Book 46 (2011): Then Came You

Then Came You is told in the voice of 4 women, all with different stories, who are joined together by infertility.

India re-makes herself and find her dream husband but the only thing lacking is their ability to have a child. Jules needs money to save her father so she sells her eggs while she's a poor college student. Annie is a young women with a family who's been beaten by the economy and she and her husband decide she can be a surrogate to bring in extra cash, and there's Bettina, India's step-daughter who is unsure of her place in her family's life after he parents divorce, and who wants to protect her beloved father from making a terrible mistake of having a late in life child.

All four women come together with unexpected twists and turns. Not only does this novel explore their own individual stories but of how these characters meld together. Great work by Jennifer Weiner! (352 pages)

B

Book 43 (2011) The Bird Sisters

Twiss and her sister are spinsters, living together, hobbling around in the house they grew up in. The Bird Sisters explains how they came to be a pair of single old ladies in their childhood home, told in flash backs to their summer of 1947, the summer cousin Bette came to visit, the summer their daddy lived in the barn, and the summer of first loves and heart breaks.

This is a really sweet story, nice character development, and a nice blend of flashback story telling, with just enough twist to keep interest and without the reader forgetting the "modern" story.
(pages 304)

B-

Book 36 (2011): Red Hook Road

I think I liked this book. I liked the premise, most certainly, and I'm not giving anything away here: a young couple dies in a car wreck after leaving their wedding ceremony and are en-route to the reception. The rest of the novel is how the families are left to cope. What a morbid yet fascinating story!

The other thing that makes me say I think I liked it is that I didn't really like many of the characters, certainly not the mothers of the deceased and that's who this story primarily focuses. It does shift from character to character: the groom's brother, the bride's father, sister and grandfather, a prodigy niece... the story goes between all these but the central focus is on the moms, neither whom I liked.

But I do like that the story takes place over 5 summers, in Maine, and I like to see the evolution of the characters, or at least the evolution of their private grief.

Not what you would call light reading, but it certainly does move along. I hate to say it, but I found it to be a page turner. (343 pages)

B

Book 35 (2011): Friendship Bread

Friendship Bread made me hungry! And wanting to cook! And made me want to have my bed and breakfast dram come true.

It's a beautiful story of an unlikely friendship between 3 women- Madeline, Hannah and Julia, who've all come together over a personal tragedy, and Amish Friendship Bread.

Julia receives a starter and a plate of bread and then it takes off. She makes the bread, out of duty to her 5 year old daughter, and then it gets passed and thus begins the unfolding of all three women. After unfolding their stories, are also the stories of Edie and Livvy.

It's a beautiful story, and it's also full of wonderful recipes. It's a good beach read, and in some ways it's reminiscent of The Friday Night Knitting Club. This novel too, is a simple story of the power of women's friendships and their strength. (400 pages)

B+

Book 34 (2011): The Peach Keepers

The Peach Keeper is part Southern magic, part mystery, part love story...

Willa Jackson came home to Walls of Water, North Carolina. She was a wild teenager but a quiet and sedate adult, single, living quietly, visiting her grandmother, and missing her dead father. She runs a sporting good store and has a coffe bar in the corner run by quirky Rachel, who sells yummy baked goods.

Then re- construction of the Blue ridge Madam, a mansion that was once in Willa's family but was sold in the middle of a 1930's scandal, is almost done, bringing ghosts that Willa knew and didn't back home. A boy who's now a man that was once a crush, a girl who's now a perfect woman who wasn't a friend in high school but is in and out of Willa's adult life but not by either woman's choice, and other ghosts she didn't know about.

Willa finds friends and secrets in strange places, and also finds a new part of herself.

This was a good read, and I always like a bit of the Southern magic- not fairies or monsters, but the illusion of Southern women's traditions and beliefs, of their sayings, some of the magic that comes from a bright moon, a scent of peaches in the air, or of a soft breeze on a still day... I love this story! (pages 272)

B

Book 28 (2011): deep down true

I picked up this book because of the pretty cover and in the end, I was glad I did, even though it's a sort of romance type of stuff that I wouldn't normally read. Fay 's book was funny and serious all at the same time, with a nice blend of focus on post divorce life and her "romance" blended together so I didn't feel like I was just reading a romance novel, straight up.

The main character, Dana, is recently divorced and she finds out she has to go back to work, which she does, par time, at her dentist office. Her middle school age daughter is struggling with her recently divorced parents and with middle school. Dana starts dating her son's football coach and her stray nice shows up and moves in. She also has an ex-husband who is living with the woman with whom he was having an affair.

