Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Review of the Day: My Life in France



My Life in France is Julia Child’s memoir of her years living in Paris, Marsails, and Provence; her tutelage under French chefs; her “cookery-bookery” with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle; and her general love affair with la belle France. Written in collaboration with Alex Prud’homme, the book reads like a chatty letter from an old friend.

Child was in her 30s when she married her husband Paul and they moved to post-war Paris, where he had a job with the United States Information Service. No cook before her wedding, Child’s love of French food led her to enroll at Le Cordon Bleu, the legendary cooking school, which was a little down at the heel after WWII, but still managed to launch America’s most famous chef.

While in Paris, Child hooked up with Beck and Bertholle and the three began work on what eventually was titled Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I. It took 13 years from original conception to publication in 1961. Child and Beck spent another nine years completing Volume II. In the meantime, the Childs had moved back to America, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Child had started a cooking show for PBS – quite a creative leap for someone who had not even owned a television set until 1962 or so. They maintained their connections with France by keeping a second home in Provence.

What makes the book so appealing is Child’s exuberance. Even when she wrote the book in her late-80s, shortly before she passed away in 2004, she showed an enthusiasm for food, cooking, and her husband that brings energy to every page.


NOTES

I am posting this review on my birthday (not my blog birthday, my real one) because I love celebrating my birthday and this book is a great party of a book.

This book was the basis for the better half of the Julie and Julia movie. My review of Julie and Julia, the book, is here.

There is a gorgeous, boxed edition of both volumes of MTAFC. If I didn't already have both books, that set would be at the tip-top of my wishlist.

OTHER REVIEWS

ExUrbanis

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

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Teaser Tuesday



When, a few weeks later, a news bulletin came over the radio that Vincent had been shot while dining in an East Side restaurant, it was a weird pride I felt -- the sense of being a privileged insider, an I-knew-him-when feeling that was quite insensitive to the extremity of his situation. After all, I was a fellow who sat most of the day in his house, living without the normal compliment of friends and associates, and with no practical enterprise to occupy his days, a man with nothing to show for his life but an overworked consciousness of it -- who can blame me for acting like a fool?
-- Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow

That pretty much sums up this book about two brothers who live as recluses in their family home. Their tragic story is interspersed with anecdotes about their brushes with major events of the 20th Century. In this case, the shooting of a New York mafioso. 

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



Monday, February 8, 2010

Mailbox Monday



Nature abhors a vacuum, and so, apparently, does my mailbox. After going empty the week before, my mailbox was stuffed to overflowing last week, giving me quite a list for Mailbox Monday.

Mostly I have Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts to thank for my bounty. Hawthorne is a Portland-based, independent publisher specializing in literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. 

They sent me five books they thought would appeal to my list-oriented reading habits because all are prize-winners or nominees. All are in Hawthorne's trademark cool bindings: taller and skinnier than a typical trade paperback and featuring "acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks."  They are as gorgeous on the outside as they are interesting on the inside.

Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley (PEN/Faulkner winner; new introduction by Wole Soyinka)



Leaving Brooklyn by Lynn Sharon Schwartz (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner; new introduction by Ursula Hegi)



Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories by Scott Nadelson (Oregon Book Award winner; Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award)



The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips (Discover Award winner; introduction by Fannie Flagg)


Clown Girl by Monica Drake (Independent Publishers Book Award winner; introduction by Chuck Palahniuk)



In addition to the Hawthorne books, I had another nice surprise last week -- a review copy of Jim Harrison's new novella troika, The Farmer's Daughter. I shamelessly begged Grove Press for a review copy because Harrison is one of my all-time favorites. I am quite excited that my efforts paid off.


Now, the price I pay for all this publisher largess is that all six books are going straight onto my Guilt List. I had better get cracking.


Sunday, February 7, 2010

List: PEN/Faulkner Award Winners



The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is a national prize honoring "the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year." It is the largest peer-juried award in the country.

The award was founded in 1980 by members of the international writers’ organization PEN and is now governed by an independent foundation board. Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize money to create an award for young writers, the aim of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation is to bring together "American writers and readers in a wide variety of programs to promote a love of literature."

So far, I have read 10 winners and have another 11 on my TBR shelf. Those I have read are in red; those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue.

2018 Improvement by Joan Silber

2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

2016 Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

2015 Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

2014 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

2013 Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

2012 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

2011 The Collected Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

2010 War Dances by Sherman Alexie

2009 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

2008 The Great Man by Kate Christensen

2007 Everyman by Philip Roth

2006 The March by E L Doctorow

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin

2004 The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike

2003 The Caprices by Sabina Murray

2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (reviewed here)

2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here)

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1998 The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor

1997 Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford

1995 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth

1993 Postcards by E. Annie Proulx

1992 Mao II by Don Delillo

1991 Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

1990 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow

1989 Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

1988 World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle

1987 Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley

1986 The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor

1985 The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff

1984 Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman

1983 Seaview by Toby Olson

1982 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

1981 How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish

NOTE

Updated DXecember 31, 2018.

OTHERS WORKING ON THIS LIST

If you are reading these books and would like related posts to be listed here, please leave comments with links and I will add them.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Opening Sentence of the Day: Homer & Langley



"I'm Homer, the blind brother."

-- Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow

It this book weren't based on a true story about real brothers, the whole blind Homer thing would be too gimmicky.

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