped by the unlikeliest of people – a black prostitute named Gumdrop, inmates in a women's prison (where she spends the holidays watching a woman get "Merry Christmas" tattooed above her...ahem) and finally a man on the lam living in the Alaskan frontier. Lillian does a little saving of her own when she comes upon a cabin where a mother has accidentally died and three children await the return of their father from a hunting trip – they surely would've perished had she not stepped in.
Lillian is a strong-willed and determined heroine and the ending is bittersweet indeed. Full of the most gorgeous prose, witty moments, and wonderful characters, the book fairly sparkles with gems like this: "...she believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can't even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day." |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
September 2008 [link] |
recommend
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story time
edward bloor
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| Edward Bloor writes really great Y.A. books. CRUSADER and TANGERINE both have this weird air of menace that keeps you hooked until the end, and STORY TIME isn't any different. Kate, our plucky protagonist, lives in a weird but kindly family where her uncle George is two years younger than she is! When George gets accepted to the Whittaker Magnet School and Kate is forced to go there as well, they discover a bizarre place with psychotic teachers, a Bush-esque curriculum ('We have a test every day. In every class. That's what we do.") to measure student learning, and a demon that possesses books and makes whoever reads them go psycho for a few minutes. Kate and George hate their new school and their draconian teachers, so they decide to get some revenge with the help of the quasi-mute librarian...and when the president's wife comes to visit the school, all hell breaks loose... |
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reviewed by: victoria |
May 2005 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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kitchen confidential: adventures in the culinary underbelly
anthony bourdain
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| I had heard Anthony Bourdain many times on radio talk shows, and was already quoting his book before even picking it up. You know, he's the chef that wrote that book about how crappy restaurant's kitchens are and how you should never order mussels or eat fish on Sunday or Mondays. Yea, that guy. I fully expected to read this book and then swear off eating out ever again. Well, it's not that bad - if anything I am a smarter diner, but the whole 'restaurants are dirty' is only a small part of the book. The rest is an entertaining autobiography of his rise to success in the restaurant biz, along with his motley crew of freaks and drug users that he employs in his kitchen. If you don't mind his liberal use of profanity, this is a great summer time book. |
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reviewed by: rich |
May 2002 [link] |
recommend 4 thumbs up
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sheltering sky, the
paul bowles
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| This is one of those books I either acquired at a yardsale or off the road of some Brooklyn street. I've owned it for at least four years, but have never read it. I was trepidacious (hey at least I TRY to say big words) to read it as it was some flop of a Debra Winger (not my fave actress) movie. The only image from the movie I have is the Debra Winger character staggering off into the desert with sun fever in her. I may have tried to watch this movie while a pre-teen with HBO (where most of my formative tv years evolve). Anyway, I started reading it due to there being no books I hadn't read in my hovel. I quite enjoyed this desert romp. It captivates you. I just finished reading it yesterday, and it put me in the most meloncholy mood. Ah la vie! Anyway, the most I got out of the book was that it tells you the futility of trying to understand the meaning of life. The main characters were two people like myself who live in their heads and analyze every utterance twenty million times. They are much more trapped than me though as it is two people of this mindset. As we all know, that spells disaster. Anyway, they are the bored idle rich and they embark on a trip to Africa because Europe is so unhealthy and incestuous during the war. My very favorite part came near the end, and that is unusual as most writers don't think it through that much and give their best stuff to getting you to keep reading. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
July 2001 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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fahrenheit 451
ray bradbury
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| This book is wonderful. I read it whilst in 9th grade and will re-read it again. It says everything I feel about TV and society's atrophy because of technology. Soooooooooo good. It's set in the future. |
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reviewed by: kristen |
September 2000 [link] |
recommend
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the sweetness at the bottom of the pie
alan bradley
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| In this unique new series, we meet Flavia de Luce, 11-year-old resident of Buckshaw, a crumbling old estate in England. Flavia is a prodigious lover of science and mystery who delights in tormenting her older sisters only because she's a little jealous that they remember their deceased mother and she doesn't. Their father is a bit of a recluse and so Flavia spends a lot of time on her own in her "lab" or scouting around town. That is, until a dead bird with its beak stuck through a stamp winds up on their front door. And a body appears in their garden. Flavia is on the case! One refreshing aspect of the book is that it takes place in the 50s, so there's no technology bogging it down. Flavia is adorable and such a little spit-fire, one can't wait to find out what her next case will be. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
January 2010 [link] |
recommend
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here if you need me
kate braestrup
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| Here if You Need Me is such a kind book - spiritual, without being religious and just nice (and a bit sad; I cried twice by page 42). Kate Braestrup is widowed at the age of 40 when her Maine state trooper husband is killed by a drunk-driver while on duty. Her husband always had dreams of becoming a chaplain and so, Braestrup takes over that dream and goes to seminary school to become a chaplain. She then gets a job with the Maine Warden Service. She counsels wardens who find dead bodies, she counsels parents looking for lost children and she tries to make sense of her husband's death and her life (and the life of her four children) without him. It's really a lovely story, funny at times and bittersweet, since some of her of her stories do not have happy endings. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
July 2008 [link] |
recommend
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what would jackie do?
