Review of "Food: A Love Story" by Jim Gaffigan

Review of "Food:  A Love Story" by Jim Gaffigan

This book is not about high cuisine.  It's a lot closer, in a self mocking way, to low cuisine, to everyday eating as much as everyday food and to everyman.  Jim travels the low road to food everywhere including restaurants, restaurant chains, at home, at BBQ's and at football games.  I found him to be very often laugh out funny so be careful not to read this book in public places.  It's a lighthearted book with its heart in the heartlands of today's American food heartland. 

Review of Fifty Mice by Daniel Pyne

Fifty Mice plays with memory and what is real. It is the story of a man who is unwillingly put into the Witness Protection Program but doesn't know why. He has to try to figure out what information the people who abducted him want. The man has a fiance but has commitment issues and hasn't set a wedding date. He slowly comes to care about a little girl who is also in the Witness Protection Program and eventually her mother.  Through sessions with a psychiatrist he recalls an incident in his life having to do with a mermaid/dancer at a sex bar that he had visited. His memory of that night is hazy at first. He was drunk and doesn't remember the details. Eventually he does remember and the story moves forward quickly after that.  I enjoyed reading this book. It presented a puzzle to solve that had me hooked until the end.

Review of "Bitter" by Jennifer McLagan

Review of "Bitter" by Jennifer McLagan

 

They say you can't judge a book by its cover.  In this case, you can judge the publisher really cares about the texture or feel and imagery of the cover of "Bitter".  The six letters in the title word 'Bitter' are engraved or inset into the hardcover and the spine.  The topic, cooking bitter foods or ingredients, is different and interesting from that angle.  The author brings in many aspects of bitter foods including the  historical background [did you know the grapefruit is the only citrus not originating in southeast Asia?, sometimes the science of the sensation of bitter or the chemistry [e.g. of phytochemicals]].

The recipes are interesting and  although I have not tried many of them.  My only complaint with the book is that it covers a fair number of ingredients that are either hard to obtain or very expensive.  Expense is especially a problem in the realm of bitter where one often needs to acquire a taste for some foods and without knowing if you will truly like it in the end this can be an expensive bet of money, time and effort.  Examples include Tobacco Chocolate Truffles and a whole chapter of recipes using cardoons [member of the thistle family].

Overall an interesting read and a well produced book.

Review of "North - The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland" by Gunnar Karl Gislason & Jody Eddy

"North  - The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland"

This is a sumptuous book.  It starts with the jacket cover with an enticing "nouveau" dish on the front and on the back a photo of  waters chock full of blue ice.  Both are inviting and stunning. The stories, photographs and recipes are very engaging and maintain the same standard of quality throughout.  Icelandic cuisine has a lot of novel and broadening aspects for an American palette and cook.  Though this is the 'new' cuisine there are many fairly simple recipes that any cook can approach.  Read this book for any number of reasons:  the stories of people and food, photographs or recipes.

Review of The Underground Girls of Kabul: In search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg

This book provides a revealing look at females living as males in Afghanistan. Families with only girl children may designate one of the girls to be a boy. She will be dressed in boy's clothing and allowed to interact with outsiders as a boy. She will have much more freedom in movement and contact with boys and men than her sisters will. Girls (and women) have very little status in Afghanistan. Designating a child to be a male gives a woman more status to the outside world. Women with only female children risk the threat of having their husbands take a second wife so that the family will have a male heir.
Many of these girls will revert to being a female when they reach puberty and are of marriageable age. But some remain in their status as males to the outside world because it gives them much more freedom. Since they have grown up being able to speak and think for themselves they don't want to give this up.
Afghanistan is not the only country in which the practice of dressing girls as boys is done. It has been done in places where the status of women is low. The author states that the situation of women in these places will only change when men support women having equal status and rights.

Review of The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks

This graphic novel covers an important part in our country's history that is too little known about. It tells the story of the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all black unit, that fought in World War I. They faced racial discrimination at home and abroad. This unit was called "the "Harlem Hellfighters" by the Germans. They were known for their bravery and willingness to give all they had to the fight. Canaan White's illustrations of the horrors of war really make an impact on the story. They bring home the conditions that these men had to survive under.

