BW5: Literary cookbooks

H is for Home

And now for something completely different - literary cookbooks!  We've all come across passages in stories about the characters preparing meals or having dinner and could practically smell it, it sounded so good.  From the classics like Jane Austen's Emma to modern day cozy mysteries like Cleo Coyle's Coffeehouse mysteries to Harry Potter's Treacle Tart which I'm sure we are just dying to try. (or not!)  Here's a round up of a few literary cookbooks to check out:

Literary Feasts by Barbara Scrafford

 "Drawing on the culinary traditions of the times and cultures at the center of each novel, the author serves up an eggplant epiphany from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, jam tarts from D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, to Mrs. Ramsay's famous boeuf en daube dinner in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and much more. Accompanying thought-provoking essays define the role of food in each work: as a part of a larger metaphor, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; as a way of depicting character, like the bland diet of the dull Mr. Woodhouse in Jane Austen's Emma; as a means of adding vivid detail in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth."

The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black

"Jane Austen wrote her novels in the midst of a large and sociable family. Brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, friends and acquaintances were always coming and going, which offered numerous occasions for convivial eating and drinking. One of Jane’s dearest friends, Martha Lloyd, lived with the family for many years and recorded in her “Household Book” over 100 recipes enjoyed by the Austens. A selection of this family fare, now thoroughly tested and modernized for today’s cooks, is recreated here, together with some of the more sophisticated dishes which Jane and her characters would have enjoyed at balls, picnics, and supper parties. A fascinating introduction describes Jane’s own interest in food, drawing upon both the novels and her letters, and explains the social conventions of shopping, eating, and entertaining in late Georgian and Regency England. The book is illustrated throughout with delightful contemporary line drawings, prints, and watercolours"

Kafka's Soup by Mark Crick

"If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to make dinner with Franz Kafka, Jane Austen, or Raymond Chandler, this is the chance to find out.Literary ventriloquist Mark Crick presents fourteen recipes in the voices of famous writers, from Homer to Virginia Woolf to Irvine Welsh.Guaranteed to delight anyone in love with food and books, these witty pastiches will keep you so entertained in the kitchen that you’ll be sorry when the guests arrive."

 Do you have any favorite or different cookbooks to share?  What recipes have you tried from some of your readings?

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If any of you were reading Ahab's Wife, did you finish it? Tell me what you think of it in the comments.   Check out these discussion questions (spoilers included so don't click unless you want a hint of things to come)

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW4: Mystery of Nevada Barr

A couple years back I discovered Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon mystery series when I read "Blind Descent" and was delightfully pulled into the mysterious world of spelunking and murder.  Her writing puts you right there with Anna as she battles claustrophobia to go save an injured friend.

Blind Descent

Amazon:  "Feisty, resourceful forest ranger Anna Pigeon faced everything from raging fires to deep-water dives with cool aplomb in her first five adventures. Very early in Blind Descent her courage is put to an even greater test when she learns that a woman seriously injured while exploring a cave next door to New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns is a friend who has requested Pigeon's help in getting her out. "A chilling image filled Anna's mind: herself crouched and whimpering, fear pouring like poison through her limbs, shutting down her brain as the cave closed in around her." Pushing aside her fears, Pigeon takes the plunge, leading readers through a truly harrowing series of tight squeezes...."

I dipped my toes into Anna's life again with "Winter Study" as she battles both nature and man in the frozen winter of  Isle Royale National Park.  You could practically feel your toes freezing off as you read the story.

Winter Study

Publisher's Weekly: "In bestseller Barr's chilling 14th mystery thriller to feature National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon (after 2005's Hard Truth), Anna joins the team of Winter Study, a research project intended to study the wolves and moose of Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, the setting for 1994's A Superior Death. Complicating the study is Bob Menechinn, an untrustworthy Homeland Security officer assigned to shadow the research. Crowded into inhospitable lodgings and persecuted by unrelenting cold, Anna is far from her comfort zone as nature turns awry with a series of bizarre events. The team stumbles upon the tracks—and the mutilated victim—of a preternaturally large, unidentified beast, and local packs of wolves descend on human-populated areas, a behavior out of step with their species. The campfire legends of youth metastasize into adult fears as Anna must piece together a connection between these anomalies while guarding herself from the strangers around her. Barr's visceral descriptions of the winter cold nicely complement the paranoia that follows the appearance of the mythic monsters at play.

