The Hungry Bookworm
reading + eating
My reading month started off with a bang and then pretty abruptly crashed to a halt the week of Halloween. In that time, I managed to read two graphic novels and an essay collection about popular movies, but have been struggling through my current fiction read (which I’ve been working on for 13 days). Anyway, here’s a look at what I read — mostly 4-star reads and no two books alike!
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books That Make Me Hungry… honestly, at this point that could almost be every book. I’m always looking for food mentions when I read; it’s the nature of the beast. A couple of years ago I participated in the topic Yummy Food Mentioned in Books, so I’ll try to avoid choosing the same ones here. Like I said there are a lot of books that make me hungry…
Let’s get to it!
[Read more...] about Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Make Me HungryEver since Julie & Julia hit theaters 10 years ago, it has been one of my favorite movies. Until recently, I had never read the book it was based on. Julie Powell’s memoir Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously is based on the year she spent cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child’s legendary cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it. Perhaps you can see why I love the story so.
Not much over the course of Julie’s memoir was surprising to me, though certainly elements of it had been left out of the more streamlined movie (also paired with Julia’s life story, where Meryl Streep plays the iconic chef). I have to say, though, the book lacked the charm with which the movie nestled into my heart.
When I went to the library recently, the brightly colored cover of Allie Rowbottom’s Jell-O Girls caught my eye. I took it down to flip through it, and the blurbs proclaiming it as “an artfully crafted feminist excavation of an American legacy” and “an important and honest feminist history for right now” sealed the deal.
The book is part family memoir and part nonfiction. In turns, it focuses on Allie’s family history and the so-called “curse” that plagued their men -- the family’s fortune earned when her great-great-great-uncle bought the patent for Jell-O for just $450 in 1899 -- as well as Jell-O’s history through a feminist lense.
Like much of America, I’ve been looking forward to Michelle Obama’s book Becoming since the moment it was announced. As much as I’ve admired her from afar, I honestly never knew much about Michelle and was excited for the opportunity to learn more -- from her, in her own voice.
Michelle’s writing is as engaging as expected. From the beginning of the memoir -- a section entitled “Becoming Me,” in which she describes her life growing up on the South Side of Chicago -- to the end of “Becoming More” -- the final section in which she discusses her and her family’s life in the spotlight while Barack held office -- it was a joy to get to know her better.
[Read more...] about Becoming + Sweet Potatoes in a Hurry (An Obama Family Favorite)
I read Molly Wizenberg’s first memoir, A Homemade Life, during my Thanksgiving readathon last year and fell in love with it. Her storytelling was warm and relatable, and her recipes sounded (and were, when I tried a couple of them) delicious. So, I was excited when I stumbled upon her next memoir, Delancey, one day while browsing near the cookbooks in the library.
While A Homemade Life was more a jumble of life stories (sometimes connected, sometimes not) and charming nonetheless, Delancey tells a linear story of her experiences while opening a restaurant with her husband Brandon. While it was more his dream than hers - like me, Molly detested working in restaurants and preferred the comforts of home cooking - she supported him as he pursued it.