Review of The Witch by Jean Thompson

The stories in this book were a mixed bag for me. Some of them were engaging and interesting, others less so. I liked the fairy tale element in them. Some were easy to identify. Others were more obscure. The characters in these stories were well drawn but not people that I would readily identify with.

Review of The Mathematician's Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer

This was an engrossing story about the life of a mathematician from the point of view of her son. It showed what mathematicians are like and how they pursue problems. It also showed how disconnected from the world they can be socially. The novel succeeded in delineating the influences on mathematicians and their insular world.

Review of Your Face In Mine by Jess Row

This is a book about how people see themselves and how they fit into the world around them. It's about what each individual regards as desirable physically and culturally.

The main character, Kelly, a caucasian male, was married to a Chinese woman. He had met her when he went to China to study. Eventually they returned to the U.S.  Kelly had been working on an advanced degree at Harvard when he and his wife had a daughter. Realizing that he wanted a steady paycheck at this point in his life, he took a position at a public radio station in the Boston area. A couple of years later his wife and daughter are killed in an automobile accident. Kelly is depressed and wants to move somewhere else where he hopes the memories won't be so strong. He accepts a position at another public radio station in Baltimore where he spent his teenage years. There he happens to meet up with a friend, Martin, whom he hasn't seen in twenty years. But now the friend looks like a black man.

Martin is a businessman. He wants Kelly to craft a story about how he, Martin, reached the decision to have "racial reassignment surgery" so that he can promote a business that will provide this service to the world and be viewed as acceptable and desirable.

Review of Trapped Under the Sea by Neil Swidey

This book is about the end stage of the building of the 10-mile long sewer tunnel under Boston Harbor. The entire undertaking was an amazing feat of engineering, but the long drawn out and over budget project resulted in a disaster that cost lives. The author recounts in great detail the engineering and management challenges along the way. He brings to life the people who were involved, their various roles and actions and the results.

The book starts out with a horrifying scene in which divers near the end of 10-mile tunnel far under the ocean experience equipment failure that you know will result in deaths. The author then cuts from this scene to give us the background of the project and details about the individuals involved. The engineering is explained well enough that a lay person can understand. I highly recommend this book for its riveting story.

More information about the book: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/209340/trapped-under-the-sea-by-neil-swidey
Information about the author, Neil Swidey: http://www.randomhouse.com/author/129167/neil-swidey

I receive this book for free from Blogging For Books for this review.

Review of Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

Jane Jenkins, the privileged child of a socially correct and high society mother has just been released from prison after 10 years on a technicality. She was only 16 when she was sentenced to prison for the murder of her mother. Jenkins has problems with her memory due to drug use as a teenager and cannot even remember what happened on the day that her mother died. She's not sure if she really killed her mother but her lawyer, Noah, believes that she is innocent.
Noah provides Jane with a new identity and she takes off to try to find out if there was anyone in her mother's past that might have wanted her mother dead. Jane ends up in a small town in South Dakota and slowly uncovers its secrets and her own family background.
I didn't like the character of Jane at first because I thought that she was too smart-mouthed and shallow, But as the book progressed, Jane's character grew on me. She turned out to be an astute detective who unearths the truth about her mother's murder.

Review of Shots Fired by C. J. Box

This book is my first introduction to the writings of C.J. Box and I was quite taken with his stories. Box conveys the atmosphere and characters of Wyoming very well. All of these stories except for one involve a death whether intentional or accidental. Life is physically hard in the environment that these stories take place in. I could feel the bone chilling cold of winter in several of the stories. Box describes place and environment very well. Many of his characters are rugged individuals who seem more comfortable being alone than with other people and have their own take on the world. I highly recommend this book. I will be looking for other C.J. Box books to read.

Review of Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch

This book takes place in a futuristic United States where people have implants in their heads that keep them always plugged into a network that gives them VR feed back where ever they go or even think. It's not a nice place to live. The protagonist, Dominic, is an investigator of cold cases. He can't forget about his wife who was killed 10 years earlier in a blast that destroyed Pittsburgh. He uses drugs to ease the pain of her memory. He is obsessed with one case of a murdered woman he is investigating. After he loses his job, Dominic is hired by a wealthy man who asks him to find out what happened to his daughter whose images have disappeared from the Archive. The link between this daughter and the murdered woman slowly unfolds over the course of the story. I found this book a bit difficult to read because of some of the gruesome scenes depicted, but I found it worthwhile at the end.

