Lilac & Ivy

Synopsis:
When Molly Wizenberg’s father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn’t possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

At first, it wasn’t clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly’s blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn’t long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn’t over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.

In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother’s pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won’t be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.

Review:
I wanted to love this book because of the sheer fact it was written by a blogger and I was so proud of her for getting a book deal. And, I can’t say that I hated it. I just didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. For starters, the whole book was read in my head with the voice of Amy Adams. I’m not sure why, other than that for some reason I kept relating the book back to the movie Julie & Julia. So, that being the case, in my head, I constantly heard that whining voice. Just like in the movie.

Beyond this, I did enjoy the format of short memoirs paired with the relating recipe. But, I do wish that there were some easier recipes and ones that were a bit healthier. Everything printed seemed to be for the more advanced cook and seemed to be very heavy either with cream or lots of sugar or tons of butter. Nothing that I’d cook on a regular basis.

Overall, I would recommend the book if you’re looking for a light, quick read and love cuisine.

***1/2 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb…

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends — and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island — boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Review:
This book was so, so charming. From just reading the title, I thought it would be somewhat silly. Thankfully, I was mostly wrong. I fell in love with several characters and the book actually taught me somethings about the Nazi occupation. It’s one of my favorite historical time periods to study and I found myself wanting to learn more. I did particularly enjoy the manner in which the story is written. A book composed entirely of letters made for an interesting read, albeit, occasionally choppy which left we wondering where the authors focus was. Additionally, the story is  somewhat predictable. Despite the fact that I inevitably knew how it would end, it didn’t make getting there any less enjoyable.

**** out of 5 stars

After reading and loving Three Junes, I couldn’t wait to pick up The Whole World Over. I truly wish I hadn’t.

Synopsis:
Greenie Duquette loves her cozy life in the West Village, her work as a pastry chef, and her precocious young son. But she is fed up with her husband, Alan, an underemployed psychotherapist whose once passionate beliefs are ossifying into reflexive bitterness. When, in early 2000, the brash Republican governor of New Mexico offers her a lucrative job, she jumps at it; Alan is free to follow her if he chooses. In Glass’s sprawling follow-up to her award-winning novel “Three Junes,” a dozen or so characters are plunged into the tumultuous dissatisfactions and challenges of middle age, their paths crossing and recrossing with a pleasing mixture of chance and inevitability.

Review:
What a disappointment. As in Glass’s previous novel, there are many different story lines, however, with each chapter I felt like I was reading a completely different novel. The connection between some characters is slim, at best, and Glass just didn’t master the flow between them. The characters aren’t very involving, and their stories don’t make you want to find out more about them. The story lumbers along and Glass finally does return to her great writing but it isn’t until the last 50 pages or so. The only reason I didn’t give this book 1-star is because of the last 50 pages which truly are beautifully written. Unfortunately, you have to get through 460 other pages to reach them!

** out of 5 stars.

I picked up this book at the recommendation of Erin of Elements of Style. She’s posted a few books she’s read and they are all on track with what I like so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I’m so glad I did!

Synopsis:
Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family’s remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman.

Review:
This book is a very smart thriller. After reading the first page, there was no turning back! With twists and turns, author  Stieg Larsson introduces different story lines that are totally unexpected and fit so perfectly. I found Larsson’s writing to be very easy to follow and I found myself genuinely liking several characters. The book isn’t short (clocking in around 500 pages) and I found the climax to feel a bit rushed, but the book definitely leaves you wanting more. Thankfully there’s two more books written by Larsson. Unfortunately, he passed away before he ever saw the success of his books and leaves us with just this trilogy.

**** 1/2 of 5 stars

I wish people were able to see and experience the good in others everyday and that our news could be filled with more stories like this instead of sadness.

Via: Design Mom
Image: flickr

This coffee table book about renovating and living in row houses and brownstones looks gorgeous. Best of all, it offers practical advice for that one day renovation. Sigh…

Jaimee Rose of The Arizona Republic wrote a beautiful ten part series about blogger Stephanie Nielsen aka NieNie. It takes readers from the day of her plane crash through her first year of recovery. It’s such an inspiring story that made me laugh and brought tears to my eyes. It reminds me of the strength of a family and of the compassion we are capable of.  I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Image: Justin Hackworth

This Pictorial Webster’s Visual Dictionary of Curiosities looks amazing! It features more than 1,500 restored engravings of things like bell jars, zebras and Velocipedes that originally were seen in Webster dictionaries from the 19th century. I’m thinking it would make a perfect coffee table book for anyone from art lovers to science buffs, children and visual learners.

I’m not sure where I first read about The Help. I think it was a monthly recommendation in Real Simple or Good Housekeeping. Either way, after reading the synopsis I knew it was right up my alley.