There are 16 books in the series and easily read as stand alones.   Barr just released the 17th book "The Rope" which takes you back to the beginning of Anna's story.  

The Rope

Amazon:  "In The Rope, the latest in Nevada Barr’s bestselling novels featuring Anna Pigeon, Nevada Barr gathers together the many strings of Anna’s past and finally reveals the story that her many fans have been long asking for. In 1995 and 35 years old, fresh off the bus from New York City and nursing a broken heart, Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. On her day off, Anna goes hiking into the park never to return. Her co-workers think she’s simply moved on—her cabin is cleaned out and her things gone. But Anna herself wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a dry natural well, naked, without supplies and no clear memory of how she found herself in this situation.

As she slowly pieces together her memory, it soon becomes clear that someone has trapped her there, in an inescapable prison, and no one knows that she is even missing. Plunged into a landscape and a plot she is unfit and untrained to handle, Anna Pigeon must muster the courage, determination and will to live that she didn’t even know she still possessed to survive, outwit and triumph.

Check out the first paragraph here and find out more about Nevada Barr and all her books here.  I'm slowly making my way through the series and look forward to reading them all. 

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW3: Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund 

Chapter one

"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last. Yet, looking up—into the clouds—I conjure him there: his gray-white hair; his gathered brow; and the zaggy mark; I saw it when lying with him by candlelight and, also, taking our bliss on the sunny moor among curly-cup gumweed and lamb's ear. I see a zaggy shadow in the rifting clouds. That mark started like lightning at Ahab's temple and ran not all the way to his heel (as some thought) but ended at Ahab's heart. 

That pull of cloud—tapered and blunt at one end and frayed at the other—seems the cottony representation of his ivory leg. But I will not see him all dismembered and scattered in heaven's blue—that would be no kind, reconstructive vision; no, intact, lofty and sailing, though his shape is changeable. Yesterday, when I tilted my face to the sky, I imaged not the full figure but only his cloudy head, a portrait, glancing back at me over his shoulder.

What weather is in Ahab's face?"

Does it sounds intriguing! I started reading it Saturday afternoon and it quickly captured me.  There are a few ladies on the WTM forum who are joining me in reading the story.  Play along with us and Read Ahab's Wife starting today. 

Synopsis:   "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." This is destined to be remembered as one of the most-recognized first sentences in literature--along with "Call me Ishmael." Sena Jeter Naslund has created an entirely new universe with a transcendent heroine at its center who will be every bit as memorable as Captain Ahab. Ahab's Wife is a novel on a grand scale that can legitimately be called a masterpiece: beautifully written, filled with humanity and wisdom, rich in historical detail, authentic and evocative. Melville's spirit informs every page of her tour de force. Una Spenser's marriage to Captain Ahab is certainly a crucial element in the narrative of Ahab's Wife, but the story covers vastly more territory. After a spellbinding opening scene, the tale flashes back to Una's childhood in Kentucky; her idyllic adolescence with her aunt and uncle's family at a lighthouse near New Bedford; her adventures disguised as a cabin boy on a whaling ship; her first marriage to a fellow survivor who descends into violent madness; courtship and marriage to Ahab; life as mother and a rich captain's wife in Nantucket; involvement with Frederick Douglass; and a man who is in Nantucket researching his novel about his adventures on her ex-husband's ship. Ahab's Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one woman's spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the greatest American novel, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph."

There are 167 chapters averaging 4 pages each for a total of 667 pages. You can read at your own pace and when we come up for air on Saturday January 21, we'll see where we all stand and take it from there.  Or read 48 pages a day which will have you finishing in two weeks.

I found a list of interesting discussion questions on Harper Collin's site. There are some spoilers so don't look at the questions if you think it will ruin your reading experience. The questions will give you things to think about as you read or after you read it.  I'll post the questions in the Miscellaneous and Readalongs link above on the 29th and you can discuss the book and answer them in the comments or on your blog.

Available in paperback or ebook format at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

For more information about Sena Jeter Naslund and her other novels, go here.