It sounds like a lot of "schtick" but it's well written and funny, upbeat, and of course serious when necessary but not dragging out the serious to the point where it becomes depressive. The ending is cliched, but I don't think happy endings have to be a bad thing. (432 pages)

B

Book 24 (2011): Mothers & Other Liars

I liked this book. I have a feeling once I think about this story for a few days, it will become a book I could add to a favorite list. AND this is certainly one of the best books I've read this year.

Mothers & Other Liars (written by Amy Bourret) is the unpredictable story of Ruby and her daughter Lark. When Ruby was 19 and wandering aimlessly through Oklahoma when she finds an abandoned baby in a trash can. Now Lark is 9 years old and something happens and the story starts spilling out, legal charges, the media, lawyers... and in the middle are Lark and Ruby, loving each other worried about being ripped apart. There are also several twists and turns to the story but no spoilers here.

I love the characters. They are so strong and detailed. Their voices are smart and powerful. This story of motherhood and choices is compassionate. I love this story. (288 pages)

A+

Book 72- Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen is hilarious and fun, yet offers a good think as well.

I truly enjoyed this memoir of a woman returning home to her parents after her ugly divorce, an illness and accident.

Rhoda's voice- a full of a blend of self depreciating humor, family memories, and nursing her new wounds- was refreshing and fun.

And I want to say this, loudly and clearly: she has a good relationship with her mother. Yes, her mother most certainly drove her absolutely insane, but she has a good relationship with her despite of crazy. She loves her mom and doesn't blame the ills and wrongs in her life on her mother. Thank you for writing a memoir that's funny and honest yet still endearing of family. It was refreshing.

Book 70- The Last Will of Moira Leahy

The Last Will of Moira Leahy (by Therese Walsh) took me forever to read because... well, I have no idea. I think the fact that I read this over a period of 6 weeks, putting it down and reading something else then picking it back up, was probably a disservice to the book, and for that I apologize. it probably influenced the fact that I wasn't really a fan of this novel.

The premise is a bit odd. The story is told now and mingled with flashbacks. Moira and Maeve are twins, separated by a tragic incident in their teens. Maeve is telling the story, about her lonely life as a university professor, with a small limited world. The story unfolds and we find that she's purchased a Japanese dagger in a sheath called a keris. The keris seems to, at first, remind her of her twin Moira, and then it seems to have some sort of magical, mystical powers, that cause Maeve to abandon her quiet and orderly life and traipse off to Rome to find answers that she's been looking for for her adult life.

There, encounters a man who wants to do her harm because of the keris, and a man who wants to help her understand the dagger's power. The man she's secretly in love with, who is in Europe on his own journey of self discovery, meets up with Maeve to help her solve the mystery of the keris. She follows the clues left her by a strange Indian man and tries to find all that is lost to her: her live, her sister, love, her music, her own sense of self.

I like the idea of ghosts and magic in a novel. I like the mysticism that can surround a modern day type of ghost story and I think I had a different perspective of what this story was GOING to be about rather than what it IS about. I just struggled getting into the characters. I often was confused at what was going on with the twins in the flashback sequences. They have strong twin powers ( activate! ) which I think was part of Walsh's tie to the magic of the dagger but it just felt overdone and overworked. And of course, since the girls were twins, they often pretended to be each other and sometimes I was confused about who was doing what, and to whom. Add to this that the "love" story between Maeve and Noel sometimes meandered into just flat out "romance novel" writing that I wanted to puke. There's a line between lyrical writing and harlequin romance style writing, and this drifted in both camps.

While I appreciate the settings of Maine and Rome, but not even these locales could save this book for me. I just didn't enjoy the read, which could be why it took me many weeks to complete this often tedious and wordy novel.

Book 67- Substitute Me

I enjoyed the novel Substitute Me by Lori L. Tharps. I like stories about nannies. And this is the story of a Black woman who is young and single who had no life direction so she's a nanny. I like the narrative's struggle with the idea of a Black woman being a domestic for a White couple when she was raise in an affluent, upper middle class life.

Zora isn't sure what she wants to do in life but she does like kids and she does love to cook and she does want to live in NYC. So what to do? Well, making good money can be done by being a nanny so that's the position she takes while she tries to figure it all out. But her family would hate that she's become a "mammy" so she keeps it a secret. She has a boyfriend who pressures her to be more. And her friend Angel says she should do what she wants to be happy.

