morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I had chosen 15 books to read in 2018 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories; I failed. I failed not to read (I read a ton), but I failed to blog.  So I reignited the quest in 2019. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.  This  first for 2019  installment is  a novel about anxiety. About a year ago, I sat around the dinner table with part of my family and I asked for four recommendations for book categories, and this (a book about anxiety) was one of them. And I have to tell you, outside of non-fiction, this was a tough one. A lot of fiction may include anxious characters, but not many where the anxiety rides front and center, but John Green's young adult novel, Turtles all the Way Down , does just tha...

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. While we're well into 2018, I did finish reading this book last year--these posts take longer than I anticipate. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.   This twelfth installment is an Oprah's Book Club Selection. Oh, this book is brutal. Sexism, rape, systematic racial injustice, torture, cruelty. Compassion, community, family, love, magic realism, metaphor. Certainly,  Ruby  by Cynthia Bond was all the talk of the Oprah airwaves in 2015, and I chose it for this twelfth installment. And what a whirlwind it was. The book opens with Ruby Bell wetting herself in the street as the men circle on a center-of-town porch, jeering and j...

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food.  And it turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in. This eleventh installment is a book set in Illinois . Oh, Desire. With a capital "D." There you are. Haunting around Chicago and New York (and their restaurants) in this old chestnut from the turn of the century. I picked up Sister Carrie   in the Chicago History Museum gift shop while I was wiling away some time before catching my plane from O'Hare back to San Francisco. I needed a book set in Illinois, and there was no way I was going to write about one of my most loathed books Augie March  (with apologies to my father-in-law, who is a big fan) or about the meat exposé  The Jungle  (a great book, but...