shelly branch
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| I unapologetically am obsessed with the Kennedys and I ate up this fluffy, silly book with glee. I love reading that Jackie O would've loved Botox, would not hesitate to re-gift and raised her children to be anti-brats just by being involved and enthusiastic about life (okay, summers on the Cape helped, too). The book is easy to breeze through with chapters on make-up, home decorating, career and love. Lots of little tips at the end of the chapters just make you just for a second feel a bit more glam and a lot more Jackie even if you don't have a billionaire tycoon bank account. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
June 2006 [link] |
recommend
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the da vinci code
dan brown
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this book has been on the ny times bestseller list for a while and all i know is that when i first requested it from the library, i was like 119 on the list. that was about 6 months ago. so i read it and loved it and there you go. it's a conspiracy thriller - a religious conspiracy thriller and i love nothing more than to slightly discount my catholic upbringing. anywho, this book begins with a murder in the louvre and involves cryptograms and riddle-poems and a scavenger hunt all concerning a secret that has been protected since the time jesus himself was on his first pair of birkenstocks. the best part? although it's a work of fiction, apparently all the facts are true. the secret societies, the history behind many of da vinci's paintings, the secret life of jeebus, etc.
it won't give you the religious heebie-jeebies (unlike the career-finder book i accidentally checked out that will lead me to the career god thinks i should have. oy) or anything - it's very interesting and mind-boggling and exciting and well-written. the author's web site is a pretty good start but make sure you don't read everything or some secrets of the book will be given away! |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
October 2003 [link] |
recommend
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angels & demons
dan brown
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I believe this was the pre-quel to Da Vinci Code and it's practically the same formula - high-profile person dead, Robert Langdon, a prominant symbologist, gets called in before the police to decipher the strange ambigram branded onto the victim. Victim has hot & smart daughter and a madcap adventure ensues.
Just like Da Vinci Code, this book explores the true existance of the Illuminati and the struggle between science and God. I love these books because it's mostly non-fiction, so many of the religious conspiracy facts are true. The fiction parts include the poisoning of the Pope (never a good thing) and some really gruesome murders.
There's also some detailed information about the dollar bill actually being full of Illuminati symbols. It's all very creepy and cool. Once again, www.danbrown.com has some really neat photos and factoids about both Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons - although he calls them "spoilers" I would almost have preferred seeing some of the images before I read the book. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
June 2004 [link] |
recommend
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the weird sisters
eleanor brown
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| The three Andreas sisters are each named for a Shakespeare character – Rosalind (As You Like It), Bianca (The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordelia (King Lear)–and they have a predilection for communicating through the lines of Shakespeare they learned from their professor father. They reunite at their childhood home to help take care of their mother recently diagnosed with breast cancer, but ultimately, they are home with their own baggage – Rose is afraid to leave home to live with her fiancée in England; Bianca has fled multiple indiscretions in NYC and Cordy has spent her life traveling where the wind blows her and now needs to lay down some roots. Told from the perspective of all three sisters, this is a funny and warm look at how individuals make up a family and how that defines who they are. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
April 2011 [link] |
recommend
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big bad love : stories
larry brown
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| Everyone should read Larry Brown. He's a Raymond Carver re-incarnation in the blue-collar country. I adored his style and his isolationism. His characters were very rugged and real. I'm a sucker for drop out of life, sorrow-filled with wryness stories, and this was right up my alley |
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reviewed by: kristen |
September 2000 [link] |
recommend
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mother shock: loving every (other) minute of it
andrea buchanan
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In this lovely collection of essays, Buchanan (no relation to Rich, I believe) writes about her first year of motherhood and beyond. Her premise around the term "mother shock" is that becoming a mother is like culture shock - you're in a country where you don't speak the language, you have no idea what you're doing and everything is topsy turvey. But, little by little you make your way through and it's not so scary after all. Finally, after all the mothering books I've read, this is the first one that gave me permission to not love EVERY minute of being a mother without feeling selfish, uncaring and ungrateful. In fact, in one essay she writes out a list of her own "don't love" moments and urges you to add your own (her list includes not loving every minute of the playground, of changing diapers, of being chained to someone else's routine and of HATING the Teletubbies).