Good story as we follow the story of Zora. Now, the chapters alternate narrators between Zora and Kate, the woman for whom Zora works. I think the Zora story is better and I felt Kate was just whiny and I didn't find her all that likable. But she's necessary to the story. I didn't like the trite ending, but overall I thought it was a well written novel and an engaging story.

Book 63- The Nobodies Album

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst is... interesting. Octavia Frost is an author and a mother, a widow and lonely. She's estranged from her so, Milo, a famous rock star, after he reads one of her books.

A tragedy in their lives cause them to have a strained and tenuous relationship as Milo grows up, leaving this estrangement in his adulthood. Until he's accused of murdering his girlfriend. Then Octavia flies to California to see if she can help him, in some way.

During the course of the novel we hear Octavia and Milo's story as they weave through the murder accusations, as well as flashbacks of Milo's childhood. Intermingled with these stories are summaries and chapters of Octavia's books.

She feels she wants to make the world right for all her book character she's wronged, all the tragedy she bestowed upon these characters. So in her new book that she delievers to the publisher and it's ironically called The Nobodies Album, she has the original chapter of each book and then she's re-written them and that's presented as well. As the reader, we get to read these chapters of Octavia's as well as her re-writes. This is an interesting part of the book.

It was an interesting story but nothing that was really exciting. I think the thing I liked the best, or the thing I'm most curious about, are these "fake" books. As I read these "experts" of these pretend novels I really wanted to read several of them. As for the real Nobodies Album, I wasn't really thrilled and could leave it.

Book 61- The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a 40 year friendship

This non-fiction story, The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty Year Friendship is about just that: 11 women who lived in Ames, Iowa who became friends in elementary school and remain friends to this day.

This story chronicles their lives, and their memories, of their friendships. It looks into the ins and outs of the group itself, how others perceived them, what they were like as teens and how they've evolved as a group and as individuals.

Not only did author Jeffery Zaslow interview the "girls"- which is what they call themselves and think of themselves,- their friends, their families, etc., but he also shares stats and research about women/ girls and friendships that studies have shown.

It was an interesting story, and I wonder what's happened to these women individually since the publication of the book. I say 'individually' because there is not a doubt in my mind that as a group they are still friends.

What was I thinking?

Okay in theory it seemed like a good idea to read a whole bunch of books with the same theme: memoirs written by women who turned to cooking careers. I checked out several of these from the library and started reading and... it's not the fun I thought it would be,

I read Julie and Julia last year and it was awesome, and I loved it. I also read I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti and loved it as well. Ditto the recently read The Sharper the Knife, the Less You Cry. I also read a few others so that's what nudged this project along for me. I thought since I tend to gravitate to these books and enjoy them, reading several for a theme month would be fun. I was wrong.

First, I screwed up because I ended up with books that weren't exactly what I was looking for. While Spaghetti, Knife and Julie were about just regular women doing cooking, the books I found were a bit different. I read Garlic and Sapphires which was about a woman who was a food critic for the NYTimes. While it was interesting, it wasn't what I wanted, exactly. I read The Recipe Club which was a fictional story of the friendship between two women told through letters and recipes. While it wasn't what I wanted, I did, however, REALLY enjoy it, and was glad I found it (thanks for the recommendation from a fellow blogger who pens Food for Thought!)

Then I found a book called Spoonfed about a woman who turned critic and something about her messed up life and blah blah blah. I have to admit I didn't even finish it! Spiced was about the alleged drama in the life of a new pastry chef. And it wasn't that dramatic as it claimed to be; I read it cover to cover waiting for the spiciness.

I wanted more of a feel like Julie, Knife and Spaghetti, I guess. Or maybe I read too many of the same genre all together. Whatever my problem, I just know it wasn't my best plan. So now, I'm back to mixing it up a bit. I'm got lots of good books in my stack:

• a new Greg Rucka book with the Atticus Kodiak character
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
• State Fair (a Bennie Harper mystery) by Earlene Fowler
• Beachcombers

So with that failed projected off my plate, I can turn to my waiting list of books, which is about 100 right now. Until I come up with another harebrained scheme!

Happy reading!
Mags

Book 51- Fly Away Home

When Sylvie Woodruff was in college and when she met Richard she was a wild bohemian girl. Now in her mid 50s she's a politicians wife: put together, elegant, perfect, and stand behind your man sort of woman. Who just found out, in a very public way, that her politician husband Richard screwed a woman.