Synopsis:
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Review:
I absolutely loved this book. I read it in less than a week (granted I was on vacation and had long flights) but that’s a recent record. I’ve always been interested in Civil Rights history and even more so now that I live in the South. I loved reading each woman’s individual point of view and I found Kathryn Stockett’s writing very easy to read. I enjoyed how each chapter alternated between different narrators, yet demonstrated how they were clearly entwined. I didn’t find the book to be preachy (I was hoping it wouldn’t be) but it certainly opened my eyes to several things, including practices I never knew existed. If you’re searching for a heart warming book that also has a bit of history in it, I definitely 100% recommend The Help.
***** of 5 stars

P.S. If you’re waiting for the review of The Whole World Over, I’m still reading it. This one popped up at the library and having been on the wait list since August, I had to take it when I got it. After I finish The Island I’ll get back to it and hopefully finish it quickly.

It’s a coincidence that I read this article today, because I just took the jacket off a book this morning. It’s a borrowed book and I don’t want to damage the jacket which is in perfect condition.

Needless to say, I love the idea of creating book covers without jackets and instead stamping them with a graphic. I think it does a great job of both selling the book and creating a beautiful piece for your home. Really, it seems the question is, “for what purpose [is] the book designed: to be sold in a store, or to be a part of a reader’s life.”

After describing the type of book I enjoy reading to my friend Tonya, she recommend Three Junes.

Synopsis:
This strong and memorable debut novel draws the reader deeply into the lives of several central characters during three separate Junes spanning ten years. At the story’s onset, Scotsman Paul McLeod, the father of three grown sons, is newly widowed and on a group tour of the Greek islands as he reminisces about how he met and married his deceased wife and created their family. Next, in the book’s longest section, we see the world through the eyes of Paul’s eldest son, Fenno, a gay man transplanted to New York City and owner of a small bookstore, who learns lessons about love and loss that allow him to grow in unexpected ways. And finally there is Fern, an artist and book designer whom Paul met on his trip to Greece several years earlier. She is now a young widow, pregnant and also living in New York City, who must make sense of her own past and present to be able to move forward in her life. In this novel, expectations and revelations collide in startling ways. Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit or create for themselves is highly recommended for all fiction collections.

Review:
The premise of this book immediately interested me as I love books about families and all the tangled webs of emotions involved. Compromised of three distinct sections, the main character of each section is tied to the main character in the previous section. I found some characters lovable, some difficult to like and felt pity for others. Overall, I found each respective relationship to be extremely tender. I could feel the emotions between them in my own soul. The book felt long because so much of it is dialogue based, however, it never dragged and I didn’t find myself skipping anything. I enjoyed Julia Glass’ writing so much, my next selection is by her too.
**** of 5 stars

Several people recommended this book to me but before checking it out from the library I knew very little about it.

Synopsis:
Manhattan freelance writer Ward and his wife, Heather, faced a steep learning curve when they abandoned harried, technology-driven lives for a year not just in the country but in the country as it was a century ago. Their mantra was, If it didn’t exist in 1900, we will do without, and they did—no electricity, no telephone, no computer. This breezy account of their stubbornly quixotic odyssey begins in June 2000, with Logan exhausted pumping water from a well, ineptly milking cantankerous goats and confronting his fear of a 2,000-pound Percheron, while Heather coped with the cooking stove’s suffocating heat, her fear of snakes and hand-scrubbing two-year-old Luther’s cloth diapers. Their garden, planted late, was soon parched by drought and plagued by pests, the most severe of several crises, since it was their winter food. Ward writes candidly about how tempers flared and sexual intimacy vanished in the early months of their adventure, but the stress of a daunting new experience soon settled into the comfort of routine, as the couple canned dozens of quarts of produce once the rains returned and forged friendships with curious, ultimately supportive country neighbors. This lyrical account of keeping the 21st century at bay is more real, and more rewarding, than any survival TV show.

Review:
The premise for this project intrigued me. Although I know there are less fortunate people in this country who currently live without electricity or other modern conveniences, for me, this would be a pretty dramatic change. You see, I grew up in what people would categorize as typical suburban America and I now live in an urban neighborhood in Charlotte so the thought of letting it all go would be challenging. In as much that I found the concept interesting, what I found more interesting was the authors descriptions and challenges with growing his own food {a topic I’m extremely interested in} and building community {something I fear is somewhat lost today}. Another reason this memoir interested me is because it’s set in Swoope, Virginia, a town 20 miles away from my in-laws house so the imagery of the town and people seemed so familiar. Overall, it’s a light, simple read with some thought provoking points.
*** of 5 stars