Review of The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai

I found the first third of the book not all that engaging. I didn't like any of the characters in that part of the book that much. I almost considered giving up on reading the whole book until I got near the end of the first section where a surprising secret is revealed. After that, the rest of the book was hard to put down. I wanted to know what had happened in the past that resulted in the present day situation. All the questions brought up are resolved neatly in the end. It is quite an interesting story along the way.

Review of Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

This book kept me reading to find out what would be revealed with each chapter. It explores the hopes and fears of the parents whose daughter was found drowned at the bottom of a lake. The parents ultimately put all their unfulfilled dreams onto their older daughter and ignored their son and younger daughter. The older daughter tried to do and be whatever her parents wanted - in the case of her mother, to eventually become a doctor and in the case of her father, to fit in and be accepted socially. The older daughter relied on her brother to shield her from her parents over involvement in her life. But when her brother is accepted into Harvard and about to move away from home, she can't take it any more. I won't spoil the ending by revealing how the book concludes.

Review of Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok

I enjoyed this story about a young woman who finds out that she really can achieve her dreams by persevering. She doesn't have an easy road because of her traditional Chinese background, but her cultural roots also provide the strength she needs. The interaction between Charlie, the main character, and her family contrasts with the people she works with at a dance studio. Charlie feels the need to keep that part of her life a secret from her father because she thinks that he would disapprove. Eventually though he realizes that she has become an accomplished professional ballroom dancer and is proud of her.

Review of Denali's Howl by Andy Hall

This account of the Wilcox expedition made me feel all the hardships and mishaps that climbing a big mountain entails. It also documents other climbing parties on Denali in 1967 and how they were involved in the aftermath of the tragedy. The book also examines the response of would-be rescuers and what could or could not have been done. Ultimately, the super storm that hit Denali while the Wilcox expedition was on the mountain was something that was highly unusual and could not have been anticipated.

Review of The Untold by Courtney Collins

The book is set in the Australian outback in the 1920's. It tells the story of a woman horsethief. The story unfolds in scenes from her early life to the present day 1920's as she is being hunted by the law and vigilantes. The evocation of the hard life lived on isolated homesteads in the outback is done well. I was drawn into this story of a strong, female character and wanted to know how it would end. I won't spoil the story by revealing the ending. Suffice it to say that she uses all her wiles to survive as best she can.

Review of Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

Invisible Ellen is the story about a young woman who had an abusive childhood and as a result tries to keep herself out of the eyes of people. She seeks solace in junk food and is very overweight as a result. She has a disfiguring scar on her face which makes her even more reticent about engaging with people. She spends her non-work hours observing the people around her including the residents of the apartments in her building which is in a bad neighborhood. Her life changes when one day she saves a young blind woman from muggers. Ellen slowly opens up to the possibilities of being emotionally close to someone and actively doing things to help them. The story moves along at a good pace. I found the book hard to put down because of the interesting characters and developments.

Review of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker

This was a fantastic book - well written with plot twists galore. The first half of the book seemed to be a straight-forward whodunnit concerning the 33 year old murder of a teenage girl, but just as the mystery seemed to be resolved new information is revealed. The second half of the book was a rollercoaster ride of twists and turns as the plot moves forward to it's final, unexpected resolution.

Review of The Keillor Reader by Garrison Keillor

I could hear Garrison Keillor's voice as I read this book. Many of the stories were familiar to me from A Prairie Home Companion. I liked the personal anecdotes that preceded each piece. They gave context to the writing of each piece. Highly recommended.

Review of Listen to the Squawking Chicken by Elaine Lui

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The author tells stories about how her mother influenced her to become who she is. The mother's life history is slowly revealed throughout the book. Her mother has a lot of traditional Chinese beliefs which affect her outlook and actions and how she raised her daughter.

Review of No Book But the World by Leah Hager Cohen

I enjoyed the story as it developed through flash backs to the childhood of the narrator. The relationship between the narrator, her parents and her younger brother are slowly revealed as the novel progresses. The book deals with the difficult issues of allowing children freedom to learn by themselves or imposing rules on them.