Sylvie goes into hiding at her family summer home while she tries to decide what she wants to do with her life and her marriage.

Her daughters are as different as night and day. Dianna the doctor has it all but feels her life is terrible and in the midst of it all, she takes a leave of absence from work and goes to the beach house with her mother. The other daughter, Lizzie, is the family screw up who's been in and out of rehab. She's trying to get her life right this time, but she makes a new type of mistake and she too flees to the beach house to be with her mother.

None of these women were close to each other, but now they all come together, each with her own struggle, and try to find a way to survive, and they are all brought closer together.

This was a well written story (who could've used a better editor because I found 4 glaring errors) but it was predictable. It became a pretty traditional romance novel combined with chick lit. It's good for a beach read, but wait for it to come out in softcover. I was so disappointed because I wanted something more. I loved author Jennifer Weiner's In Her Shoes and felt it had a dash of the unpredictable and wish she would be more daring in her writing again.

Book 50- Garlic and Sapphires

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise is about former New York Times restaurant critic's adventures in reviewing. It's also about her evolution as a reviewer and the great lengths she went to get get fair treatment rather than the royal treatment reserved for critics and kings. Though in one instance, she received better treatment than a king.

She donned disguises and took friends, family members, and colleagues to eat in the best of the best that NYC has to offer. During this time in her life as being the most important food person in... well, the world, she also went through a personal evolution and realized this wasn't the sort of writer she wanted to be. It also wasn't the sort of "eater" she wanted to be.

Author and former NYTimes critic Ruth Reichl is not the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine.

This is obviously a memoir and try as I might reviewing someone's life doesn't seem right. So basically I can say it was entertaining but still sort of sad. It's sad that such "fancy" and "exclusive" restaurants give crappy treatment and cheat the food to the poor and unknowns who visit their establishments. It was nice for someone like Reichl to go through what she did to give honest reviews. The anecdotes she shared about her son Nicky were some of my favorite parts of this non-fiction story.

I like that she enclosed recipes within her her book, of her favorite foods to fix, since she really loves to cook.

I still liked Julie and Julia and I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti better!

Book 49- Spiced

Spiced: A pastry chef's true stories of trials by fire, after hours exploits, and what goes on in the kitchen by Dalia Jurgensen is a memoir of her early years as a pastry chef. And it basically is what she said it is: what goes on in the kitchen during and after hours. It's not scathing nor is it raunchy, but just a factual account of her pastry making experiences.

I did enjoy this book when I read it but as I sit here writing the review and summation, I can't think of any reason it stands out that made me REALLY like it, or even, any special details to share about it. Again, it's certainly part of a genre I enjoy reading: women, food, cooking. She tells her story in a pleasant voice, and she also doesn't take herself too seriously. Almost, but not quite.

Actually, she really deviates from what I like best about the "memoir by a woman about her life turned to cooking" stories- the humor, the love, the humor. She was sort of funny, but it didn't seem as real as some of the other books in the genre. Again, it was a pleasant enough of a read but nothing that makes me jump and down for having read it. One other thing was missing as well: recipes. She talked about all these wonderful desserts she created and it was a memoir so recipes, or at least PHOTOS of her creations would've been just lovely.

I guess I didn't like it so much after all. I hope her pastry is better than her book.

Book 47- The Recipe Club

Earlier this month I said I wanted to read a bunch of memoirs about women and cooking. Well, tucked into the recommendations for this genre was this fictional novel, which I decided to include in my personal theme, and I'm glad I did. This is the first in my grouping of women and food books, with the focus usually to be on memoirs, but since this is the exception, it's first. More about women, food and memoirs will follow over the next month.

The bulk of The Recipe Club by authors Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel is an exchange of letters between two life long friends who always love and hate each other. The chronicling of the friendship between Val and Lilly is also punctuated by recipes; their story spans from childhood into their middle-aged adulthood.

This was an interesting story and I didn't always like the characters, but I like the letter exchange way of telling a story. And while often found the story predictable, I have to say I liked the book because of the format. I also LOVE the layout of the book. It's is laid out as emails and letters, which changing fonts and the pages are in color with pictures and such, so it actually LOOKS like letters oft times. I like the "stationary" and post cards, and little drawings. I'm a letter writer and I do things like that when I send a paper letter through the USPS.