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW2: Sarah Addison Allen

Sarah Addison Allen

It always amazes me when I discover a new to me author and get enthralled in a story to learn that he or she is so young.  There are times I am reading a story and you get the feeling of a very old soul. One who knows, whose lived a dozen lifetimes.  One whose been around a while, been writing forever.   The ladies on the Well Trained Mind group have been talking up a storm about Sarah Addison Allen's novels so decided I must read one.  I picked up Garden Spells which I have found to be an incredibly charming story.  As it turns out it was her debut novel which was published in 2007.   Since then, she's released three other stories which I look forward to reading.  

Garden Spells

 Booklist:  Take a pinch of marigold to stimulate affection, add a dash of snapdragon to repel evil influences, finish with a generous helping of rose petals to encourage love, then stand back and let nature take its course. It may be the recipe for Claire Waverley's successful catering business, but when it comes to working its magic on her own love life, she seems to be immune to the charms found only in the plants that have always grown behind the Waverley mansion. Like generations of Waverley women before her, Claire has accepted her family's mysterious gifts, while her estranged sister, Sydney, could not run away from them fast enough. Knowing it's just a matter of time before her abusive boyfriend finally kills her, however, Sydney escapes with her young daughter back home to the only place she knows she'll be safe.

The Sugar Queen

Barnes and Noble: "Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds her closet harboring Della Lee Baker, a local waitress who is one part nemesis—and two parts fairy godmother. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey’s narrow existence quickly expands. She even bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who is hounded by books that inexplicably appear when she needs them—and who has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush. Soon Josey is living in a world where the color red has startling powers, and passion can make eggs fry in their cartons. And that’s just for starters."

The Girl Who Chased The Moon

B&N: "Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in"

The Peach Keeper 

B&N:  "Thirty-year-old Willa Jackson might be returning to her rural North Carolina home to escape her failed marriage, but what awaits her is anything but a smooth, quiet healing period. Instead, Willa tosses herself into a 75-year-old murder mystery and a developing relationship with a local benefactor. The new novel by Sarah Addison Allen (The Girl Who Chased the Moon; Garden Spells; The Sugar Queen) contains a poignant mix of human drama, sibling feuds, and Southern hospitality."

Check her out and tell me what you think.

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

Week one - The sky's the limit

Josephine Wall - Doorway to the Stars

Happy New Year!  I am so thrilled to have you all joining in on our quest to read 52 books in 52 weeks. Welcome back to those who are diving in for another round and welcome to those who are joining in for the first time.  The picture above says it all. Books are a doorway to the universe - a mind voyage.  You'll never quite know where they will take you.  They can enlighten you, thrill you, teach you, make you laugh or make you cry.  They offer a temporary escape from your day to day or enhance your day to day.  Reading to me is as necessary as breathing. All I know is that if I don't read every day, I get really cranky.  Seriously!  


The goal of the challenge is to read 52 books.  Ordinarily you'd think, okay I'll read at least one book a week and reach the goal. However, there are books that take longer than a week to read. And there are some books that can be read in two or three hours.    I'd hate to see anyone sacrifice quality for quantity by reading a short book just to make the goal for the week.  Read what you want, explore and dive into those longer books, engage your mind and soul and don't worry.  Do your best and challenge yourself and see what happens. How you get there is up to you. 

There are a few mini challenges that are available and all the information about them are in the tabs above: 12 in 2012, A to Z Challenge, Jane Austen, Mind Voyages and Well Educated Mind.  Also, throughout the year, I will be posting some mini weekly challenges such as pick a book based on its cover, with a certain word, with a number or color.  Challenge you to read a certain genre or author.   Your choice if you want to participate or not. The goal is to have fun. I also be borrowing from various challenges around the blogosphere presenting you with ideas for books to read throughout the challenge. 

Speaking of challenging:  I have a mission for you which will start mid January. Your first mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read "Ahab's Wife" by Sena Jeter Naslund and then tackle.....Moby Dick

 

  








A few folks from the Well Trained Mind boards have decided to tackle the stories and since I've haven't read either one yet, am jumping on the band wagon.  You are welcome to join in. More information will be provided once we figure out the plan *grin*

I'm excited. 2012 is going to be an awesome new year and I'm looking forward to hearing all about your reads, which will inevitably lead to my wishlist growing larger!  Happy Reading!  

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

Please note: keep in mind that we have all ages involved in the challenge, so please keep your reviews clean. If I come across any link that is not appropriate (vulgar language, x-rated, that type of thing) it will be deleted.