This is a must read for new Moms, old Moms or people even thinking about becoming a Mom. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
October 2005 [link] |
recommend
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the sisters grimm
michael buckley
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| The Sisters Grimm is an awesome juvenile fiction series about the Grimm Family – as in the folk tale-collecting Grimms. In modern day society, the heirs of the Grimms – sisters Sabrina and Daphne along with their Grandmother Relda – are tasked with keeping all fairytale characters and creatures - called "Everafters" - within the confines of the Town of Ferryport. While an enchanted spell does most of the work, the Grimms are needed for assorted mysterious goings-on – for example, the secret cult of the Scarlet Hand, who has kidnapped Sabrina and Daphne's parents. Fairytale characters far and wide make clever and witty appearances in this series – Prince Charming is the Mayor and is actually not all that charming; Snow White is a grade school teacher and also teaches self-defense classes; Fairy Godfathers show up on book four as Mobsters complete with brass knuckles and pin-striped suits along with dozens of other fictional references. While it's all great fun, the stories are tinged with a dark side – violent clashes between characters and some unsettling plot twists (at one point Sabrina and Daphne are sent to live with a foster parent – a newly out of prison convict that murdered seven people with a pipe. Eeek) Very "grimm", indeed. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
February 2010 [link] |
recommend
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dangling in the tournefortia
charles bukowski
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| I always get ridiculed for saying this, but I am a huge Bukowski fan. I pretty much feel at one with the world for some reason when I read his stuff. I mostly like the poetry. I was sitting in the new downtown Bristol Books in Wilmington, NC, just sitting in a chair reading a Banana Yoshimoto book, when I looked over and saw these neat books with no glitter, gloss or anything on their spine except Black Sparrow Press and titles and Charles Bukowski. I casually picked one up and fell in love. His writing seems REALLY REAL. Super truth. I asked my friend, Sinda (who worked there but often had too southern of a slant for me in her employee books. Sinda was a voice on some Japanimation that came through Wilmington. She totally fell in love with some guy like it was the totally soulmate thing. I heard he cheated on her in Oregon where they moved to start life afresh. She now lives in Wilmington again.) What she thought of Charles Bukowski, and she said that he was really bitter and so "gen X". I often don’t like the words "gen X", but I took her opinion like I normally did – with a smile and an ignore button (ever since she recommended "Geek Love" so adamantly. Oh it sucked.) |
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reviewed by: kristen |
September 2000 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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women
charles bukowski
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| Now we should all have read my archives by now and know that I’m a perky, proud Bukowski lover. I probably even said something like ‘although he sure is a jerk to women, I feel he is an honest jerk and I like him". This book was a bit boring and gruesome. I borrowed this book from my friend Timmy. He was surprised that I wanted to read it. As I’m reviewing it right now, I do realize that in it’s long entirety, Women is a good catalog of a man screwing women who want to be screwed. Mostly I would have preferred that this book not be written, and I could have lived in my sheltered world thinking how wonderful Charles Buckowski’s short stories and poems and "Post Office". I’m much more into the "life is an amusing rat race – people don’t think" sentiment . |
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reviewed by: kristen |
October 2000 [link] |
recommend
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strip city: a stripper's farewell journey across america
lily burana
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While this was an interesting read, I got a little annoyed near the end as the author acted like someone was making her take this trip around the country and forcing her to strip. I mean, she got a book deal out of the whole thing so I say: quit yer whinin'. Lily used to be a stripper and when she gets engaged she decides that she needs to have one final hurrah (her own year-long bachelorette party in which she's the stripper.) She visits - and works at - strip joints across the country and searches for herself along the way. She explores how she first got into stripping and what it made her feel like then and what it makes her feel like now. Most interesting to me was the actual places she went to, the people that work there and the clientele. I'm fascinated with the whole damn industry (as evidenced by my next review.) My girl Lil is one tough cookie, though, and if she ever reads this review I am sure she will find and kick my ass.
"Strip City" is not out in paperback yet. Don't be surprised if you get strange looks when reading this book in public. I did. You can read the first chapter here. It should sufficiently peak your interest. |
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reviewed by: lisa may |
April 2002 [link] |
recommend
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running with scissors
augusten burroughs
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| Augusten Burroughs first work chronicles his childhood in what can only be described as a psychotic catastrophe. His writing style is clear and somewhat flippant regarding the severity of damage that was done to him and others at the hands of his guardians and parents, and I find it remarkable how daily writing in his journals served as a grounding for what sanity he maintained during his formative years. I recommend this book to anyone who thinks that they had it bad growing up in a home filled with neurotic, middle class family members. This book will make you call your parents and thank them. |
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reviewed by: nate |
May 2004 [link] |
recommend 3 thumbs up
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dry
augusten burroughs
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The second memoir by Augusten Burroughs shows well the development of his writing skills. He is a story teller with a ton of stories to tell. Battles with creative compromise and the constant need and pining for an alcoholic beverage come through palpably in this book, making me want to either pour myself a stiff drink or never smell liquor again for as long as I live.
His life has all the tragic trappings of one of Chuck Pahlan..., Chuck Phallanu..., Chuck Palomi..., Chuck Pahlinchic..., Chuck whatever the fuck his name is books, especially Invisible Monsters.
It will be interesting to read Burroughs next books and I'm wondering if he's lived enough to write yet another memoir about his life given that he's only in his thirties. Read it and see if you don't think that his second book makes you as grateful you are you and not him the way his first book did so very well. |
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reviewed by: nate |
May 2004 [link] |
recommend 1 thumbs up
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