Book Beginnings: The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The blade of Napoleon's sword scythed air redolent of roasted meat as the man who would one day be emperor severed at the top of the cheese before him.

 -- The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison.  She starts the book with the apocryphal story of Napoleon refusing to eat a pyramid-shaped cheese after his defeat in Egypt.

What a fun choice for the 2013 Foodies Read Challenge!

It looks like the cover on mine, above, may be the ARC cover, because I got my copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. The official cover looks like this:



Both are cool. Which cover do you like better?

Review: Independent People

Independent People, first published in Iceland in 1934, secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize in 1955. It is the grim saga of Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family, early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level. The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.

The book is rich, although the plot is meager, following Bjartur from the acquisition of his farmstead through the loss of two wives and three children. Vivid scenes punctuate long passages describing geography, weather, and peasant conversations about sheep ailments and Icelandic politics. For example, in one scene, Bjatur clings to the furry antlers of a reindeer as the animal drags him across a half-frozen river. Meanwhile, his first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut -- kills and butchers a ewe, salts down the meat, and then gorges herself on a pot of offal stew. The cognate, while false, is apt.

Dark humor is woven into the story but does little to lighten the somber mood. With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy. Many readers praise the book's genius; others will find it a heavy slog.

OTHER REVIEWS

CaribousMom

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 480 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

Favorite Author: Graham Greene

Graham Greene (1904 - 1991) has been a favorite of mine since I read The Heart of the Matter while working my way through the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

Greene was a prolific author, writing novels, short stories, poetry, plays, screenplays, travel books, memoirs, essays, and criticism.  He wrestled with Catholic religious themes in much of his work, as well as political and moral issues.  He traveled widely and his books are set in all around the world.

Below is a list of Greene's novels and short story collections.  Those I have read are in red; those currently on my TBR shelves are in blue.

If anyone else is working through Greene's bibliography, and would like related posts listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

The Man Within (1929)
The Name of Action (1930) (out of print)*
Rumour at Nightfall (1931) (out of print)*
Stamboul Train (1932) (also published as Orient Express)
It's a Battlefield (1934)
England Made Me (1935) (also published as The Shipwrecked)
The Bear Fell Free (1935) (short stories; out of print)
A Gun for Sale (1936) (also published as This Gun for Hire)
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Confidential Agent (1939)
The Power and the Glory (1940) (also published as The Labyrinthine Ways)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Heart of the Matter (1948)
The Third Man (1949) (novella)
The End of the Affair (1951)
Twenty-One Stories (1954) (short stories)
The Quiet American (1955)
Loser Takes All (1955)
Our Man in Havana (1958)
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)
A Sense of Reality (1963) (short stories)
The Comedians (1966) (reviewed here)
May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967) (short stories; reviewed here)
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
The Honorary Consul (1973)
The Human Factor (1978)
Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980)
Monsignor Quixote (1982)
The Tenth Man (1985)
The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
The Last Word and Other Stories (1990) (short stories)
No Man's Land (2005) (posthumously published)


* Greene repudiated these two early novels and they were never reprinted. In his autobiography, he stated, "Both books are of a badness beyond the power of criticism properly to evoke."

Teaser Tuesday: Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore

At darkfall, we all trip to the edge of the water, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the sand, hoping to hear the fish sing. The breeze is warm and piney, sliding out of the forest onto the water, lifting our hair.

-- Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore, from an essay about the toadfish, also called the western singing fish.

Moore is an award-winning nature writer and professor of philosophy at Oregon State University.  This edition of Holdfast is part of the OSU Press Northwest Reprint series. It is available on amazon or direct from OSU Press. 

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Naturalist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore meditates on connection and separation in these twenty-one elegant, probing essays. Using the metaphor of holdfasts—the structures that attach seaweed to rocks with a grip strong enough to withstand winter gales—she examines our connections to our own bedrock.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Abi at 4 the Love of Books is hosting in May. Please visit her fun, inspirational blog.

I picked up two books last week from the "Adopt a Book" self at the Helena, Montana library.  It is their way of distributing withdrawn library copies.  I snagged one for myself and one for my hubby.



A Thousand Bells at Noon : A Roman's Guide to the Secret & Pleasures of His Native City by G. Franco Romagnoli. This looks wonderful! I know I read about it somewhere, but I can't remember where.



Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown by Maureen Waller.  This one is for my husband who has been in the mood for books on English history ever since watching The Tudors.