I also thought the recipes were great. I liked they were all easy and very practical, nothing to complicated, and made with ingredients that are going to be accessible to most people, and they sound delicious and basic, but yummy.

So, I'm glad that I read a review from Food for Thought blogger Once in a Blue Moon. I enjoyed the concept of this novel, the basic story was fine, but the food and fun lay out were the kick for me!

Book 45- Home Repair

Home Repair is a nice little novel about a woman whose first husband died and her second one left her while she was having a rummage sale. And that's probably the best part of the book.

Eve must persevere while she deals with her aging crabby mother, her son Marcus who is about ready to graduate from high school but can't seem to pass his driving test, her daughter Noni who misses her dad but is years older than her 9 years, and her life that's falling apart.

She works in the Art department of a college. Eve is also loosing lots of weight, walks her dogs, meets a Koren family that she starts tutoring English, and she meets Jonah, a man who works at the park and hits on her. She wants to redecorate her house and her car is falling apart. How much can go wrong with this woman?

There's more.

I like author Liz Rosenberg's writing style but i didn't care for the characters in this book. I appreciate the humor but it was just so depressing and so many bad things- and then throw in a few TRAGIC events- and it just was too mired in the sad for the humor to win out.

Book 44- Every Last One

Every Last One is a profoundly sad and powerfully written novel by author and columnist Anna Quindlen.

This is an unforgettable and beautifully written portrait of a mother and wife, of a woman who survives an unspeakable horror brought upon her life.

Mary Beth had built a wonderful life for herself and for her family. She and her husband Glen and their three children have a great life together. They are survivors. When one of her son's becomes depressed she gets him help. But in the midst of helping him she misses other things happening and her perfect world is shattered.

This is an amazing novel. I don't want to say any more so not to give any detail away. I've always been a fan of Quindlen's columns and this is the first novel of her's I've read. I enjoy her writing style most certainly, and they way she weaves a character is breathtaking. Excellent novel. Tragically sad, but excellent.

Food, memoirs, women

So, I'm thinking about a "reading theme" for myself for the summer. I'll read other stuff, but I was thinking of trying to read several books of a particular type.

I really enjoyed the book Julie and Julia: 356 Days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment (and I also loved the movie!) last year. Another one of my favorite books I read last year was I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti. And earlier this week I finished The Sharper the Knife, The Less You Cry and enjoyed it immensely. What do all these have in common? They're memoirs of women who have made some life changes that usually revolve around food, cooking, eating, or all three. For some reason, this particular genre has hugely interested me. I don't know if it's the journeys these women take, if it's all the food, if it's their writing styles, their voices.... I don't know, but I do know that I really like this particular style. I usually enjoy a memoir by a woman (Eat Pray Love seems to be the exception to that rule since I hated that book- yeah, I'm the only woman in the world who hates that book, it seems. So, shoot me!) and I've read several. But the one's about food/ cooking and the woman searching for something in life really speak to me.

I have no desire to go to a cooking school but I do love food. I love to cook and I LOVE to eat. I like to be creative in the kitchen when time and resources allow for such. The food part is always interesting. And life and food always generate some wonderful metaphors and analogies from "Life is like a box of chocolates" to "people are like onions. Keep peeling back the layers.." sort of thinking.

The women who've written the three books I've read so far are pretty smart women, too. I like how they've written their stories, and they don't seem to take themselves too seriously. I also like that all these start at the adult point in their lives. Food may been important to them since they were children or someone in their childhood might have influenced their food love, but these are memoirs not biographies so I like forgoing the long drawn out family stories about food- blah blah blah. I like the here and now, "I am woman, hear me cook" sort of stories.

The one thought that gives me pause is that if I read several more of these books, will I burn myself out? Will I feel as if I've over indulged in this decadent dessert type of reading to the point where I'll be sick? (I said I like food metaphors and analogies.)

I've made a list of titles:

• Garlic and Sapphires: The secret life of a food critic in disguise
• Cakewalk: A Memoir
• Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life
• Spiced: A Pastry Chef's true stories of Trials by Fire, After Hours Exploits, and What really Goes on on the Kitchen
• Under the Table: Saucy tales from Culinary School
• Lunch in Paris: A love story, with recipes

I've always enjoyed books about food. I read several fiction writers who incorporate food in their story lines and characters. It just seems to be something I'm drawn to.

Now I just have to see what the local library has, what Half Price Books has and what I can get ILL and from Amazon. And if anyone here has any of these and wants to share, please let me know!

Maggie